For one of the most influential commentators on the Russian political scene, Vladimir Putin is beating the West with his “big bluff” in the Ukraine crisis: showing himself ready to invade his neighbor, although he does not necessarily intend to go ahead.
“The point is that even if he wins, as seems likely, it won’t change Russia’s problems at all,” says Fiodor Lukianov, editor of the bilingual publication Russia in Global Affairs.
He conducts a geopolitics program on state TV Russia 24 and is a member of the most important centers of analysis in the country — independent in origin, but strongly linked to the Kremlin, which qualifies his criticism even for being a voice heard in the Russian political elite.
Lukianov says he “never believed” in the hypothesis of an open war between Moscow and Kiev, let alone NATO (Western military alliance), even as Putin began his massive mobilization around his neighbor in November, using 150,000 of the 900,000 active service members of their Forces.
Risks of accidents, of course, exist, as the volatile situation on the line of contact between Russian-backed separatist rebels and Ukrainian forces proves. A spark out of place can start an irreversible process when guns are cocked, as World War I (1914-18) taught.
But he believes Putin ultimately wants to establish a new design for international security relations with NATO with his move. “So far, it looks like he’s going to make it,” he said.
By showing that he can assemble an effective strike force, with multiple vectors, in such a short time, Putin stunned the West. It has been left to Joe Biden to shout “invasion imminent” since the beginning of the year, looking for a way to stop the gang’s favorite villain.
“The problem is that Putin is in a position where if he decides to do something, he will do it and there will be no real opposition. When Biden says he supports Ukraine but warns that he will never send troops to help it, the situation is set. disappointed many in Kiev,” he says.
Lukianov believes that Putin, who will turn 70 in October, has an “obsession” with the Ukrainian question. “See, he’s entering the final stage of his rule. It’s a stage that could take many years, of course, but he’s perceptibly worried about his legacy. And he wants to resolve it,” he says.
KGB Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Vladimirovitch Putin rose to power at the age of 47, when he held the post of head of the main secret service successor to the dreaded Soviet agency, the FSB (Federal Security Service). On August 9, 1999, he was appointed prime minister.
At the turn of the year 2000, President Boris Yeltsin resigned and handed over his powers to him, who was elected in March to the Kremlin and has never left the Kremlin again — from 2008 to 2012 he was prime minister under his pupil Dmitri Medvedev, giving The letters.
In 2020, he promoted a constitutional change that he had always refused to make, leaving open the possibility of running for two more elections. His current term expires in 2024, and the move will allow him to try to stay in power until early 2036, when he will be 83 years old.
But how would this imposition of the will to prevent the expansion of NATO and keep Ukraine and other ex-Soviet countries, such as Georgia and Moldova, at least neutral? “Contrary to what people think, Putin is not a warrior. He is a very sophisticated manipulator, calculating with every move,” he said.
So, he reasons, a war, even limited to rebel areas in eastern Ukraine, would only harm Putin. And they would take advantage of it so far, given that being hated in the West and having your country under economic sanctions is already at a price.
And what would they be? “Putin has shown that NATO is defenseless. With this huge and rapid mobilization, he has proved that he can go to war whenever he wants, with capacity”, suggests Lukianov. He relativizes, however, the weight of the support that the Russian has received from the ally China, something sold in the Russian press as a leap of the cat for the future of the country.
“This is not a military alliance. The agenda of the meeting between Putin and Xi Jinping was basically Chinese, he only left there with moral support. But it is something new, in fact. I just think that the countries will never fight for one another.” another”, he said, about the meeting to seal the rapprochement between the leaders, at the beginning of the month.
Despite the momentary positive assessment of the Kremlin, Lukianov is gloomy about the future of Putinism — the “Russia problems” he cited. Unlike in 2014, when the annexation of Crimea sparked a patriotic wave that took the president’s popularity to 80%, the scenario is now different.
First, Crimea has always been a Russian region, having been given to Ukraine by a political son of the land, then-Soviet kingpin Nikita Khrushchev in 1954. Now, despite polls showing that Russians agree with Putin and say it is the West that provokes the conflict, the Ukrainian east cause is not popular.
Putin, who had an approval rating of 89% in 2015 according to the Centro Levada, an independent institute, in January reached 69% — a figure that would make any Western politician envious, but far short of the goals of political scientists on duty in the Kremlin.
The harsh repression of political dissent that the Russian has applied in the last two years, whose symbol is the imprisonment of the opponent Alexei Navalni, also still has unprecedented effects on the spirit of the younger generation. For now, there is no sign of political organization against the Kremlin, but the massive protests of 2012, 2017, 2019 and earlier this year prove that there is fuel in the pipeline.
And, as always, there is the economy. Russia suffered a blow after the 2014 crisis, which linked Western sanctions to the most important drop in the price of a barrel of oil. In 2015, GDP (Gross Domestic Product) fell by 2%. It returned to stability in 2016 and walked sideways for two years, with a small peak that followed the 2018 World Cup, when it rose 2.8%.
But the pandemic came and the fall of 2020 was negative 2.7%, for a good recovery last year (4.6% positive). But the crisis now threatens more crippling sanctions in the area of ​​trade and financial exchanges, which already puts the 2022 growth forecast of around 2.4% in doubt.
The ruble’s devaluation is also having an impact, especially on the affluent middle classes of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Cafes and restaurants are still full, but prices are the subject of universal complaints — dishes that used to cost the equivalent of R$50 before the inflated World Cup are now R$80 in trendy places, far from haute cuisine.
Putin has managed to reasonably shield his economy from the impact of sanctions, and he has the fourth-largest cushion of foreign exchange reserves in the world, at $640 billion. But despite the relative diversification of its economy, it still depends heavily on the export of hydrocarbons — and the pipeline tap for China will not replace the one for the Europeans, under US pressure to close it, on the visible horizon.
For all the image of a strong Russia rescued by the president, at the end of the day what counts is the cliché prediction of the marketer James Carville in the 1992 Democratic campaign in the USA (“It’s the economy, stupid”).
