© REUTERS/Alexey Malgavko

As the coronavirus was ravaging northern parts of Italy in March, Russia was one of the first countries to come to Rome’s aid, with the delivery of military medical aid. The final details were agreed during a phone conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on March 21. The next day Russia’s Ministry of Defense began sending fifteen military transport airplanes to Italy, with 122 personnel and dozens of military vehicles on board. The Russian team consisted of military doctors, virologists, radiologists as well as disinfection experts, while the equipment included mobile disinfection and chemical defense units, and a mobile laboratory. 600 respirators were also delivered.

In Russia the military plays an important rolein handling all types of crises, including health-related ones, so it is not surprising that it was Russia’s Ministry of Defense that delivered the aid to Italy. As this was a military operation, Russian cargo airplanes landed in the Pratica di Maremilitary airport close to Rome, and from there they moved to the Bergamo region that was severely hit by the virus.

Russian aid was composed mostly of elements that could operate without constant cooperation with Italian medical personnel, such as disinfection units. Since they did not have to be integrated into the Italian health care system logistics were considerably easier than if Russia had sent surgeons or nurses, who would have had to work within Italian hospitals.

“From Russia With Love”

The Kremlin made sure to take the opportunity to make a witty gesture by labelling both the aid packages, as well as the military trucks sent to Italy, with “From Russia With Love” signs.

However, within days of the arrival of the first shipments the backlash started. Quoting Italian governmental sources, the influential newspaper La Stampa wrotethat 80 percent of the Russian equipment was useless, and the whole operation was aimed much more at gaining political influence than providing humanitarian aid. An expert at the Rome-based Gino Germani Institute said that some parts of the Russian deliveries could indeed be usefulbut voiced concerns about the possible presence of Russian intelligence operatives among members of the Russian team, who might have wanted to use the operation for intelligence purposes.

On April 1, a Russian medical aid shipment landed on New York’s John F. Kennedy airport. The giant Antonov An-124 cargo aircraft delivered large amounts of medical equipment, including masks, gloves, protective suits, and again respirators. Similar to the aid to Italy, this delivery also took place shortly after the countries’ leaders, Putin and US President Donald Trump, spoke. The Russian aid delivery created a sizeable scandal in the US, partially in the context of the upcoming presidential elections, and also due to the allegations about the role Moscow played in the election of Trump in 2016.

A Similar Pattern

Several problems have since arisen with the Russian aid delivery to the US. In May, the Russian government charged Washington $660,000 for the aid shipment. Furthermore, the Russian transport included equipment that was not of much use in a pandemic, such as military-type gas masks and household cleaning gloves. The 45 ventilators that were delivered also turned out to be essentially useless due to the electricity network voltage difference between Russia and the US.

To make things worse, it later surfaced that some of the ventilators Russia delivered were the Aventa-M brand, which earlier had caused a deadly fire at a St. Petersburg hospital, killing several COVID-19 patients.

From April 3 on Russia started to deliver military medical aid to Serbia, too, with similar equipment to that sent to Italy. Details were again coordinated between the countries’ two presidents. Eleven Russian military cargo planes delivered 87 military doctors and specialists, including infectologists and experts on chemical warfare and disinfection. (As there is an existing multi-layered security and military cooperation between Serbia and Russia, Moscow delivering military medical aid to Serbia is a lot less surprising than it sending such shipments to NATO countries.)

In all three cases, the deliveries followed a similar pattern: Putin made the offer directly to the leader of the given country in a phone conversation, thus partially circumventing traditional diplomatic channels. Once the agreement was reached, details were coordinated by lower level officials; though not always perfectly, as the problems with the shipment to the US revealed.

Hoping for Reciprocity

Concerning the United States in particular, Russia from the very beginning hoped for reciprocity. The Russian president’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, openly declared that the Kremlin hoped for the US would provide Russia with its own medical equipment should Russia need it.

Indeed, there is considerable evidence indicating that in all three cases the dominant motives were political. The primary objective was to get the sanctions against Russia suspended. The deliveries to Italy coincided with a Russian initiativevoiced first at the March 26, 2020 G20 summit. Russia suggested that due to the humanitarian crisis caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, all international economic sanctions should be suspended until the end of the pandemic.

While Russian diplomats referred only to the cases of Iran and Venezuela without mentioning their own country, it was still clear that Russian diplomacy’s intention was to get the sanctions against Russia suspended. On the same day Moscow submitted a similar initiative in the United Nations. Hence, it looks as if Russia tried to use the aid deliveries to get the sanctions lifted by using a humanitarian argument, and Moscow’s own humanitarian shipments were to demonstrate the Kremlin’s good will.  In fact, the way Russia has been employing a universalist, humanitarian-oriented narrative is a good example of how the Kremlin is using Western value-based arguments against Western sanctions. However, Russia’s initiatives at both the UN and G20 were rejected.

Not giving up easily, on April 27, 2020 Leonid Slutsky, Chairman of the Duma’s International Affairs Committee and President of the Russian Foundation for Peace NGO wrote a letter to his Italian counterpart, Vito Petrocelli, President of the Italian Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee, and a member of the Five Star Movement. In his letterSlutsky asked for Petrocelli’s help in getting all international economic sanctions lifted by putting pressure on Western countries. Slutsky referred to the Russian aid delivered to Italy, and also mentioned the humanitarian situation in Iran and Venezuela.

Propaganda Campaign

Also, Russia apparently intended to demonstrate that it was able to act much faster and more decisively than the EU could. A recent report by the EU vs. Disinfo project pointed out that during and after the delivery of Russian military medical aid shipments to Italy, Russian propaganda accusing the EU of being incapable and helpless was a lot stronger than usual. Meanwhile, the same disinformation outlets portrayed Russia as a responsible power able to provide an efficient reaction to the COVID-19 crisis. Regarding Italy specifically, Russian disinformation outlets particularly emphasized the narrative that “The EU is not helping, but Russia does.” Similar, anti-EU messages were targeted also at the Serbian population, where there is already a certain receptivity for such messages.

While no great success, it is highly unlikely that Moscow will abandon this project and particularly the strategy of employing a humanitarian narrative. The next voting on the extension of the most important EU sanctions is due to take place in September 2020, during the German EU presidency. Until then Moscow is likely to continue its information campaign and other efforts to break up or weaken the European coherence behind the sanctions. The military medical aid shipments constituted a brief albeit spectacular element of this larger campaign.

The post The Political Motives Behind Russia’s Coronavirus Aid appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

Ironically, even the liberal opposition has been calling on the Kremlin to introduce the state of emergency, but with no effect: Russia’s government continues its muted response to the virus that spreads across the country. Indecisiveness and confusion in the Kremlin has not only confirmed the inability of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s personalized system to effectively react to the unpredictable circumstances. We also see the true nature of Putin’s governance style: his attempts to avoid responsibility and his distancing from unpleasant problems. Instead of using the crisis to shift toward a more restrictive rule, Putin has chosen “wait and see” tactics. He even postponed the national vote that has to legitimize his indefinite rule which were supposed to take place on April 22.

The most likely explanation: an introduction of emergency rule in Russia would mean a reconfiguration of power within the Kremlin and new political regime that Putin apparently is not yet ready to accept. Putin’s hesitation and foot-dragging could be explained above all by the belief that Russia will escape the dramatic spread of virus. (On April 7, Russia officially had a total of 7,497 cases, with 58 fatalities, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.) The seriousness of the pandemic, often described as “just a form of influenza,” has been grossly underestimated. And the authorities hoped that Russia’s economy would not be affected dramatically because it is more isolated than those of Western countries. Also, the Kremlin has built a financial “nest egg” for rainy days, with foreign-exchange and gold reserves presently around $570 billion. The political establishment until recently persuaded itself that moderate measures against virus spill-over were enough.

In addition, there’s a Russian habit of concealing bad news from the top and of attempting to create a glossy image of reality. Putin’s plan to celebrate the 75th anniversary of victory in World War II—the preparation for the May 9 parade continues at full speed—also played their role in the Kremlin’s attempt to minimize the hazards of covid-19.

In his long-delayed address to nation on the coronavirus crisis on March 25, Putin decided to refrain from introducing stringent measures against the pandemic. He did not adopt adequate measures to support the population segments that are losing their jobs, small and medium businesses, and big companies that will suffer from the pandemic. The measures announced so far have been piecemeal and are lagging behind those introduced by other states. Russian observer Sergei Shelin, expressing the dominant mood in Moscow, wrote on March 27: “The president’s ‘anti-coronavirus package’ has been prepared in haste with reasonable, opportunistic, and even absurd measures mixed together… There’s been an atmosphere of irresponsibility and chaos.” One could add a total disrespect for the human health and life as well as a fear of undermining the optimistic picture of Russia produced by Kremlin propaganda. In comparison, the Russian measures look meager:  the United States has announced to spend a sum equivalent of 9 percent of its GDP to fight the pandemic, the United Kingdom 14 percent, and Germany more than 20 percent. In contrast, Russia will only use means equivalent to about 1.3 percent of its GDP.

Moscow’s Mayor: Crisis Fighter

A week ago, however, Moscow finally woke up to the grim reality: the pandemic has started its deadly marathon across Russia. On March 30, Russia sealed its borders. Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin ordered an indefinite city-wide quarantine (the self-isolation order applies to all residents regardless of age). Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin imposed the same restrictions in Russia’s regions.  On March 31 Russian lawmakers swiftly passed legislation threatening severe punishment—including up to five years in prison—for people convicted of spreading false information about the coronavirus. The ever-bustling Russian capital has been suddenly transformed into a post-apocalyptic sight. Precious time had been lost, however.

Moreover, the Kremlin continued to take a back seat. As Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov announced on March 30, “The state of emergency is not called because all necessary measures are being undertaken.” It seems now that the Kremlin’s strategy is based on several components: achieving “herd immunity”; attempting to force business and the middle class to carry the financial burden; relying on the population’s self-isolation, controlled by the authorities. However, even pro-Kremlin analysts think this approach is not any more satisfactory.

On April 2, Putin again addresses the nation. But he offered only the extension of Russia’s nationwide “non-working week” until April 30. Moreover, the Kremlin delegated the decision-making power on anti-coronavirus measures to the regional authorities. It looked as if the Kremlin was more afraid of introducing tough quarantine measures than of the coronavirus itself.  As one of the regional officials commented, “They even try to avoid the word ‘quarantine’.”

The Absent Leader

Meanwhile, Putin continues to shy away from publicity. Moscow Mayor Sobyanin (and not Prime Minister Mishustin!) was designated the lead figure organizing the coronavirus defense (Putin gave him the job of heading a special working group in the State Council for combatting the pandemic). But the state apparatus and society at large continue to wait for the Kremlin to define the mechanisms of fighting the virus. Having no definite agenda the police in the Moscow region introduced the curfew and then stopped it.

The speculation is that Mishustin and Sobyanin are hoping to use this crisis as a springboard if not to the status of Putin’s “successor” than at a minimum to that of his “number two.” However, the Russian system of personalized power has no place for the role of “successor” who could undermine the omnipotence of the only national leader. Meanwhile, the Russian system oriented toward solving bureaucratic tasks demonstrates its inefficiency in an emergency situation. It can  crack down on the protests, but is unable to tackle national disasters. It is quite a paradox: an authoritarian regime unable to successfully implement authoritarian measures!

Already, Putin’s popularity has fallen victim to the pandemic. Only 48 percent of respondents supported the idea of “Putin forever” in a Levada poll at the end of March, while 47 percent disagreed with this. Every second respondent preferred “a rotation of the authorities and the emergence of the new leaders”; only 37 percent of respondents opted for “stability and the same politicians.” Given that already a quarter of the population has to struggle to feed itself, there is much potential for disaffection growing for which there are no legal channels of articulation. The fight of millions left without jobs and financial help may well create “Titanic atmosphere” in Russia, pregnant with mass social turmoil.

Formidable Challenges

Russia will follow likely follow the Chinese pattern of restricting the freedom of information. However, the Russian system is lacking a uniting idea, basically relying on predatory clans. With Putin’s authority fading, there will be serious difficulties securing societal obedience even under threat of repression.

Systemic conundrums have become apparent, too. Putin will have to think about how to revive Russia’s ravaged economy. He will also have to balance Russia’s domestic insulation with its participation in the global politics, which he is eager to continue. Putin will try to return to the international scene as the responsible leader accepted by the West, and not only by China. Of course, in case of domestic disorder he may try to switch to the real “fortress Russia” mode. But this move will hardly be supported by the part of the Russian elite that has become globalized and personally integrated into the West.

The challenges Russia is facing are formidable. Depleted health care systems, corrupted authorities, an atomized and demoralized society, the state’s inability to help the most vulnerable segments of society—all that mean that Russia is moving toward an existential crisis. How Russia will respond to it will form its future destiny.

This article is based on a DGAP Study Group: Russia presentation delivered on April 7, 2020.

The post Russia’s Coronavirus Drama appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© Sergei Chirikov/Pool via REUTERS

When the “family photo” was taken at the Berlin Libya conference on January 19, 2020, there he was standing confidentially in the front row, next to UN secretary general António Guterres and host Angela Merkel: Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. For the Kremlin, Libya is currently the most important African country when it comes to expanding Russia’s military influence as well as its influence on energy and migration policy—in a country that is of crucial importance to Europe’s security.

However, Libya is not an exception. All across Africa, Russia has expanded its presence recently, particularly as an arms exporter. The years 2018 and 2019 already saw a remarkable concentration of Russian diplomatic efforts to re-establish ties in Africa. In March 2018 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov conducted a spectacular diplomatic trip across the continent, visiting Namibia, Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique, and Ethiopia. Three months later, in June 2018 he visited South Africa and Rwanda. Even Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the continent once, when he attended the BRICS summit in South Africa in 2018. At the same time, plenty of African leaders paid visits to Moscow.

A Summit in Sochi

So far, the largest and most spectacular diplomatic effort was the first Russia-Africa Summit, held in Sochi at the end of October 2019. All 54 African states took part, and a number of bilateral agreements or letters of intent were signed. The message was clear. Moscow is not only interested in re-warming ties the Soviet Union once enjoyed during the Cold War. The Kremlin aims to establish partnerships of a new quality.

Russia is also using the newly-forged ties for practical diplomatic purposes. Moscow utilizes its position on the UN Security Council to support its African allies, for example, by publicly endorsing the idea of granting Africa a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. In exchange, Moscow can count on the votes of its regional partners in the UN General Assembly, when issues important to Russia arise. For example, on December 18, 2020 the UN General Assembly voted on a resolution about the human rights situation in Crimea and Sevastopol. Although the resolution was adopted by 65 votes, none of Russia’s newly (re)forged African partner countries voted against Moscow; Algeria, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan all either voted against the resolution, abstained, or decided not to vote.  Closer relations, of course, do not necessarily guarantee unconditional support. In other words, there are limits to the loyalty Russia can buy. The results, however, had been largely similar in an earlier vote, held on December 9, 2019, on a resolution that condemned Russia for the militarization of Crimea, and generally for violating Ukraine’s sovereignty.

Meager Economic Ties

Moscow has long been trying to bolster its foreign policy by economic means. However, Russia’s economic capabilities are much smaller than those of the Soviet Union. Despite its diplomatic efforts, Moscow at present remains a comparatively small player in the continent´s economy, although its trade with African countries is undoubtedly increasing. While in 2009 its total trade turnover with African states was $5.7 billion, by 2018 it had reached $20 billion. However, even this spectacular increase is dwarfed by China´s approximately $200 billion annual trade with African countries, or by the EU´s $300 billion. The main comparative leverage that Russia has, particularly over Western investors, is that Moscow can be a lot more flexible by posing no political conditionality. Furthermore, trading with Russia does not pose the danger of a debt trap , which might make it a more attractive partner than China.

The situation is similar in terms of aid, assistance, and investments. While the EU, Japan, China, and the United States all have aid, investment and assistance programs worth of tens of billions of dollars, Moscow has no resources for providing investments or any economic assistance on a comparable scale. Although during the Russia-Africa Summit President Putin spectacularly announced that Russia was going to write off ex-Soviet debts of African states in the accumulated value of $20 billion, this seemingly generous move was less a real investment and more a recognition of the fact that these debts were anyway impossible to collect.

Despite Russia´s comparably small share in the continent´s economy, certain Russian companies have been remarkably successful in establishing strong regional positions, often with the Kremlin´s active support. During the Russia-Africa summit the state-owned nuclear energy company Rosatom signed a contract with Ethiopia to build a nuclear power plant there, and another one with Rwanda to build a nuclear science and technology center. Meanwhile, the Rosgeo State Geological Company signed cooperation agreements with South Sudan, Equatorial Guinea and Rwanda, while the diamond mining company Alrosa has already been active in Angola and Zimbabwe. The Russian state oil company Rosneft has been working in Nigeria on developing more than 20 different oil production facilities, and there are a number of other Russian entities (including the state-owned VEB bank) looking for expansion opportunities.

The Biggest Export Goods: Arms

Certain African countries also represent an important market for Russia’s arms exports. It is well known that arms sales are an important source of income for the Russian economy. In addition, they also serve as a foreign and economic policy tool, due to the fact that by supplying a country with weapons Moscow can establish long-term dependences and keep existing Russia-friendly regimes in power.

Those African countries that were Soviet allies in the Cold War have armed forces that relied heavily on Soviet-made weapons, and Russia is building on those ties. Furthermore, in some cases arms sales also constitute a form of debt relief: in exchange for writing off debts that would anyway probably be difficult to collect, Russia often agrees that the given country can instead sign arms procurements contracts.

Algeria is a good example in this respect. Back in 2006 Russia wrote off Algeria’s entire $4,7 billion state debt and in exchange signed contracts for arms exports as well as for positions in the country’s agriculture and energy sectors. More recently, in 2017 Moscow agreed to supply Algiers with Iskander-E long-range tactical missiles.

After the Sochi summit Russia confirmed that it is currently supplying 20 African countries with weapons, including Uganda, Rwanda, Angola, and Mozambique. The overall value of arms exports was put at $4 billion—approximately one-fifth of Russia´s total trade turnover with Africa.

Big Buyer Algeria

Based on data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), between 2009 and 2019 Algeria has been the largest purchaser of Russian weapons on the continent by some margin. In this period Russia supplied 75 percent of all the country’s arms imports. Algiers has been buying practically the fully spectrum of what Russia’s defense industry has to offer, ranging from diesel-electric submarines to tanks, from helicopters to air defense systems.

Uganda is another significant buyer, procuring a wide variety of Russia-made weapons, ranging from old T-55 tanks to modern T-90 tanks, as well as missiles for the also Russian-made Sukhoi Su-30 fighter-bombers. Egypt has also been a major buyer of Russia-made weapons, although Cairo concentrates mostly on air defense systems, including radars, missiles and other equipment.

Earlier, Libya under Muammar Gaddafi had been the largest buyer of Russian-made weapons. When Gaddafi fell in 2011, Russia lost already signed contracts worth approximately $4 billion, together with the potential for future deals. This particular case also illustrates that Russia’s well-known aversion vis-à-vis externally imposed regime changes is not only because the Kremlin is worried about a potential similar regime change at home, but also because it may lead to significant economic losses.

Across the continent, the most popular military equipment sold by Russia are helicopters, whether they be Mi-8/17 military transport helicopters or Mi-24/35 attack helicopters. Moscow apparently sells military helicopters to whoever can pay, including Zambia, Chad, Angola, and a dozen other countries. The latest helicopter delivery contract was the one signed with Nigeria at the Russia-Africa Summit for 12 Mi-35 attack helicopters.

In addition, Russia is also successfully selling African countries even older, long outdated weaponry, left over from the Cold War era. Low-tech conflicts on the continent are absorbing even those largely obsolete weapons, ranging from small arms to mortars, from armored cars to outdated tanks. Sudan constitutes one of the main “depos” for aged, ex-Soviet Russian weapons and spare parts. Engines supplied by Russia help the Sudanese government keep their old T-55 tanks and BTR-80 armored personnel carriers still operational.

Proxy Boots on the Ground

While Russia has no military base on the African continent, Russian private military companies and mercenary groups are actively present in many armed conflicts there. The infamous Wagner Group, a private military company with close ties to Russia´s military intelligence (the GU), has already seen action in the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Mozambique, and Libya. In fact, despite their de jure private status, the group functions more like a proxy, irregular Russian force than a real private entity.

In the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Mozambique, operatives of the Wagner Group provide security assistance, military training as well as reportedly combat operational support to the central governments. In exchange, the Russian oligarch who owns the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, usually gets mining or oil production concessions, as well as other economic benefits.

From Russia´s point of view using private military companies such as the Wagner Group (or any other of the more than a dozen PMCs Russia already has) offers several benefits. First, unlike deploying the regular military, only a very low level of domestic accountability is involved, as Wagner operatives do not count as military personnel, only as employees of a private company. The same applies to international responsibility: the nominally private status of Wagner enables Russia to consistently deny its official involvement, even though Wagner is so closely connected to the GU that they even share a training facility in Russia, and Wagner´s commander, Dmitry Utkin, was a career military intelligence officer.

At present the group’s biggest operation is probably in Libya. Estimates vary, but it seems that at present there are at least 1,500 Wagner operatives deployed there, who conduct not only their usual support tasks, but also high-intensity operations, i.e. fighting. In addition, according to US sources, there are also Russian regular troops deployed in Libya, though there is only very limited public information available on this. What makes Russia´s presence particularly interesting is that in Libya Moscow is not supporting the legitimate, UN-recognized government residing in Tripoli, but the forces of warlord General Khalifa Haftar, who is opposed to the central government.  Russia’s likely motivations for involvement in Libya include the opportunity to have another military base on the Mediterranean (it would be the third one after the harbor and military airport in Syria), to get concessions in oil production, and also to gain a leverage over the migration flow coming from Sub-Saharan Africa towards Europe. These factors make Libya an operational theatre of very high interest for Moscow.

Having boots on the ground in Africa is not without risks for Russia. The Wagner Group recently suffered significant losses in Libya, losing more than 30 of their operatives in September 2019 alone, and another five in Mozambique, who fell victim to an ambush by rebel forces. However, so far these losses remain tolerable for Russia, mostly due to the deniability Moscow employs both at home and abroad. So far, the profit achieved through Wagner´s involvement conveniently outweighs the losses; hence, there is no reason to believe that Russia would downscale the operations of its proxy forces in Africa in the foreseeable future.

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© REUTERS/Tatyana Makeyeva

Russia’s ruling elites have been successful in preserving regime stability for two decades now. But their success cannot even begin to resolve a succession dilemma hanging over the Kremlin. No proven power transfer mechanism exists: when the man at the top goes, everything goes.

It is not just about political power; it is about businesses, properties, investments, and all other repositories of value. All wealth in Russia is first generation—and the principals are getting older. Russia’s weak institutions and lack of trust has driven money abroad. Most liquid assets still end up in other jurisdictions, not Russia. But you can only siphon off so much. There are factories, oil fields, chain stores that cannot be moved abroad.

The looming generational shift and its accompanying—and inevitable—power and property transfer is Russia’s central political problem. Russia’s vested interests should have been working on promoting strong institutions that would allow their families to hold on to their wealth.

The recent constitutional shake-up means that the Kremlin has recognized the challenge and is front-running an expected demand for change. Its response has been to come up with an array of constitutional reforms intended to address issues of continuity and wealth preservation. But exactly those issues could have been handled from the grass roots up, by pushing for the independence of the judiciary and strengthening institutions, instead of issuing top-down edicts.

Russia’s Homeowners

Many call them anthills. Rows of nondescript prefabricated blocks of various sizes dot the skyline of every Russian city. The blocks are grouped into so-called mikrorayony (micro-districts or neighborhood units) that were designed in the late 1950s to early 1960s to house tens of thousands of inhabitants each.

Taking up more than 70 percent of all housing development of the average Russian city, neighborhood units complete with prefabricated blocks are the country’s dominant urban form. The vast majority of Russians—this writer included—grew up in this sort of environment.

Those neighborhoods are no picture-postcard view, but they are the only kind of inheritance Russians could take with them when the Soviet Union collapsed 30 years ago. Most families’ savings were wiped out when prices were liberalized overnight in a big-bang transition to the free market. Much of the immaterial wealth perished, too. The skills and experiences passed down from the previous generations were nearly useless in the unregulated free-for-all that unfolded in post-Soviet Russia.

But the prefabricated blocks stood the test of the economic and political crisis. Built by the government to alleviate the postwar Soviet Union’s acute housing shortage, those anthills turned into real estate as soon as Russia’s new government announced its privatization program.

During the past 30 years almost 80 million Russians became homeowners; over 30 million apartments have been privatized. More than 40 million Russian residents own plots of land or other “second” real estate, while about 10 million hold non-residential space in their property. In US dollar terms, the price of a square meter of residential space in Moscow grew, on average, by a factor of three between 1999 and 2019. In ruble terms, the price grew 14 times, from about 10,000 rubles to 140,000  rubles (which is a less reliable indicator, given exchange rate fluctuations).

The anthills in Russia’s biggest metropolitan centers are the largest repository of value for most Russians and their investment vehicle of choice. The post-Soviet transition proved to be not so much about building free market and democratic institutions as about crossing from one historical reality to the next with at least something to take along.

A History of Forced Redistribution

Of the Russian 20th century’s many traumatic transitions, the post-Soviet one was unusual in that it allowed for the preservation of something of value. Previous generations could not build on what, in cultural and material terms, they had inherited from their predecessors because they had no inheritance to build on.

Land, houses, and life savings were lost in the 1917 revolution as the Bolsheviks expropriated factories, banks, and other assets. In rural areas, they allowed the spontaneous repartition of privately-owned land between peasant communes. In 1929-30, that same land was expropriated again, this time from the peasant communes. The most able and well-off farmers were labeled kulaks and executed, imprisoned, or exiled. The rest were forced into collective farms during Stalin’s breakneck collectivization drive of the early 1930s.

Few families could bequeath any possessions to their descendants. Fewer still could imagine sharing their pre-revolutionary memories and experiences with their children and grandchildren. Memories had to be hushed, suspicious last names changed, entire family legacies wiped out and lost forever.

Stalin’s demise in 1953 and the late Soviet Union’s mass housing construction program changed that. Apartment blocks built under Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev were a social phenomenon that affected the way of life and structure of families. In a way, it was a reversal of collectivization. If what took place in the 1930s was a vast destruction of rights, confiscation of property and destruction of value, the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s saw the creation of property and value. Of course, the phrase “private property” could not be used at the time but, for the majority of today’s Russians, the concept of owning one’s place and passing it down to one’s descendants was born then.

Apartments in ageing prefabricated blocks and other assets acquired over the past 30 years—from humble gardening plots to huge industrial conglomerates—is what constitutes Russia’s living generations’ “patrimony.” Overwhelmingly, today’s Russian citizens are first-generation owners.

Some Things Are More Ownable

Mass attitudes to owning different kinds of assets still reflect private property’s peculiar beginnings in the Soviet Union of Khrushchev and Brezhnev. As the concept of private property was forming in mass consciousness during the boom years of housing construction and late-Soviet consumerism, some assets were seen as more ownable than others.

In the late Soviet Union, it was highly desirable to have an apartment that one could leave to one’s children. It was also a matter of prestige to own a car and a dacha. Today’s studies show that Russians fully recognize an apartment (93 percent of those polled), a car (83 percent), and a dacha (81 percent) as legitimate “private property.” Passing down all those “anthill burrows” is not seen as a political problem: it has become routine. Meanwhile, only 52 percent of those polled by Levada Center, Russia’s leading independent polling organization, recognize securities as private property. Owning a company is defined as private property only by 59 percent of respondents.

Levada Center polls show that larger businesses are often associated with the privatization campaign of the 1990s, and privatization brings to mind oligarchs, fraud, and the inequitable distribution of state resources. Respondents believe that the three main beneficiaries of privatization were the oligarchs of the 1990s, government officials, and big business, with the oligarchs being far in the lead.

This is why an overwhelming majority of Russians polled believe that striking it rich while remaining honest is impossible. Passing on private companies, especially large ones, down to posterity is bound to be controversial because the Russian public considers owners of major assets to be suspect. The provenance of riches is still shrouded in mistrust, and attitudes toward private business overall, even when it is truly private and not oligarchic, are often negative. This is the background against which Russia’s next wealth transfer is going to unfold.

Billionaires and the State

An array of demographic and political factors point in the direction of a looming generational shift and a large family wealth transfer in Russia. Many of Russia’s private businesses, both oligarchic and non oligarchic, will have to change hands. According to Ruben Vardanyan, a former investment banker who is now running a wealth management consultancy, there are about 200,000 dollar millionaires in Russia. Counting all the family members, we are talking about up to 700,000 people. About 70 percent of principal owners are older than 50, and many are 70 or older.

Forbes Russia estimates the number of billionaires in Russia at 100. In its Global Wealth Report, Credit Suisse puts the number at 110. According to Credit Suisse, the top decile of wealth holders owns 83 percent of all household wealth in Russia. That is a high level even in comparison to the United States, which has one of the most concentrated distributions of wealth among advanced nations (in the US the top 10 percent owns 76 percent of all household wealth). Russia’s concentration of wealth is also higher than China’s.

Alisher Usmanov, an Uzbek-born Russian magnate who controls the USM industrial group, told the Financial Times recently that he had drawn up plans for dividing up his $16.5 billion empire between his family and the top managers of his businesses. “Fifty per cent to family, 50 per cent to management who deserve this, in my view,” Usmanov told the FT. The shares would be sold “at a friends and family price,” he added.

One way of looking at Usmanov’s interview is to place it among other tycoons’ public pledges. Ultimately, all such statements have one addressee: President Vladimir Putin. Oleg Deripaska, the owner of the Rusal aluminum corporation, told the FT in 2007 that he did not see himself as separate from the state and would unhesitatingly surrender his assets to it. Vladimir Potanin, the majority owner of the Nornickel corporation, has confirmed on various occasions that he will not bequeath all his property to his children. Oligarch Gennadii Timchenko said in a 2014 interview with Itar-Tass that he was entirely prepared to hand his assets over to the state. It is likely that most of Russia’s largest fortunes will not be passed to the next generation intact. They will either be diversified or pledged to causes directed by the Kremlin.

A Dangerous Political Environment

This kind of certainty is rare. It is characteristic for many of Russia’s business owners to keep a close eye on their companies’ day-to-day operations and see themselves as indispensable to their companies. Many of the “fathers” are unwilling to contemplate succession. According to a joint study by the Skolkovo Wealth Transformation Centre and UBS, the overwhelming majority of the wealthy parents’ children are not willing to take up responsibility for their parents’ companies. “We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people who are in their 50s to 70s and whose children are loath to take over their family businesses,” Vardanyan told me.

Wealth transfer in Russia is tricky not just because of the business owners’ management styles and family disagreements. It is a political problem which cannot be solved by the “fathers” alone. The children, in their turn, don’t just loath responsibility; they are afraid to take on the impossible task of running a private business in an environment like Russia’s. This environment is unpredictable at best and outright dangerous at worst.

In truth, the reason why few business owners have clear road maps for succession is that the “fathers’” ability to navigate the opaque and fluid world of Russian politics is hard to pass on to the next generation. And without this set of political skills and personal connections, private ownership in Russia is precarious: private property and political power are too closely intertwined.

The Kremlin’s Dilemma

Russia’s looming transition of wealth and power is the elephant in the room but few seem to be ready to address it. “Properties that are contingent on political power are impossible to pass on to the next generation,” one of the high-ranking officials told the Levada Center as part of the center’s study of Russia’s political transition. When fathers are thrown out of the system of power, their children cannot get in and become business leaders.

Younger generations of wealthy Russians study abroad, but neither knowledge nor skills acquired at a Western university can prepare them for the task of running a business that the Kremlin does not consider fully private. In fact, the knowledge gained at Western universities could even be harmful in their case. Seizing a market and maintaining a monopoly by cementing it with legislation made possible through access to the lawmaking process is very different, after all, from running a textbook business.

The Kremlin is pursuing two goals that seem to be in conflict with one another. One is to hold on to uncontested autocratic power; the other is to ensure continuity of the regime. To reach the first goal, the leader needs personal agreements, informal arrangements with law-enforcement agencies, and de-institutionalized arbitrary rule. Those are the kinds of tools that allow one to quash opposition and keep officials and the public on their toes.

To achieve the second goal, i.e. to transfer one’s wealth and power to the next generation and thus provide for the regime’s continuity, the leader needs to build impersonal institutions that provide citizens with the right to personal inviolability and to a fair trial, and that ensure the inviolability of property, enforcement of contracts, and control of corruption.

There are indications that President Vladimir Putin does understand the challenge of the coming wealth and power transfer. A demand from the grass roots for more impersonal institutions and fair rules also seems to be causing some soul-searching in the Kremlin. Judging from his recent constitutional amendments, Putin is trying to solve a complicated problem: he seems to be undertaking to turn his regime into a more rules-based governance system without making it any less authoritarian.

Less Corruption, Not More Freedom

In mid-January 2020, Putin announced an array of changes to Russia’s constitution. The draft amendments appear to give more powers to the office of the prime minister, the Duma, Russia’s parliament, and the State Council, a body comprising Russia’s regional governors and a number of top-ranking officials. Putin may have to leave the presidency in four years, as the Russian constitution requires, but he is expected to move on to the State Council or some other vantage point from where he would be able to oversee a transfer of wealth and power.

A reformed office of the president will share some of its policy-making powers with other bodies, but the president will continue to be the commander-in-chief and the foreign-policy czar. “I would agree, Putin is moving away from personalism,” Konstantin Gaaze, a sociologist at the Moscow School for Social and Economic Sciences, tells me. And to ensure the kind of transfer that is favorable to the Kremlin, they [the leaders] “also need a clear legal order on top of the informal hierarchy they have long established,” Gaaze observes.

It is important to understand, though, that none of this is meant to make Russia’s governance system less authoritarian. It is meant to make it less corrupt, chaotic, personalized, and thus prone to human error. Mikhail Mishustin, a former technocratic head of Russia’s tax service and one of the leading officials responsible for the state digitalization drive, has now become Russia’s new prime minister. Mishustin’s mandate is to cement the system, not to develop it.

Putin may be genuinely convinced that he is leaving the presidency in 2024, but that conviction hinges on an assumption that, by 2024, the economy will run nicely and Putin’s power base—employees paid out of the state budget—will be happy. If the base is unhappy and the broader society is in turmoil, Putin will find a pretext to stay on. Russia’s political transition thus depends in large part on the country’s new prime minister. Mishustin’s future success, meanwhile, is not to be taken for granted just because Putin and his close allies will continue to be around.

In fact, Mishustin’s is not the first technocrat entrusted with the task of turning Russia’s economy around. On multiple occasions since 2000, when he first took office, Putin has from time to time hired a “technocrat cabinet” and thought that Russia’s economy was taken care of. He then proceeded to wage wars, annex other countries’ territories, crack down on media, quash protests, and let his businessmen friends enjoy government-funded contracts. In Russia, by now, there are lots of able bureaucrats well-versed in public administration. But the ever-unpredictable Kremlin sets limits to what a technocrat can do.

On the Threshold of a New Period

Russia’s current leaders have been successful in anticipating a bottom-up call for change and thus staying on top of the institutional game. It is not surprising that the Kremlin knows how to intercept Russian society’s bottom-up drive to transform Russia’s institutions. This is what Russia’s center of power has traditionally been good at.

Still, this current decade will likely see Russia crossing into a new period. Creating a less personalized and more rules-based governance system that is still authoritarian might not solve the fundamental problem, namely that of succession. It is supposed to do so, but it will not.

Nonetheless, for the first time in many years Russian society has a chance to pass a substantial amount of wealth and experience to the next generation. The wealth is highly concentrated, and the experience is all about living for the moment, however. Planning ahead will continue to be difficult.

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© Sputnik/Alexei Druzhinin/Kremlin via REUTERS

Two weeks ago, a wormhole seemed to have opened up at the Élysée Palace, transporting us back to the 1960s. Addressing France’s assembled ambassadors, Emmanuel Macron sounded at times like a 21^st century Charles de Gaulle.

Fresh off his diplomatic success at last month’s G7 summit in Biarritz, the French president proclaimed: “We are not an aligned power… We need to work with our European friends, which we have to respect… But to put it in simple terms, we are not a power that considers that the enemies of its friends must also be ours.” For history buffs, that was nothing short of a direct riff on de Gaulle’s foreign policy tenets.

Once Paris had buried its imperial ambitions in the course of the 1950s and early 1960s, President de Gaulle reimagined France’s role as an independent geopolitical power, removed from the Cold War schism. “Having given independence to our colonies, we have to retake our own independence,” de Gaulle famously said in 1963. France should be a free agent on the world stage, which led de Gaulle to create the force de frappe, France’s independent nuclear deterrent. In 1966, the general ordered Washington to close its French army bases.

In the diplomatic sphere, this so-called “policy of free hands” translated into an early recognition of communist China (1964) and above all a rapprochement with Moscow. In a bid to further distance himself from Washington, de Gaulle embarked on a “Ostpolitik” avant la lettre, travelling from Kiev to Novosibirsk in 1966 and making the case for a détente. “Soviets and French, we can shake hands!” he told a roaring crowd.

“Useful Idiot”?

It seems Paris is gearing up to embrace Moscow once again. The Iranian nuclear deal, the Syrian civil war, the stalemate in Libya and Eastern Ukraine—Russian President Vladimir Putin has made himself indispensable to resolving all these issues. Moreover, with US President Donald Trump pulling out of the INF treaty, the threat of a new arms race is returning to Europe with a vengeance. In Macron’s mind, isolating Putin simply doesn’t work anymore.

In Paris, many doubt that Macron’s overture toward Russia will yield any tangible returns. In 1966, de Gaulle did not obtain much from Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in return for his Soviet pivot. His diplomatic somersault was rewarded with a couple of trade agreements and a direct telephone line from the Élysée to the Kremlin.

Much like in the 1960s, Putin may simply see Macron as a “useful idiot” that might help him to break up the joint US-EU sanctions front. The Kremlin’s gambit seems to be paying dividends already: France supported Russia’s return to the Council of Europe this year.

Return to Grandeur

But like de Gaulle, Macron seems to be thinking above all about his domestic audience. In 1966, the general’s triumphant Russia trip was also a giant propaganda show. It was supposed to signal that France was de retour and—perhaps more importantly—the French themselves were keen to forget the memories of the disastrous Algerian war.

Macron presented himself to French voters in 2017 as a vigorous leader who would reform the European Union and create, in tandem with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a “Europe that protects.” Politically and fiscally more integrated, such a “sovereign Europe” would be able to resist Trump’s unilateralism and to ring-fence China’s state capitalism.

But Berlin and a coalition of northern and eastern European countries soon frustrated Macron’s ambitions. A eurozone budget was agreed on in name only, and a EU-wide tax on America’s digital giants seems dead in the water. Macron’s powerlessness in Europe became more and more visible, most of all to the French.

But by positioning himself at the center of the global diplomatic game, Macron is now attempting to recover some of his fading authority and standing at home. It seems to be working: after the G7 summit in Biarritz, Macron’s ratings reached their highest level since the start of the “yellow vests” crisis late last year.

A Gaullist European

Banking on Merkel has proven a flawed strategy for Macron. Consequently, talk of Franco-German cooperation was noticeably absent his latest Élysée speech. Instead, Macron could not help pointing out once more that Berlin is much better at organizing support for its views within the EU. His marching order to the assembled ambassadors was clear: go and strengthen France’s bilateral relations, particularly with eastern and Nordic EU countries.

It is these countries that are most worried about a rapprochement with Putin’s Russia—especially since Trump, now that his hawkish national security advisor John Bolton is out of the picture, cannot be trusted to be tough on Putin. The Baltic countries are well aware that in a crisis, France is the only EU nuclear power with a president at its helm that can send troops across the continent on a whim.

Macron is playing billiard diplomacy. By rekindling his relationship with Putin and becoming Europe’s geopolitical wheelhouse, he hopes to increase his leverage within the EU and upend the rivalry with Germany—an old trick in French foreign policy. Ironically, in a Europe where many are still reticent about further integration, Macron seems to hope that going for a walk with Putin may do more wonders than charming Merkel. If Macron is taking a Gaullist turn, he still has his sights firmly set on Europe.

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© REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

Vladimir Putin’s Russia–or Putin himself–has often been described as hard to read, enigmatic, or even misunderstood in the West. Do you agree? Well, I’m asking the question: how was Putin’s Russia with a per capita GDP less than that of Italy, with a declining population, a crumbly infrastructure, a heavy reliance on oil and gas exports able to reposition itself as a global player? And my conclusion is that Putin definitely had a plan given his background and given his view on the collapse of the Soviet Union. He certainly believes that Russia is a great power and wants to restore it as such. But I also think he has been very adept at taking advantage of opportunities that were offered to him by a West that didn’t have a plan. He’s been in power for 19 years now and he has seen lots of Western leaders come and go, and what he was doing is having Russia in many ways act as a disruptor, go into areas where the United States or Europe is trying to accomplish something. So, I don’t think he is misunderstood but I think we aren’t very good at anticipating what his next move is.

The Russian side always insists that there’s nothing untoward in what Putin is doing and pleads ignorance as to why the West is so antagonistic. I think that’s disingenuous. I mean why would they think the West wasn’t upset about the fact that they annexed Crimea and started a war in south eastern Ukraine. Did they really think that the West wouldn’t respond negatively to that?

Is the annexation of Crimea in 2014 an example where long-term planning and short-term action came together? I think it’s not that they didn’t have plans to do such a thing, but it was clearly triggered when Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fled. This was the moment for them to strike. It’s probably true that the worst fear that they might have had is that Ukraine would terminate an agreement to have a Russian naval base on Crimea and that possibly you would have seen NATO ships in Sevastopol—highly unlikely, but I think that they thought that that was the moment to strike.

Once the Kremlin started the war in south eastern Ukraine, there were fears that the ambitions were even greater—a “Novorossiya” was being built all the way to Crimea to have a land connection. They tried the Novorossiya and it didn’t work. I think maybe they misunderstood the reaction in Ukraine to what they were doing and even though obviously you have support for separatism in those regions it doesn’t extend much beyond that. And I think you could make the argument that the Western reaction, the sanctions, acted also as a deterrent. Now you see what the Russians have done in the Sea of Azov, so they’re trying to deny the Ukrainians access to that body of water from which a lot of Ukrainian exports leave. We don’t know what they are going to do in the Black Sea, but it looks like they are encroaching on some of this area and then ever so often people think that they will still move on Mariupol or maybe Odessa. But the situation is more or less frozen because nothing is getting resolved.

Russia went as far as inferring in the US presidential election. Did they overreach? I think that what they probably didn’t anticipate was the American reaction to the knowledge of their interference. As a consequence of all these inquiries Russia has become such a toxic issue domestically that has made it really difficult for Donald Trump to do what he said he wanted to do which is to make a deal with Russia, have good relations with Russia, etc. He can’t do that and I think the publication of the Mueller report doesn’t change that because in the first volume it documents in great detail how the Russians went about it in the social media sphere, in the cyber sphere, interfering in the election. And so, going into the next US election, this is still going to be a major domestic topic, particularly for the Democrats. So, I think they didn’t anticipate that. But what they did was certainly help exaggerate the polarization that existed in the United States, and I think that was one of their goals. They didn’t really think at that point that Trump was going to get elected; they were as surprised as everyone else.

How successful would you say Putin’s foreign policy is overall? It’s certainly a mixed picture. One of the successes is, at least in the medium term, the relationship with China. It enabled Russia to continue doing what it does. The West obviously can’t isolate Russia—the Chinese signed a big gas deal with the Russians shortly after Crimea, and they backed the Russians up at least formally and publicly on everything. In the longer run, though—China is a rising power, and Russia isn’t. But at the moment you can say that Putin is still looking for other options both politically and economically. The other success is Russia’s return to the Middle East. Unlike in the Soviet times, nowadays it’s much more pragmatic. Russia is the only great power that talks to Iran, all of the Sunni states, and to Israel. The latter, along with Saudi Arabia, (both US allies!) hope that Moscow can use its influence to temper what the Iranians are doing in the region. I’m not sure that Russia can but it is seen as a neutral operator there. And obviously in Syria, it helped Bashar al-Assad to survive.

There also seems to be some ambition to return to Africa. Yes, and both economically and militarily. Russia is also playing a role in Venezuela, making it more difficult for Juan Guaidó to become the president. So, in all of those ways it has reappeared as a disruptor largely. But in Ukraine, for instance, this has been counterproductive. Yes, Russia is making it much more difficult for the Ukrainian government to function, but it helped really unite Ukrainians in a way that wasn’t possible before. This applies also to many other parts of the post-Soviet space. Even if you look at Belarus, the relationship with Minsk isn’t going as well as it was; and the Central Asian countries: yes, they all have strong ties, but they are wary, obviously, of what Russia might do, given what happened in Ukraine. Obviously, its relationship with the West significantly deteriorated, including with its main European partner, Germany.

What kind of future relationship do you foresee? As long as Merkel is in power, no big changes are to be expected. More and more people realize the attempts Russia made to divide the West, and they brought a NATO critic into the White House, which is quite unusual. EU sanctions are still in place largely because of Merkel’s leadership. A number of European countries—Italy, Hungary, some other Central European countries—have argued against the sanctions and would like to get rid of them. So, what you see is a more divided Europe, and I do think there’s a Trump effect, too. The extent to which the US relationship with Europe has deteriorated under Trump has also prompted some rethinking in Europe. If you find yourself between Trump’s America and Putin’s Russia, it’s difficult because the US is no longer seen as a country that is the most reliable partner, as it used to be. In other words, Russia was successful in destabilizing Europe; also, all the euroskeptic parties and groups tend to be pretty pro-Russia.

How successful can disruption be as a long-term foreign policy strategy, though? Do you foresee a future relationship between Russia and the West that is less antagonistic? I think that there’d have to be a different leadership. I don’t see that happening under Putin. He has become convinced that the US wants regime change in Russia, convinced that Europe would like to impose a value system. I think Putin hoped that the US and its allies would recognize the sphere of influence Russia should have, according to Putin, in the post-Soviet space, and that has not happened. So, the preconditions for having a closer relationship with the West would either be that the West changes its policies or that you have a different leader in the Kremlin. And even then it might take some time. I think the best-case scenario would be to have a generation coming to power after Putin that are more technocratic, that understand that Russia has to modernize its economy and its institutions, and that those kind of reforms would be much easier if there were not such antagonistic relations with the West. If you had more people like that coming to power, maybe that could change the way Russia interacts with the West.

 Angela Stent is one of the world leading experts on Russia, Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and director of its Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies. Her new book Putin’s World is now available in German as Putins Russland (Rowohlt).

The interview was conducted by Henning Hoff. Assistance: Melina Lorenz.

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© REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque

It has become a weekly ritual. In the midst of desperate attempts by American diplomats to assuage the concerns of counterparts in Europe, President Donald Trump unleashes a volley of tweets that further destabilize a transatlantic alliance that has been crucial in sustaining the global dominance of the United States. In the past few weeks the pace of Trump’s malevolent bumbling has accelerated, with the bullying of European allies at the NATO summit in Brussels and his courting of Vladimir Putin at their summit in Helsinki leading many European policymakers to question the future of an alliance that has endured for over seventy years.

For many observers, the disruptive impact Trump has had on a global order that entrenched the preeminence of the United States seemed to mark a sudden break from established American foreign policy traditions. Disoriented policymakers in the United States often interpret this system shock in near revolutionary terms. The willingness of Donald Trump to undermine America’s alliances is often depicted as a sudden moment where a relatively stable liberal order was overturned by a small faction of Trump loyalists that reject the global role American institutions have played since 1945. Indeed, the idea that the current turmoil engulfing the transatlantic alliance is the product of a unique electoral aberration is comforting to those who hope for its swift restoration after Trump falls.

Yet a closer look at the evolution of relations between the United States and members of the EU since 1992 indicates that there are long term structural factors at play that have been causing tensions within the transatlantic alliance for quite some time. Many of the resentments that Donald Trump’s wildly provocative rhetoric plays upon reflect frustration over supposed free-riding on American generosity. This issue has repeatedly flashed up under previous presidents. In the 1990s, the inability of European states to head off the Yugoslav wars of secession caused frustration among US policymakers who had hoped that the collapse of the Soviet Union could lead to a shift of strategic focus to the Asia/Pacific theater. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to deep tensions with key EU states, though British, Spanish, and Polish support for the US war effort balanced rhetoric from those US conservatives, such as John Bolton, who were already beginning to define the EU as a potential strategic adversary.

For many Europeans, the subsequent election victory of Barack Obama in 2008 fueled hopes that the transatlantic alliance could overcome such challenges. But despite initial emphasis on renewed cooperation, the inability of European states involved in the NATO intervention in Libya in 2011 to sustain targeted airstrikes without American assistance brought to the surface frustration with what many US officials believed was a lack of equitable burden-sharing when it came to defense spending. In his final years as president, Barack Obama expressed frustration with a perceived imbalance between high levels of US defense spending and budget cuts in EU member states that were increasingly hampering the operational effectiveness of European militaries.

An Emerging Europe

A paradox of these growing tensions between the US and its European allies is that they were also a product of the EU’s increasingly powerful global role in other key policy areas. While the end of the Cold War led to cuts in European defense budgets that exacerbated the military imbalance with the United States, it also intensified a process of European integration that would lead to an vast concentration of collective trade and regulatory power in a restructured EU. When the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992 consolidated economic and monetary integration and deepened political union, the ability of the EU’s institutions to influence trade and regulation on a global scale expanded rapidly in ways that clashed with the interests of key American business sectors.

Though there are still many unresolved aspects of economic and monetary integration despite the waning of the Eurozone crisis, it is notable that Europeans have repeatedly resisted American pressure over the past decade—for example, Europe has brushed off American calls to change course over such issues as debt relief for Greece or Brexit. The divergence of European strategic priorities from American attempts to shape the global economy has been a source of tension since at least a decade before Trump’s election. As the EU intensifies integration and puts pressure on trading partners to adopt its own regulatory framework, that tension will only grow.

In the context of a transnational system that is increasingly developing its own state-like structures, the EU’s internal institutional dynamic was also creating pressures for greater defense coordination before Donald Trump took power. The dawning realization of the extent of military weakness in the period between the Libyan War and the Russian annexation of Ukraine fueled concerns within Europe about the extent of its reliance on US security guarantees.

The increasingly unpredictable behavior of the US has accelerated these efforts, as even many Europeans who are strongly committed to the transatlantic alliance have swung to the view that American unreliability may well make the effort needed for the EU to achieve strategic autonomy a matter of existential necessity. In what can be described as a belated victory for the Gaullist view of geopolitics, there is now an emerging consensus across the EU that its interests can no longer be made reliant on an American political system that is vulnerable to violent electoral swings between belligerence and paralysis. As ever with shifts in EU policy, this is still likely to be an incremental process. But the emergence of an EU able to project collective power in all areas of policy would diminish US leverage and influence in Europe and geopolitical flashpoints surrounding it.

So rather than just assuming that Donald Trump is the primary factor behind the crisis threatening the transatlantic alliance, it is worth looking at how he has been able to use this long term divergence in institutional approaches and strategic interests between the US and the EU to his advantage. Even in an alternative scenario in which Trump had lost in 2016, a more benign US president would have still have faced tensions between the EU and the United States. These would have needed to be managed in a way that acknowledged the divergence of interests while still retaining the benefits of continued cooperation in security and defense. If Trump leaves office soon, it could still be possible to have such an honest dialogue. Both sides could discuss the implications of a strategic rebalancing process in which the EU expands its military strength to lighten the load on an overstretched United States while American political elites accept the strategic implications of a truly equal partnership.

Yet if Donald Trump continues to sabotage any attempts to explore such a managed rebalancing, the accelerating strategic divergence could quickly become unbridgeable. The differences in opinion between Europe and America would then fuel strategic rivalry. If one takes the potential global implications of such a breakdown in the alliance between the US and the EU into account, then those American policymakers should be careful what they wish for in demanding a massive expansion of European military power.

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© REUTERS/Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin

Politics, they say, makes for strange bedfellows. After 13 tense years knowing each other, it’s hard to imagine Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin engaging in political pillow talk. The two speak each other’s languages but their leadership styles—and goals—couldn’t be further apart. But in the Black Sea resort of Sochi this week, Russia’s president welcomed the re-elected German chancellor to his summer residence and both made an effort to accentuate the positive.

At a joint press conference after talks on Friday, Merkel and Putin made clear that pragmatism was the order of the day. Their countries’ bilateral interests outweigh the differences and, increasingly, they find themselves united against the Trump White House.

Four years ago bilateral relations dipped below freezing point after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the wider Ukraine conflict. In all-night talks, Merkel took the lead in Western diplomatic efforts, facing down Putin in Minsk to produce a peace process named after the Belarussian capital.

That roadmap remains fragile but not even regular violations of its terms are enough to hold back a thaw as summer approaches. The Russian president welcomed Merkel with  pink and white roses. Merkel came empty-handed, but bearing with a diplomatic bouquet.

“We have a strategic interest in having good relations to Russia,” said Merkel. Serious, ongoing policy differences that were obvious from their “open exchanges” did not mean the two countries did not have “areas in which we are completely of one opinion.” On her wavelength, Putin said “differing analyses of this situation or that” did not alter how Germany remains a “key partner” for Russia. “Solving problems is not possible when one does not engage in dialogue with one another,” he added.

Though ongoing disagreement over Ukraine featured in their talks, their joint press conference made clear that it has been displaced by more pressing problems. The American decision to disown the Iran nuclear deal, Merkel said, was no reason for the rest of the world to walk away from a agreement that, though not perfect, offered more control, security, and transparency than no deal. “It would be becoming for Iran to say now, ‘we want to continue to observe this obligation,’” she said.

With a typically wily flourish, Putin invited Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to his Sochi residence a day before Merkel. At the press conference with his German visitor Putin called on Western countries to make a greater effort on the humanitarian front in the war-torn country. European leaders counter such calls by saying Russia, as his main backer, should bankroll any reconstruction effort. As long as Assad is president, they have refused to provide anything more than humanitarian assistance to Syria.

Show of Unity

Perhaps the greatest show of unity between the two leaders was in facing down US criticism of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. This is the second pipeline, currently under construction, to carry Russian natural gas to Germany under the Baltic Sea. It follows the first Nord Stream pipeline that opened in 2011. Ukraine fears an alternative route for Russian gas will see a drop of deliveries through its territory, opening the door to further energy standoffs with Moscow and a subsequent fall in transit charges which comprise around 4 percent of Ukraine’s annual budget.

Merkel insisted gas delivered must continue through Ukraine while Putin declared the project, controlled by the state-owned Gazprom concern, as an economic not political project. Russia would continue these deliveries, he said, “as long as they make economic sense and sense for all involved”.

Trump administration energy experts in Berlin on Thursday called Nord Stream 2 “a bad idea … from a geopolitical perspective” that was “potentially … an elevated sanctions risk.” Sandra Oudkirk, deputy assistant secretary of state for energy diplomacy, said Russian guarantees to keep supplying Ukraine with Russian gas were “unenforceable.” Washington would continue diplomatic efforts on this front, she said, but recalled how last August the US congress voted for sanctions against companies involved in the pipeline project.

Making light of such tough talk, in a show of the thaw with Germany, Putin joked on Friday in Sochi that US opposition to the Nord Stream project was perhaps the only point of continuity between the Obama and Trump administrations.

The Russian and German leaders share too much history to become bedfellows in this life. But the Sochi thaw suggests the two are pragmatic enough to move on, sharing the belief that, in politics, there are no friends—only shared interests.

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© REUTERS/Eduard Korniyenko

In today’s Russia, elections are above all a stress test for the political system Putin has built. Even if the results of the presidential election scheduled for March 18 are already established, the “campaign” exposes both the strengths and the weaknesses of the reigning regime.

First off, it is important to clarify that these are not free and fair elections in which real candidates compete against each other and enjoy equal access to the media and the public. Instead, this is a collection of candidates selected by the Kremlin (including newcomer Ksenia Sobchak) who will run a pointless race that only Vladimir Putin can possibly win. Putin has all the resources of the state at his disposal and unlimited access to Russian media. The Kremlin will manage the entire process in minute detail. This presidential election is thus a referendum on Putin’s popularity more than anything else.

Second, the actual votes cast on election day are less important than what happens before and after. Who will actually go to the polls? Who will get access to the public, and how much? And which numbers will the Central Election Commission recognize when it’s all over? Even if there are once again irregularities on the day of the election, with groups bussed from one voting location to the next to cast their ballots for the correct candidate several times, the process has become more and more professional.

Despite exercising almost perfect control over the opposition, the media, and the NGOs, the regime is always nervous ahead of an election. It has no real contact with the public, and does not trust the people. With Russian political leaders, communication is a one-way street: The public is meant to be directed by what the regime communicates via the media, but the regime receives no communication back. It has to rely on opinion surveys to understand the mood of the population.

While Putin, as a non-ideological populist, has sought direct contact with Russians in his annual TV appearances, only carefully selected individuals are given the chance to bring their problems to the president, and only as an opportunity for him to display the full power of his office in solving them. Putin issues direct edicts to governors, CEOs, and managers to solve the problems he has chosen to address, and for a brief moment he seems to be in touch with the concerns of his citizens. To the viewer at home, the message is clear: The corrupt bureaucrats are responsible for their problems, not the president himself.

A Magnifying Glass

Against this background, the presidential campaign serves as a magnifying glass that exposes all the weaknesses of Putin’s system. Putin has been in power for 18 years now, and it is becoming harder and harder for his government to pretend to stand for any kind of innovation or change; the system is geared entirely towards retaining power and enriching its elites.

Despite Putin’s considerable foreign policy successes in 2017, both the president and the media have been focusing their attention for several months now on domestic politics. The “Crimea effect” has been exhausted, Ukraine is mentioned less and less in Russian media, and there is a growing desire among Russians to withdraw the country’s military forces from Syria. Putin has been listening and announced a massive troop withdrawal at the end of 2017. Even if he does not entirely follow through on this promise, the shift in the public’s attention to domestic concerns is unmistakable.

Thanks to the rising price of oil, the economy has begun to slowly recover. Despite the sanctions, the Russian state is doing better than many economists predicted. Yet the average Russian’s standard of living has been deteriorating for years. According to the state statistics office Rosstat, real income decreased 1.7 percent in 2017. Poverty, social justice, education, and the health care system are the topics that actually concern Russians. It is increasingly difficult for the government to distract from this socio-economic reality, and Putin’s campaign offers no solutions to these issues; the long-serving president represents only continuity and stability. The state-directed media work to make this look like an attractive platform, pointing to Islamist terror in Europe or the EU’s eternal existential crisis as the potential alternatives. Be happy, they say, that you’re living in Putin’s Russia: At least we guarantee you security and stability.

Many Russians buy into that, especially in the regions where memories of the catastrophic 1990s are still fresh. And it is important to remember that over 90 percent of Russians get their information from the national, Kremlin-directed TV channels. Many of the active, educated young elites left the country long ago to try their luck in the US or Europe.

Putin does not have a particular theme for this campaign and offers no specific prospects for his country’s future other than himself – which will not be enough. The journalist Oleg Kashin described the feelings of many Russians, especially those who live in the big cities: Even if the entire state apparatus works to secure six more years in power for Putin, the whole process seems unreal to many. Despite Putin’s consistently high approval ratings, a discussion has started to brew among intellectual and elite circles and even in the streets over what will come after Putin. Is he still the right person to determine the future of the country, and does he have answers to the country’s real problems? How much does he really understand the reality in which most Russians live?

The Anti-Putin

With his own campaign, opposition leader Alexei Navalny is making the weaknesses of Putin’s system clear. He is the only one waging a real election campaign, and by addressing topics like corruption, social justice, and freedom, the only one truly communicating with the people.

While Putin’s campaign relies on a negative worldview—the world is evil and Russia is surrounded by foes—Navalny appeals to Russian’s patriotism and their positivity, above all among younger Russians. Russia is a wonderful country, he says, and if it were not for the corrupt elites it could do much better—and Russian citizens have the power to change their country. While Putin speaks of the past, Navalny speaks of the future. He is the only real candidate, and he campaigns as if he could win the election.

Even if he never had a chance to be allowed to run, he has already changed Russian politics. With his social media presence, his website, and his YouTube channel, he is in continuous contact with his public, informing and motivating his supporters. Through a crowd-funding campaign, he has managed to open 84 regional offices and attract more than 200,000 volunteers.

With his ironic and lively videos, Navalny reaches young people whom Putin has failed to reach and who are not afraid to take to the streets. For the first time in post-war history, many young Russians are becoming engaged in politics. They do not see themselves as liberals, but rather as patriots; they want to live like people in the West, while maintaining their differences.

These self-organized campaigns worry the Kremlin. It has not organized them, and it cannot control them. Particularly when it comes to elections, authoritarian regimes do not like to leave anything to chance, even when there is little actual risk of losing control. Putin would also win if elections were free and fair, after all. This element of uncontrolled irrationality is something the powerful in Russia cannot allow. Thus, they are trying to silence Navalny: Putin will not speak his name, as though he would deny his very existence.

According to political scientist Alexander Kynev, Navalny is the first person in modern Russia to communicate a liberal political discourse in a language people can understand. He presents himself as a patriot and a nationalist; he supported the annexation of Crimea; and, unlike traditional Russian liberals, maintains few contacts abroad—yet his platform is a synthesis of freedom and justice. He is trying to create change within the system, and he is ultimately calling into question the fundamental power structure governing the state – yet another reason he is not allowed to campaign.

Ksenia Sobchak’s campaign, on the other hand, is targeted at a minority of Russians. With her references to European values, sanctions, the legalization of drugs, and LGBT rights, Kynev believes that Sobchak is consciously bypassing the majority and speaking to only a small group of the Russian population. She is committed to appealing to all the values that the regime has described as “liberal decadence” for years. In doing so, she is legitimizing the official discourse on the decadent, liberal elite, and making herself one of the political leadership’s favorite candidates.

Navalny is competing in earnest – he wants to build a parliamentary majority and change the system. Sobchak has no chance and will not win a majority of the vote for the foreseeable future. She has gained media access, however, and the chance to address the public in ways that are barred to Navalny. Thus, she has become a candidate for the powerful. There is no candidate “against everyone,” as Sobchak describes herself; each candidate either supports the current political arrangement or does not. And even opposing the current political constellation can be, in a certain sense, futile: Navalny’s appeal to boycott the election entirely will predominantly find an audience among the young people who would not have voted anyway.

Mobilization with Social Media

The video Navalny published in March 2017 revealing the riches amassed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has now been seen 26 million times. The fact that so many young people were engaged via social networks in such an apathetic, apolitical, paternalist system shows that even Russian society is going through a process of fundamental change.

The Putin system has been holding the lid down on Russian society since at least 2012, but pressure has been growing faster than outsiders have realized. Many Russian regions have seen an increasing number of spontaneous demonstrations, usually concerning social justice or mistakes made by local administrators. These protests have no common goal, and there are still no political leaders who could assemble these outcroppings of anger into a coherent movement. But it is evident that another six years of stagnating economic growth—particularly alarming in an emerging economy like Russia—will not be enough to satisfy people.

That means that President Putin, so successful in his international relations, will have to devote even more attention to domestic politics, and he will have fewer tools and resources to pacify his citizens and the country’s elites. He has no answers to challenges like digitalization, the future of education, the country’s demographic problems, and migration.

The country’s isolation and the black-and-white thinking of its leaders will simply not suffice in an increasingly complex world. One should not underestimate Putin’s flexibility and adaptability, but it is already clear that in many key areas Russia has gone off the rails. Representatives of the more liberal economic elite inside the system, like Sberbank head German Gref, are pushing for an improvement of the country’s geopolitical environment to prevent Russia from falling further behind in technological and social competitiveness. The brain drain of the past few years has led to a shortage of qualified specialists in technical fields, no matter how many personal visits Putin makes to important Russian technology companies like Yandex.

Putin’s power is built on two elements: First, it is based on his apparent closeness to the people and his image as a populist leader. Putin is becoming a sort of sacred figure within the state, a leader who single-handedly directs all the governing institutions—which tends to undermine the tough everyman image he projects in his televised discussions. Second, it relies on the institutionalization of Putin himself and his supposed ability to change the bureaucracy. He has begun to remove his old friends and acquaintances from his time in St. Petersburg and the KGB from key positions, replacing them with young, professional and technocratic officials.

A Shrinking Circle

As a result, Putin’s role within his system has grown even larger—he now makes all the decisions himself. His close circle has contracted so much that there is almost no one left to serve as any kind of counterweight. Sooner or later, this will inevitably lead to the question of how much responsibility he bears for the mistakes of his administrators.
At the same time, representatives of the security services have gained prominence in the bureaucratic apparatus. Vladimir Pastukhov, a political scientist and research associate at the University College London, says the competition among various groups within Putin’s circle to gain influence and resources is becoming an institutionalized battle between the civilian and military bureaucracies. That makes the system even more opaque and calls into question the degree of control Putin is able to exercise himself.

The prosecution of former Minister of Economic Development Alexey Ulyukaev and legal action against film director Kirill Serebrennikov have worried the elites. Whether someone is close to Putin or not, no one is safe. Putin’s system demands absolute loyalty; he has less and less patience for statements and behavior that indicate any kind of independent thought. If this trend continues, it can lead to destabilization.

The Russian presidential election may seem a boring, forgone conclusion. However, look more closely, and the fundamental changes reshaping Russian society become clear. If the political system cannot find answers to the questions Russians are increasingly asking, it will eventually be replaced. The longer the lid is held down, the longer the current challenges are ignored, the likelier it is that eventually there will be an explosion

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© Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik via REUTERS

The most common complaint about Russia’s foreign policy theses days is that it is becoming more aggressive and expansionist. Both US and European policymakers believe that Russia is now a serious challenge to global peace and stability. However, while this description might be accurate—Russia has already proven how dangerous it can be, especially to its neighbors—there is another phenomenon that has come to characterize Russia’s foreign policy: its absence. In its place, Russia has amassed a patchwork of interests, alliances of convenience, and grudges.

Contemporary Russian foreign policy was born in 1999, as Russian leadership—and more importantly the Russian public—began to grow deeply disillusioned with the West. At the time, the survival of Russia’s political elite depended upon both the suppression of separatism within Russia and the restoration of Russia’s global role. When Putin was elevated to the position of president, he tried to restore the country’s political relationships—not only with post-Soviet states, but also with the former USSR’s most corrupt allies. He paid visits to North Korea and Cuba during his first year in office and wrote off more than $40 billion of Soviet-era debts owed by Mongolia, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Syria, Nicaragua, and other nations between 2000 and 2004. This did little to establish beneficial relationships, but these steps were quite popular inside Russia and contributed to the ascent of Putin’s approval ratings in the early 2000s.

When Putin began to consolidate his position, he used the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US to dramatically shift the country’s foreign policy. In exchange for its support for the Western mission in Afghanistan, Russia was able to improve its economic relations with both the US and Europe. Moscow founded the Russia-NATO council in 2002, with Putin calling European integration a “hope” for Russia. It seemed that Russia was briefly able to accept Washington’s special role in the world and maintain a steady rapprochement with the West.

A Short-Lived Honeymoon

The honeymoon ended in 2003 with the Bush administration’s occupation of Iraq. Russia sided with Germany and France against the invasion, and for a brief time, it was possible to imagine the beginnings of a new Moscow-Berlin-Paris alliance. But it was short-lived: Moscow turned its back on Europe after the major European powers denounced its behavior towards Ukraine during the Orange Revolution of 2004/05. With the exception of brief overtures to the West, like the ”Partnership for Modernization” with the EU and a ”reset” with the US, Russia had returned to its skepticism of the West.

This culminated in Russia’s ”pivot to the East,” as the Kremlin called its decision to rely more on a rising China to buttress Russia’s geopolitical ambitions, and ”Eurasian integration,” another response to the hardening of Russia-Western relations. The deep alienation from the West after the Ukraine crisis also led Russian leadership to develop relations with the most authoritarian regimes in the world, from Iran to Venezuela and Syria to Sudan. These connections cost money, and for a dubious rate of return: Over the last five years, Russians lent to and invested in Venezuela and Syria without achieving any foreign policy effects at all. Russia’s involvement in Syria in 2015 was meant to force the West to recognize Russia’s claims in the post-Soviet space, but neither the Americans nor the Europeans expressed any willingness to fight terror alongside a nation that was itself perceived as a terrorist power.

Thus, Russian foreign policy has come a remarkable full circle: it started with pure anti-Americanism, entered situational alliances with the United States and major European powers, then pivoted to the East, and ended by building ineffective partner-client relationships with disreputable political regimes. With Putin seeking another presidential term, extending his time as Russia’s leader to a quarter of a century, it is obvious he lacks any agenda for engaging with the world in the future.

A Domestic Imperative

President Putin might be not a very good strategic planner, but his actions are at least well thought out. Experts have been predicting his fall since 2002, but his regime remains reasonably healthy, and no organized opposition exists in the country. Putin’s foreign policy has been one of the foundations of his hold on power, and it reflects the shifting roles of Russia’s elites and its public in domestic policies.

When Putin assumed presidential power in the early 2000s, he sought popular support rather than that of the elites. This changed in 2002/03: With all the major state-owned corporations under the control of his allies and Russian businesses subdued, Putin’s major focus shifted to the interests of the elites. This is when the era of constructive foreign policy began. Until at least 2007, Russia’s foreign policy was largely underpinned by a desire to connect with the West, driven by Russian businessmen who wanted to join the global financial elite. Moscow opposed NATO and EU enlargement in the post-Soviet zone, but until the end of former President Dmitry Medvedev’s tenure, Russia cooperated productively with the US and Europe.

The decisive change came in 2011. Putin was disturbed by the implications of the Arab Spring revolutions, which had deposed a number of local strongmen, and felt his suspicions confirmed by massive street rallies held throughout Russia in response to the rigged 2011 Duma elections. In 2012, Putin won re-election with only 63.3 percent of the popular vote, a much lower margin than his 71.3 percent in 2004 and Medvedev’s 70.3 percent in 2008. He refocused his attention on the public and tried to galvanize support, especially since economic growth was faltering.

Without any vision for the future, the Kremlin decided to bet on a set of ideas for a post-Soviet reconstruction, a plan outlined in an article Putin published in the Izvestia newspaper in late 2011. These ideas failed: By the end of 2013, it was clear that Ukraine was moving westwards, and the benefits of closer ties with Kazakhstan and Belarus were negligible. In November 2013, the Levada Center recorded the lowest ever popular support for Mr. Putin—60.7 percent, compared with 85.9 percent when he allowed Medvedev to take over in April 2008. The occupation of Crimea in February and March 2014 and the subsequent war in Ukraine had far more to do with domestic concerns than global considerations. It was one of Putin’s boldest moves and it resonated strongly with the public. From this time on, Russia’s foreign policy began to vanish, replaced by an imaginary discourse meant to serve domestic political needs.

A Besieged Fortress

The Russian government has no actual need to improve the country’s relationships with the West because it derives its legitimacy predominantly from the current showdown. It also has little need to be active on other foreign policy vectors, since it simply has nothing to offer except the sale of energy resources and weapons. Welcoming international pariahs like Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro or Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir should not be considered an element of foreign policy. The Kremlin simply wishes for Russia to look like a besieged fortress, under attack by the West.

And it has worked well: Putin’s approval ratings haven’t dipped below 80 percent since the annexation of Crimea, even though the economy has stagnated and personal disposable incomes have declined for the fourth year in a row. As it becomes more obvious that Putin is unable to provide Russians with improved conditions or Russia with expanding international influence, his only realistic option is to claim that only because of him, Russia is successfully withstanding growing external pressure. No one in the Kremlin wants relations with the West to improve. This would not make much of a difference to Russia’s economic landscape, and without an ”enemy” it would become much more difficult to explain why the country’s economy is performing so poorly, why military spending is so high, and why corruption is rampant.

The dismantling of Russia’s foreign policy also allows the government to change the entire worldview of the Russian people. As the country’s self-image as a besieged fortress has become more deeply ingrained, the Kremlin has tried to extend it, turning the whole history of the country into a story of defensive wars and praising the wisdom of ”strong rulers” who led the country to victory. Ivan the Terrible and Josef Stalin, the rulers who were responsible for the most brutal repressions of the Russian people in history, are nowadays the most glorified leaders in the nation’s history. For facilitating Putin’s political victories, some politicians have in fact suggested extending voting rights to 27 million people killed during World War II. More absurd initiatives are certain to follow. Books published with the support of foreign NGOs are confiscated, Russian non-profits that receive foreign grants or produce research for foreign customers are pressured; the country is being brainwashed, and its self-made isolation is a contributing factor.

To see that the Kremlin will not change its course now, one need only look at how its foreign policy actors have changed their language. Any trace of diplomatic politeness has completely disappeared. Putin described US sanction policy as ”clownery that cannot be tolerated;” Aleksey Pushkov, the chairman of the State Duma’s foreign policy committee, described the United States as a power ”approaching the point of a mental breakdown.” All of this underlines the fact that Russia’s foreign policy statements are used not to manage relations with other countries, but rather to impress a domestic audience.

A Vicious Cycle

This development could in fact be rather good for the Western powers. Many see Russia as a revisionist power that wants to change the borders of Europe and rewrite the rules that took hold after the end of the Cold War. But it has not been successful in this pursuit. Putin wanted to consolidate the post-Soviet space and keep Ukraine inside Russia’s sphere of influence, but instead of regaining Ukraine, he had to settle for Crimea; the Eurasian Union looks dysfunctional, with even Armenia disgruntled with its rules; China has not been a valuable investment partner; and the West is tightening its sanctions. In 2008 and 2014 Putin had targets he could invade and occupy without having to directly confront the West militarily, but now he does not. The country’s shift to domestic rhetoric in its foreign policy reflects the clear fact that the Kremlin realizes it has no chance of military expansion, and no means with which to respond to Western sanctions.

Under these conditions, Moscow’s only rational course is what it has already chosen: Abandoning any hope for positive change and nurturing a domestic climate of fear and hatred. This approach allows Russian authorities to both mobilize their subjects’ political and electoral support and channel hundreds of billions of rubles from the budget to fund the military and military equipment manufacturers (who represent, along with their family members, up to 11 percent of the Russian population). This strategy precludes any full-scale military conflict with the NATO countries for two obvious reasons: First, the Russian people do not want to go to war. No one was killed in Crimea, and during the subsequent conflict in Donbass the highest estimates of casualties among Russian servicemen are around two to three thousand people. In Syria, the combined losses of the regular army and the mercenaries Russia employed totaled less than 300. A single day of direct engagement with NATO forces would claim many more lives.

The second is that the Russian army isn’t fit for a full-scale war. It possesses only about a tenth of the tanks, armored vehicles, and guns that the eastern flank of NATO forces in Europe (not counting Greek and Turkish armies) can command. Even with 4.3 percent of its GDP spent on defense, Russia will need 30 to 40 years to catch up with its main opponents in just one theater. At the same time, the country possesses no means to respond to Western sanctions and nothing to offer in exchange for these sanctions being lifted. Thus, Putin is now able only to interfere with foreign elections and influence public opinion abroad by either waging disinformation campaigns or secretly funding fringe political parties. The Kremlin is stuck in its current foreign policy stance. Like a caged dog, it can only bark louder and louder.

The main challenge Putin’s regime now faces is the need to preserve its popularity within Russia while maintaining the international status quo—avoiding becoming a rogue state or attracting further sanctions. The West’s response to such a tactic should be based on a deep understanding of its own strategic superiority and the recognition that Putin’s Russia will run out of steam much more quickly than Brezhnev’s Soviet Union did. The gap between Putin’s non-existing foreign policy and his desperate rhetoric may broaden, but it will produce neither substantial benefits for Russia nor existential threats for the West.

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