The Fewer Allies the Kremlin has, the More It Relies on Force Alone, Travin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 3 – With each new political crisis, Dmitry Travin says, three long-standing trends only intensify: ever more members of Russian elites become disappointed in the system, the regime in response becomes ever more totalitarian and opposed to any difference of opinion, and the Kremlin turns to force rather than manipulation to maintain itself.

            These three processes, of course, are interrelated, the economist who heads the Center for Research on Modernization at the European University in St. Petersburg says. The more elites recognize that Russia is headed into darkness, the less willing they are to accept that and the more ready the Kremlin is to use force against them (rosbalt.ru/posts/2022/03/03/1946895.html).

            And that means this, Travin says. “the fewer friends or at least allies the Kremlin has, the less it is prepared to depend on disputes over vote counts and the more it is ready to rely on a diktat that cannot be so easily contested.” And that shift provides evidence of splits at the very top, splits that highlight how isolated Putin is becoming because of the war in Ukraine.

            “If Tsar Alexander III had only the army and fleet as his allies,” the St. Petersburg economist says, then today, “Putin in his struggle with his real enemies has only the FSB and the National Guard,” an even more limited base.