Millions of people have now watched a video of a Russian Coast Guard vessel ramming a Ukrainian tugboat in the Kerch Strait. For some Russians, this show of force undoubtedly aroused a sense of pride, much to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s pleasure. However, for many others, the footage evoked feelings of fear at the prospect of a full-blown war in Ukraine.
Most Russian parents, like parents everywhere, would prefer to send their 18-year-old children to study, not fight.
The narrative that Russia is under attack has long dominated Kremlin propaganda, with Putin positioning himself as the commander of a fortress besieged — militarily, economically and even in the domain of international sports — by a hostile West.
This propaganda, already building in volume in 2012, after Putin won his third presidential term, reached a crescendo in 2014, after the Russian annexation of Crimea.
So far, there has been no diminuendo and there is unlikely to be one so long as Putin’s siege narrative strategy continues to yield political dividends. Prior to the annexation of Crimea, his approval rating had dropped to record lows; afterward, it surged to more than 80 percent.
However, since last summer, Putin’s approval ratings have again dropped precipitously, to 66 percent in October and last month.
Beyond “making Russia great again” on the international stage, Putin was supposed to improve Russians’ standard of living. Instead, after four years of falling real incomes, the government announced deeply unpopular pension reforms, which included an increase in the retirement age.
Addressing Russians’ economic grievances will not be easy. Russia’s economy is under severe strain as a result of the sanctions imposed by the West over Crimea. More important, Russia’s state-capitalist model has led to weak competition and declining incentives for private investment and entrepreneurship.
With few options for rallying public opinion, Putin may well have decided that it is time to “remind” Russians that they are under attack. (Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko might also benefit politically from escalating tensions as he seeks to lift his dismal approval ratings ahead of his re-election bid in March.)
To be clear, Ukraine is not attacking Russia. The Ukrainian naval vessels were in full compliance with a 2003 bilateral treaty governing access to the Kerch Strait and the Sea of Azov. However, by asserting that the vessels entered Russian waters illegally, not to mention escalating tensions with the West, Putin might be hoping to breathe new life into the siege narrative, thereby inspiring the kind of primitive patriotism on which he has long relied.
This could involve direct provocations and potentially even armed clashes, but Putin is likely also to draw more public attention to Russia’s military-industrial complex and weapons development, while celebrating past glory, especially the mythologized version of World War II that he has established as a component of his own legitimacy.
For example, the veneration of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, with whom Putin shares more than a few traits, has no doubt contributed to many Russians’ greater willingness to accept repression. The grand military parade commemorating the anniversary of the end of the Siege of Leningrad, planned for Jan. 29 in St Petersburg, could inspire patriotism, but it will in no way reflect the real drama of the city’s starving inhabitants.
Still, Putin’s nationalist appeals might well be insufficient to rally public opinion this time, not least because, among Russians, animosity toward the West — which is now linked to Ukraine in the minds of many — has waned. In this sense, another glory-drenched commemoration planned for next month in Veliky Novgorod might turn out to be more true to history than intended.
In the “Great Waltz” of July 1944 — which the Novgorod event is to re-enact — 57,000 German prisoners of war were marched through the streets of Moscow, Stalin’s goal being to humiliate the Germans and remind Muscovites of their hatred for their enemies. However, in the event, many Russians pitied the prisoners and some even threw bread to them.
When sociologists from Moscow’s Levada Center recently asked 20-year-old Russians to identify the country they view as a model for others, they chose Germany, followed by China and Putin’s favorite villain, the US. While these young people support Russian greatness, they define greatness not only in military terms, but also on the basis of economic prosperity and social progress.
It does not help that Putin’s foreign policy gambits have become increasingly dubious. It is hard for many Russians to see why their leaders have channeled so many resources to Syria when there are such pressing challenges at home. Watching a Russian boat ram a Ukrainian boat is no substitute for economic opportunities.
For a long time, the slogan “we can repeat” — a reference to the Soviet Union’s WWII victory — was popular in Russia, but the truth is that we cannot. We lack not only the resources, but also the will to let our young people die fighting another country’s young people. Indeed, the last thing Russians want is to repeat a war that left 27 million of their compatriots dead.
Andrei Kolesnikov is a senior associate and the chair of the Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers