Kremlin’s Effort to Portray Events in Kursk as New Normal will Backfire, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 21 – The Putin regime may succeed for a time in convincing Russians that what is happening in Kursk is not central to their lives, Abbas Gallyamov says; but this effort and others like it will fail to prevent each new crisis from adding to the ones before it and generating revolutionary forces that will be more radical than would otherwise be the case.

            In presenting Kursk as part of a new normal, the former Putin speech writer and commentator says, “the Kremlin had a great idea of how to respond to the current situation; but its denizens have lost sight of the fact that individual situations don’t exist separately. Instead, they feed into long-term trends” (pointmedia.io/story/66c5a254dc48800406e0f4a6).

            And as a result, Gallyamov continues, “the authorities will not be able to do anything about the defeat at Kursk. That will strengthen the long-term anti-Putin trend and exacerbate the processes of growing fatigue and negativity,” delaying but not preventing an eventual and even more radical revolt.

            That is because there will always be a new crisis – the Putin regime can only exist as a crisis management organization – and while things may improve for a time after one crisis, people will become more radical as they experience each new one, however successful the Kremlin’s propagandists think they are.

            Russians may for a time “get used to the fact that Putin has been unable to protect his native land” and “calm down a little.” But when the next crisis comes and especially if as seems likely it comes more quickly, their anger about the first will revive and fuse with their anger about the second.

            “By starting the war and radicalizing internal political processes,” Gallyamov argues, “Putin created just such a situation: when society immediately migrates from one crisis to another; and in this situation, all the Kremlin’s tactical tricks won’t help him” to pacify the population for long.

            He asks: “does anyone in the Kremlin really think that the people will like this ‘new normal’ any more than they did the old one? Of course not! And that means their desire to change this ‘new normal’ will become stronger.” And it is thus becoming ever more obvious that “the powers that be couldn’t see the forest for the trees.”