Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 10 – Vladimir
Putin, Aleksandr Zhelenin says, “who until the end of 2019 was like the master
of the game in rapid chess and in such a capacity all the time was ahead of his
geo-strategic opponent-partners, now has entered a strategic dead end,”
domestically and foreign, despite the fact that in all cases he was warned
about what was coming.
Russia’s economy is in stagnation if
one accepts official figures and in decline if one doesn’t, the Rosbalt
commentator suggests. And its population has declined by 300,000 over the last
12 months, yet another indication of decline. But what is most striking is that
the Kremlin leader doesn’t appear to be in a position to compensate for this by
foreign “triumphs.”
Even where he may be able to succeed
in some respects, Zhelenin continues, his victories will be less impressive to
Russians at home than they were earlier and his defeats significantly more
obvious as a brief examination of the key areas of his action and concern shows
(rosbalt.ru/blogs/2020/01/09/1821428.html).
As for Ukraine, Putin did not get
the concessions from Vladimir Zelensky he expected at the Normandy format
meeting in Paris. The Ukrainian president took a hard line and the Kremlin
leader has no reason to expect that he is about to change it. Moreover, Moscow
had to pay Ukraine an enormous sum to keep gas flowing across Ukraine to
Europe.
With regard to Belarus, much has
been promised but little delivered. Instead, Alyaksandr Lukashenka has played
Putin in such a way that the Kremlin leader is unlikely to get the breakthrough
he hopes for in the coming months. Instead, while there may be some cosmetic
changes, the union state isn’t going to take the form Putin has promised.
The United States is another place
where Putin has not achieved what he expected after Donald Trump was elected.
Instead, the Congress keeps upping the sanctions against Russia; and even Trump
acts in ways that Moscow doesn’t approve of, including liquidating the Iranian
general in Iraq.
As far as the Middle East is
concerned, Russia’s position looks anything but what Putin would like. Yes,
Putin can order more airstrikes in Syria; but it won’t win him points at home.
And Turkey despite its cooperative attitude on some matters is now blocking
Russia from doing what it wants in Libya.
In the next twelve months, Zhelenin
suggests, Putin will act as he has in the past “but without his former success”
given that his geopolitical opponents have taken his measure and because Russians
aren’t as impressed as they were with his boldness now as they have been in the
past.
And there are two events in 2020
that Putin will have to decide what to do and do so from a position less flexible
and promising than in earlier years. He will have to decide what to do about
the Belarusian presidential elections where a new victory for Lukashenka will
hardly serve Moscow’s interests, and he will also have to decide what to do in
the US election.
Putin can hardly act as openly in
the latter case as he did in 2016 given that his opponents are watching and
thus any effort in that direction will almost certainly prove counterproductive.
Instead, he may try to offer Trump something the US president wants, such as a new arms control deal, to allow the US
leader to claim that his policies have brought Putin to the table.
Ukraine will remain a neuralgic
issue in large measure because again any radicalization of Russia’s policies
there almost certainly would prove counter-productive, uniting Ukrainians and
the West against Moscow. Most likely, Zhelenin says, Putin will simply try to
maintain the status quo and wait for events.
Unfortunately for him and for
Russia, Putin has adopted the same strategy for the Russian people at home. He’s
asking them to wait for a change for the better. But after 20 years of
promises, ever fewer of them are as willing to do that as they were. For these
reasons, the triumphant Putin of the past is likely to look less so by the end
of this year.
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