Until Russian Opposition Talks about Putin’s Foreign Policy, It Won’t Threaten Him or Achieve Much, Kirillova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 14 – “The majority of Russian dissidents,” US-based Russian journalist Kseniya Kirillova says, “do not understand that they will not be able to achieve any significant changes in their country as long as they continue to ignore the Kremlin’s foreign policy” because that policy is inextricably connected with many of Russia’s domestic problems.

            In a commentary for Kyiv’s Den newspaper, Kirillova suggests that the recent protests regarding Ivan Golunov show two things. On the one hand, when they want to, Russians are capable of coming out to defend victims of the Putin system’s arbitrariness. But on the other, such desires manifest themselves quite rarely (day.kyiv.ua/ru/blog/politika/v-ramkah-dozvolennogo).

            Many commentators on the Golunov protest have already noted, she continues, that it was a safe issue for Russians because the issues the journalist worked on “did not concern Vladimir Putin and his closest entourage directly.” Thus, they could be tolerated by the regime and were less likely to land those who protested in serious trouble.

            Other victims of the system’s arbitrary and repressive policies are more dangerous as possible objects of opposition concern; and perhaps none more than Ukrainians given the sensitivity of their issue for the Kremlin leader. Russian opposition figures have generally shied away from addressing this issue although there have been some happy exceptions.

            But conversations with participants in the Free Russia Forum in Lithuania “shows that the majority of them really prefer not to get involved in their activities with the policies of their country regarding other states,” viewing such issues as unpopular or dangerous especially at this stage in the protest movement.

            In this way, Kirillova argues, “the majority of Russian liberals continue to view the ‘Ukrainian’ theme as ‘foreign,’ not very useful in their political activity inside Russia and chiefly as too dangerous to take up.”  They view any involvement with Ukrainian issues as “pure altruism” rather than fundamental politics.

            This is completely natural, she continues. “Any society is fundamentally egoistic, and in any country the majority of people prefer to speak out on behalf of ‘their own’ rather than for ‘others.’” One can criticize this, but one can’t say it is in any way unexpected.  Unfortunately, if Russia is to change, this attitude must be overcome.

            As Kirillova points out, “Putin propaganda doesn’t deny pollution, corruption or other social problems. Yes, these issues are typically minimized in Russia media, but they aren’t totally blocked.” The same is true of bribery and official incompetence. And so all these things can be discussed and become the basis of protests without much fear of serious repression.

            “But not one of these themes is capable of giving rise to a genuinely serious protest movement at the federal level, capable of generating systemic changes and threatening Putin personally because the fear the Kremlin promotes influences Russians more strongly than anger about the illegality and declining standard of living around them.”

            While protests continue to focus on these issues, the Kremlin can make use of its propaganda tools to promote the idea that Putin deserves support as the defender of Russia against foreign threats even if his officials are guilty of this or that crime or abuse.  They can always be sacrificed and Putin saved as a result.

            Consequently, “issues of trash, corruption, building churches in squares and other such ‘permitted’ actions always will remain local protests until Russians recognize” that “Putin is not the defender of the country from moral danger but the guilty party” in the problems domestic and foreign that Russians suffer from.

            “The understanding that it is precisely the federal authorities who are intentionally killing them, leaving them without work and medicines and sending their money off to unnecessary wars of consequent not only will eliminate the strongest fears on which Putin propaganda is based but also open the way for protests against Putin himself.”

            Kirillova concludes: If Russians continue to view Putin’s wars as a ‘foreign’ theme,” they will live under the kind of illusion the Kremlin has sought to promote. For a long time, it has “shifted foreign policy into domestic Russian discourse, having made it the basis of its ‘information operations’ directed at the consciousness of the population.”

            If the Russian opposition is going to get serious, she suggests, it will have to address Putin’s aggressive foreign policy fearlessly – and in the first instance his continuing war of conquest against Ukraine.