Vladimir Putin didn’t just wear an Italian parka from the exclusive R$70,000 Loro Piana brand to celebrate the eighth anniversary of the annexation of Crimea, an event at the heart of the current conflict in Ukraine. After more than three weeks, he presented himself to the Russians in the mantle of commander-in-chief of a country at war.
Nothing in the ex-KGB agent’s government escapes scrutiny of minutiae, as the brilliant documentary “Putin’s Witnesses” (Vitali Manski, 2018) demonstrates, and the 2018 World Cup final stadium party was duly choreographed.
Thus, attention is drawn to the failure to broadcast the president’s speech on state TV, something unusual, to say the least, in times when editors of these companies manage to make on-air protests against the boss.
But the message was passed. The approximately 95,000 people who packed Luzhniki, the former Lenin Stadium, the historic stage of Russian football, and the other 100,000 in the surroundings, according to official accounts, saw a new stage in Putin’s communication in the war.
Until now marked by anodyne pronouncements on TV or broadcasts of meetings with ministers or commissioners of Aeroflot, in which he explained the presumed reasons for the invasion, the Kremlin narrative was far from stirring nationalist sentiments.
That it changed with a Putin talking about sacrificing our boys and stuff like that, that means something. Few autocracies in the world place as much value on public opinion as the Russian one, and the monitoring of opinion polls is as intense or more intense than in Western democracies.
This has to do with Putin’s power arrangement so far, in balance with an elite formed by rival groups that fight each other, leaving the tsar, I mean, the president to reign over everyone. The legitimacy of the president comes largely from popular support.
Now this is something unfathomable, given that only state institutes pointed to support for the war, of perhaps 60%. It is possible that this is the case, say Russian analysts who no longer have the courage to expose themselves for fear of 15 years in prison for military censorship.
But maybe 60% is not enough. When he annexed Crimea without firing a shot in 2014, Putin saw his popularity explode to levels close to 90%. It stayed that way during the subsequent recession, only to be overcome after 2016, although the Russian economy never got up again — with a hiccup in the festive 2018 World Cup.
Even before the war, it was at a comfortable 69% according to the trusted independent institute Levada. This Friday’s demonstration (18), therefore, may be merely a photograph to show the world. “It’s been a long time since you’ve seen such unity,” said the leader. But there is another possibility.
Especially among the younger, westernized members of the middle class that Putin now wants to see purged from the country, the war is highly unpopular. Showing strength can be an attempt to galvanize domestic support for the war, something that creeps in slowly.
The reason is the Kremlin propaganda script, which seemed to rely on a quick submission from Ukraine. The conflict would be with few casualties, won by the impression of power of the Russians. So it would be a televised cabinet war. With the upsurge on the ground, however, Putin had to open the toolbox at home.
One key is the Z, the non-existent Latin letter in Cyrillic that has become the symbol of war, painted on tanks and armored vehicles deep into Ukraine. This Friday, he was in the audience, in the heroic colors of Saint George’s pennant (black and orange), a symbol of Russian military power since the Romanov empire and amplified to the maximum in the Putin government.
But its most conspicuous use was on stadium screens. Lined up were the words Russia, Crimea and Donbass — the latter, the Russian-speaking breakaway region that was recognized as two countries by Putin three days before the war, and whose defense of the population constituted his initial excuse for action.
Highlighted, “Za presidenta”, “Pelo Presidente”, with the non-existent Z in Cyrillic in Latin letter. Also appeared “For a world without Nazism”, “For Russia”, all like the alien Z. One of the suspects who created the marketing of the Z, the editor-in-chief of the RT network, was there to give a speech. But the selling point that matters is another: from now on, the war is for Putin.
Whether this doubled bet shows desperation for support or the certainty of the victory to be won, only time will tell.
