Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 16 – The leaks about
the state of talks between Moscow and Minsk on the integration of the two state
which appeared in Kommersant (kommersant.ru/doc/4094365), Yezhednevny
zhurnal commentator Aleksandr Ryklin says, are “more important than their
content” (ej.ru/?a=note&id=34190).
They are intended to send a message
to the West that Vladimir Putin is not “a lame duck” but will be in office long
after 2024 including possibly as head of a restored empire and another message
to the Russian force structures, on which he has to rely to defend against
rising popular anger at home, that no agreement he makes with Belarus will harm
them, Ryklin says.
Putin’s need to extend his status in
the Kremlin after 2024 and his obvious desire to build “’a new Russian empire’”
are clearly behind the talks and the leaks because any such accord with Belarus
will “immediately kill two birds with one stone.” But in pursuing any such agreement, Putin
faces two problems.
On the one hand, Alyaksandr Lukashenka
is perhaps the most unreliable partner imaginable, fully capable of appearing to
agree to something only to reject it later. Leaks are obviously a way of trying
to lock his position in place. And on
the other, Putin can’t now afford to alienate the security services on which he
relies.
Consequently, the leaks are all
about economic issues and none about security ones, something that Russian
force structures can be counted on to read as an indication that they aren’t the
subject of the talks but will retain their current positions in a Russian state
headed by Putin well into the future.
As Ryklin puts it, “the Kremlin
doesn’t want too introduce unnecessary nervousness in the activity of structures,
the significant of which given the growing strength of the protest wave has
significantly grown.” Putin wants them to focus on “how to defend the powers
that be from the anger of the people” rather than on Belarus.
Leaks like those in Kommersant are
just the way to arrange that.
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