Putin is Not a Superman and the Russian Military is Not All Powerful

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, February 27 – Despite Vladimir Putin’s bombast and his apparent success in convincing many Russians and some Western leaders otherwise, the Kremlin leader is not a superman, according to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and the Russian military is not the all powerful force he claims it is, according to Kseniya Kirillova.

 

            Speaking at Chatham House in London yesterday, Khodorkovsky said directly that changes in Russia are inevitable because “however much Kremlin PR specialists and TV propagandia seek to show us something else, Putin is not a superman and he will not pass into history as a hero” (openrussia.org/post/view/3003/).

 

            Russian media show a bare-chested Putin fighting bears, flying with birds, and hunting tigers; but all this, the former Russian oligarch, political prisoner, and now opposition leader says that this is all “a fantasy” and that Putin is “not a strong leader but a naked king,” someone who like King Canute thinks he can order the tides but succeeds only in getting his feet wet.

 

            Putin’s Russia is “not all Russia,” Khodorkovsky says, although many in the West do not look beyond him.  “’Putin’s Russia,’” he says, is that part of the country “which unconsciously and as a result of fear has decided to go in the direction of a closed society,” something that the oil and gas income of a decade ago made possible.

 

            Those in “Putin’s Russia” but not in the rest of it accepted the Faustian bargain of “a well-off existence in place of political freedom.”  But the first part of that equation is no longer available, not because of the war in Ukraine or Western sanctions, he argues, but because “the Russian economy has exhausted the resource of development based on the destruction of openness and entrepreneurialism.”

 

            What the war has done, Khodorkovsky says, is make the situation worse by depriving the Kremlin of its access to Western investment and support. As a result, “the closing off of state institutions, the absence of competition and the seeking of isolation has led to rapid devaluation, a fall in production and a reduction in the standard of living.”

 

            It is quite clear that the autumn has come for Putin, but this may be a long fall, one that will involve enormous difficulties for citizens of Russia and will be “dangerous for international security,” he argues. Tensions are going to increase within the government between the old elites and the new, and restiveness among the population will go up as well.

 

            In response, the Kremlin can be counted on to increase repression, exploiting “religious radicalism, archaic values, and xenophobic attitudes” which will be reflected in witch hunts against increasing numbers of people and causing those who can to flee the country. That will make the future even more difficult.

 

            One thing that Russians and the West must be clear on is that russia is not a petro-state as Putin would like people to believe and thus accept that all kinds of things that should not be allowed are necessarily permissible. In fact, Khodorkovsky points out, only a quarter of Russia’s state budget comes from the sale of oil and gas. Three-quarters comes from other sources.

 

            He says he is optimistic about the future because of the rise of a new generation that is not prepared to accept the closed society Putin is offering. Unfortunately, he tells his London audience, “Western society does not see these people and continues to deal only with Putin” as if there “will not be any alternatives.”

 

            And having adopted that mistake view of Russia, the West feels it has no alternative but to come to a deal with the Kremlin leader even though what he clearly wants is no less than a reordering of the international system against the forces of freedom and for the powers of closed societies.

 

            It is of course possible to make a deal with anyone, Khodorkovsky says, if one recognizes what he or she really wants. But if one does understand what Putin wants, one must recognize that it is at variance not only with the interests of the West but also of the interests of Russia and Russians as well.

 

            Another assumption promoted by Moscow and widespread in the West is that the Russian military is all-powerful, but as Kseniya Kirillova points out in an NR2.com commentary, the facts do not support that contention. On the one hand, Russian military equipment is often dated and ineffective (nr2.com.ua/blogs/Ksenija_Kirillova/Nepobedimost-Rossii-mif-90903.html).

 

            And on the other, and much more seriously as the Ukrainian fighting has proved, Russian forces may gain their objectives but only at the cost of serious losses if they are opposed by a determined opponent.  The Vympel special forces unit, for example, lost a third of its personnel during the attack on the Donetsk airport.

 

            Ukrainian forces, although suffering from shortages of certain kinds of weapons, showed there and are showing elsewhere that they can slow or even stop the Russian advance. Indeed, Kirillova says, “the war in Ukraine has shown that the Russian army is not so strong as many are accustomed to think.” It hasn’t been able to advance everywhere it wants and with minimal losses.

 

            To say this is not to suggest that the Russian army is not capable of advance, but “to exaggerate [its]strength” on the basis of “myths from the past” is a big mistake.  And if Putin continues his invasion of Ukraine, he will find that not only the Ukrainian army but the armed Ukrainian people will oppose him every step of the way.

 

 

Post-Soviet Space Entering New Era of Potentially Explosive Border Changes

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, February 25 – When the USSR disintegrated in 1991, the United States and other Western countries and with the support of the leaderships of the former Soviet republics, including the Russian Federation, insisted that the administrative borders of the union republics should become without change the international borders of the new states.

 

            The West did so out of fear that any border changes would open a Pandora’s box. And the leaders of the former Soviet republics did so because in most cases, the border issue was far from the most pressing one they faced and because, again in most cases, they recognized that challenging the borders would land them in difficulties with other countries.

 

            Many even came to believe that these borders were both natural and had seldom been changed, neither of which was the case. These borders had been changed more than 200 times during the Soviet period, and they were in no way “natural” except when they abutted a river or a sea.

 

            This commitment to the stability of borders in the post-Soviet region had both positive and negative consequences. On the positive side, it prevented or at least put off an issue that could have torn many of these countries apart. But on the negative, it meant that in discussions of what came to be called “frozen conflicts,” border changes were off the table.

 

            That had the unintended result of keeping many of these conflicts going far longer than might have been the case if territorial adjustments had been made in the immediate wake of the disintegration of the USSR when the situation was more fluid and exacerbating tensions within these countries even if it helped to minimize them between the new states.

 

            But the idea of border stability began to break down a decade ago, with Russia’s military actions against Georgia leading to the partially recognized independence of Abkhazia and South Osetia, with conflicts along borders in Central Asia, and with Vladimir Putin’s drive for regional amalgamation within the Russian Federation, a push that reopened the question.

 

            Now with the Russian Anschluss of Crimea and Moscow’s continuing intervention in southeastern Ukraine -- and despite the Kremlin’s frequent assertions that it supports the territorial integrity of that country – other countries and indeed parts of countries see border changes as having been legitimated and are making their own proposals.

 

            An example of one such proposal that is in itself small but that may have enormous consequences down the road was reported yesterday by a Kazakhstan outlet.  According to that news agency’s Marina Aimbetova, Russia’s Omsk Oblast has proposed two variants of a border swap with Kazakhstan (time.kz/articles/zloba/2015/02/24/42385-i-nashim-i-vashim).

 

            Ten days ago, Erik Sultanov, the head of the Northern Kazakhstan Oblast, made a visit to Omsk, during which Omsk Governor Viktor Nazarenko proposed a territorial swap of approximately 2400 hectares in each direction to simplify life for border residents who otherwise must cross the international border several times a day.

 

            He argued that this would not be difficult as most of the territory involved has no population centers and is owned by the two governments rather than by private persons. But the issue is obviously very sensitive: Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry issued a statement saying that it had heard nothing about this idea at an official level.

 

            “Questions concerning the demarcation of the state border between the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation are in the exclusive competence of the joint Kazakhstan-Russian commission on issues of demarcation of the state border,” the ministry said, adding that it would “carefully study” any proposals that the Russian side might make.

 

            There are few borders in the former Soviet space where the borders are unproblematic, either because of the intermixture of populations left over from Soviet times or because of national claims.  And now that Putin has opened this Pandora’s box, it will be worth watching what comes out and, also as in case of Pandora, what if anything will be left behind.

Six Post-Soviet Countries Now Say They Were Occupied by the USSR

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, February 25 – Today, Georgians marked the 94^th anniversary of what Tbilisi calls “the battle of the Soviet Occupation” of that country in 1921, a self-definition that means six post-Soviet states now officially view the Soviet system as an occupation and one that marks an important milestone in their separation from Russia and possible future development.

 

            Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians and their supporters in the West always viewed Soviet power in the three as an illegal occupation. That was the source of both the West’s non-recognition policy and their efforts a quarter of a century ago that led to the restoration of their independence.

 

            Moldovans also view their inclusion in the USSR as an occupation, with many of them arguing that they were the “fourth” victim of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and should be viewed as such. And Azerbaijanis, official and unofficial alike, trace their current statehood back to the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan that was occupied by Soviet forces early on.

 

            Such self-identifications are important both because they underscore the commitment of these peoples not to allow that to happen again but also and perhaps even more because they open the way to the kind of developments economic and political that happened in Eastern Europe when the Soviet occupation of that region ended.

 

            Indeed, many analysts there and in the West have suggested that one of the major reasons that Eastern Europe, including the three Baltic states, has been more successful in overcoming the communist past is precisely because its peoples viewed communism less as an integral part of their national lives than as a foreign occupation they were only too happy to throw off.

 

            To the extent that Georgia and Moldova and potentially other former non-Russian Soviet republics move in that direction as well then not only will make the restoration of any Moscow-centered empire far more difficult but will also open the way to a better future, something that Western governments should take note of.

 

            The Day of Soviet Occupation was first marked officially in Georgia five years ago when the parliament voted to commemorate “the hundreds of thousands of victims of political repressions of the Communist occupation regime” (agenda.ge/news/30346/eng).

 

            Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said that February 25, 1921, was “one of the most tragic days in the history of the country” because the ensuing 70-year-long Soviet occupation had “devastating effects” on Georgia and required Georgians to make enormous sacrifices to recover their independence.

 

            "Despite the communist ideology and the regime,” he added, “the idea of freedom and striving for independence has never vanished in people; their struggle for freedom has never been suspended. Today Georgia is an independent country and it is the result of the devotion of many generations. Our responsibility is to protect this great legacy.”

 

Belarus, ‘Key to Baltics,’ Perhaps Even More Important for Moscow than Ukraine, Shevtsova Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, February 25 – For Vladimir Putin, Belarus is “the key to the Baltic countries” as a military-strategic outpost and thus quite possibly Minsk will turn out to be “much more important for the Russian system than Ukraine is, according to Liliya Shevtsova, a Russian commentator now at the Brookings Institution.

 

            In an interview to Belaruspartisan.org, she points out that Putin “does not have any sympathy for Aleksandr Lukashenka,” because the Belarusian leader’s independent poses constantly force Moscow to give him more help. The Eurasian Union in reality provides help to Lukashenka and Moscow and Kazakhstan only “lose” (belaruspartisan.org/politic/296545/).

 

            But Putin and those around him feel they have no choice but to do so because of the importance of Belarus as a transit route to the West – one far more important than Ukraine – and as a place from which it can put pressure on the Baltic countries. Without Minsk in its corner, Moscow would find that very difficult to do.

 

            Shevtsova adds that what Moscow is doing in Ukraine now is an effort to intimidate Belarus and keep it in line by reminding Lukashenka that the same thing could happen to him if he is not careful. But at the same time, she says, “Russia and the Kremlin are completely uninterested in territorial acquisitions.”

 

            Moscow does not want to assume the burdens that would be involved in the absorption of new territories within its own borders, she suggests. It simply wants to show that it can take such actions and then force those against whom such actions are directed to pay the bill – or to get others in the West to do so.

 

            Crimea is the exception which proved the rule. From Moscow’s point of view, Crimea “always was Soviet Russian.” Its annexation simply codified what those in the Russian capital believed was in fact already the case.  But even its absorption has proved to be extremely expensive. Moscow doesn’t need or want more such burdens, Shevtsova says.

 

 

 

Moscow has Made Eight Major Mistakes in Ukraine, Artemyev Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, February 25 – At a time when criticizing Ukraine for mistakes it has made in pursuing its goals is a cottage industry not only in Ukraine and Russia but in the West, Maksim Artemyev, a commentator for Forbes.ru, identifies eight major mistakes Moscow has made that Russia has made in its Ukrainian policy.

 

            What makes his list both especially valuable and potentially influential is that it is based not on a moral assessment of Russia’s violation of international law but rather on a consideration of the ways in which Vladimir Putin has taken actions that undercut Russia’s interests (forbes.ru/mneniya-column/mir/280911-8-oshibok-rossiiskoi-vlasti-v-ukrainskom-krizise).

 

            Artemyev’s eight Russian mistakes in Ukraine are as follows:

 

            First of all, the annexation of Ukraine and the manner in which it was done with a highly irregular referendum increasingly appears to be not a well-considered policy, but “a nervous improvisation with consequences” that few in Moscow reflected upon: a permanent spit with Ukraine and the West, incredible new government burdens, and no real gains.

 

            Second, Moscow adopted a constantly shifting and ambivalent position on the Donbas, first encouraging people there to think they could become part of Russia and then rejecting that idea while deepening its own direct military involvement there, something that “only deepened and prolonged the crisis” without benefit to Moscow.

 

            Third, Moscow’s bold talk about how sanctions would work to Russia’s benefit and even more its introduction of counter-sanctions have turned out to be nothing more than a bluff not only for the country as a whole but for the elite.  “The parasitic essence of the ruling class has remained unchanged: its representatives as before keep their savings in the West,” regardless of what happens to Russia.

 

            As a result, Artemyev continues, “the economic growth of the last decade has degenerated into stagnation and depression,” to a situation like when Putin came to power with a weak ruble, a collapsing infrastructure, and all talk about improving the lives of people put off for a long time to come.

 

            And Moscow failed to see that “the collapse of Ukraine is the collapse of Russia, a hit on its own economy.”  The two countries remain to this day so inter-connected that this could not be otherwise, but the Russian planners of the Ukrainian adventure utterly failed to take that into account.

 

            Fourth, he says, “the anti-Maidan hysteria” of the Ukrainian campaign has become “the occasion for the adoption of a number of draconian laws and government decisions on the media and the Internet which not only reduce freedom of speech but have the effect of throwing Russia ever further behind the West.

 

            Fifth, the Russian government’s propaganda has “lowered the level of intellectual life” in Russia by promoting “black-white thinking and the psychology of ‘a besieged fortress’” and the denial of the obvious – as when Moscow says Russian troops are not in Ukraine – is contributing to “duplicity and schizophrenia.” All this will cause Russia to fall further and further behind.

 

            Sixth, Artemyev says, the war has led, not surprisingly, to a dramatic rise in the role of military and other security officials in the Russian government, something that has the effect of reducing attention to all the country’s problems which are not directly connected with the conflict.

 

            Seventh, and perhaps especially seriously for the future, as a result of its use of volunteers and irregular forces in the Donbas, the Kremlin has created a situation in which “the monopoly of the state on arms and force has been violated,” something that could threaten Russia from within and that is already further alienating Russia’s neighbors.

 

            And eighth, Moscow’s demand for the federalization of Ukraine is extraordinarily “shortsighted” because it means that the Donbas will be divided and will get fewer resources from Kyiv than would otherwise be the case, as the experience of centralized states in Europe with significant regions shows.

 

            As a result of all these mistakes, Artemyev says, “a regime on the banner of which is written ‘stability and no accidents’ has in a paradoxical way made a choice in favor of the unpredictable.” And that unpredictability, he suggests, will rebound against and inside Russia as a result.

 

            “The number of risks is growing exponentially,” he writes, noting that “already today the Kremlin is forced to coordinate its moves with yesterday’s marginals, the leaders of the DNR and LNR.”  Had Moscow distanced itself from the events of the Maidan rather than gotten involved in the way that it has, it might have avoided many of these problems.

 

            But that is not what has happened, and Moscow’s efforts to keep Ukraine from moving toward the West have proved to be “too costly” for Russia itself, not only because of what they have meant in terms of relations with the rest of the world, including Russia’s other neighbors, but perhaps equally important in terms of what they mean for Russia itself.

 

Non-Russian Language Education Being Decimated Under Putin

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, February 25 – Between 2002 and 2010, the number of schools offering non-Russian language instruction has declined by more than 65 percent, and the number of pupils studying in these languages has declined by nearly 80 percent, according to Olga Artemenko, a senior scholar at the Education Ministry’s Federal Institute for the Development of Education.

 

            That decline, which she says reflects school consolidation, shifting of students to Russian-language schools, and lack of support for non-Russian education generally, is the sharpest in modern times and threatens the survival of many of Russia’s more than 230 ethno-national groups (nazaccent.ru/column/88/).

 

            This trend is especially striking at a time when Moscow is demanding that neighboring countries keep Russian-language schools open for their minorities and even make Russian a second state language, a call that is just as perverse under the circumstances as Moscow’s demand that other countries federalize at a time when it is destroying federalism.

 

            Language developments depend both on broad economic trends and on the language policy of the government, Artemenko says. In the past, the Russian government has been supportive of minority languages as a result of which many languages which would have died elsewhere have survived and even flourished there. But now that is changing.

 

             On the one hand, the government increasingly makes its decisions on the basis of cost calculations rather than the value of languages. And on the other, it now requires all non-Russian language textbooks to be approved in Moscow. Only three languages have even some of their textbooks approved: Tatar, Sakha and Khakass. The others don’t.

 

            In many federal subjects, work on new textbooks for Moscow’s approval is finishing up, but in Daghestan and Karachayevo-Cherkesia, it hasn’t even begun, at least in part because of the linguistic complexity of the former – Daghestan has 32 languages which enjoy state status – and political sensitivities in the case of the latter – KChR is one of two bi-national republics.

 

            Many people in Moscow and elsewhere assume that young people today would rather study English, German, and Chinese than their native Buryat or Mokshan. “But in fact this is not entirely so,” Artemenko says, and she cites the findings of a survey she conducted last year among students in the 10^th and 11^th grades in non-Russian areas.

 

            Fifteen percent of those studying Finno-Ugric languages, 33 percent of those studying Turkic languages, 20 percent of those studying Daghestani languages, and 40 percent of those studying Chechen and Ingush languages said that they intended to organize their careers in such a way that they would use their native language and not some others.

 

             Artemenko also points out that students show great interest in the study of their ethnic group and the places where its members live, and consequently, she says, “in order that the languages not disappear or degrade to kitchen level, there should be created, at a minimum, conditions for those who want to use these languages in their lives.”

 

            The need for that is growing not decreasing, she says, because in recent years, the representatives of non-Russian language groups have increased by five million people, and if their needs are not taken into account, there will be “an outbreak of inter-ethnic tension,” just as there will be if Russian speakers have problems in schools in non-Russian republics.

 

            And that requires, the scholar says, a state language policy which would promote “social and economic stability, the development of dialogue, and the all-Russian unity of all the peoples of Russia.”

War in Ukraine ‘Continuation of Decay of USSR,’ Sukhov Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, February 24 – The war in Ukraine must be seen as a direct “continuation” of the decay and disintegration of the Soviet Union and the failure of Russia and many other of the countries which emerged from it to develop the kind of political institutions necessary for stability, according to Moscow commentator Ivan Sukhov.

 

            “The war in the east of Ukraine is not the first and unfortunately is unlikely to be the last war in the former post-Soviet space,” he argues, because there are many territories with disputed borders, valuable resources and groups who believe that “war is the cheapest means of gaining access to these resources” (profile.ru/eks-sssr/item/92965-god-vojny).

 

Such violent conflicts are all the more likely because these are “comparatively young states and parts of a country which existed within living memory.” And there is yet another reason which few have focused on: the failure of many of these countries to develop political institutions in which leaders can have confidence.

 

In far too many of them, there is “no reliable system” which could “guarantee that this or that leader having left his post would not be brought up on charges in court [or] driven into exile.” No leader wants that to happen, but at present, “there remain many countries and presidents from the USSR but few functioning institutions have grown up.”

 

            When a president is “not too certain” that he will not lose more than office when he leaves it and when there are all the other factors listed upon, it should not surprise anyone that he or she will choose war as a way of keeping in power and avoiding disasters. And that more than anything else explains what is going on, Sukhov says.

 

            In that critical sense, he continues, “the war in Ukraine is a continuation of the decay of the USSR, a decay which no one in the world expected or predicted and which for a decade and a half were pleased with because unlike the decay of Yugoslavia, it occurred relatively peacefully,” all this “’relatively’” nonetheless involved “several tens of thousands of dead in the Fergana, Sumgait, South Osetia, Abkhazia, North Osetia, Transdniestria, and Chechnya.”

 

            Along with Georgia in August 2008, Ukraine now is part of “a second wave” in this disintegration “when the new states test both their relative strengths and the limits of the permissible.” It might have been avoided if after the events of the early 1990s, the governments involved had developed institutions rather than stolen resources and build mansions “in various picturesque locations.”

 

            “1991 could have become a democratic revolution which would have allowed” Russia and all the other countries to catch up with what they had missed as a result of tsarist backwardness and the Soviet system. But instead, Sukhov says, it brought to power the very same people responsible for the earlier disasters, something others reacted to with indifference.

 

            It would have been impossible for Ukraine or Russia to change in the course of one year what they could not change in 25, he continues. “But the events of the Maidan, the death of people, the overthrow of Yanukovich, the loss of Crimea, and the war in the east over the course of the year have created in Ukraine a situation which at the very least is provoking an attempt at normal government construction.”

 

            Whether it will succeed is another matter. “Many in Kyiv talk about European values, but they do not all know very well what those are.” Moreover the country is very much divided.  But Russians should not take any pleasure in this because in Russia there are many of the same problems but much less of an impulse to address them.

 

            “Wars on post-imperial spaces sometimes begin as local conflicts and sometimes as a tst of strength or a diversionary political maneuver,” Sukhov says. “From a theoretical point of view, country A can be the source of support for irredentists on the territory of country B or the irredentists in B can declare A their main hope.”

 

            “For the authorities of B, victory alone becomes the single basis for political survival, but A at the same time doesn’t want to retreat.” In this situation, Sukhov adds, “both foregt that sometimes when an empire falls apart, everything begins with a dream about harmonious and mutual cooperation. But in the end it can involve the collapse of either of them.”

 

            Indeed, he writes, “it is not excluded” that it can lead to the collapse of both.