Both Putin and West have Miscalculated about Impact of Isolating Russia, Shevtsova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 12 – Vladimir Putin assumed that the West would never hold Russia accountable for his violations of the international rules of the game, and the West assumed that if it transformed Russian oligarchs into international pariahs and forced them to return to Russia, they would challenge the Kremlin leader, Liliya Shevtsova says.

            Both have been proved wrong, the Russian political analyst says. The attitudes of Western leaders, the people Putin calls his “partners,” have not been supported by Western societies as a whole who have proven far more willing to stand up to Putin impose severe penalties on his agents abroad (echo.msk.ru/blog/shevtsova/2313524-echo/).

            But at the same time, Shevtsova continues, the Russian businessmen who have been living in the West but now are being forced to return home are not playing the role that the West expected them to: they aren’t standing up to Putin but in most cases falling in line, having been gelded by the Russian political leader by their fears of what he may do to them. 

            Whatever the leaders of foreign countries have been willing to put up with in the past, she continues, most of their populations and political elites are not. At present, there are only three countries in the world – Vietnam, Greece, and the Philippines – where more people have a positive attitude about Russia than a negative one. And Greece is clearly shifting away too.

            These nations “don’t like us” and they are increasingly prepared to treat Russians as pariahs, Shevtsova argues.  Putin didn’t expect this; but at the same time, the West has been wrong to assume that those oligarchs and businessmen would be so horrified by losing their ability to live and operate in the West that they would rise up against Putin. 

            “The era of the integration of Russia and the Russians ‘in the West’ has ended;” but so too has the expectation that such integration could become the cause of a revolt of the oligarchs against Putin back in Russia.  That isn’t going to happen.  Instead, those forced out of the West will try to make the best deal they can with Putin and support repression if that is what it takes.

            In short, the Russian elites that the West hoped to play against Putin aren’t going to fulfill those expectations.  They will become the basis not of overthrowing his authoritarian regime but of promoting totalitarianism because they like Putin will see that the real threat to him and them comes from below, from a Russian people mobilized by demands for justice.

            “Any Russian leader, both Putin and the post-Putin will be forced to think how to calm the people demanding justice.” The most likely course will be a redistribution of wealth and power away from those who have those benefits now to others. The oligarchs forced to return home will be defenders of the regime only to be betrayed by it in the future, Shevtsova says.

            Tragically, however, the attitudes people in the West have formed about Russia and Russians because of the behavior of Putin and his favorites mean that all Russians will become suspects and outcasts regardless of what happens next.  And that is perhaps the greatest tragedy of the misunderstandings of both sides.