Block Posts on Borders of Federal Subjects Show Russians Now Realize They Can’t Count on Putin to Save Them, Portnikov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 9 – The appearance of block posts on the borders of an increasing number of Russian federal subjects as part of their efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic, a development that recalls the early 1990s and that one would expect Vladimir Putin to react to is instead being met by him with calm indifference, Vitaly Portnikov says.

            When Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov said he wouldn’t take his down despite demands from the Russian government, Putin’s press secretary responded that he didn’t see any conflict between Moscow and Grozny; and even though Putin has said movement across oblast and republic borders shouldn’t be impeded, he isn’t moving to prevent that.

            In fact, the Ukrainian commentator continues, it almost appears that Putin has organized “a socialist competition” among the governors over who can most successfully combat the pandemic without much regard to existing laws or relations between them and the Kremlin (https://graniru.org/opinion/portnikov/m.278547.html).

            One might have expected something different. After all, “a block post in Chechnya is a reminder about two bloody wars in the course of which the republic defended its striving to proclaim independence. A block post in Tatarstan is a reminder” about its efforts to leave the Federation. And one in Crimea is a reminder that “Crimea in fact has no relationship to Russia.”

            “But,” according to Portnikov, “Putin isn’t interested in all these recollections for one simple reason: He isn’t interested in the coronavirus.” He is interested in the war with Ukraine. That is something “he understands and can do. Putin is the universal Doctor Evil. He is about murder and not about saving anyone.”

            He is obviously bored by talk of the coronavirus for that reason, the commentator continues. But “this boredom may become for him a dangerous trap” because of the looming economic crisis in Russia.” People in the regions and republics will see and remember the 1990s when Yeltsin advised them to “take as much sovereignty as they could.”

            They will do so, Portnikov says, because they will have been provided with yet another demonstration that “in critical situations, they cannot count on the Kremlin,” that the Kremlin isn’t interested in them or their problems and that they must take things into their own hands if they are going to save the situation.

            In short, they will yet again see that “Putin in the first instance is interested in Putin, and in the last, Russia.”