Vladimir Putin is ruling a Russia that is not unlike the Soviet Union of the late 1970s. At home, he is facing a growing, if largely sullen and silent, discontent, but abroad his Russia appears to be triumphant — reminding you of the Soviet Union after America’s defeat in Southeast Asia, albeit on a much smaller scale.
Indeed, the landscape beyond Russia’s borders must look fairly glorious to Putin’s eye. Things are pretty much going his way everywhere.
Ukraine surely remains Putin’s greatest prize, but it has had to be put on the back burner. His own blunders in 2014 have placed it out of reach for the time being. His hope of fomenting a revolt in the Eastern, mostly Russian-speaking, parts of the country and converting them into a “New Russia” failed. Instead, Ukraine has turned strongly anti-Russian, the Ukrainian military, all but nonexistent at the time, has become better equipped and trained, and the frontline states, most of them NATO members, have closed ranks against Russian aggression.
An outright military invasion would be costly politically and bloody militarily. Russia has done stupid things before, and Putin might yet make a major move before the US presidential election, but he is probably too cautious to get entangled in this kind of misadventure.
That said, he has Kyiv very much where he wants it. Volodymyr Zelensky, elected president in a landslide last year, has predictably proven himself inexperienced and weak. His popularity has dwindled and a poll in July showed his approval rating sliding to just 24%.
More challenges loom for the Ukrainian government around the corner. COVID-19 cases and deaths are still relatively low but rising fast, and a nasty economic crisis is likely to follow. The EU is willing to provide financial assistance for now, but given the economic and financial problems the rest of the world is facing, international largesse will dry up soon.
The economic situation in Ukraine will remain precarious and politics in the country are as murky as ever, potentially creating opportunities for Putin to meddle. In any case, in the bleak post-pandemic environment, Ukraine’s integration into Western Europe will stall—which is what Putin ultimately wants.
The popular revolt in Belarus has been an unexpected development — after all, the Belarusians had tolerated their collective farm caudillo for over a quarter of a century. But it too is playing into Putin’s hands.
A weak Alexander Lukashenko is a better Lukashenkaofrom Putin’s point of view, and the man has already crawled back to the imperial throne on his hands and knees. His crazy lie about intercepting the call between Berlin and Warsaw, supposedly proving that it was the West that poisoned Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, is like a dog bringing his slippers to its master.
In Belarus, too, Putin may yet do a stupid thing and intervene against peaceful protesters to prop up Lukashenko or even to annex the country. But if he has learned any lessons from Ukraine, he will sit tight, waiting for the situation to develop favorably — especially since the Belarusians, unlike the Ukrainians in 2013, are not demanding that their country adopt a European course.
Instead, where Putin and his army of internet trolls and hackers will be busy this fall is the United States. His most pressing task is to get Donald Trump re-elected for a second term on November 3rd. US intelligence agencies are constantly uncovering Russian attempts to influence the election in Trump’s favor, and a bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee has also warned about Russian interference.
Needless to say, the Trump administration is doing nothing to counter this. Trump actually welcomes Russian help, just as he did in 2016. Now, the question is why would Putin would want Trump in the White House for another four years.
Naturally, helping the least competent and the most divisive man in American history stay in the White House is a huge intelligence coup, but Trump has mostly fulfilled his function. He has shredded America’s reputation in the world, antagonized its historical allies, and weakened NATO.
Moreover, Trump is a. gift that will keep on giving for years. Actually, he may even be more useful to Putin as a loser in November. If he is defeated, he will surely claim that the vote was rigged and will bring divisions and hatred in America toa boiling point. His heavily armed fascistic “patriots” will likely instigate violence across the United States with the connivance of the sympathetic local police.
Meanwhile, a winning Trump may turn from a Russian asset to a liability. True, Russian intelligence obviously has some nasty kompromat on the Leader of the Free World, a fact confirmed by his relentless kowtowing to Putin. The Senate Intelligence Committee has confirmed that pretty much all of the maligned Steele Dossier on the Trump-Russia connection was true and only some of the allegations have not yet been corroborated.
But whatever Putin has on Trump, its sell-by date is fast approaching. If Trump wins a second term he will be out of control. With Bill Barr as his attorney general and a pocket Supreme Court, Trump will no longer care whatever compromising information about him Putin will be able to reveal.
The military, technological and economic strength of the United States should not be underestimated. An authoritarian, nationalistic, highly resentful United States, with a statist, crony capitalist system Trump favors, can easily turn into a nasty rival, engaging in the good old “beggar thy neighbor” policies. Russia, with its stunted, resource-dependent economy, could be especially vulnerable. Trump’s aggressive move into the European natural gas market provides a hint of what is to come.
Yet, why is Putin still interfering in the U.S. election in support of Trump?
The answer probably lies in what a Democratic government will do. Just as Trump fears that a Biden Administration will investigate his ties with Russia, so does Putin. Trump is at risk of going to jail, while for Putin this could mean some serious sanctions — including personal sanctions against his and his close associates’ assets in the West.
Putin may pretend to be a Russian nationalist, but he is above all a kleptocrat. He and his cronies have amassed monstrous fortunes and they see themselves as the founders of super-rich dynasties based in the West. The winning Biden-Harris ticket could throw a major spanner into such dreams.
The U.S. presidential race has tightened recently, and Trump’s — and Putin’s — victory in November is now once again a real possibility.
And then there is the Russian domestic situation. In the Soviet Union, the dissident movement which emerged in the 1960s, after Nikita Khrushchev’s thaw, was crushed in the 1970s by Putin’s old KGB boss Yuri Andropov. Andropov jailed or expelled leading dissidents. Putin is acting even more ruthlessly, murdering his opponents both in Russia and in the West. His latest outrage, the poisoning of Navalny, was clearly an attempt to demoralize protesters after a wave of anti-government demonstrations in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk.
But whether or not Putin is aware of historical parallels, let’s not forget that after huge Soviet successes in Indo-China, the Horn of Africa, Angola, and Nicaragua in the mid and late 1970s came a reckoning—and it came largely from within the Soviet Empire with some very active encouragement from Washington. Whether or not Belarusian protests will turn into Putin’s version of the rise of Solidarity in Poland in August 1980, what we have seen in Khabarovsk will certainly expand.
A little more than a decade after its greatest successes, the Soviet Union collapsed, its Eastern European empire disappeared, Germany was reunited and Washington won the Cold War.
