WADA Sanctions Work to Putin’s Benefit, Travin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 12 – While many Russians are angry the doping scandal will keep the country’s athletes from competing in upcoming international competitions, Vladimir Putin is benefitting from WADA’s decision to impose new sanctions because it plays into his ideological message that Russia is “a besieged fortress” surrounded by enemies, Dmitry Travin says.

            The head of the Center for Research on Modernization at the European University in St. Petersburg says that what might look like a political disaster from the outside in fact works to Putin’s benefit and will continue to do so because of the ideological framework he has worked to impose since the spring of 2014 (rosbalt.ru/blogs/2019/12/10/1817644.html).

            “Approximately since the spring of 2014, the policy of the Kremlin has been based on the cultivation of the idea of the besieged fortress.  The more people who think Russia is surrounded by enemies, the more stable is Putin’s position” because one doesn’t obsess about domestic issues when one’s country is under attack or change its experienced leader at that moment.

            According to Traven, “the promotion of this defensive strategy is the only means for Putin to convince society of its need for him.” He hasn’t boosted the economy for ten years and he doesn’t have an ideology that promises a bright future after a “gray” present. And despite what some think, the Kremlin leader isn’t willing to rely on force alone.

            In fact, the St. Petersburg scholar argues, Putin sees that such a move would be “quite dangerous” because those who he needs as his defenders might decide to shift their alliance to “a young and charismatic leader capable of awakening hope in the population.” Thus, he is driven to rely on the formation in society of the sense that Russia is “threatened from all sides.”

             Five years ago, many assumed that Western sanctions would “inflict harm on the Putin regime,” but now “it is already obvious that they have strengthened rather than weakened it.” Its declining poll ratings are not the result of sanctions but of self-inflicted wounds like raising the pension age.

            The latest round of the doping scandal “certainly will be used to strengthen the sense” that Russia is a besieged fortress surrounded by enemies. “And it will be used successfully. Foreign affairs do not agitate many Russian citizens, but they carefully follow sports developments. And now it will be much more difficult to cheer for their own.”

            One can already see how the Kremlin media are going to play this: clean athletes are being prevented from competing because they are Russians, and millions of Russian fans are being deprived of the pleasure of watching them do so. “This is in fact real Russophobia. From this to aggression is [only] a single step.”

            It is of course “difficult to say how long and effectively” this will work for the Kremlin, Travin says. But for Putin’s purposes, it only has to work to solve his 2024 problem. After that, he can come up with a new ideological message, but this one gives every indication that it will work until then.