What Putin really wants: the autopsy of an autocrat

In 2001 the then US President, George W. Bush, was asked what he made of Vladimir Putin after their first meeting. He replied: “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.”

Bush soon changed his mind.

Images of the first Russian tanks rolling into a sovereign Ukraine are confirmation — if confirmation were needed — that Vladimir Putin is a dangerous autocrat, set on shoring up his waning popularity with another war.

But there is more to it than that. The appalling prospect of another European war is evidence that Russian irredentism is alive and well and still inhabits the Kremlin. The invasion of Ukraine follows an unmistakeable pattern: Poland 1939; Hungary 1956; Czechoslovakia 1968; Afghanistan 1979.

For the West, fragmented by single-issue identity politics, uncertain of its purpose as the protector of pluralism, democracy and a rules-based international order, the challenge is immense.

In the short-term Putin’s grab for Ukraine poses the question: why is he doing this and how should the West respond?

In the longer-term it raises, more fundamentally, the question: has Russia, or at any rate the Russian leadership, changed at all since the collapse of the Soviet Union? Can it ever be trusted as an international partner?

Putin may be dangerous, but he is not impulsive or even, I would argue, reckless. He has been laying the ground for his lebensraum strategy for some time.

First he needed absolute control. Any opposition had to be silenced.

Putin’s third presidential term, beginning in 2012, was marked by a sharp decrease in popular support and a brutal effort to choke off the anti-regime protests that broke out while he was Prime Minister in 2011. His fourth term, since 2018, has seen more clampdowns and a crude power grab. Major opposition leaders have been jailed or poisoned: in the case of Alexei Navalny, both. Others have simply been assassinated.

The Russian constitution has been rewritten to “reset” Putin’s presidency, potentially handing him the keys to the Kremlin until 2036, something he explicitly ruled out in 2005. If he makes it, Putin will be 83 by then and the longest-serving leader since the Tsarist empire.

But what else lies behind Putin’s latest adventure? Is it, as some have suggested, a lapse in judgement driven by personal ambition, a desire perhaps to leave behind a legacy of a greater Russia when he finally goes?

This is a man who has spent two decades assiduously building his power base with great care. He plays a long game. The Putin-has-gone-off-the-rails theory is an unlikely, or at any rate, an insufficient explanation.

Does he want to put back together the former Soviet Union? This seems far-fetched. Putin is a judicious risk-taker. He is also a realist. Russia’s economy is weak. Incomes are stagnating. Covid has wreaked havoc. The prospect of a depopulated Russia haunts Putin. Sanctions in retaliation for invading Ukraine will hurt. Sanctions for going further would be ruinous.

To understand Russia’s and Putin’s obsessive territorial ambitions in Ukraine, we need to look to the past. We need to ask where, in the minds of Russia’s rulers, does the Russian nation (the Rodina) begin and end, and who constitutes the Russian people?

Putin has, through stealth, corruption, and brute force, moulded post-Soviet Russia into a rogue state, stifling alternative voices at home and seeking influence abroad by sticking a spoke in every wheel he can reach.

The ageing leader sits at the centre of a web that reaches across Europe to the City of London, which launders his money; to Syria, which gives him a foothold in the oil-rich Middle East; and beyond to failing states in Africa challenging Western and especially American influence.

He has outsmarted, out-spent and out-manoeuvred a fractious liberal order divided, ironically, by an upsurge in nationalism. When he told the FT in 2019 that liberalism had “become obsolete” he was raising a red flag, not merely shooting his mouth off. We should have paid closer attention.

But he would not have got this far without the wind of Russian nationalism in his sails: a heady cocktail of Cossack brotherhood and love for the cultural and geographical entity called Russia — or the land of the Rus’, which includes Ukraine and Belarus.

In his prescient book The Lost Kingdom about Russian nationalism and imperialism Harvard Professor Serhii Plokhy has a telling story. In 2015 shortly after the annexation of Crimea Putin unveiled a statue at the gates of the Kremlin. The monument is to Prince Vladimir (sic) who ruled in Kyiv in the Middle Ages, early founder of the Russian nationalism.

In his address Putin hailed his namesake as a “gatherer and protector of Russian lands, a statesman who laid the foundations of a strong, centralised state, a family of equal peoples and cultures”.

Russians are full-throated patriots. The legend of heroism, patriotism and sacrifice runs through Russian veins. Overlaying this is a profound insecurity. Russia, the world largest country, is exposed on all sides to potentially hostile powers. Its relationship with China is purely transactional.

In addition Russia has struggled for centuries to choose between a European and an Asiatic identity. Russian rulers have used the “shared sense of dynastic origin” with their Slavic neighbours to justify dominance over other lands in its near abroad. But that pan-Slavic identity is also the cause of a kind of collective personality disorder that leads Russia astray.

The invasion of Russia by Napoleon in 1812 slammed the door shut on Europe-leaning sentiments. Hitler finished the job with his Operation Barbarossa. The possibility of NATO troops in Russia’s backyard is the stuff of nightmares for Kremlin strategists.

This is the narrative that Putin is exploiting by beaming it into every TV and smartphone. And it’s one, judging from his endless pronouncements, which he also believes.

When he crushed the separatists in Chechnya, Putin did so at great human cost. It was a deeply unpopular war. But when he walked into Crimea, annexing it largely without bloodshed, he hit this nationalist “sweet spot”.

Perhaps he is gambling that his recognition of the two breakaway “republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk and a limited incursion into eastern Ukraine will have the same effect. This is mere speculation, of course. But it does have a bearing on our response because success may encourage him to go all the way.

Which brings us to another question, an even more serious one. Can democracy ever take root in Russia? Is it — has it ever been — a country we can confidently do business with, let alone build a comfortable long-term relationship with?

It’s a question of deep importance for democracies and economies, especially in Europe, that service Russian financial interests while being uncomfortably dependant on Russia’s raw materials.

With the exception of a brief period after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Russia has never been a democracy. And when democracy was allowed to emerge under the guise of perestroika it spluttered and failed. The dreams we had after 1989 of a democratic, pluralist Russia have been blown out of the water.

Russia was founded as a princely state and later as a monarchy. Reborn as a communist state, it now exists as an imperial presidency. Catherine the Great answered to her nobles, though she also executed some of them. Putin, like Stalin, answers to no one.

What Putin has engineered is a return to despotism without the outward trappings of a communist state. He has recreated the Soviet-era’s intelligence and subversion machine and then some. He has rebuilt his armed forces. His cyberwarfare units pose a real threat to open economies and western infrastructure.

Over time they have exerted a chokehold on the levers of power and the economy with the help of ex-Soviet secret policemen and buddies from his St Petersburg’s days.

He justifies his actions by trumpeting  an increasingly strident anti-Western nationalism. The US and other democracies are routinely denounced as evil states hatching diabolical plans to undermine traditional Russian values.

It’s not a pretty picture. Scarred by failures in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, the liberal West is caught between a rock and a hard place. Economic sanctions have not deterred Putin so far.

It’s worth remembering that when the Soviet Empire collapsed, the West crowed. We couldn’t resist the temptation to poke the wounded Russian bear at every turn. We talked of a unipolar world. We invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. We were cocky. It doesn’t excuse what Putin is doing. But it merits a post-it note at the next negotiating table.

William Hague is right in saying that we need fundamentally to reassess our relations with Russia. It is not a democracy. It is not liberal. It is not stable. And it may never be any of these things.

Putin already has Belarus in his pocket. Ukraine looks like it’s following. The dream of a Greater Russia is within his grasp.

Where does this leave us? War is unthinkable. The world is already awash with failed states and refugees fleeing persecution, hunger and oppression. But we cannot look away. Much more than Ukraine is at stake. Where Putin leads, others will follow.

This is a defining moment for the liberal, democratic world.

A Message from TheArticle

We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout the pandemic. So please, make a donation.