Turning to the East isn’t a Mistake but How Putin is Doing So Is, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 5 – Given the growth importance of Chinese and other Asian economies, the reorientation of other countries in that direction is an appropriate even necessary step, Putin is not wrong to do so, Vladimir Pastukhov says; but the way he is doing it is, a pattern that is true of his actions in many other areas as well.

            Putin is right to devote more attention to the East than his predecessors, the London-based Russian analyst says. Indeed, any conceivable leader of Russia including those who are the Kremlin leader’s most committed opponents would be doing the same given new economic realities (t.me/v_pastukhov/1232 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=66D9ECB5CA97E).

            But the way Putin is doing this “turn to the east” is deeply flawed, involving as it does the launching of a war in the West and trying to cut Russia off from Europe and the Atlantic world, Pastukhov says. And that is part of a far larger problem: Putin does identify many problems Russia really faces but the methods he has chosen to use can’t solve them.

            “Russia cannot go anywhere at all while it is ruled by a bunch of St. Petersburg boys who have clung to power and who have created a northern branch of Cosa Nostra in place of statehood with thousand-year-old traditions,” Pastukhov continues. They do not understand that entrepreneurship isn’t just about building but about taking risks.

            That in turn requires freedom and the conditions under which people can build plans for the longer term. That isn’t possible under Putin; and until a Russian leader replaces him who can open the way for that, “there will be no development” east of the Urals, however much the Kremlin talks about “a turn to the east.”

            Instead, Pastukhov says, there is all too real a possibility that Russia “will lose what we have.”