Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 7 – At the
center of most Russian discussions today is the question “What will Russia be
like after Putin?” Tatyana Stanovaya
says. But in fact, she continues, “it is already possible today to observe a
situation in which the president is ceasing to fulfill his traditional
arbitrage functions” and thus to see what a Russia without Putin would be like.
In a commentary for the Republic
portal (republic.ru/posts/86235), the Moscow analyst says that during
the last week alone, there have been three serious conflict situations in which
Putin did not play the role of initiator and did not intervene to resolve them
to the benefit of one of the sides.
These include the situation around director
Kirill Serebrennikov, Ramzan Kadyrov’s statements about Myanmar and his
willingness to oppose Moscow if it didn’t oppose the mistreatment of the
Muslims there, and the legal fight between Rosneft and Systema (kremlin.ru/events/president/news/55535)
Many commentators concluded that “beginning
in 2014,” Putin almost completely focused on foreign policy issues; but in
2016, he returned to domestic issues by engaging in a reordering of cadres to
make governing simpler and less politicized for himself and “more
self-administering.”
In the recent cases, Stanovaya says,
Putin’s removal of himself from conflicts within the system has become “still more
expressed” with the Kremlin leader often acting as if he weren’t in any way
involved, had a personal view about some of them, but was not going to resolve
the situation by laying down the law.
Stanovaya observes that it is clear
that “conflicts within the system ever more often are arising without any
participation by Putin,” a major change from the early years of his rule. “Each step them, each movement was under
presidential control and resolved exclusively by him” down to the smallest
detail.
“Now,” she continues, “conflicts arise
throughout the entire vertical as a rule at the initiative of the major
players,” and Putin “not rarely” is hardly involved or even completely informed
until very late. “Tensions arise without Putin and without his strategic
interest,” and that means that the Russian system has changed in fundamental
ways.
In the three cases this week, Stanovaya
continues, the Kremlin leader, on the one hand, “did not support either side of
the conflict in public,” and on the other, “we do not see any manifestation of
his own position or emotions” about the case.
In this new situation, “initiators
of conflicts have greater freedom, ‘the implementers’ have more opportunities
for creativity … Each side now will act on the basis of its own assessment.”
And that is because “Putin’s new role” means he has ceased to be “the
arbiter-judge” and become instead an outside observer.
In this way, Stanovaya argues, “the
personal role of Putin is being devalued. Now, if people in masks come to you,
one has to ask whether one should seek redress at Putin’s office or whether
there is in fact any sense in seeking the defense of such ‘a guarantor’?”
Indeed, it is becoming clear that “Putin is no longer giving anyone any
guarantees.”
Chances for getting his attention
and support arise “only in those cases when the issue involves Putin’s agenda –
and that is everything to do with geopolitics.” Otherwise, there is no
certainty anymore. That of course is one
of the reasons so many issues are discussed in terms of their geopolitical
dimensions.
“In the near term,” Stanovaya
argues, “the number of intra-elite conflicts in Russia will grow rapidly,” with
latent ones breaking out into loud public ones. Political struggles will take
place in court cases and raids as the main “internal mechanism[s] of the
resolution of conflicts without Putin.”
That in turn means, she says, that “the
significance of force, financial and administrative resources, of judges,
procurators, and investigators will grow sharply” and Putin “in a short time
may turn out to be not a demiurge but a boring figure in the background” whose
attitudes will not determine outcomes.
This is how, Stanovaya claims,
already “under Putin, a post-Putin Russia is being born.”
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