Putin’s Russia Now Increasingly Isolated at Three Levels, Makarkin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 22 – Moscow analyst Aleksey Makarkin says that Putin’s Russia is now isolated from other members of the international community on three levels: personal, financial-economic and the government as a participant in that community. Addressing any one of them will not necessarily lead to immediate changes in the other two.

            On the Bunin&Co. telegram channel, the vice president of the Moscow Center for Political Technology says that the first of these isolating developments consists of “sanctions against specific officials and businessmen” that have made any relations with them “toxic” (t.me/BuninCo/1374).

            “The Americans are prepared to lift sanctions toward only those persons dialogue with which at a certain moment corresponds to the interests of the US,” as when Washington allowed Dmitry Rogozin to come to the US to discuss joint efforts in space.   But as for the others, they are now beyond the pale.

            The second isolating factor are financial and economic sanctions against Russian corporations or entire sectors of the Russian economy, which make it very difficult if not impossible to complete current projects or to develop the Russian economy in the future.  They thus mean that Russia will fall further and further behind the West.

            And the third “isolating” factor is the way in which the international community is treating Russia as an outcast state.  There are two recent examples of this, Makarkin says: the voting down of the Russian candidate to head Interpol and the expansion of the ability of the anti-chemical weapons organization to take action on its own rather than refer that to the UN.

            Both of those actions and others as well, the Moscow analyst suggests, were directed at Russia as a state and designed to limit its ability to respond.   In the case of the chemical weapons change, which is by far the more indicative of the current situation, Russia will not be able to rely on its veto in the UN Security Council as it has in the past.