Russia after 2020: Looking Ahead after Two Decades of Putin 0367745941, 9780367745943

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures
List of tables
Preface
Transliteration, spelling, punctuation and sources
Abbreviations and key terms
About the author
Introduction
Chapter 1: The presidency, the executive and the Constitution
Introduction
The president’s mandate
The government before 2020
Who is Vladimir Putin?
The question of succession looms early
Putinism
Siloviki, oligarchs and cronyism
Presidential envoys
Public chamber
National security agencies
Street protests
Inauguration promises, 2018
Forming a government
Presidential staff
Outlining the future
Trust in president fades
Coping with domestic non-political problems
Constitutional amendments, 2020
More succession speculation
Putin, the ‘eternal’ president
Presidential powers
Administrative reset
The new government
Working with the pandemic
The All-Russia Vote and beyond
Post-vote
Chapter 2: The Russian Federation: Internal strengths and strains
Introduction
General structure
Constitutional amendments 2020
The federal legislature
The governors
Language matters
Coronavirus pandemic and the federation
Crimea
Siberia and Russia’s far East
Siberia deals with climate change – or doesn’t
Northern sea route
The North Caucasus
Chechnya
The Islamicist cancer: Terrorism
Terrorism in the North Caucasus
Terrorist acts elsewhere in Russia
Russian and international anti-terrorism activities
Terrorism of another kind
The future of terrorism in Russia
Chapter 3: The political arena
Introduction
Main street politics
The post-presidential election political scene, 2018
The State Duma
United Russia
The Duma opposition
The extra-systemic opposition
Navalny to the forefront
Re-modelling political movements outside the Duma
Searching for a cause via social media
The politics of pension reform
Searching for a party to support
Moscow’s mayoralty race, 2018
Electoral fallout
2019–20 – turning points?
New electoral crisis in Moscow
Regional elections
More parties
Nationalists – riding high
Constitutional amendments and the political arena
Political reset
Back to work – Pandemic, Khabarovsk and Navalny variables
Politics and the pandemic
Back to political theatre
Unrest in the regions
A Navalny riddle, again
First test: Regional elections, September 2020
Chapter 4: Economic patterns and the sanctions saga
Introduction
Sanctions and the oligarchs 4
Import substitution
Sanctions become American weapon of choice
Weathering the storm
Pandemic panic
Domestic issues
National projects revisited
Infrastructure initiatives and SPIEF-2018
Pension reform and Russian labour
Revising the budget, and the pandemic
Economic integration
Caspian Sea
Eurasia
The BRICS
Industry, trade and development
The Kerch Strait Bridge and domestic transportation issues
Foreign investment
Pivot to the East
The ASEAN
Western remnant
Energy
Gas & gas pipelines
LNG
Oil sector
Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs)
SPIEF-2019
Other natural resources
Government shuffle, coronavirus, price war and an energy strategy for 2035
Down on the farm: The agricultural sector
Coronavirus and protecting the food supply
Back to work
Budgeting to cover for 2020
Chapter 5: Russia in the world: Changing patterns
Introduction
The Skripal factor
Ukraine
Donbas
Crimea
South Caucasus 65
The Middle East
Iran–Iraq–US, 2020. Russia in the middle
Syria
Iran, Israel and further diplomatic muddle
Europe and the EU 118
Eastern Europe
Poland and the Baltic States
Belarus
Moldova
Populist leaders in Europe and Russia
Western Europe
Germany
The UK
The Italian link
European institutions
Latin America
Pivot to the East: Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Far East
Valdai’s ‘Asia’ theme, 2019
Moscow’s ‘pivot to the East’ and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)
India
North Korea
Japan
Africa
Coronavirus: manifestations for the world order
Pandemic aid
Chapter 6: New Cold War: The Russian Federation, the United States – and China
Introduction
Moscow and Washington face off in 2018
The 2018 summit
Mid-term elections in USA
The Mueller report
International interaction
Russophobia in action
NGOs as ‘foreign agents’
Spy capers
Space capers
Manipulating public opinion
Ides of March, 2019
Modernizing Cold War. Digital wars
Putin and Trump meet again
A new American ambassador
Coronavirus blame-casting
Russia and the US presidential election, 2020
China matters
Final straws?
Chapter 7: The re-militarization of Russia, and the end of arms control?
Introduction
Spending
Arms control treaties targeted
Conscripts
Strategic issues
China joins up
Other strategic operations
Buzzing – dangerous games
Arms race and arms sales
INF saga and arms control
Strategic consequences
Arms out of control
Weaponizing space
Weapons sales
The CSTO
NATO
Chapter 8: Quality of life: Media, mind and behaviour
Introduction
Media
Internet interplay
Print & TV media
Vedomosti sold
Education, science and the arts
Education
Coronavirus disruption
Science
Arts
Human & civil rights
LGBT woes
Women on the march and ‘family values’
The dilemma of crime and corruption
The criminal world
Eternal corruption
Sectoral corruption
Chapter 9: Quality of life: Pandemic, body & soul
Introduction
Coronavirus pandemic and its over-arching implications
Public response
Second wave
Vaccine nationalism
Quality of life
Seeds of social (dis)satisfaction
Climate change 100
General healthcare
Alcohol & drug abuse
Infectious diseases other than COVID-19
World Cup, fitness and sport
Religion
Constitutional amendments 2020
Coronavirus & the Church
Demographics, immigration & the workforce
Back to work
Closing remarks: What’s left after 2020?
Stability anyone?
The Presidency
The domestic political scene
Poisoned politics
The international arena
Biden in office
Demonization of Russia
The economy
Quality of life
Pandemic futures
Government and society going into 2021
A second ‘January Revolution’, 2021
Navalny comes home
Street protests against the odds
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Russia after 2020

This book presents a comprehensive survey of the current state of Russia and how Russia is likely to develop in the immediate future. Not always sticking to the mainstream narrative, it covers political events including Putin’s constitutional reforms of January 2020 and their likely consequences, economic developments, Russia’s international relations and military activities, and changes and issues in Russian society, including in education, the place of women, health care and religion. Special attention is paid to manifestations of the COVID-19 pandemic. The book’s overall conclusion is that events of 2020 may compel Putin to ‘think again’ before he decides whether to run for office in 2024. J. L. Black is an Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at Carleton University, Canada, and an Adjunct Professor at Laurentian University, Canada.

Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series

Law and Power in Russia Making Sense of Quasi-Legal Practices Håvard Bækken Putin’s Third Term as Russia’s President, 2012-18 J L Black Soviet and Post-Soviet Sexualities Edited by Richard C. M. Mole De Facto States in Eurasia Edited by Tomáš Hoch and Vincenc Kopeček Czech Democracy in the New Millennium Edited by Andrew L. Roberts with Stanislav Balík, Michal Pink, Marek Rybář, Peter Spáč, Petra Svačinová and Petr Voda. Russia's Food Revolution The Transformation of the Food System Stephen K. Wegren The Sense of Mission in Russian Foreign Policy Destined for Greatness! Alicja Curanović Soviet Films of the 1970s and Early 1980s Conformity and Non-Conformity Amidst Stagnation Decay Edited by Marina Rojavin and Tim Harte Europe, Russia and the Liberal World Order International Relations after the Cold War Timofei Bordachev Russia after 2020 Looking Ahead after Two Decades of Putin J. L. Black Series url: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Contemporary-Russia-andEastern-Europe-Series/book-series/SE0766

Russia after 2020 Looking Ahead after Two Decades of Putin J. L. Black

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 J. L. Black The right of J. L. Black to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-74594-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-74595-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-15864-6 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003158646 Typeset in Times by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

Contents

List of figures viii List of tables ix Preface x Transliteration, spelling, punctuation and sources xii Abbreviations and key terms xiv About the author xix

1

Introduction

1

The presidency, the executive and the Constitution

6

Introduction  6 The president’s mandate  8 Street protests  19 Inauguration promises, 2018  20 Coping with domestic non-political problems  26 Constitutional amendments, 2020  27 Administrative reset  33 Working with the pandemic  35 The All-Russia Vote and beyond  39 Notes  42 2

The Russian Federation: Internal strengths and strains Introduction  52 General structure  53 Crimea  60 Siberia and Russia’s Far East  64 The North Caucasus  66 The Islamicist cancer: Terrorism  71 Notes  77

52

vi Contents 3

The political arena

84

Introduction  84 Post-presidential election political scene, 2018  86 The State Duma  86 The extra-systemic opposition  88 The politics of pension reform  94 Moscow’s Mayoralty race, 2018  96 2019–20 – turning points?  98 Nationalists – riding high  106 Constitutional amendments and the political arena  108 Back to work – Pandemic, Khabarovsk and Navalny variables  110 Notes  117 4

Economic patterns and the sanctions saga

129

Introduction  129 Sanctions and the oligarchs  131 Domestic issues  139 Economic integration  142 Industry, trade and development  144 Energy  151 Down on the farm: The agricultural sector  163 Back to work  165 Notes  166 5

Russia in the world: Changing patterns

178

Introduction  178 Ukraine  182 South Caucasus  190 The Middle East  193 Europe and the EU  199 Eastern Europe  200 Western Europe  206 Latin America  211 Pivot to the East: Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Far East  213 Coronavirus: manifestations for the world order  222 Notes  223 6

New Cold War: The Russian Federation, the United States – and China Introduction  239 Moscow and Washington face off in 2018  241 International interaction  246 Manipulating public opinion  256

239

Contents  vii Russia and the US presidential election, 2020  265 China matters  267 Final straws?  268 Notes  270 7

The re-militarization of Russia, and the end of arms control?

284

Introduction  284 Strategic issues  289 Arms race and arms sales  294 The CSTO  302 NATO  303 Notes  308 8

Quality of life: Media, mind and behaviour

317

Introduction  317 Media  317 Education, science and the arts  325 Human & civil rights  329 The dilemma of crime and corruption  334 Notes  342 9

Quality of life: Pandemic, body & soul

351

Introduction  351 Coronavirus pandemic and its over-arching implications  352 Quality of life  362 General healthcare  368 Religion  374 Demographics, immigration & the work force  377 Back to work  380 Notes  380 Closing remarks: what’s left after 2020?

391

Stability anyone?  391 The Domestic political scene  393 The international arena  394 The economy  396 Quality of life  397 Government and society going into 2021  398 A second ‘January Revolution,’ 2021  399 Notes  402

Bibliography 405 Index 413

Figures

2.1 Components (subjects) of the Russian Federation 2.2 Russia’s North Caucasus 4.1 Northern Sea Route 4.2 Power of Siberia pipeline, 2019 4.3 Nord Streams 1 & 2 5.1 Nagorno-Karabakh 5.2 Central Asia 5.3 Russia’s Far Eastern Neighbourhood 7.1 Sea of Azov, strategic site

55 69 148 152 154 192 215 220 293

Tables

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 6.1 6.2 6.3 7.1 9.1

Presidential Election, Official Results, 18 March 2018 The New Russian Government, 18 May 2018 Survey: ‘Which politicians do you trust the most?’ VTsIOM weekly surveys on trust in Putin, November 2018 to January 2019 Survey: ‘Which politicians do you trust the most?’ September–October 2019 The New Russian Cabinet, 20 January 2020 Duma Election Results. Parties in order as they appeared on ballot, September 2016 Survey: ‘Which politicians do you trust the most?’, 2020 VTsIOM polls post- retirement age bill, 2018 Results of Moscow mayoralty election, 9 September 2018 Register of foreign mass media functioning as a foreign agent, December 2020 Gallup Poll on American attitudes towards Russia February 2019 Levada Poll results on Russian attitudes towards the US January 2020 Global Military Spending 2019 Q: Would You Limit those who come to live in Russia …, Percentage?

12 22 23 24 26 34 87 89 95 97 251 256 258 286 379

Preface

Although Vladimir Putin is everywhere in this book, this is a story about Russia, a country that is far more than just its leader. To get a proper perspective, we need to see the world, abroad and at home, through a Russian prism, and take note of what Russia actually does, not merely what we assume it will do, or has done. This approach may not provide us with what is correct from our perspective; rather, it will reflect what most Russians believe to be correct. In contrast to the old Soviet days, sources used here will demonstrate that, even if the state is the main player in the Russian media, especially on TV, Russian citizens are able to find all sides of political, economic and social arguments in their own print media, blogs, tweets and Internet. Both ‘sides’ of controversial issues will be on display and, though it will not seem so to those whose minds are already made up, no ‘side’ will be taken. Like its predecessors in chronological accounts, The Russian Presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, 2008–12 (2015) and Putin’s Third Term as Russia’s President, 2012–18 (2019), this book focusses on a short but crucial period in Russia’s very recent past and present. Indeed, together they form a trilogy of detail on Russian affairs since at least 2008. The multi-subject approach also echoes chapters in the edited volume, Russia After 2012 (2013), which included essays by a dozen scholars, from four countries. Using the year 2020 as a make-or-break year in Putin’s fourth and oncepresumed final presidential term, and collating events and developments in a three-year period (2018–20) with earlier ones, the book demonstrates how far Russia has come in its still short post-Soviet history and provides a glimpse of what may come next. No recent book deals with as many facets of Russian life as this one does. Details included here should cause readers to think harder about generally accepted narratives related to the Russian economy and the consequences of economic sanctions, the Kremlin’s relations with Ukraine, Syria, China and the United States, and the attitudes of citizens towards their government and president. It is hoped that an understanding of reality will emerge somewhere between the rosy optimism presented by Russia’s officialdom and the gloom and doom presented by Western Russophobes and Russian dissenters.

Preface  xi The coincidence of political turning points in 2020, such as the ‘January Revolution’, constitutional reset and pandemic, all complicated further by a temporary oil price collapse, pipeline wars, devastating climate change, the Navalny phenomenon and accelerated Western-imposed sanctions, ensures that 2020 will be marked as a pivotal one for Russia and its people.

Transliteration, spelling, punctuation and sources

Russian transliteration here is based on a modified Library of Congress system, with common-use applications for names and places. Most diacritical marks have been deleted in the main text. Although they both use the Cyrillic alphabet, the Russian and Ukrainian languages have different spelling for the same names and places, such as Kyiv (Ukrainian) and Kiev (Russian). Some of these spelling have political implications, such as Donbass (Russian) and Donbas (Ukrainian). As much as possible, the spelling used most commonly by inhabitants of the area/town/region is adopted here. British spelling and punctuation are used throughout except for personal and textual titles where other spelling systems are appropriate; for example, an American Secretary of Defense and Russian Minister of Defence, or in quotes where the original is maintained. To avoid confusion over acronyms such as ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and Daesh (Arabic acronym for ISIL), either ISIS or Islamic State are used throughout. Note on Sources Russian-language sources, such as independent and government newspapers, blogs, party agendas, and public opinion surveys, and both Russian and foreign government documentation are widely used. Multiple English-language books, articles and media are cited as well. Although all major references are authenticated in the usual way and Russian-language sources dominate, the endnotes include a large number of general, often journalistic essays in English. These are for quick first-start guides for readers who do not have Russian and want to pursue a particular subject further. Government and private wire service notations (e.g. AP, AFP, Reuters, Interfax, TASS, RIA Novosti, RBC, Sputnik, UNIAN) are not intended as analytical or evidential sources; rather, they provide exact dates of information releases, context and sequence for the topic at hand. Government press releases present us with what officialdom said, and what it wants readers to believe. Journalistic accounts and blogs are used to inform readers of public knowledge and, often, political agendas. Readers will also find data from surveys conducted by Russian pollsters such as the independent Levada Centre and state-funded All-Russian Public

Transliteration, spelling, punctuation and sources  xiii Opinion Research Centre (VTsIOM) and the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM). These polls almost always engage a sampling of 1,600 respondents over the age of 18, spread over most of the components of the Russian Federation, rural and urban sites and across generations. Doubtless such polls should not be taken as absolute. Since a majority of Russians still obtain their news from state television, ‘public opinion’ often mirrors the narrative provided by that venue. Still, a very large percentage of Russians use the Internet regularly and can therefore access whatever sources they wish. Important sectors of the print media are relatively independent. The polls provide a reasonable measure of popular thinking, societal trends and, indeed, often reveal a distrust of government and reflect serious concerns on specific issues. They are also all we have.

Abbreviations and key terms

ABM ADC AES AIIB APEC Apparatchiki ASEAN BAM BelTA BMD BRI CAATSA CAR CB CEC CIS CNSA CP CPRF CPSU CSTO CTBT Daesh DASKA DCFTA DMZ DNC DPR EBRD ECFR ECHR EDM EEC

Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (1972) Anti-Discrimination Centre, Memorial Atomic (Nuclear) Energy Station Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Russian officials Association of Southeast Asian Nations Baikal–Amur Mainline RR Belarus News Agency Ballistic Missile Defence Belt and Road project (China) Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act Central African Republic Central Bank Central Electoral Commission Commonwealth of Independent States China’s national space agency Communist Party Communist Party of the Russian Federation Communist Party of the Soviet Union Collective Security Treaty Organization Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Arabic acronym for ISIL Defending American Security from the Kremlin Aggression Act of 2019 Bill Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Association (with EU) Demilitarized Zone (Korea) Democratic National Convention Donetsk People’s Republic European Bank for Research and Development European Council for Foreign Relations European Court of Human Rights Eurasia Daily Monitor (USA) Eurasian Economic Community

Abbreviations and key terms  xv EEU EU EurAsEC FBK FCIN FDI FEC FIFA FMS FSB FSKN Gazprom GCC GECF Glasnost GLCM GLONASS GMO GNA GRU

Eurasian Economic Union European Union Eurasian Economic Community (EEC) Anti-Corruption Foundation (Navalny) Federal Penitentiary Services Foreign Direct Investment fuel and energy complex Fédération Internationale de Football Associations Federal Migration Service Federal Security Service Federal Drug Control Service energy behemoth in Russia Gulf Cooperation Council Gas Exporting Countries Forum ‘publicity’, often translated as ‘openness’ under Gorbachev Ground Launched Cruise Missile Global Navigation Satellite System Genetically Modified Organism (food products) Government of National Accord (Libya) Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces (RF) HRC Human Rights Council HSE Higher School of Economics, Moscow IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency IC Investigative Committee ICAO International Civil Aviation Organization (UN) ILO International Labour Organization IMF International Monetary Fund INF Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty ISAF International Security Assistance Force (NATO in Afghanistan) ISIL Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ISS International Space Station ITLOS International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea JRL Johnson’s Russia List KGB Committee of State Security (USSR) Kontraktiki contract, professional soldiers LDPR Liberal Democratic Party of Russia LGBT lesbian, gay, bi- and trans- community LNA Libyan National Army LPR Lugansk (Luhansk) Peoples Republic MANPAD shoulder-launched surface-to-air defence system MAP Membership Action Plan (NATO) MBKh media site funded by Khodorkovsky MENA Middle East and North Africa, a journal MERCOSUR regional bloc (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela)

xvi  Abbreviations and key terms MFA MID MoD MOU MVD NASA NATO NDB NDN

Ministry of Foreign Affairs (see MID) Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ministry of Defence Memorandum of Understanding Ministry of Internal Affairs National Aeronautics and Space Administration (US) North Atlantic Treaty Organization New Development Bank (BRICS) National Distribution Network (in Russia, for NATO’s Afghanistan war) NED National Endowment for Democracy NGAO Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast NMD National Missile Defence System NOTAM flight operations notice NPP nuclear power plant NRA National Rifle Association (USA) NSA National Security Agency (USA) NSR northern sea route NTBT Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty OAO Unlimited Joint Stock Company (Russian) OBOR One Belt, One Road project (see BRI) OCCRP Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project ODIHR Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE) OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development OHCHR Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN) Oligarchs Russia’s nouveau riche billionaires OMON special forces within MVD ONF All-Russia People’s Front OPCW Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons OPEC Organization of the Oil Exporting Countries OSCE Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe OUN Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists OVD-info independent Russian human rights media project PACE Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe PARNAS Republican Party of Russia-People’s Freedom Party PDVSA Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (Petroleum of Venezuela) Perestroika ‘reconstruction’ (under Gorbachev) PGNIG Polskie Gornictwo Naftowe i Gasownictwo S.A. PGO Prosecutor General’s Office PKK Kurdistan Workers’ Party PNG persona non grata PPE personal protective equipment PYD Partiya Yekitiya Demokrat (Democratic Union Party, Kurdish, in Syria) QUAD Quadrilateral Security Dialogue

Abbreviations and key terms  xvii RANEPA

Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration RAPSI private Russian agency for legal and human rights notices RBC (RBK) Russian News Service RBTH Russia Behind the Headlines RCEP Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership RDIF Russian Direct Investment Fund REDA Russia & Eurasia Documents Annual (see Bibliography) RF Russian Federation RFE/RL Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty RIM Russian Imperial Movement ROC Russian Orthodox Church Rosatom Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosaviatsia Russian Federal Air Transport Agency Rosdravnadzor Federal Service for Monitoring Health Care Rosgvardii Russian national guardsmen Roskomnadzor Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications Rosmolodezh Federal Agency for Youth Affairs Rosobrnador Federal Service for Supervision in Education and Science Rosoboronexport Russian Arms Export Agency Rospotrebnadzor Russian Federal Service for Monitoring Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing Rosprirodnadzor Federal Service for Supervision of the Use of Nature Resources Rosselkhozbank Russian Agricultural Bank Rosselkhoznadzor Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Monitoring Rossotrudnichestvo Federal Agency on CIS Affairs, Compatriots and International Humanitarian Cooperation Rosstat Russian Bureau of Statistics Rostrud Russian Labour Rosrybolovtsa Russian Federal Fisheries Agency Rostekhnadzor Federal Service for Ecological, Technological and Nuclear Supervision RPR-PARNAS (see PARNAS) RT Russia Today RUSADA Russian Anti-Doping Agency RZD Russian Railways SBU Security Services of Ukraine SCO Shanghai Cooperation Organization (sometimes ShCO)

xviii  Abbreviations and key terms Russia’s power brokers Special Rapid Response Unit (CSTO) Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty private Moscow NGO that monitors racism and extremism in Russia SPIEF St. Petersburg International Economic Forum START Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty SVR Russian Foreign Intelligence Service TPP Trans-Pacific Partnership TsEPR Centre for Economic and Political Reform UN United Nations UNCTAD UN Conference on Trade and Development UNESCO UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNSC United Nations Security Council UR United Russia Party USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics US United States USE Unified State Examinations VOA Voice of America VTsIOM All-Russia Centre for the Study of Public Opinion WADA World Anti-Doping Agency WHO World Health Organization WTO World Trade Organization YPG People’s Protection Units (Kurds) Xinhua Chinese English-language news service Siloviki SOBR SORT SOVA

About the author

Joseph Laurence (Larry) Black grew up in a small village in the province of New Brunswick, Canada. He has degrees from three universities, culminating in a doctorate awarded by McGill University, Montreal. He has been a secondary schoolteacher, rugby player, football and basketball player and coach, and for many years served as a professor of history and international affairs at Laurentian University (9 yrs), and Carleton University (30 yrs), both in Ontario. At Laurentian, in Sudbury, he chaired the History Department and sat on the academic Senate. At Carleton, in Ottawa, he was director of the Institute for Soviet & East European Studies for a decade, founding director of the Centre for Research on Canadian–Russian Relations (CRCR), and was the first faculty member to be elected directly to the University’s Board of Governors. He is now Professor Emeritus, and was re-designated Distinguished Research Professor by Carleton in 2017. Black has served as a researcher for NATO, an instructor for recruits to the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), and consultant with Canada’s Immigration & Refugee Board. He is the author, co-author or editor of over 50 books on the USSR, Russia and Russian–Canadian relations.

Introduction

In August 2019, Vladimir Putin marked his twentieth year as the most powerful man in Russia, from his appointment as prime minister in August 1999 to four elections as president and one more as prime minister. His two decades in high office have been assessed at length by members of the chattering classes. Russian pundits tended to compare their country’s circumstances in 1999 to those of the present, and emphasize how far Russia had come, at home and in foreign affairs.1 Western pundits tended to focus on the present and employ such terms as ‘autocrat’, ‘emperor’ or ‘tsar’ for the presidency, with no consideration whatsoever of how present-day Russia differed from its Soviet predecessor, and the turbulent Yeltsin years.2 As Putin’s fourth term progressed, guesses proliferated on what he would do after his constitutionally prescribed turns in office ended in 2024. No one believed that he would simply fade away to rest on his laurels, or wealth, and no one outside his very inner circle foresaw the proposals for constitutional changes set out in his Address to the Federal Assembly in January 2020, that is, the ‘January Revolution’. Startled as they may have been by the proposal to revise rules for terms in the presidential office, most Russians were more concerned by deteriorating economic conditions caused by a damaging oil price war with Saudi Arabia and were seized with fear and anxiety generated by the global pandemic. How and in what form they and their state emerged from these history-shaping parallel crises is the story documented here. Events of January 2020 caused Putin to be reviled by many in the West and by Russian dissidents as a man set on retaining power at all costs. The majority of Russians thought otherwise. This gaping divergence of opinion was nothing new, for Western media and politicians had long since labelled the Russian president a ‘thug’, a ‘murderer’ and even a ‘dangerous psychopath’ whose ambition was power for power’s sake. Western foreign policy pundits habitually referred to Russia as ‘aggressive’, or even ‘imperialistic’.3 Predictions of the imminent collapse of Russia and Putin’s regime also have been part of the literature from the onset of his first term, yet both have

DOI: 10.4324/9781003158646-1

2 Introduction survived and, one could say fairly, have flourished.4 Forecasts about Russia’s future without Putin multiplied as his ‘final’ term opened. Some writers saw the entire Putinist edifice tumbling down; others assumed that it had a resilient life of its own that would enable it to function without the man who had been its leader for a quarter century.5 Potential successors to Putin have been named regularly, only to slip into the background.6 Russia is no innocent caught in the headlights, as the occupation of Crimea and interventions in foreign election campaigns attest. It has not achieved political democracy at home, nor does it provide any serious safeguards for human rights. In both spheres, however, Russia has come an enormous distance from Soviet days. In fact, a preponderance of citizens remains true to their country and approve the conduct of their president. So how to explain the level of anti-Russian venom flowing from politicians and media that became so toxic by 2018 that some Western analysts began to see greater danger in demonization than in attempts to normalize relations? Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire wrote in September 2018 that ‘the demonization of Russia is, I believe, one of the most dangerous things that is happening on our world today’. Without excusing Russia’s action in Ukraine, she worried that NATO’s military apparatus was exploiting and exaggerating that situation solely for the purpose of expanding their budgets in a new, unnecessary, arms race.7 One observer described the mainstream narrative about Russia as ‘narrow [and] simplistic’, replete with clichés and therefore counterproductive; another scholar wrote that we tend to judge Russia by ‘unique standards’, creating unnecessary anxieties that prompt excessive responses to its real and alleged actions. Even a self-described critic of Putin, Robert Service, acknowledged that Russians believe he ‘restored dignity and authority’ to the country and that Western critics judge Russia by standards they don’t apply to themselves.8 Political campaigning in the USA during 2020 and President Trump’s wild assault on American democratic institutions added credence to that assumption. Too many Western judgements assume that, to be ‘normal’, Russia must be like ‘us’ – or at least like our self-image – and thereby shrug off Russia’s legitimate international interests or home-grown practices because they differ from, or compete with, ours.9 *** As his current presidential term opened in 2018, the country occupied a far less comfortable place on the international chessboard than it had in 2012, the first year of Putin’s third term. Since that time, the Kremlin’s absorption of Crimea, support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, ‘meddling’ in a US presidential election, and perceived culpability for murders of a Russian citizens in London and political opponents at home, has turned Moscow and Putin into pariahs in Europe and North America. Waves of retaliatory economic sanctions hammered the Russian economy and the blackballing of Putin in the West reached feverish extremes.10 The fact that since 2015 powerful armed forces from Russia, NATO and the US face off against each other

Introduction  3 across North, East and East Central Europe for the first time since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1990, rendered the rhetoric of war dangerously close to reality. The global scene has also changed dramatically. Talk of a new Cold War and a new world order became a standard part of the international affairs discourse. Whereas the old Cold War was rooted in competing ideological frameworks and had a set of tacit conventions that helped keep the peace, the new version is almost strictly geopolitical and has no rules. There is now also a third A-team player in the new Great Game, China, and Russia is plainly the weaker of the three. Unfortunately, the new world order is more of a world disorder. Populism, racism and nationalism are taking over domestic agendas, hot and cold local conflicts are conducted as proxies for major powers, separatist movements and the ravages of climate change raise anxieties and impose severe hardships around the globe to the extent that still viral international terrorism is almost forgotten. Before the pandemic closed borders down, refugees and asylum seekers crossed them by the hundreds of thousands. Thus, Russian and other world leaders have to take many subtexts into consideration when they deal with each other – or at least they should.11 *** Russia is a huge, complicated, diverse and, as Winston Churchill once famously said, an enigmatic country. The habit of attributing everything that occurs there to the president – for better or worse – inevitably misses the forest for the trees.12 These pages include sides of Russia not often heard or seen in Western publications, media headlines and government press releases. It describes, during a defined period, what went on in the political ring, the economic sector and society at large, and demonstrates that Russians often take care of their own destinies, not waiting for Putin to do it for them. The book represents an attempt to break from the clichéd version of Russia as a simple country ruled by a ‘tsar’, aggressive towards its neighbours and oppressively governed at home. Without ruling any of these characterizations out, I provide a broader than usual overview of Russia in motion. It is hoped that materials presented here will counter the more common doomsday (demonization) or rosy (hagiographic) approaches to Russia and its president. That said, this book is not an apologia. Ponderous analyses, profound interpretation and active side taking are purposely avoided. This is an account of what has gone on in Russia, and is going on now, in the hope that it will provide fodder for more analytic studies by future researchers. Each chapter will begin with a look back tracing 20-year patterns in the relevant topic, featuring a ‘how did we get here from there’ approach. JLB Barrie, ON, Canada March 2021

4 Introduction

Notes 1 See, for example, a series of essays carried in Vedomosti, ‘Putin 20 let u vlasti’, August 2019; and Sergei Guriyev, ‘20 Years of Vladimir Putin: The Transformation of the Economy’, The Moscow Times, 17 August 2019. 2 For a small sampling, Susan B. Glasser, ‘Putin the Great. Russia’s Imperial Imposter’, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2019, pp. 10–16; Nathan Hodge, ‘Vladimir Putin has dominated Russia for 20 years. Will he ever step down?’, CNN.com, 10 August 2019; ‘Teflon Putin? Over 20 Years In Power, Scandals Don’t Seem To Stick To The Russian President’, RFE/RL, 8 August 2019; Anton Troianovski, ‘A New “Emperor”: Russia Girds for 16 More years of Putin’, New York Times, 12 March 2020. 3 Joan Smith, ‘President Putin is a dangerous psychopath – reason is not going to work with him’, Independent (UK, digital news), 1 February 2015. Among the many hostile books with flowery demonizations, are Joel M. Ostrow, Georgiy A. Satarov, Irina M. Khakamada, The Consolidation of Dictatorship in Russia. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007; David Satter, a journalist expelled from Russia, The Less You Know, The Better You Sleep: Russia’s Road to Terror and Dictatorship Under Yeltsin and Putin. New Haven: Yale UP, 2016, and S.L. Myers, The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin. London: Simon & Schuster, 2015. As recently as July 2020, American conservative George Will penned an article titled ‘The Thugocracy of Vladimir Putin’, The Washington Post, 17 July 2020. 4 See, e.g. Paul Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin: The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism. Eugene: Harvest, 2001; Ben Judah, Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell in and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin. New Haven: Yale UP, 2013; Ilan Berman, Implosion: Russia’s Imminent Collapse and Its Threat to America. Washington, DC: Regnery, 2013; Richard Laurie, Putin: His Downfall and Russia’s Coming Crash. New York: St. Martin’s, 2017; on this phenomenon, see Paul Robinson, ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’, Irrussianility, 29 April 2020, and an early attempt at balance by Daniel Treisman, The Return. Russia’s Journey from Gorbachev to Medvedev, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011, see esp. Chapter 10, ‘The Russia That Has Returned’, pp. 340–90. 5 For the most balanced, Richard Sakwa, Russia’s Futures. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2019. See also Tony Wood, Russia Without Putin: Money, Power and the Myths of the New Cold War. Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2018. 6 See, e.g. Sir Andrew Wood, ‘The Rocky Road to Replacing Vladimir Putin’, Chatham House (RIIA), 16 April 2019; Gordon Hahn, ‘Explaining the Failed Expectations of Regime Change’, Russian and Eurasian Politics, 11 October 2017; K. Bennett, ‘Is Putin’s Russia Headed for a Systemic Collapse?’ The American Interest, 26 August 2016; N. Ferguson, ‘In decline, Russia is on its way to global irrelevance’, Newsweek, 12 December 2011. 7 Mairead Maguire, ‘Demonization of Russia in a New Cold War Era’, Common Dreams, 14 September 2018. 8 Robert Service, Kremlin Winter. Russia and the Second Coming of Vladimir Putin. London: Picador, 2019, pp. xvi, 322–3. See also Lyle Jeremy Rubin, ‘It’s Time for a Little Perspective on Russia’, Current Affairs, 20 July 2018, and Diana Johnstone, ‘Mass Dementia in the Western Establishment’, The Unz Review, 20 July 2018. 9 On this, see Keir Giles, Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia to Confront the West. London: Chatham House (RIIA), 2019, and Arkady Ostrovsky, The Invention of Russia: The Rise of Putin and the Age of Fake News. London: Penguin Books, 2017. See also Mark B. Smith, The Russia Anxiety: And How History Can Resolve It. London: Allen Lane (Penguin), 2019; Andrew Monaghan, Dealing with the Russians. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2019. 10 For analyses of where the ‘demonizing’ came from and what it has led to, see Patrick Lawrence, ‘Discerning Vladimir Putin’, Raritan (Rutgers), Vol. 38, No. 1

Introduction  5 (Summer 2018), pp. 1–15, and David S. Foglesong, ‘Putin: From Soulmate to Archenemy’, ibid., pp. 18–41. See also the ‘other side’ of demonization discourse, e.g., Mark Galeotti, We Need to Talk About Putin. How the West Gets Him Wrong. London: Ebury Press, 2019; Stephen F. Cohen, War with Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019; Guy Mettan, Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria. Atlanta: Clarity, 2017. 11 See, e.g. Richard Haas, ‘How a World Order Ends. And What Comes in Its Wake’, Foreign Affairs, Comment, January/February 2019; J.L. Black, Michael Johns, Alanda Theriault, eds., The New World Disorder. Challenges and Threats in an Uncertain World Lanham, MD: Lexington Press, 2019. 12 On this, Tony Wood, Russia Without Putin: Money, Power and the Myths of the New Cold War. Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2018. See also Samuel A. Greene, Graeme B. Robertson, Putin v. the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia. New Haven: Yale UP, 2019; Ani Kokobobo, Colleen Lucey, ‘If You Thought US– Russian Relations Were Bad Now, Wait Another Ten Years’, The Russia File (Wilson Center), 23 July 2020.

1 The presidency, the executive and the Constitution

Introduction When, on 26 March 2018, Russians elected Vladimir Putin to his fourth term as president of the Russian Federation, he began his 19th year as the most powerful and most popular political individual in the country. According to the Constitution (Basic Law) under which he first came to power, he would have been compelled to step down in 2024, the end of the current term. As of 2020, however, Putin has the right, if re-elected, to serve for a dozen more years after that. An entire generation of Russians has grown up knowing only Putin as their leader; a second such generation is in the making. Writing in late 2019, two senior researchers at the Russian Higher School of Economics (HSE) understood that a majority of the first ‘Putin Generation’ personalizes politics and still see him as the ideal political leader for the Russian state, the very future of which depends on who is president.1 The second generation may not share those presumptions. The first two decades of the 21st century have not been easy ones for Russia. The already weakened economy had been shattered by radical reforms initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev’s ‘restructuring’ (perestroika) policies in the 1980s and the disastrous ‘shock therapy’ forced on Russians by Yeltsin in the 1990s. Part of that latter regimen featured the privatization of state assets, which in practice meant selling off valuable state properties cheaply to a class of corrupt businesspeople, who came to be known as oligarchs. These assets included valuable natural resource enterprises. Making matters worse, in 1999, the year Putin was named prime minister, the country was at war in Chechnya for the second time, relying on an underfunded, poorly trained and shoddily equipped military. Putin won his first presidential election handily, taking 53 per cent of a nearly 70 per cent turnout. The Communist Party’s Gennady Zyuganov was well behind at just under 30 per cent and none of the other ten candidates came close to double figures. During the campaign, Putin called on Russians to be patriotic and promised to restore Russian domestic immunity and international prestige. Emphasizing that Russians need to take care of their own business, he failed to invite any foreign leaders other than Ukraine’s Leonid Kuchma and Belarus’s Alyaksandr Lukashenka (Lukashenko) to the DOI: 10.4324/9781003158646-2

The presidency  7 inauguration. Putin’s approval rating hovered between 65 and 73 per cent over the late summer and fall of that year and, except for a few brief higher and lower peaks, rarely fell much below that until 2019. The turn to patriotism came as no surprise. In a paper published in December 1999 and titled ‘Russia at the Turn of the Millennium’, Putin called attention to the ‘Russia idea’, that is, the notion that there is a uniquely Russia way of doing things.2 While opposing the ‘restoration of an official state ideology’, he made it plain that the way to achieve ‘social accord’ was through ‘traditional Russian values’ and patriotism. Citizens must believe ‘in the greatness of Russia’ and the ‘exceptionally important role of the state’. The paper came to be known as the ‘Putin Manifesto’. Notions in it may not have represented another type of ideology per se, yet they provided catch words for the next two decades of Putin’s foreign and domestic policies.3 In foreign affairs, he has had to deal with an expanding NATO and European Union (EU), both of which exclude Russia. NATO was then and still is perceived as a strategic threat. A brief war with Georgia in 2008, Russia’s annexation/reintegration of Crimea in 2014 and its involvement in the on-going fratricidal conflict in eastern Ukraine, resulted in Russia’s isolation from the West. These consequences were mostly self-inflicted, to be sure, but also a consequence of the West’s inability, or unwillingness, to accept that Russia has legitimate national security interests in the neighbourhood that surrounds it. In addition to the problems it faced in the international arena, the Russian government had to find ways to help its failed economy recover from the disasters of the 1990s, survive the global recession of 2008–9 and, after 2014, counter the repeated imposition of economic sanctions by North American and European states. Whereas Putin proclaimed the need to integrate ‘the Russian economy into world economic structures’ in his Manifesto, the Kremlin eventually had to alter its traditional trading patterns by ‘pivoting’ to the East to find new commercial partners and political allies. Ameliorating the disastrous economic consequences of the dozen or so years prior to 2000, while at the same time muting disruptive dissent in the name of social order, has been a constant struggle. In these matters, the Russian state has been unexpectedly successful – so far. Putin has not acted outside the powers granted him by Russia’s Constitution, though his government sometimes bypasses it by means of legislative acts. Before 2020, the first amendments made to the 1993 document were introduced in 2008 by President Medvedev. Instead of four-year terms for both the president and deputies in the Lower House of parliament, the State Duma, he raised the presidential term to six years and to five for the deputies. Medvedev argued that more time in office was necessary because Russia was still in a state of transition and needed consistency and stability.4 That argument was delivered again in 2020. Other changes came in 2014, when several articles were modified to abolish the Supreme Arbitration Court, increase the number of members of the Supreme Court and clarify procedures for naming prosecutors. Later in that year two articles were altered to provide

8  The presidency a presidential quota in the Federation Council, or Upper House of p ­ arliament (see Chapter 2). These changes were all minor compared to the dramatic amendments of 2020.

The president’s mandate According to the 1993 Constitution, the president is the head of state, guarantor of the Constitution and of state sovereignty. He or she determines the direction of both internal and foreign policy and is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces.5 That Constitution granted the president the right to select the prime minister, the head of the Central Bank, government ministers, judges, regional governors, plenipotentiary representatives, and chiefs of security and the Armed Forces. Faced in 1993 with uncertainties generated by a near civil war between still sitting communist and nationalist deputies elected in 1989 to the RSFSR (Russian) legislature and the postSoviet executive headed by Yeltsin, most Russians welcomed a Constitution that allocated centralizing authority to a head of state. On a referendum coinciding with a general election, 12 December 1993, 58.4 per cent of the 53.2 per cent of registered voters who turned out approved Russia’s new Constitution.6 Russia does not have a vice president. That office was not included in the 1993 Constitution, presumably because Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi orchestrated a revolt against Yeltsin earlier that year. In fact, the USSR’s only vice president, Gennady Yanaev, had been part of a coup attempt against Gorbachev in 1991, so the position had a bad track record. If a president dies in office, his powers are transferred temporarily to the prime minister, who will then also chair the Security Council. An election for a new president must be held within 90 days. Already faced twice with attempts by what was then the Congress of People’s Deputies to impeach him, Yeltsin made certain that articles related to impeaching the president were greatly reduced from earlier draft constitutions. On taking office the president swears an oath to ‘respect and safeguard the rights and freedoms of man and citizen’ and ‘to faithfully serve the people’.7 It is here that presidential obligations become less clear in practice. Yet, if the description of a younger Putin presented ahead is accurate, it is likely that he assumes that he has been serving the Russian people faithfully. Moreover, it would seem that most, if certainly not all, Russian citizens have believed that as well. The government before 2020 The government wields executive power in Russia (Arts. 110–117). It is comprised of the prime minister who, before 2020, was appointed directly by the president. Until 2020, the State Duma had the right to ‘consider’ the president’s nominee and, if it rejected the candidate three times, could force another election. That never happened. According to the 1993 Constitution,

The presidency  9 the prime minister then recommended cabinet members to the president. In practice, the proposals were made the other way around. The government prepares the federal budget and ensures it is implemented if adopted by the Duma. It manages federal properties, oversees the implementation of state policies through the offices of its various ministries and committees, and enforces the country’s laws and decrees. Prime ministers serving Putin were Mikhail Kasyanov (2000–04), who is now in the liberal opposition, Mikhail Fradkov (2004–07), Viktor Zubkov (2007–08), Dmitry Medvedev (2012–20) and, from January 2020, Mikhail Mishustin. Who is Vladimir Putin? There is a large literature on Vladimir Putin. For this study, it is enough to recall that, prior to becoming prime minister in 1999, he had been a KGB agent posted in East Germany. He resigned from the KGB in 1991 and joined the staff of the mayor of St. Petersburg, the famous democrat Anatoly Sobchak. In 1996, Yeltsin appointed him director of the FSB (Federal Security Service), successor to the KGB. That KGB background gets by far the most attention from those who seek deep-rooted motivations for Putin’s behaviour as Russia’s president. John Evans, the US Consul general in St. Petersburg from 1994 to 1997, was one eye-witness who was not overwhelmed by the easy KGB label. Putin was a ‘gosudarstvennik’, he wrote, a man of the state, one of the very few Russian bureaucrats of that time who seemed not interested in wealth and would not take a bribe. Evans went on to say: I am not going to attempt to prove it, but I assure you that Putin 1) was not anti-American (although he felt more comfortable with Germans); 2) was not a communist (at least by that time) or hostile to private business; 3) was not anti-Semitic; 4) and was not intolerant of gay people. I have already noted that he had a legal bent. You may take my word for these assertions or not. I have concrete examples to back each of them.8 With the exception of the first of Evans’ first-hand presumptions it is probable that these character traits remained true for the next quarter-century, and Putin’s anti-American sentiments were by-products of events and pressures over that time. Indeed, from the moment Yeltsin named him acting president on New Year’s Day 2000, and charged him with ending the debilitating Chechen war, curbing the unchallenged power of the oligarchs and putting the Russian economy in order, Putin was caught between either fulfilling his mandate or alienating the West. His choice was clear – he fulfilled his mandate. If he was not what the West wanted in the Kremlin, he was exactly what Russians wanted at that time. In 2019, while musing on Putin’s first two decades in office, Fred Weir, a Canadian journalist who married a Russian, has lived for decades in Russia

10  The presidency and writes about Russia regularly for the Christian Science Monitor, put it differently: Putin is popular because of the things he does. He stays in power because Russians don’t see any alternative, and they’re reasonably satisfied with what he does. And that’s a hard thing sometimes for Americans to get their minds around.9 Writing at the same time, former president of the USSR and chief architect of the end of the first Cold War, Gorbachev, concurred: When Vladimir Putin became president, he inherited chaos. … I can’t imagine how one could act under the ‘textbook of democracy’ in these conditions to find a way out of an almost catastrophic situation. … The president of the country had no other choice but to take decisive actions. Some of his actions were interpreted as authoritarian and part of society was critical toward them. … If the aim of authority is to create conditions for developing a strong modern democracy, then I’m ready to support the president even if I disagree with some of his individual actions and decisions.10 What did Putin do that we in the West so disliked, so soon, and Russians liked? In the first instance, he took the war to the Chechens, brutally, and eventually forced them into accepting peace, of sorts. We saw the ferocious side of that conflict, Russians saw it differently. Chechens had won the first war, 1994–96, and signed a peace treaty that called for a five-year truce, the withdrawal of all federal troops from Chechnya, and financial help from Moscow for reconstruction. Most Russians were relieved and no longer cared if Chechnya seceded. It was a Chechen act that launched the second war in 1999, well before the period of truce was over. On 7 August 1999, Chechen field commander Shamil Basaev and radical Islamicist Ibn al-Khattab (Samir Saleh Abdullah) led a 2,000-man Chechen army into Russia’s Dagestan and called for an Islamic uprising. The second war was on, and Putin was appointed prime minister two days later. Weeks later, explosions rocked apartment blocks in Moscow and two other Russian cities (31 August–16 September), killing over 300 people. Yeltsin responded by launching a ‘counter-terrorist operation’ in the North Caucasus and, the next day, Putin delivered an aggressive message: ‘we will pursue the terrorists everywhere. If they are in the airport, we will pursue them in the airport. And if we catch them, forgive me, in the toilet, we’ll whack them in the outhouse.’ An Islamicist group claimed credit for the apartment bombings. The already furious Russian population raged against Chechens and cheered Putin’s efforts on. 11 One study showed that 70 per cent of the Russian population saw the first Chechen war as a tragedy, and 70 per cent approved of the second war.12 As a sign of things to come, a conspiracy theory blaming the FSB and Putin for

The presidency  11 the apartment bombings emerged, and remains virulent to this day.13 Whatever the source of the explosions, the second Chechen war provided Putin with the aura of a ‘White Knight’ who salvaged the national pride and protected Russian territorial integrity. Another important task set for Putin in 2000 was to curb the power of the oligarchs, the wealthy businessmen who enriched themselves by exploiting the almost regulation-free privatization of state assets in the 1990s. As a first step, Putin gathered 21 of the country’s leading oligarchs for a roundtable discussion and, after appealing to their national consciousness, told them that he would not reverse the privatizing process that had made them wealthy so long as they paid their taxes and kept out of politics. They agreed, in essence giving Putin a ‘go-ahead’ to conduct a campaign against recalcitrant tycoons, such as media mogul Vladimir Gusinsky, media and business baron Boris Berezovsky (Aeroflot) and Mikhail Khodorkovsky (Yukos), three of Russia’s richest men. Berezovsky and Gusinsky were living in exile before the year was out and Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003. In these and other such cases, the actual charges were very likely true, the Russian business world being notoriously venal, so it was the politically-determined selection of targets that served as a lesson to other oligarchs. This approach, too, was popular at the time.14 As the years passed, Putin was held responsible personally for the murders of journalist Anna Politkovskaia (2006), former FSB agent and security man for Berezovsky, Aleksandr Litvinenko (2006) and liberal politician Boris Nemtsov (2015), and the attempted murders of exiled spy Sergei Skripal (2018) and oppositionist Aleksei Navalny (2020). Western governments and media interpreted Russia’s military interventions in Georgia (2008), Ukraine (2014) and Syria (2015) as parts of an imperialistic continuum, and saw Putin’s hand as decisive behind the MH17 tragedy, Brexit, Donald Trump’s victory in America’s presidential election, France’s gilets jaunes (yellow vests) turmoil, Catalonian separatism in Spain and, indeed, every major crisis threatening the internal unity of the EU.15 It became de rigueur for American politicians to taint opponents simply by accusing them of acting on Russia’s behalf.16 If these, and other, crises could all be attributed unequivocally to Putin’s ‘malign’ intentions then he would deserve to be classified a villain of the highest order. Yet, with the important exception of the invasion and subsequent annexation of Crimea, none of the above should be accepted without question or context. In the background, always, were allusions to Putin as a modern-day Stalin who hoped to resurrect the influence and territory of the Soviet Union. Advocates of this scenario continue to misuse Putin’s remark in 2005 that the break-up of the USSR ‘was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe’ of the 20th century as evidence that he planned to resurrect the Soviet empire under another name. In fact, the same paragraph in a three-hour address to the Federal Assembly made it clear that he was referencing the disruptive social and national consequences of the break-up: the poverty, lawlessness, economic chaos of the 1990s, plus the relocation of millions of ethnic

12  The presidency Russians into other, newly created or resurrected states. The ‘catastrophe’ reference had nothing whatsoever to do with reviving the USSR, yet Putinophobes still cite it as evidence that Putin wants to do precisely that.17 That said, it is also clear that Putin wanted to restore Russia’s major power status. He said so himself, often. It is not a secret. Nor is it surprising or, in itself, a wrong ambition. Certainly, the Russian people saw it as a natural and proper restorative. Commentators who equate Putin with Stalin ignore the many times he has openly condemned the Stalinist repressions, forget that he launched with Patriarch Kirill a ‘Wall of Grief’ (2017) as a monument to all victims of repression in Russian history and that he always commemorates the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression. That day, 30 October, was designated in 1991 and is still marked by state-funded ceremonies and exhibits in museums and schools. Statues erected by human rights groups to honour the victims of Stalinism abound around the country. It is true that Putin, and millions of Russians, credit Stalin for the USSR’s defeat of Nazi Germany in what they call the Great Patriotic War, 1941–45, but that can hardly be reason to deem him, and them, Stalinist. These perceptions of Putin’s agenda and both Russian and Western reactions to them will be ever present here as we attempt to judge what progress Russia has made since its rebirth in January 1992, and what is to come after 2020. *** Putin’s victory in the March 2018 Russian presidential election was expected. The extent of that victory was not. Gathering nearly 77 per cent of votes from a 68 per cent turnout was an overwhelming success, made sweeter for his supporters by the fact that Western pundits habitually predicted his political demise and prominent domestic opponents, such as Aleksei Navalny, had called for boycotts of the election itself (Table 1.1). Table 1.1  Presidential Election, Official Results, 18 March 2018 Eligible voters = 109,008,428

Vladimir Putin, Independent Pavel Grudinin, CPRF Vladimir Zhirinovsky, LDPR Ksenia Sobchak, Civic Initiative Grigorii Yavlinsky, Yabloko. Boris Titov, Party of Growth Maxim Suraykin, Communists of Russia Sergei Baburin, Russian All-People's Union

Turnout = 67.74 per cent %

Votes

76.69 11.77 5.65 1.68 1.05 0.76 0.68 0.65

56,430,712 8,659,206 4,154,985 1,238,031 769,644 556,801 499,342 479,013

Source: Central Electoral Commission of the Russian Federation. http://www.cikrf.ru/eng/ information-center/results-of-russian-presidential-elections-2018.php

The presidency  13 The question of succession looms early As Putin prepared for the inauguration set for 7 May 2018, Western analysts were already forecasting Russia’s stagnation and decline, as they had been doing for most of the 21st century, and mooting the question of whether he might try for a fifth term. At that time, the Kremlin rejected a proposal from Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov that the Constitution be amended so Putin could run again in 2024. Although he told reporters at the international economic conference in St. Petersburg (SPIEF) that he would not campaign again, because the Russian Constitution forbade it, Putin grew cagier as the weeks went by. He ducked a direct question in June about preparing a ‘successor’ by saying that the next president would be chosen by the Russian people.18 The subject came up again as the year wound down, this time introduced by speaker of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, who thought that Constitutional Court judges and legal experts should be looking into the question of succession. The Constitution ‘isn’t dogma’, he continued, and should be changed if the change was good for public order. The question, ‘Who, if not Putin?’ (Kto, esli ne Putin?), was back in play for Putin supporters.19 Volodin argued again, in July 2019, that the Constitution should be amended to allow the legislative branch to participate in choosing the prime minister and cabinet ministers. If that happened, Putin could step down as president in 2024 and retain considerable power as head of United Russia (UR), the dominant political party.20 There was no outward sign that Putin believed it a good idea. Still, individuals within Putin’s inner circles, potential candidates to replace him as president or Dmitry Medvedev as prime minister, began setting out personal agendas that included criticisms of current policy. Sberbank president German Gref and the head of the Accounting Chamber, Aleksei Kudrin, both called Putin’s plans to modernize Russia’s education, housing, healthcare and demographic spheres, too costly and unproductive. These National Projects had been high on Putin’s list of priorities since 2005, with Medvedev in charge of their development. The reproaches were directed at Medvedev, not Putin. Public disputes between Volodin on the one hand and the minister of economic development, Maksim Oreshkin, and the chair of the Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, on the other, all had the appearance of positioning for post-Putin standing. Disagreements among senior law-enforcement officials about how best to deal with massive protests in Moscow in 2019 (see Chapter 3) also represented a challenge to the top-down power vertikal that was central to Putin’s regime. The vertikal features a chain of authority that relies on unconditional ‘party’ discipline and loyalty to the leader.21 Putin avoided any direct personal involvement in these spats. By staying aloof, it may have seemed to some that he was not fully in charge. They would have been wrong.

14  The presidency Journalists got excited again in December 2019 when Putin, asked in his annual press conference about modifying the Constitution, hinted that it would be easy to change the restriction of two consecutive terms for a president.22 He noted too that parts of the Constitution could, and perhaps should, be altered so that the State Duma could participate more fully in forming the government.23 Few observers realized that these conversations would soon represent reality. Putinism Although there was a post-election dip in his popularity, a poll conducted by the independent Levada Centre in May 2018 showed that 51 per cent of Russians wanted Putin to stay on as president after 2024 and 27 per cent did not. The same poll revealed that 57 per cent of respondents wanted largescale changes in the country, above all improvements in the quality of life and more stringent efforts to curb corruption. Russian analysts treated the numbers as pragmatic support of Putin; Western analysts treated the ‘narrow majority’ as a sign that support for Putin in Russia was slipping.24 A similar poll conducted a year later found that a few more Russians wanted him to stay in office after 2024 (54%), and quite a few more did not (38%). The undecided category had dropped significantly.25 This survey was conducted before an electoral crisis burst out over the slate of candidates for the Moscow City Duma. What is it that the people like? ‘Putinism’ as a system of governance has been scrutinized from the beginning of Putin’s first term. As early as January 2001, a Western scholar wrote that decentralization resulting from the inability of Yeltsin’s government to subsidize the regions forced Putin to make substantial adjustments to centralize the economy and strengthen the political centre. These included the re-introduction of the federal presence to the regions (envoys, see ahead) and restraints on regional foreign economic policy initiatives. As his years in office multiplied, other analysts added to the contours of Putinism, calling it conservative, populist and personal. 26 Even in the Yeltsin years it was doubtful that Russia had ever set out on a path leading directly to what we in the West define as ‘democracy’. Humiliated and infuriated by Western triumphalism and the economic ‘shock therapy’ American advisers (e.g. Jeffrey Sachs) urged Yeltsin to adopt in the 1990s, most Russians welcomed an authoritative central government. An author comparing the Putin era with the Yeltsin decade concluded that Putin’s persistently high approval rating was precisely the result of his fostering a ‘positive national self-esteem’, a mindset entirely absent during Yeltsin’s time in office.27 In the words of another Western analyst in 2020, since the collapse of the USSR ‘what Russians want more than a liberal country – a goal that galvanizes relatively few outside Moscow and St. Petersburg – is an autonomous state’.28 This is what Putin gave them. To ensure a wider and more compliant home-grown understanding, longtime close associate of the president, Vladislav Surkov, introduced an on-line

The presidency  15 column under the caption ‘Putinism’, which he termed a ‘well-functioning method of rule’. From October 2019, the column appeared as a weekly addition to the news site, Actual Comments (Aktual’nye kommentarii). The presidential press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, assisted Surkov. The column purported to ‘analyse different aspects of the Putin agenda, evaluating his historical significance for Russia and the world’.29 In practice, it represents propaganda on behalf of presidential authority. The opening piece summarized articles on Putin and Putinism carried in Western periodicals and blogs, including Foreign Affairs, Politico, and Foreign Policy, picking out the paragraphs that describe the system of government in Russia without casting judgement. For example, Susan Glasser’s remark in ‘Putin the Great’ (see Intro) that the 19th-century ideology of ‘Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality’ was close to modern Putinism was taken as a given; other Western definitions, such as ‘Putinism … is a personalized process intended to enforce the unity of the Russian state and the obligation of its citizens to obey its requirements’, were cited to confirm the fundamental importance of state unity. Other citations from Western literature stressed that territorial integrity was a permanent and overarching characteristic of Putinism.30 More than one author cited the philosopher of Eurasianism, Aleksandr Dugin, as Putin’s indirect mentor.31 Putin encapsulated his own sense of Russian uniqueness most clearly himself when he told an interviewer in May 2020 that ‘Russia is not just a country, it’s really a distinct civilization’. This notion was not new. In 2016, Russian-born international affairs expert now teaching in the US, Andre Tsygankov, had described ways in which the language of a ‘distinct civilization’ was already used widely by officials in Russia, and how that believe system was shaped by history and politics.32 *** The president’s administrative staff changed very little as his third term morphed into a fourth term. Deputy Chief-of-Staff Sergei Kiriyenko acquired greater influence over the agenda of the State Council, an advisory board Putin created in 2000, by naming his associate, Aleksandr Kharichev, head of the Directorate for Supporting the Activities of the State Council.33 As former prime minister (1998), head of Rosatom for 15 years and in his present office since 2016, Kiriyenko already had wide-ranging influence. The appointment suggested that Putin was more willing to delegate responsibility to accountable government agencies than he was in earlier terms.34 The election honeymoon didn’t last long. Executive confidence was shaken by popular reactions to a government decision to raise the obligatory pensionable age. Moreover, in October 2018 the Finance Ministry proposed an increase in money allocated to the presidential administration in the 2018 budget by some ₽1.7 billion ($26 million). Further funds, over $20 billion, were set aside as well for an upgrade of the presidential fleet of aircraft. News like this fuelled social unrest.35

16  The presidency The backlash originated as early as June 2018, when the government announced changes in retirement ages for men (60 to 65) and women (55 to 63), meaning that planned-for pensions were to come much later than expected. The substantial increase in retirement age from its decades-old status had been discussed for years because Russians were living much longer, the workforce was diminishing and pensions were a huge drain on the federal budget. Few economists doubted that a restructuring was long overdue. But the citizenry did. According to a poll conducted by state-funded Fond Obshchestvennoe Mnenie (FOM), the decision was opposed by a whopping 82 per cent of the population. A month later a Levada poll revealed that popular ‘trust’ in Putin had fallen below 50 per cent (48%) for the first time in five years, a 12-point drop in trust levels since January.36 Even a state-sponsored pollster, the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VTsIOM), reported a 10-point drop for Putin, to 38.3 per cent. Almost all Russian senior politicians suffered losses in credibility.37 Whereas the pension reform triggered a sudden collapse in support for authorities, continuing tensions in international relations and domestic economic strains lurking beneath a veneer of calm also contributed to outbursts of protest. At first, Putin made a point of keeping out of the debate over raising the pensionable age, letting the outrage target Medvedev and the Cabinet. Indeed, he had spoken publicly against the reform since 2005 and hedged again in his annual call-in show in 2018, saying that he had ‘always taken a highly cautious and careful attitude toward it’, going on to stress that he wanted to raise pensioner incomes. If, as is often assumed, Putin’s power relied on his ideas and emotions coinciding with current popular values, then the pension crisis represented a sudden turning point against him.38 He avoided disaster by joining the fray in late August, shortly before a scheduled anti-pension reform demonstration. Facing the population in a special TV presentation, Putin outlined the economic necessity of change for the benefit of the entire country, and then proposed a compromise that would lower the planned pension age for women to 60, rather than the 63 set out in the draft law. This concession was in support of domestic households, he said, freeing up female pensioners to help their sons and daughters raise families and still go to work.39 Taking back the issue and presenting moderate ‘fixes’ slowed the decline in his approval rating, which dropped from the 80s in March-April to the upper 60s in August.40 Hoping to recover popular confidence, the presidential team went on a public relations binge in August, playing up a nature hike in the Tuva region with multiple photos of the president, aged 65, showing off his physical fitness and communing with nature – keeping his shirt on this time. Head of the FSB Aleksandr Bortnikov joined him in the venture. Shortly thereafter, Russian state TV launched a new programme dedicated solely to Putin. Titled ‘Moskva.Kreml.Putin’, Rossiia 1 aired the first show on 3 September, featuring interviews with Peskov and Kremlin reporters.41

The presidency  17 Putin continued to cater to Russian sensibilities, playing in public hockey matches (scoring more goals than he deserved to), and joining in the annual ‘Immortal Regiment’ parades carrying a photo of his father.42 Popular opinion was an important source of presidential influence, and an especially valuable legitimizing one, and those were to be badly jolted in 2020. Siloviki, oligarchs and cronyism Along with his administrative team, Putin governs Russia by manipulating the siloviki, leaders in the various security services. These individuals dominate the power ministries and are often influential in state-owned energy companies, such as Gazprom and Rosneft. The siloviki are especially important in the regions, where they can shape voting patterns, sway the choice of candidates and protect the interests of Moscow.43 Gazprom, the largest publicly-listed natural gas company in the world and the sole exporter of Russian gas to Europe, provides us with a perfect example of how a primarily state-owned enterprise (51%) can act in the interests of Russia’s foreign policy when needed, and remain powerful enough to lobby successfully on behalf of its own commercial interests and its billionaire shareholders.44 As we have seen, Putin also stage-manages the oligarchs by coercion and favour granting, allowing them to oversee state-owned and private megacompanies that pour tax monies into governmental coffers. He is helped in this approach by the fact that they compete among themselves for power and wealth, which means that currying favour with the president is essential. Assertions are made that Putin is the wealthiest of the oligarchs himself. It would not be surprising that the president enriched himself further than his limited disclosure suggests: an apartment in St. Petersburg and a larger flat in Moscow, two vintage cars and a Lada, and an annual salary the equivalent of $135,000.45 The source of many such claims are well-known Putinophobes, such as Nemtsov as early as in 2012, followed by Navalny, William Browder and Anders Åslund. Åslund, for instance, estimates Putin’s wealth at $160 billion, which would make him the world’s richest man.46 That seems a stretch. Challengers to these allegations insist that the numbers include items that actually belong to the state and not to Putin. Whatever the case may be, the majority of Russians seem not to be concerned about it. Presidential envoys One of Putin’s first centralizing acts in 2000 was to create a completely new level of territorial administration, called Federal Districts. Each district encompasses several of the component subjects of the Federation and are monitored by a special envoy (officially, Plenipotentiary Representative) named by the president. The relationship of the envoys to the governors, or official heads, of the subjects, is ambiguous. Their official role is to watch over federal agencies in the region, guarantee that federal funds are spent

18  The presidency appropriately and ensure that local laws conform to federal laws. As informal liaison between governors and the president, the envoy can wield considerable influence. As of March 2014, the nine Federal Districts were: Central, Southern, North Western, Far Eastern, Siberian, Ural, Volga, North Caucasian and Crimean. The president also appoints delegates (envoys) to the Federal Assembly, the Federation Council, the State Duma and the Constitutional Court. These agents of the president help consolidate the centralized chain of command from Moscow, the vertikal. Edicts excluding governors from the Federation Council (see Chapter 2) strengthen the presidency as well. Public chamber The Public or Civic Chamber was created in 2005 to examine draft laws and oversee the activities of the Duma and other governing bodies in the Russian Federation. It began with 42 members named by the president, those members then added another 42 from All-Russia public associations and, finally, the 84 elected 42 more members from regional and inter-regional public associations. The Chamber met in 2006 for the first of its three-year terms. In a strictly advisory role, its chartered purpose is to serve as liaison between citizens and governing circles at all levels and express opinions on legislation, and even foreign affairs. Its 18 commissions hold public hearings and community workshops, and it reports on a quarterly basis to the Duma and the president. The Chamber may field appeals directly from citizens, so it serves as an important sounding board for the president. The Public Chamber’s membership was broadened in 2013, so that, by 2020, it consisted of 168 members: 40 citizens approved by presidential decree; 85 representatives of public chambers of the Federation’s subject components; and 43 representatives of nation-wide public associations and NGOs. A new final 43 members were selected in June, 2020.47 National security agencies Whereas Putin’s third term featured the creation of a Russian National Guard (Rosgvardia), his fourth term opened with the creation of a special police force to assist operations for events making up the 2018 FIFA World Cup. According to Minister of the Interior Vladimir Kolokoltsev, members of the ‘Tourist Police’ unit patrolled seven Russian cities. They were expected to speak three foreign language and be ‘tourist friendly’.48 Announced as a temporary organization, the Tourist Police were still in place in 2020. The much more significant National Guard was created by a transfer of troops from the Ministry of the Interior (MVD) and included special purpose forces (OMON), riot troops, rapid response units and security guards, altogether about 340,000 law enforcement personnel. Headed by Army General Viktor Zolotov, it is responsible directly to the president. In February

The presidency  19 2016, the Federal Drug Control Service and Federal Migration Services were placed under the MVD. Like the MVD, the FSB (Federal’naia sluzhba bezopasnosti) is a service with military ranks. Its 65,000 personnel include some 5,000 special forces troops. In its charge are approximately 200,000 border guards. The FSB director, currently Bortnikov, reports directly to the president, sits as an ex officio member of the National Security Council and chairs the national antiterrorism committee. The July–August 2020 clampdown against protesters was preceded by a ‘cleansing’ of the FSB and MVD in April–May. Senior and junior officers were arrested for bribery, intimidation and fraud after several years of investigation (see Chapter 8). Head of the FSB Investigative Department, Lt. Gen. Mikhail Shishov, was forced into early retirement, as were several other senior officials in the service.49 Shuffling ranks among the siloviki is a time-tested mechanism used by Putin, and his predecessors, to ensure the stability needed to preserve his legacy.

Street protests Whereas there appear to be enough representative bodies in Russia for public opinions to be heard, the forums most utilized for public opinion are street protests (see Chapter 3). Although demonstrations take place for a wide variety of reasons, anti-government and anti-Putin assemblies attract the most media attention. They also provide opportunities for activists to vie for the popular ear. For instance, protests during and after Putin’s inauguration on 7 May 2018 featured left-wing militant Sergei Udaltsov and Navalny competing for headlines. Municipal authorities granted Udaltsov’s application for a pre-inauguration demonstration and denied a similar bid by Navalny. The Mayor’s office explained that Navalny’s proposed site was already committed to rehearsals for Victory Day (9 May). The city offered two alternate locations and Navalny, who undoubtedly knew that his choice was inappropriate, feigned outrage and called on his devotees to rally on that location anyway, tweeting grandiosely that ‘We are not slaves’.50 Gathering under the slogan ‘He’s not our tsar’ (On nam ne tsar’), Navalnyled demonstrators purported to be against the ‘establishment of the monarchy, against corruption, against inequality, censorship and lawlessness’. About 1,600 people were detained, briefly, around the country on the day of the protests, among them Navalny, whose message on social media called the government ‘swindlers and thieves’. Almost all the demonstrations were declared illegal because neither their time nor place were approved.51 A little over a year later a political storm erupted in Moscow after the municipal electoral commission disqualified dozens of potential candidates for City Council, alleging irregularities in the list of signatures of support they were required to compile. At least seven of these people were wellknown oppositionists. There followed weeks of large anti-Putin, anti-government rallies, with over 1,000 demonstrators and leaders detained. Chants

20  The presidency of ‘Putin is a thief!’ (Putin – Vory!), a rallying cry during the mass rallies against vote rigging in 2011–12, were heard again. Fearing a coloured revolution, the Kremlin gave up on its previous concession-granting policy (see also Chapter 3).52 Whereas anti-Putin placards were seen in many of the street demonstrations, protesters also called upon the president to side with citizens against local officials, as he did in response to public actions against dumping Moscow’s waste in the North, unwanted construction projects and ineffective responses to natural disasters (floods and wildfires). Demonstrators sometimes held signs that called on municipal bureaucrats to fulfil Putin’s direct requests that they had ignored. Putin often came to the aid of provincial complainants, thereby ensuring his popularity in the regions, temporarily at least.53 During major outbursts of public wrath, however, he tended to remain aloof, a habit that began to go sour by 2020. UR deputies introduced a law in 2019 to protect Putin’s image. Part of the Administrative Offenses Code, the law proposed to curb intentionally ‘inaccurate information’ (fake news) and ‘indecent behaviour’. According to SOVA, a Moscow-based NGO dedicated to research on racism and human rights, its practical purpose was to restrict freedom of speech.54 The law provided for financial penalties graded according to the number of offences and even to the ‘severity’ of the insult. Overall, it probably did Putin’s image more harm than good, and was very difficult to enforce at the local and regional levels. The move against public ‘disrespect’ shielded everyone, at least theoretically. The Code already included a provision (Art. 5.61) that protected the right of all citizens to ‘honour and dignity’ when dealing with state or municipal officials. This was amended in 2020 to include individuals who were acting in place of a state official, such as judges, law enforcement, and even school principals. Insults were defined in the amended code as ‘a humiliation of the honour and dignity of another person, expressed in indecent form’ and clear instructions were provided on how to pursue a case in the workplace.55

Inauguration promises, 2018 By the time of the electoral crisis in Moscow, Putin was already struggling to keep promises made during his 2018 inauguration. Faced with polls that showed Russians were least satisfied with his failure to curtail the rapidly growing wealth disparity in the country, Putin’s new May Decree had included plans to kick-start the economy with an allocation of the ruble equivalent of over $150 billion for societal needs.56 The purpose of the decree was to improve the quality of life for Russians generally, and cut the poverty level in half by 2024. Development programmes included the healthcare, education, demography, housing and urban development, international cooperation and exports, labour productivity, roads and infrastructure, ecology, digital economy, science and culture sectors. One demographic goal was to raise the

The presidency  21 life expectancy of Russians to 78 by 2024 and 80 by 2030.57 Reiterating much of what were encompassed in the National Projects, these undertakings complemented the slogan Putin adopted for his new term, ‘Russia is for the People’. Projections on their cost made the agenda somewhat fanciful. In fact, Kudrin told Putin in December 2019 that only about two-thirds of the planned 2019 funding for the projects had been spent, mainly because bureaucrats were too cautious to distribute it.58 Kudrin may have unwittingly provided him with a rationale for staying on. Forming a government One day after the inauguration, Putin named Medvedev prime minister – again. The Communist Party and A Just Russia opposed the nomination. United Russia, with support from Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), pushed it through easily, 374–56. Other than shifting responsibilities among long-standing members, very few changes were made to Cabinet. Within a few weeks, Putin signed orders to: a) create a new Ministry of Science and Higher Education, separate from the Ministry of Education; b) expand the Ministry of Communications and Mass Communications into a Ministry of Digital Development; and c) transfer trade missions from the Ministry of Economic Development to the Ministry of Industry.59 Medvedev called on former Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich to co-chair the Skolkovo Foundation, Russia’s leading technological and innovation research centre. Perhaps the most significant move came when Kudrin agreed to head up the Accounting Chamber. Already director of the Centre for Strategic Research and often rumoured a prime ministerial candidate, Kudrin brought a wealth of economic experience to the post. The position also kept him apart from Medvedev, who had fired him as finance minister in 2011 (Table 1.2).60 Presidential staff The president’s own staff remained intact. Anton Vaino kept his post as chief-of-staff, along with his deputies Aleksei Gromov and Kiriyenko. Peskov retained his jobs as press secretary and deputy chief-of-staff. Three new names appeared on the list of nine presidential aides. One of these was Dmitry Shalkov, who is also deputy head of the FSB. Outlining the future Within weeks of the inauguration, Putin gave two lengthy public presentations in which he answered questions on a broad range of subjects. The first of these was a long and testy televised interview in Vienna and the second came two days later in Moscow at his annual televised ‘Direct Line’. In the latter case, staff sifted through over a million questions submitted by telephone,

22  The presidency Table 1.2  The New Russian Government, 18 May 2018 Age included Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev - 52. Deputy Prime Ministers Konstantin Chuyuchenko - 52, Government Chief of Staff and Deputy Prime Minister. Anton Siluanov - 55, First Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister. Dmitry Kobak - 59, Deputy Prime Minister responsible for energy and industry sectors. Vitaly Mutko - 59, Deputy Prime Minister responsible for construction and regional development. Yuri Borisov - 61, Deputy Prime Minister responsible for defence industry complex. Was Deputy Defence Minister since 2012. Maksim Akimov - 48, Deputy Prime Minister responsible for transport and communications. Aleksei Gordeev - 63, Deputy Prime Minister responsible for agro-industrial complex. Tatiana Golikova - 52, Deputy Prime Minister responsible for welfare. Olga Golodets - 56, Deputy Prime Minister responsible for culture and sport. Oleg Trutnev - 62, Deputy Prime Minister responsible for Russian Far East development. Ministers Finance Minister - Anton Siluanov, 55. Energy Minister - Aleksandr Novak, 46. Foreign Minister - Sergei Lavrov, 68. Defence Minister - Sergei Shoigu, 62. Economy Minister - Maksim Oreshkin, 35. Industry and Trade Minister - Denis Manturov, 49. Agriculture Minister - Dmitry Patrushev, 40. Sport Minister - Pavel Kolobkov, 48. Minister of Internal Affairs - Vladimir Kolokoltsev, 57. Emergencies Minister - Yevgeny Zinichev, 51. Transport Minister - Yevgeny Ditrikh, 45. Education Minister - Olga Vasilieva, 58. Science and Higher Education Minister - Mikhail Kotukov, 41. Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology - Dmitry Kobylkin, 46. Minister of Health - Veronika Skvortsova, 57. Minister of Labour and Social Development - Maxim Topilin, 51. Justice Minister - Alexander Konovalov, 49. Culture Minister - Vladimir Medinsky, 48. Minister of Construction - Vladimir Yakushev, 49. Minister of Communications - Konstantin Noskov, 39. Minister for development of the Far East - Alexander Kozlov, 36. Minister for development of the North Caucasus - Sergey Chebotarev Source: TASS, 18 May 2018, https://tass.com/politics/1005075. Ages added by author.

The presidency  23 social media, e-mail or video. He answered pointed queries about the economy, the Skripal affair, Syria, Ukraine, sanctions, household matters, such as the high price of fuel, and the ban on the Russian messenger service, Telegram. All of these issues will be discussed in later chapters. Trust in president fades Faith in the president plummeted when the pension reform bill was finally signed into law on 3 October 2018. Unexpected losses on the part of several Kremlin-favoured candidates in September’s regional elections were signals of a trend confirmed in a poll conducted by the Levada Centre towards the end of that month. Putin’s trust rating (58%) fell below what it had been prior to the annexation of Crimea. Trust in the army (66%) was now at the top of the list, with the FSB, the Church and charitable organizations following close behind. Government at all levels, banks and unions ranked much lower, and political parties rested at the bottom of the pile.61 Another Levada survey asked respondents to list politicians whom they trusted the most. Putin suffered a twenty-point drop from the previous year, to 39 per cent. Medvedev topped a roster of the least-trusted politicians, at 31 per cent, which suggested he was taking the heat for much of the pension protest. Navalny appeared on both lists, with 3 per cent trusting him the most and another 3 per cent trusting him the least (Table 1.3).62 Table 1.3  Survey: ‘Which politicians do you trust the most?’

Putin, V. Zhirinovsky, V Shoigu, S. Lavrov, S. Medvedev, D. Zyuganov, G. Sobyanin, S. Navalny, A.

Nov. 2017

June 2018

Sept. 2018

59 14 23 19 11 10 3 2

48 14 19 14 9 7 4 2

39 15 15 10 10 8 4 3

“Which politicians do you trust the least? Medvedev, D. Zhirinovsky, V. Putin, V. Zyuganov, G. Yavlinsky, G. Sobchak, K. Navalny, A.

19 18 7 11 11 14 10

30 18 11 8 9 15 6

31 20 13 11 4 4 3

Source: Summarized by the author from ‘Doverie politikam’, Levada-tsentr, www.levada. ru/2018/10/08/doverie-politikam-2/. These were open-ended questions, ranked in descending order. There were many more names on the list, though these were all in top ten.

24  The presidency Respect for Putin had deteriorated so that in November a clear majority of respondents (61%) told Levada pollsters that they held the president ‘fully’ responsible for problems confronting the country. Another 22 per cent held him responsible ‘to some extent’. Only 40 per cent said they would vote for him again if an election was called within the week. The only encouraging news for Putin was still the lack of an alternative. The next name on the list of potential candidates was Zhirinovsky, with 4 per cent. Navalny received only 1 per cent.63 The trend downward continued into 2019. In January, a poll conducted by VTsIOM saw trust in Putin slipping to 33 per cent, his lowest rating since 2006. Oddly, his general approval rating fell only slightly, hovering around 62 per cent. The government itself was very unpopular, with about half the population preferring its resignation. This last finding appeared to be based on both the retirement laws passed in 2018 and the first rise in direct taxes since Putin began his presidency (Table 1.4).64 Various surveys and articles suggested that perhaps ‘Putin-fatigue’ had started to set in. As public trust in him waned, anger usually directed against the Duma and local authorities was now more frequently aimed at the president. Several Russian pundits believed that the downward trend in Putin’s popularity was irretrievable.65 He was up a few points by the end of March 2019 (64%), but so was his disapproval rate (35%).66 In February, 2019, and for the first time, less than half (48%) of the voting population said it would vote for Putin in a new presidential election. This was an extraordinary drop considering he won the post with 77 per cent of the vote only a year and a few months earlier. 67 The administrative staff simply chose not to believe the findings. Peskov claimed that Putin’s popularity was climbing and challenged the pollster’s methodology – in doing so he unwittingly called attention to the results.68 Table 1.4  VTsIOM weekly surveys on trust in Putin, November 2018 to January 2019 Percentage of Russians who

5 Nov. 2018 10 Nov. 2018 19 Nov. 2018 26 Dec. 2018 3 Dec. 2018 16 Dec. 2018 23 Dec. 2018 29 Dec. 2018 5 Jan. 2019 13 Jan. 2019

trust Putin

distrust Putin

36.8 36.5 35.6 35.6 37 37.3 36.7 36.5 36.5 33.4

6.6 5.9 5.9 6.7 6.1 5.6 6.5 6.4 6.9 6.7

Source: Compiled by author from weekly surveys of 1,500-1,600 Russians from 58 to 66 components of the Federation, equal-sized and mixed-age groups. VTsIOM is a state-owned polling agency.

The presidency  25 The ‘drop’ was relative, of course, because his support among Russians was still high compared to other domestic and international leaders. In response to Levada’s annual poll asking for opinions about the ‘Human of the Year’, Putin was far out in front with 31 per cent, Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy came next with 7 per cent. Trump (3%) and Navalny (2%) were in a mix with 11 other names.69 Putin’s supporters attributed his continued popularity to leadership and policy decisions, while his detractors credited the Putin team with successfully massaging the message. One pair of analysts dubbed Putin an ‘informational autocrat’ whose team maintained popularity by non-ideological control of the information flow, and selective harassment of vocal opponents.70 There was much truth in that, but neither tactic represented the entire explanation. No matter his position as the only significantly tolerated Russian politician, it was plain that Putin would have to improve the economic situation for the country’s growing middle class if he wanted to retain, or regain, the people’s confidence. Kudrin continued to recommend that conflict resolution in the international arena, and not conflict exacerbation, was the logical way to release funds for the social progress pledged in 2018. The seriousness of that message may have failed to reach the Kremlin. The mood began to improve in the spring, perhaps due to promises Putin made to the Federal Assembly and later during his annual Q&A to energize the economy and improve living standards. Surveys conducted in June by the Levada Centre found that 66 per cent of 1,600 respondents now ‘approved’ Putin’s actions as president, the same as it had been in December 2018, and only 32 per cent ‘disapproved’. By that time, VTsIOM’s survey results were even better: 72.3 per cent trusted the president and only 24 per cent did not.71 Compared to other Russian politicians and ‘public figures’, Putin stood alone in the fall of 2019 when the Levada Centre asked another 1,601 people across the country to list in order the politicians they trusted the most (Table 1.5). When it came to which institutions were most trusted, the army still led the way. The president was close behind in October 2019, followed by the FSB, the Church, charities and police in that order. The State Duma, banks, big business and political parties were still more distrusted than trusted.72 In late October 2019, ‘admiration’ of Putin stayed about the same at 32 per cent, but the dominant attitude was represented by the 61 per cent who said they felt ‘neutral’ or ‘distant’ about the president.73 With these figures on his desk, Putin equivocated when asked in July, 2019, if he would retire when his current term expired in 2024. He told the Financial Times that the decision would be made by the Russian people and, a week later, said to Italy’s Corriere della Sera that it was ‘too early’ to speak about it: ‘There are still five years of hard work ahead. And with such rapid dynamics that we are now seeing in the world, it is difficult to make predictions’.74 Some pundits took the ‘hard work’ to include the preparation of both a successor and a post-presidency position for Putin himself, and every political analyst was well aware that the oligarchs and siloviki were already

26  The presidency Table 1.5  Survey: ‘Which politicians do you trust the most?’ September–October 2019 November 2017 to September 2019

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Zhirinovsky Sergei Lavrov Dmitry Medvedev Gennady Zyuganov Pavel Grudinin Aleksei Navalny Sergei Sobyanin Valentina Matviyenko Sergei Mironov Grigorii Yavlinsky Not interested in politicians Trust none of them Difficult to answer

Nov.

June

Sept.

Mar.

June

Sept.

2017 59 14 23 11 10 2 3 2 4 2 1

2018 48 14 18 9 7 7 2 3 2 2 2 1

2018 39 15 15 10 8 4 3 4 1 2 1 1

2019 41 16 16 13 8 5 3 4 3 2 1 1

2019 40 15 17 11 9 3 3 3 3 3 1 1

2019 39 14 13 9 6 3 3 2 2 2 1 1

14 11

21 12

18 18

17 16

18 18

24 14

Source: Compiled by the author from information provided in Levada Centre surveys, www. levada.ru/2019/10/17/deverie-politikam-3/

positioning themselves for the post-Putin power arena.75 They were soon all to be proven wrong. Putin laid out the ‘hard work’ agenda himself while answering queries during the 2019 Q&A session: corruption, though declining, was still a major issue, protection of Russia’s cyber space, healthcare, maternity and child care issues, labour productivity and continued resistance to the impact of economic sanctions, were all on his to-do list. He complained that directives from the centre were too often ignored on the ground. Clearly, foreign policy issues notwithstanding, these were the matters on which he hoped to focus for the remainder of the current term.76

Coping with domestic non-political problems In addition to street protests outlined in Chapter 3 and economic issues detailed in Chapter 4, crises that should have been dealt with locally kept crossing Putin’s desk. In the first two years of his fourth term these included landfill issues in the North and raging wildfires in Siberia. In the latter case, more than two million hectares were blazing in late July and August, 2019, with the tundra on fire and permafrost threatened. Smoke from the uncontrolled fires polluted Krasnoyarsk, Yakutsk, Irkutsk, Novosibirsk and other major cities, and damaged boreal forests. For the most part, they were allowed to burn themselves out because of their remoteness, which made reaching and containing them almost impossible. Protesters demanded the president do more to slow the flames, and complained also that Moscow was

The presidency  27 using the North to dump its trash.77 In doing so, they fuelled the general unrest and targeted Putin at a time when his government was under tremendous pressure from activists defending voting rights and calling for the release of political prisoners. While the energy sector rejoiced that the Arctic seaway was opening up, climate change had devastating effects on Russia’s North, Siberia and elsewhere, subjecting the country to record heatwaves and unprecedented downpours. When fires were not raging, floods devastated parts of southern Siberia (Irkutsk) and the Krasnodar and Altai regions in 2018–19, causing multiple deaths and forcing thousands to evacuate (see Chapter 9).78 Damage control and recovery were very expensive and undermined Putin’s economic ambitions. Moreover, a deadly nuclear blast in Severodvinsk in August 2019 raised anxieties about radiation and worries about too much haste in Russia’s military preparedness. For the first time in many years, accountability was laid at the feet of the president.

Constitutional amendments, 2020 Conjecture about the presidency reached a startling turning point on 15 January 2020. During his annual Address to the Federal Assembly, Putin set out constitutional amendment proposals that appeared to guarantee that he could not run again for the presidency in 2024. When the actual proposed change was formulated officially, it read as follows: ‘Article 81, 3. One and the same person may not hold the office of the President of the Russian Federation for more than two terms.’ Emphasizing that, because of its immense size and complicated structure, Russia ‘must remain a strong presidential republic’ and the president should still determine the ‘tasks and priorities’ of the government, Putin suggested that the Duma be granted the right to confirm, not merely ‘consider’, the candidacy of a prime minister, and the prime minister have the authority to nominate his own deputies and federal ministers. The president would not be allowed to reject any candidate confirmed by the Duma, but would keep control of the Armed Forces and appoint heads of the ‘so-called power departments’ after consultation with the Federation Council, and have the right to remove the prime minister and/or his ministers if they acting improperly. 79 An added bolt from the blue was a recommendation that the State Council be turned into an official governing agency. With governors, some cabinet ministers and siloviki on it, that body could wield enormous influence, especially if Putin chaired it himself after leaving the presidency. The draft amendment said the Council would ‘ensure the coordinated functioning and interaction of state authorities, … determine the main directions of the domestic and foreign policy of the Russian Federation and priority areas of socio-economic development of the state’. Moreover, Putin advised that the governors play a greater role ‘in the development and adoption of decisions at the federal level’.

28  The presidency Not stopping there, he proposed granting the Federation Council the right to remove judges from the Constitutional and Supreme Courts, and banning anyone with foreign citizenship or foreign residence permit from holding high-level federal positions (Art. 97. 1.). A further amendment would guarantee that international laws and treaties not restrict the ‘rights and freedoms’ of Russians or ‘contradict our Constitution’, overriding the original article that granted precedence to rules agreed in international treaties (Art. 16. 4).80 To be eligible for the presidential post an individual would have had to live in Russia for 25 years consecutively and never have owned a foreign passport or residency permit. The comment in the address most speculated upon was the following: I also know that our society is discussing the constitutional provision that the same person should not hold the office of the President of the Russian Federation for more than two consecutive terms. I do not think that this issue is fundamental, but I agree with this. Less than a week later, he told a gathering of World War II veterans that the Soviet practice of life-long rulers should not be revived.81 Wasting no time, on 16 January Putin established a working group to prepare proposals for amending the Constitution. With three co-chairs drawn from legislative committees of both chambers, Andrei Klishas, Pavel Krasheninnikov and Taliya Khabrieva, and 72 other parliamentarians, scientists and public figures, the working group started the very next day. It seemed, at that time, that Putin did not intend to run for a third consecutive term, and the next president would not have the same powers he had enjoyed. Western and Russian pundits speculated about the implications of these proposals, dubbed the ‘January Revolution’ by some media in Russia, many of them suggesting that Putin planned to govern from the side in a new tandemocracy.82 Thousands of Russians signed a manifesto published on-line and in the Novaya gazeta by activists who opposed the changes altogether, calling them a ‘coup’ intended ‘to keep Vladimir Putin and his corrupt regime in power for life’. Among their lengthy complaints was the following: Today, an attempt has been made on the basic principles of the state structure, on the constitutional rights of Russian citizens. And although chapters 1 and 2 of the Constitution, where these principles and rights are fixed, were not changed, the announced amendments not only affect them, innovations contradict what is written in the first chapters. The coup organizers remove the priority of Russia’s international obligations, destroy the autonomy of local self-government, reduce the separation of powers, primarily the independence of the court, enshrining the constitutional practice of power in the Basic Law. And they also create a new state governing body that is not under the control of society – the Council of State.83

The presidency  29 Little did they know. The notion that Putin planned to weaken the presidency by strengthening the State Council was contradicted by the fact that the president would still be able to appoint the chair of that body, no matter how it was revised. The president retained the right to introduce legislation, was the commander-in-chief, and could fire the prime minister and cabinet ministers. The top office was even granted a new right to dismiss Supreme Court and Constitutional Court judges for ‘misconduct’, and would have a ‘second veto’ over legislation. Heads of the security agencies, whom the president names, must report directly to him, or her.84 In the meantime, the question of Putin’s successor was energized.85 There was something for everybody in the ‘January Revolution’ package. A survey conducted by the Levada Centre during the last three days of January showed that 72 per cent approved recommendations for a mandatory indexation of pensions, a minimum wage no lower than subsistence level and a ban on officials having foreign citizenships.86 There were no major street rallies against changes put forward at that time.87 A Levada survey at the time, asked ‘In what role would you want to see Vladimir Putin after the end of his presidential term in 2024?’: 27 per cent wanted him back in office; 25 per cent preferred he retire. Others suggested he become the prime minister (11%), head of the UR (9%), head of a large corporation (I1%), an international body (4%) or even the president of a united Russia and Belarus (4%).88 An ‘All-Russia vote’ on the revised constitution as a whole was scheduled for 22 April, even though it was not required for the amendments to become law. The Public Chamber would oversee the vote. The 1993 Constitution required that amendments could pass if two-thirds of a Constitutional Assembly, made up of the Federation Council and State Duma, agreed. If a nation-wide (referendum) vote was held instead, then half the population must vote and over half must agree, for the amendment(s) to be adopted (Chapt. 9, Art. 134, Nos 2 & 3). For those reasons, one can assume, the AllRussia Vote was not deemed a referendum. After the alterations passed the first reading in the House unanimously, Putin introduced new proposals ahead of the second reading. These included ‘faith in God’ as one of Russia’s historical traits, a statement to the effect that marriage is between a man and a woman, a ban on ceding Russian territory and a provision that allows the central government to create federal territories.89 Altogether, the modifications affected about 60 per cent of the articles in the existing Constitution, excluding Chapters 1, 2 and 9 that can be changed only by convening a Constitutional Assembly.90 More succession speculation Speculation about Putin’s future continued. In early March, he tried to squelch any notion that he was trying either to succeed himself as president or to become a power-broker in some other position. He told an audience at

30  The presidency a factory in Ivanovo that any kind of ‘dual power’ would be ‘absolutely destructive for Russia’ and repeated his earlier insistence that Russia needed a strong presidency: Without a strong presidential power in our country, it will be bad. We do not have stable political parties that, say, in Europe, have grown for centuries. But even there, the failures are very large in the parliamentary system. … But our country is so complicated, it is simply impossible for us, destructive. Or it is proposed, … to endow the State Council with some special powers and [I am] to head this State Council. What will that mean? It will mean a situation of diarchy in the country, for Russia it is absolutely destructive.91 Half (49%) of the respondents to a survey conducted by the Levada Centre in February also believed that Russia always needed a ‘strong hand’ and an additional quarter (26%) believed they need a strong hand sometimes.92 Even though these statements and the proposed nationwide vote did not quell widespread suspicion that Putin, somehow, would still hold the reins of power after 2024, the question of succession took on a new life. The repeatedly asked ‘who’ was augmented by the questions of ‘how’ and ‘by which clique’ would the successor be chosen.93 Putin, the ‘eternal’ president The problem of succession was resolved on 10 March 2020. Valentina Tereshkova, a UR deputy famous as the first woman in space, proposed in the Duma that all restrictions on presidential terms of office be removed. In putting her resolution forward, she said: Why make any artificial construction? Everything must be honestly, openly, publicly envisioned and [we should cancel] restrictions on the number of presidential terms in the Constitution [and] if the situation requires it and if people want it, provide the possibility for incumbent presidents to be re-elected to this post.94 The suggestion, which came as the second reading was under debate, sparked a flurry of activity. Duma members rose to their feet and applauded the resolution and adjourned for nearly two hours so the heads of parties might discuss it. Volodin left to telephone Putin, who came to speak to the Duma and announced that, while he preferred that limits to presidential terms be kept in the Constitution, he agreed that term limits might be nullified if the Constitutional Court concluded that such a change did not contradict the basic provisions of the Constitution, and if the people approved.95 Stating that he considered ‘it inappropriate to remove from the Constitution a restriction on the number of presidential terms’, in part because they were not trying to replace the Constitution with a new one,

The presidency  31 rather they were amending the existing Basic Law, Putin added that in times of emergency, when the state is vulnerable from outside, the people should be able to decide to lift limits.96 Pointing out how insecure the world was at the time, with startling new technology, constant threats of war, dramatic fluctuations in oil prices and currency exchange rates, ‘coronavirus’ and Western ‘containment policy’, he insisted that Russians must ‘work together’. In these times of potential instability ‘it is the President who is the guarantor of the Constitution, and, to put it more simply, in another way, is the guarantor of the security of our state, its internal stability and internal, once again, evolutionary development … we have had enough revolutions’.97 The president was also well aware that the current global situation rendered the fulfilment of inaugural promises made in 2018 increasingly beyond his grasp. If fulfilling those undertakings were to be his legacy, more time was needed to achieve them. These circumstances may have decided the issue for him. In turn, Peskov said that Putin’s decision was driven by ‘extreme turbulence in the world’.98 The Constitutional Court performed its task in Putin’s favour within a week (18 March), leaving only the All-Russia Vote as a flimsy barrier to the constitutional changes. The senior judge on the court was Valerii Zorkin, who held the position since November 1991 and in 1998 had ruled against Yeltsin running for a third term. The Court’s decision was derided by oppositionists, including a prominent Russian political scientist, Yekaterina Schulmann, who told her Facebook followers that the text of the 52-page decision reflected a ‘spirit of slavery and intellectual cowardice’. Navalny urged his supporters not to participate in the All-Russia Vote, because it was not a regulated referendum and had no requirement for a 50 per cent turnout.99 At the end of May, a new law made it possible for citizens to vote electronically or by mail-in, even in referenda. Critics complained that the law would facilitate manipulation by the state; the CEC insisted that it the law was an attempt to counter the spread of coronavirus. They were probably both right. One can only assume that Tereshkova’s intervention on 10 March was carefully rehearsed with a small presidential insider team beforehand, and the turn to the Federal Assembly, the Constitutional Court and the public for approval was mostly to provide an aura of legitimacy for a scheme that was set in advance. Putin’s regular protestations against staying on beyond existing constitutional limits and the fact that he stepped aside, sort of, in 2008 lulled observers – including this author – into expecting him to do the same in 2024.100 On 11 March, Duma deputies voted overwhelmingly to reset limits on presidential terms, 383 in favour, 43 abstentions and no one opposed. The bill then passed quickly through the Federation Council (160-1), with 3 abstentions. If all other conditions were met, Putin could serve for 12 more years after 2024. Of the other proposed changes in the bill, the Duma supported 387 mostly minor adjustments submitted from the floor and rejected 177 others, including a proposed ban on deputies owning properties

32  The presidency abroad. By the end of the second reading in March, single-person pickets against the changes to presidential terms were already forming outside the Duma and Federation Council buildings, and both Western and Russian critics railed that Putin planned to rule for life, now tagging him the ‘eternal president’. Despite the fact that single-person pickets do not require official permission, the authorities often find reasons to arrest them. For example, picketers must keep six feet apart, not wear any kind of mask (though this requirement had to be waived during the pandemic), carry a ‘weapon’, consume alcohol, or stand close to a presidential residence, a court or a prison. In practice, police can find cause to arrest a picketer quite easily, and they do.101 Results of surveys conducted by the Levada Centre and published in the first week of March now showed that the same number of respondents wanted him to stay on (45%) as wanted him to leave (44%).102 He still has the choice of handing off the presidential burden in 2024 if his support sagged, though that option seemed unlikely early in 2020.103 By the end of May, Levada Centre’s regular surveys showed Putin’s approval rate (not to be confused with trust and confidence rates) to be lower than any year since 1999, at 59 per cent.104 The All-Russia Vote would be a test in more ways than one, perhaps above all a judgement of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. In so far as the amendments were concerned, surveys at the end of March showed that 58 per cent of responders preferred an age limit for holders of the presidential office, similar to the age 70 for civil servants, and only 26 per cent said there should be none. Answers to a question about feelings on the reset of presidential terms were oddly mixed: Satisfied (12%), Hopeful (19%), Tired of it (4%), Perplexed (16%), Disturbed (20%), Indifferent (23%). Clearly, there was no overwhelming support for the amendment that most affected the presidency.105 Presidential powers In spite of the ‘limitations’ set out in Putin’s earlier amendment proposals, which were for the most part agreed upon, the final changes strengthened the presidential office. The president now has, 1. The right to dismiss judges, including members of the Constitutional Court (with the approval of the Federation Council). 2. The right to nominate the prime minister, though the Duma has the right to confirm or deny. 3. The right to dissolve the State Duma if, in the process of forming a government, deputies do not approve the candidacies of more than onethird of ministers. 4. An extra legislative veto – ahead of signing laws, the president can send them for review to the Constitutional Court (which is under his control).

The presidency  33 5. The right to name the chairs of federal organs, among them ministers of security, justice, interior and foreign affairs, i.e. the siloviki, after ‘consultations’ with the Federation Council. 6. An obligation to provide ‘overall leadership to the government’, and the prime minister must carry out the president’s orders (Arts. 83(b) and 110.1). Moreover, 7. The Federation Council now can include former presidents, plus 30 additional representatives nominated by the president, giving the president much greater influence over that body. 8. Former presidents are granted immunity from prosecution.106 Legislation granting the president and his family immunity from criminal prosecution was introduced in November, with the provision that two-thirds of both houses could strip that immunity for matters of treason or other felonies.107 The question of the State Council was settled finally in October 2020, when a new law named it as a body under the president that does not duplicate the function of any other authority and provides ‘for a better dialogue between levels of government in the development of national decisions’.108 In short, its functions remained advisory, now with legal standing and with the president as its chair.

Administrative reset The new government A few hours after Putin’s annual Address in January, Medvedev resigned and, according to constitutional requirements at that time, the entire cabinet followed suit. Putin nominated Mikhail Mishustin as Medvedev’s replacement.109 An economist and systems engineer, Mishustin had been head of the Federal Tax Service since 2010 and worked in anti-corruption activity for the Ministry of Finance. He is a technocrat, has not been involved directly in politics, and will be focussing on Putin’s domestic agenda. The Duma approved the appointment overwhelmingly (383-0-41) the next day. Medvedev took on the job as deputy chair of the Security Council, a newly-created position. Within days, Prosecutor General Chaika announced that he would leave the office he had held since 2006 and Putin named Igor Krasnov, deputy head of the Investigative Committee, as his replacement. Chaika had been considered by pundits as a potential successor for the presidency. Putin asked him to serve as presidential envoy to the North Caucasus Federal District, a difficult and particularly important plenipotentiary posting.110 Most of the previous ministers were re-named to the new government. While Maksim Reshetnikov replaced Oreshkin as economics minister, the ministers of finance, energy, interior, industry and trade, agriculture, emergency measures, defence and foreign affairs stayed at their desks. New

34  The presidency ministers were named to telecommunications, education, culture, health, justice and sport (see Figure 1.2). Minister of Finance Siluanov lost his second post, as first deputy prime minister, to Andrei Belousov, who was put in charge of the National Projects.  Eight deputy prime ministers were named, one of them Dmitry Chernyshenko, who had served as head of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games. Another, Marat Khusnullin, had been deputy mayor of Moscow during that city’s vast construction boom. He and Viktoriia Abramchenko will assist Belousov with the National Projects. Tatyana Golikova rose to the deputy prime ministerial rank, to supervise the demographic, healthcare, education and science portfolios. Significantly, Putin moved Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, who formerly monitored the government’s fuel and energy complex, to deputy head of the presidential administration, and special envoy in talks with Ukraine, replacing Vladislav Surkov. Oreshkin and former Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky didn’t go far after leaving their ministerial posts. They were made aides to the president.111 On the other hand, Putin dismissed his long-time and effective trouble shooter in the civil service, Surkov, who had developed the concept of ‘sovereign democracy’ in 2004 and served as Putin’s point man for Abkhazian, South Ossetian and Ukrainian affairs. His ‘resignation’ had been rumoured for weeks (Table 1.6).112 The new group is younger than its predecessor, average age about 50, with three members under the age of 40. None of the newbies have experience in the private sector; rather, they have been public officials or worked in stateowned enterprises. Khusnullin’s experience in Moscow made him a natural to oversee construction and regional development for the government. Lyubimova had been deputy minister of culture with a better record than her predecessor as minister, and Kravtsov was successful as head of the Federal Service for Supervision in Education and Science (Rosobrnadzor). These are Table 1.6  The New Russian Cabinet, 20 January 2020 New appointees Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin Culture Minister Olga Lyubimova Economic Development Minister Maksim Reshetnikov Sports Minister Oleg Matytsin Justice Minister Konstantin Chuychenko Returning Ministers Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (since 2004) Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu (since 2012) Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev (since 2012) Energy Minister Anton Siluanov (since 2011) Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak (since 2012) Emergency Situations Minister Yevgeny Zinichev (since 2018) Source: ‘Who Made It Into Russia’s New Cabinet?’, The Moscow Times, 22 January 2020.

The presidency  35 trained and experienced technocrats, whose unstated role will be to help implement the long-delayed National Projects, for which another $400 million was allocated in 2019 (see Chapter 9).113 Six of the nine deputy prime ministers are either former associates or friends of Mishustin. Prominent journalist Tatyana Stanovaya, who often criticizes Putin governments, said of this one: ‘Russia’s new cabinet ministers are young, efficient, non-confrontational, adaptable, and don’t poke their noses into politics. They live in the digital world that is so difficult for the country’s aging leadership to understand. With time, the victim of this technocratic dominance may be that very same leadership.’114 These are words of encouragement, with a cautionary note. With the implementation of the National Projects as his major duty and waves of economic sanctions and a pandemic as his handicaps, Mishustin has a hard row to hoe. General approval of the appointment by the public may well have been rooted in relief that the unpopular Medvedev was gone. The Levada Centre’s first poll to measure trust in Mishustin found that only 3 per cent trusted him and 4 per cent did not – he was practically unknown. A FOM survey asking ‘How do you think Putin is at his job?’, had 64 per cent answer ‘good’, 24 per cent answer ‘bad’ and 11 per cent had no answer. By the end of March 2020, a VTsIOM poll showed that trust in Mishustin’s had risen to 8 per cent.115 The new government faced an uneasy population shaken by COVID-19, and struggling to make ends meet.

Working with the pandemic Whether Putin’s inner circle team planned the ‘reset’ over a long period of time or thought them up at the last moment, remains unknown. The notion spread by some that he did it for wealth makes little sense; he had that already. Clearly, Putin wanted to retain power, but there is no evidence that he wants power for its own sake. Rather, the collapse in oil prices and the coronavirus confirmed, for him at least, the need for stability and for a strong presidency to maintain that stability. Russians needed him, whether they knew it or not, he assumed.116 Not coincidentally, segments of interviews with Putin, conducted by the state-run TASS news agency over a period that started just prior to the 11 March announcement, re-appeared on television. Titled ‘20 Questions with Vladimir Putin’ (20 Voprosov Vadimiru Putinu), to commemorate his 20 years in office, the interviews covered a wide variety of subjects. One question was whether he considered himself a ‘tsar’, a status he denied by saying a tsar does nothing other than order other people to do things, whereas he works hard every day. He also insisted that ‘the primary source of power is the people’.117 At about the same time, Putin held a long meeting with the board of the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO), and flew out the next day to Crimea. While urging the PGO to protect ‘law and order in society [and] rights and freedoms of citizens’ more efficiently, Putin added that ‘the amendments to

36  The presidency the Constitution of the Russian Federation, … reinforce and specify our state’s social orientation. That means that your responsibility for compliance with citizens’ social rights will grow as well.’ This admonition would have to be proven in practice, as he also stressed that law, order and societal stability were the fundamental tasks of the group he addressed.118 In the meantime, the government had to deal with the pandemic (detail in Chapter 9). In his first direct ‘appeal’ to the Russian people on the crisis, 25 March 2020, Putin contradicted an earlier claim that the government had the virus under control. He now warned that Russia was by no means immune and could not ‘insulate itself from the threat’. While outlining all the preventative measures that the state was taking and urging citizens to follow medical advice, he postponed the All-Russia Vote on constitutional amendments until 1 July. At that time, he declared a week-long, paid ‘non-working’ week (28 March to 5 April), leaving all medical support structures, banks and supermarkets open. This was soon seen as inadequate. To protect citizens from huge financial losses, the state guaranteed that social benefits would be renewed automatically for six months, as would payments to veterans and home front workers in connection with the 75th anniversary of the ‘Great Victory’. Extra funds for families with children up to the ages of seven were guaranteed as well, and increased payments provided for people with sick leave or lost jobs. Mortgage payments were frozen, and tax payments deferred for small and medium-sized businesses. The package of aid included a six-month moratorium on bankruptcy filings and support for industries so they could keep workers on wages. To help pay for these additional drains on government revenues, a new tax was levied on interest and dividend payments paid to foreign accounts, and another was set on large private accounts. These levies were controversial, and in some instances, had to be coordinated with foreign governments.119 Eventually, Moscow’s self-isolation restrictions were extended to May holidays and events. The annual Labour Day (1 May), Victory Day and Immortal Regiment parades had to be either cancelled or postponed, and the gala opening of Moscow’s huge new Main Temple of the Armed Forces, set for 6 May, re-scheduled. These were all events at which Putin would have been front and centre. Instead, he spoke to the Russian people on television while sitting alone at a desk with his charisma notably absent. He tried. The president’s populist approach included a visit to a Moscow clinic treating coronavirus patients, wearing a hazmat suit. Still, everyone knew that the Russian government acted slowly in the face of COVID-19, at first blaming foreign carriers and then broadcasting inconsistent information to the population. The central government left it up to the governors to make decisions for their own regions. Coupled with conspiracy theories spread by Russian tabloids and blogs, and long-standing scepticism about any information coming from government sources, the mixed messages help explain a huge spike in cases in April. All in all, Putin’s early approach to the pandemic was not much different from that of Donald Trump.

The presidency  37 In a televised conversation with Sergei Sobyanin, Golikova, Mikhail Murashko and head of Rospotrebnadzor Anna Popova, in mid-April, Putin finally acknowledged that the pandemic was not under control; rather, it was spreading quickly and was likely to worsen. He called on these officials to provide solutions as soon as possible.120 The campaign against coronavirus infections in Russia was complicated further in late April when the new prime minister was diagnosed positively, and was forced to self-isolate in hospital and relinquish his role as a leader in combatting the pandemic. Everyone with whom he had had direct contact had to be tested and Belousov took over as acting prime minister.121 Mishustin was back at work after about three weeks, only to have two other cabinet ministers, Lyubimova and Yakushev, fall prey to the disease. In May, the Administration’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov spent two weeks in hospital and Deputy Minister Dmitry Volkov tested positive. Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov was hospitalized in late May, and Energy Minister Novak contracted the infection in August. These numbers soared when the pandemic’s second wave hit Russia in the fall. With 46 new cases among deputies in November alone, the total number of members who suffered from the coronavirus reached 137 by the end of that month. Kudrin was diagnosed with coronavirus in December. The lower house of parliament went partially remote in September, with all high-risk deputies working from home.122 Putin’s popularity continued to sputter. While 65 per cent of respondents to a Levada Centre survey conducted in March still viewed him positively, only 6 per cent saw him as supportive of all citizens; rather, they said, he relied on the siloviki (46%) and oligarchs (37%). The fact that 43 per cent supported him because they could not yet see any viable alternative was not a very strong endorsement.123 So, getting back to work meant surviving a slump in oil price and sales, a weakened ruble and the pandemic, and then getting the ship back on an even economic keel before the postponed AllRussia Vote on constitutional changes. Two economic crises at the same time was a lot for Putinism to bear.124 Afraid that there would be a small turnout for the vote, Moscow’s mayoralty office offered prizes to voters in the form of lotteries for food and services vouchers. Thousands of stores across the country agreed to participate in the programme. To make participation even easier, on 8 June Sobyanin suddenly announced the end of Moscow’s lockdown. He was probably under pressure from the Kremlin, which launched a campaign to get people out and to vote ‘yes’. The campaign emphasized traditional values, and linked constitutional reforms to the sacred nature of the victory over Nazism now enshrined in the Constitution. The ‘reset’ was barely mentioned.125 Earlier, when the presidential administration cancelled several state visits and multiple large audience events, Russia’s blog world, and the New York Times, enjoyed a momentary frenzy of conjecture about Putin’s health.126 In fact, medical experts warned the president not attend large meetings.127 When Victory Day arrived on 9 May, Putin walked alone to place flowers at the Eternal Flame outside the Kremlin walls, where a small honour guard

38  The presidency stood. There was no grand parade or fly-past. They were promised for a later date. His televised speech made no mention of the pandemic; rather, it was dedicated solely to the fallen soldiers, with only a few sentences for analysts to underscore, such as praise for the ‘sacrificial feat of the Soviet people, people of different nationalities, standing shoulder to shoulder at the front and in the rear’, who ‘saved the Fatherland, the life of future generations, liberated Europe, defended the world, restored cities and villages, achieved grandiose achievements’, and ‘we know and firmly believe that we are invincible when we are together’.128 In ten minutes, he referenced multi-nationalism, the USSR as saviour of Europe from Nazism and the power of national unity, all key ingredients of Putinism. More than a month later, he announced that the annual parade would be held on 24 June and the Immortal Regiment event on 26 July. Rather optimistically, in both cases, he declared that the daily peak number of infectious cases had been reached and, on 28 May, began sending out invitations to world leaders to attend the June event. While Moscow was lifting its restrictions, more than 20 large Russian cities cancelled plans to hold Victory Day parades, or decided to hold them without spectators, because, rather than abating, the pandemic was shifting from Moscow to the regions.129 On 2 June, Defence Minister Shoigu provided a list of cities in which the parades must take place, including nine ‘hero’ cities, and about half of those opted to do so without spectators. In Moscow, Sobyanin suggested that people stay home and watch parades on television.130 The president jumped the gun himself, making his own first public appearance in a long time on Russia Day, 12 June, celebrating by handing out awards and raising the Russian flag. Authorities arranged a concert that evening on Red Square, even though nearly 9,000 new cases were registered in Moscow that day.131 Thinking of the looming All-Russia Vote on the constitutional amendments, Putin was probably hoping to have his presence felt more directly than it had been for months. Not surprisingly, critics looking at Russia during the pandemic again mused on Putin’s political demise and the break-up of his system. Ever poised to leap at perceived cracks in Putinism’s Velcro cover, the New York Times opined that the COVID-19 allowed the oligarchs to stage a comeback by taking advantage of ‘the weaknesses of the state apparatus’. Tatyana Stanovaya wrote that Putin’s ‘political reconfiguration of Russia’s political system’, coupled with the collapse in oil prices and the pandemic, broke the centralizing core of Putinism. Appearing to disengage and turn management of the disease over to the new cabinet ministers and regional governors diffused power and influence across a spectrum of private business figures, political technocrats, state managers, state oligarchs and remnants of Putin’s inner core of associates, she opined, suggesting that the power vertikal might not recover from this disengagement. Mark Galeotti concurred, calling Putin’s behaviour during the health crisis a ‘political abdication’ and warned that, by ‘sloughing off’ responsibility to the governors, he set a decentralizing precedent from which the Kremlin might not recuperate.132

The presidency  39 Foreign-based Russian oppositionists, such as Lilia Shevtsova, mused that the pandemic marked Putin’s Waterloo and her message was repeated by Putinophobes Paul Goble and Garri Kasparov. At home, Navalny warned of ‘public outrage brewing’ among previously quiescent sectors, doctors, small business and the growing number of unemployed, and predicted that Communists and the LDPR would benefit from their anger in the September 2020 elections.133 A senior researcher for the Russian Institute of Economics, Aleksandr Tsipko, put the potential turning point differently: the pandemic ate away at the Putin mystic, and the ‘deep Russian people’ no longer see him as the impenetrable, calm, almost ‘sacred’ figure.134 As events were to show, the hasty and often-gleeful doomsday prognostications may well have been rooted in wishful thinking. Still, avid proponents of the Putin system didn’t do much better. For example, a writer for the ‘Putinism’ column in Actual Comments proclaimed that Russia would recover faster than other countries and emerge from these crises stronger than ever before.135 That didn’t happen either. Princeton University scholar of Russian affairs, Stephen F. Cohen, was more to the point. He agreed that the pandemic was testing Putin’s leadership and the ‘efficacy of the political-administrative system he has created since 2000’. He also agreed that responsibilities devolving to regional governors and mayors threatened the vertikal. Yet, Cohen concluded, since ‘no notable public figures, including oppositionists’ can ‘imagine an alternative to Putin at this time’, the devolution may not matter. Perhaps Putin’s final decision about 2024 will give us an answer to this conundrum.136

The All-Russia Vote and beyond Polls for the nationwide vote on amendments to the Russian Constitution opened on 25 June and ran through 1 July. Voting was a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the entire package, with no chance of singling out any particular article of change for judgement. The final day was declared a national holiday so that Russians could all get to the polls if they had not done so already. Because it was not an official referendum, a 50 per cent turnout was not necessary; yet to succeed, a 51 per cent ‘yes’ on votes cast was required. Charges of manipulation ran rampant before the vote took place, with government-sponsored billboards, TV commercials and other forms of persuasion everywhere. Tales of companies ordering their employees to vote in favour and other complaints gathered by the independent Movement for Defence of Voters Rights, Golos (Voice), prompted one of its leaders to call the All-Russia Vote campaign the ‘most manipulative’ in post-Soviet Russian history. On the other hand, CEC Commissioner Ella Pamfilova said that her organization had never received ‘so few complaints’. The opposition fought back, mostly on social media (see Figure 1.5). The truth was probably somewhere in-between, but the importance of the vote to Putin’s team was perhaps unparalleled.137

40  The presidency In a televised speech one day prior to the final voting day, Putin urged citizens to approve the amendments so as to guarantee ‘stability, security, prosperity and a decent life for people’, and ‘vote for the country for which we work and that we want to pass on to our children and grandchildren’. He called Russia a country of ‘a unique civilization and great culture’.138 Unable to protest on the streets, opponents used blogs, TikTok videos, Instagrams and other forms of social media to express their counter-opinions, especially on the reset of Putin’s presidential terms. Because of the pandemic, residents of Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod could vote by Internet if they applied beforehand and received permission. According to the CEC, about 1.2 million people were declared eligible and, by the end of 26 June, 700,000 people had done so.139 The results were tabulated very quickly, too quickly in many minds, and confirmed by 2 July. The size of the turnout (67.9%) and ‘yes’ votes (77.9%) were higher than expected, and both easily surpassed numbers for the 1993 constitutional referendum. The official response from Peskov, who termed the event a ‘referendum on trust’, was that it was a great ‘triumph’. Golos again announced multiple complaints of violations. Activist groups challenged the legitimacy of early voting, to no avail.140 The Russian opposition, the US State Department, the EU and Western media headlines emphasized violations and manipulation, and criticized Putin’s reset. On 2 July, Putin thanked Russians for their ‘support and trust’, adding from his campaign line that ‘we need internal stability and time to strengthen the country, all its institutions’. Pointing out that, in historical terms, ‘very little time has passed’ since the collapse of the Soviet Union and, since Russia was still in a state of formation, we need these amendments to strengthen our ‘sovereignty, territorial integrity, … spiritual, historical, moral values that hold generations together’.141 Time will tell. Post-vote Within days of the vote, Putin announced that the National Projects would be revised and a new national development plan introduced. The vast existing spending project was well behind schedule, with about half of its separate parts clearly unable to reach their targets by 2024. The new plan would, he said, be ‘based on the real situation’ and take another six years beyond 2024 to complete. He gave Mishustin and Belousov three months to draw up the new set of objectives. It seemed, therefore, that he was taking his promises of 2018 and re-fitting them to the circumstances of 2020 and beyond. 142 In November, Mishustin consolidated Russia’s far-too-many development institutions by placing many of them under one umbrella agency within the Vnesheconombank. Rusnano, Skolkovo and the Russian Export Centre were among those incorporated in the new body. Rostec, Rosatom, Roskosmos, Avtodor and a few others remain independent and eight were abolished. It was hoped that these efficiencies would make the goals of the National Projects attainable. In December, the first deputy chair of the state

The presidency  41 Military-Industrial Commission, Sergei Kulikov, replaced Anatoly Chubais as head of the state corporation Rusnano (Russian Corporation of Nanotechologies). His mandate is to create new technologies ‘applicable in the applied field’, quickly. Chubais had been in charge since 2008. Kulikov had been executive director of Rostec before joining the Commission. One analyst called this change part of a ‘professionalization’ programme.143 As of 1 December, previously enacted new laws came into force, making it easier for Russians to access a State Services portal to find out what benefits they are entitled to, and for healthcare workers to lodge complaints if they have not received due wages on time. Citizens may now also purchase train tickets on-line, thereby avoiding ticket offices and, from 14 December, apply for sick leave on-line.144 It was clear, too, that much political work needed to be done. As fear of the pandemic eased too soon, a frustrated citizenry and critical media posed threats to Putin’s vaunted stability. A flurry of unprecedented political protests in Russia’s Far East met with the approval of nearly half the Russian population and polls revealed that in July only 23 per cent of respondents trusted Putin. Granted, his trust rating was still more than double that of anyone else (Mishustin, Zhirinovsky, Lavrov all at 10%; Navalny at 2%), and his ‘approval’ rate grew from 60 to 66 per cent over the summer. The fact that many local governors now ranked as high or even higher than Putin in some surveys suggested that his aura of sole saviour was gone.145 *** As if that were not enough, late summer and early fall added a new Navalny ‘poisoning’ case, a dangerous political crisis in Belarus and a short war in the South Caucasus to the presidential file. That file was left more hazardous by increasingly undeniable ravages of climate change, spikes in coronavirus infections and forewarnings of a new executive in Washington that boasts of its hostility to Russia. The South Caucasus issue was resolved in November, or so it seemed, and the Belarusian affair was allowed to take its course (see Chapter 5). Putin and Mishustin strengthened their political cards that same month by dismissing four cabinet ministers, energy (Novak), transport (Ditrikh), natural resources (Kobylkin) and construction (Yakushev) and one presidential envoy. Most didn’t go far. Yakushev replaced Vladimir Tsukanov, the envoy to the Ural Federal District, and Kobylkin became acting deputy secretary of the UR. Novak took a newly-created post as the tenth deputy prime minister and will monitor the energy sector. Mishustin proposed other replacements: Nikolai Shulginov, general director of RusHydro, to Energy; Vitaly Savelyev, general director of Aeroflot, to Transport; First Deputy Minister Irek Fayzullin to construction; and Aleksandr Kozlov, current head of the Ministry for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic, to natural resources. The head of the Far East Development Fund, Aleksei Chekunkov, was proposed as Kozlov’s replacement. These, too, were seen as attempts to make the government more efficient and professional.

42  The presidency Putin had only recently (6 November) signed into law the constitutional change granting the State Duma right of approval before the president names the prime minister and the cabinet, so these moves also marked the first occasion where the Duma fulfilled its new role as set out in the Constitutional amendments. 146 Deputies worked out procedures for considering the ministerial candidates that included, for the first time, face-to-face interviews with each candidate in committee and then at a plenary session of the whole before the Duma agreed, or disagreed, to send the names forward to Putin for his signature.147 Other amendments, such as the new status of the State Council, were made official in December. It remained to be seen how the presidency, strengthened in 2020 by the reset, a greater presence in the Federation Council and chairmanship of the now official State Council, would continue to handle predicaments such as those noted above and the new political protocols.148 Asked again in December 2020 about his plans for 2024, he replied: ‘I have not yet decided if I will run again in 2024. To do it or not to do it, I will see. Stable development of the country is my priority.’149 Recognizing the potential for disorder in his New Year’s message to the nation, Putin stressed national unity in the struggle against the still-raging pandemic, which he compared to the battle against Nazis in World War II. ‘Together’, he said, ‘we will overcome everything, establish and ‘restore normal life’. He knew as well that his popularity was waning, so this “new dangerous virus” had to be defeated.’150 As we shall see in subsequent chapters, the Russian people and Putin may have very different criteria on which to base their presidential electoral decisions in 2024 than they had in 2018.

Notes 1 Anna Sorokhin and Valeria Kasamara, ‘The Putin Generation: Attitudes towards Political Leadership and Perceptions of Russia’s Future’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 245, 24 January 2020, pp. 2–5. 2 Putin, ‘Rossiia na rubezhe tysiacheletii’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 30 December 1999; on the ‘Russian idea’, see V.V. Alekseev, ‘The Russian Idea. From Messianism to Pragmatism’, Anthropology & Archeology of Eurasia, Vol. 51, Issue 4 (2013), pp. 11–26. 3 On this, see Robert Person, ‘Four Myths about Russian Grand Strategy’, CSIS (Center for Strategic & International Studies), 22 September 2020. 4 ‘Bill to Extend Russian President’s Term Advances’, New York Times, 14 November 2008; J.L. Black, The Russian Presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, 2008– 12. London: Routledge, 2015, p. 17. 5 ‘Konstitutsiia Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, Chapter 4, Articles 80–93; www.constitution.ru/index.htm. 6 See J.L. Black, ed. Russia & Eurasia Documents Annual, 1993. Vol. 1. The Russian Federation. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1995, pp. 1–3, 21–44 (Hereafter REDA). Until 1999, REDA came out in two volumes, Vol. I for the Russian Federation, Vol. II for the Central Asian States. 7 ‘Prisiaga Prezidenta Rossii’, kremlin.ru/structure/president.

The presidency  43 8 John Evans, ‘The Key to Understanding Vladimir Putin’, The National Interest, 21 September 2019. For continued emphasis on his KGB background, see Fiona Hill, Clifford G. Gaddy, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin. Washington: Brookings Institute, 2012; and Catherine Belton, Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West. London: HarperCollins, 2020. 9 Howard LaFranchi, ‘Who is Putin? Even to Russians, a mystery’, Christian Science Monitor, 23 October 2019, a videoed interview with Fred Weir. 10 M.S. Gorbachev, Chto postavleno na kartu: bydushcheee global’nogo mira. Moscow: Ves’ Mir, 2019, passage cited in The Bell (28 October 2019) and The Moscow Times (29 October 2019). 11 Simon Saradzhan, ‘From Toilet to Airport’, The Moscow Times, 26 January 2011. The Islamicist group that claimed credit for the bombings was the ‘Liberation Army of Dagestan’. The bombings took place in Moscow, Buynaksk (Dagestan) and Volgodonsk (Rostov Oblast). 12 See Walter Laqueur, Putinism: Russia and Its Future with the West. London: Thomas Dunne, 2015, p. 39. 13 The book usually cited as a reference for these charges is John B. Dunlop, The Moscow Bombing of September 1999: Examinations of Russian Terrorist Acts at the Onset of Vladimir Putin’s Rule. Stüttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2012. 14 For background, David E. Hoffman, The Oligarchs. Wealth and Power in the New Russia. Philadelphia: Perseus Books, 2011, and for personal stories, Elizabeth Schimpfössl, Rich Russians. From Oligarchs to Bourgeoisie. Oxford: OUP, 2018. See also Treisman, The Return, op. cit., pp. 95–6. 15 For a classic case of over-the-top, undocumented accusations, see Heidi Blake, From Russia With Blood. The Kremlin’s Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin’s Secret War on the West. Boston: Little, Brown, 2019; for an opposing view, Mark Galeotti, We Need to Talk About Putin. How the West Gets Him Wrong. London: Ebury Press (Penguin), 2019, pp. 116–17. 16 Konstantin Kisin, ‘Hysteria about Russian interference is becoming a joke’, The Spectator, 6 November 2019. 17 The full speech can be found in REDA 2005, Vol. 1 (2006), pp. 9–19; at least one Western scholar, who is no defender of Putin, debunks the continuum theory; Robert Service, Kremlin Winter, pp. 33–4. Richard Starr emphasizes the continuum, see Richard S. Starr, Svante E. Cornell, eds. Putin’s Grand Strategy. The Eurasian Union and Its Discontents. Washington: Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies, 2014, Introduction. 18 ‘Putin Says Will Step Down as President After Term Expires in 2024’, The Moscow Times, 25 May 2018; ‘Putin is Not Planning a Third Consecutive Presidential Term, Kremlin Says’, The Moscow Times, 11 May 2018; ‘Priamaia liniia s Vladimirom Putinym’, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/57692, 7 June 2018. 19 ‘Russia Contemplates Constitution Changes as Putin Faces Term Limits’, The Moscow Times, 26 December 2018; Ilya Arkhipov, ‘Russia Considers Constitution Changes as Putin Faces Term Limits’, Bloomberg News, 26 December 2018; Sir Andrew Wood, ‘The Rocky Road to Replacing Vladimir Putin’, Chatham House (RIIA), 16 April 2019; and, especially, Samuel A. Greene, Graeme B. Robertson, Putin v. the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia. New Haven: Yale UP, 2019. 20 Viacheslav Volodin, ‘Zhivaia Konstitutsiia razvitiia’, Parlamentskaia gazeta, 12 July 2019; https://www.pnp.ru/politics/zhivaya-konstituciya-razvitiya.html. 21 On the power vertikal, see Andrew Monaghan, ‘The Vertical: Power and Authority in Russia’, International Affairs, Vol. 88, Issue 1 (2012), pp. 1–16. 22 ‘Bol’shaia press-konferentsiia Vladimira Putina’, Kremlin.ru, 19 December 2019, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62366.

44  The presidency 23 Svetlana Bocharova, Yelena Mukhametshina, ‘Putin soglasilsia iz’iat’ iz Konstitutsii ogovorku, pozvolivshuiu emy vernut’sia na post presidenta’, Vedomosti, 19 December 2019. 24 ‘Polovina rossiian khochet videt’ Putina presidentom i posle 2024 goda’, Vedomosti, 19 June 2018; ‘Poll: Half of Russia Wants Putin for President Beyond 2024’, The Moscow Times, 19 June 2018; ‘Poll: Narrow Majority of Russians Want Putin To Stay Past 2024’, RFE/RL, 19 June 2018. 25 ‘Prezident: doverie i golosovanie’, Levada-tsentr, 30 July 2019, https://www. levada.ru/2019/07/30/prezident-doverie-i-golosovanie. 26 See, e.g. Graeme P. Herd, ‘Russia and the Politics of “Putinism”’, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 38, No. 1 (2001), pp. 107–12; M. Steven Fish, ‘The Kremlin Emboldened. What is Putinism?’, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 28, No. 4 (October 2017), pp. 61–75. For an analysis of Putin’s public statements, see Brian Taylor, The Code of Putinism. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2018. An entire edited book on Putinism was published as early as 2013: Ronald J. Hill, Ottorino Cappelli, eds. Putin and Putinism. London: Routledge, 2013; and, earlier, ‘Russia under Putin’, a special issue of Internationale Politik, Vol. 1 (Fall Issue), 2000. 27 Suzanne Loftus, Insecurity & the Rise of Nationalism in Putin’s Russia. Keeper of Traditional Values. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 28 See esp. Michael Kimmage, ‘The Wily Country. Understanding Putin’s Russia’, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2020, a review essay, and Marlene Laruelle, ‘Making Sense of Russia’s Illiberalism’, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 31, No. 3 (July 2020), pp. 115–29. See also William Zimmerman, Ruling Russia. Authoritarianism from the Revolution to Putin. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2014 29 ‘Surkov i Peskov vystupili za izuchenie “putinism”’, Kommersant, 14 October 2019; ‘Putinizm kak politcheskii laifkhak’, Aktual’nye kommentarii, 14 October 2019; ‘Kremlin Aide Surkov Calls Putin’s Form of Rule “Political Life Hack”’, RFE/RL, 15 October 2019. 30 Areg Galstyan, ‘The Real Code of Putinism’, American Thinker, 2 December 2019; ‘Dostizheniia putinizma’, Aktual’nye kommentarii, 6 December 2019. 31 See esp. Anton Barbashin, Hannah Thorburn, ‘Putin’s Brain: Alexander Dugin and the Philosophy Behind Putin’s Crimea’, Foreign Affairs, 31 March 2014; ‘“Aktual’nye kommentarii” otkrvaiut rubriku “Putinism”’, Aktual’nye kommentarii, 19 October 2019. Specific references are to Susan Glasser, ‘Putin the Great. Russia’s Imperial Imposter’, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2019; and Andrew Wood, ‘Putinist Rule Minus Putin?’ The American Interest, 29 July 2019. To get a picture of Dugin’s own impression of Putin during his first two terms in office, see Dugin, Putin vs. Putin. Vladimir Putin Viewed from the Right. London: Arktos, 2014. Translation of Russian original written in 2012. 32 Andrei Tsygankov, ‘Crafting the State-Civilization. Vladimir Putin’s Turn to Distinct Values’, Problems of Post Communism, Vol. 63, Issue 3 (2016), pp. 146– 58; ‘Russia Is a “Distinct Civilization”, Putin Says’, The Moscow Times, 18 May 2020. 33 R-politik, Bulletins #’s 8, 9 (2018), rpolitik.com/non-classe/resume-bulletin-782018. 34 Tatyana Stanovaya, ‘Illusory Stability: Putin’s Regime is Readier than Ever for Change’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 3 July 2018. 35 ‘Dlia prezidentskogo letnogo otriada zakupiat samolety na 20 mlrd rublei’, Interfax, 23 October 2018; ‘Russia to Allocate $26M More for Putin’s Administration in 2018, Media Reports’, The Moscow Times, 24 October 2018. 36 See Chart in fom.ru/Politika/10946, 17 June 2018; ‘Kreml’ ob’iasnil reskoe snizhenie reitinga Putina’, Vedomosti, 25 June 2018. 37 ‘Doverie politikam’, Levada-tsentr, 3 July 2018, www.levada.ru/2018/07/03/doverie-politikam/; ‘Doverie politikam’, VtsIOM, 24 June 2018, wciom.ru/news/ratings/doverie_politikam/; Andrei Kolesnikov, ‘Why Putin’s Approval Ratings Are Declining Sharply’, Foreign Affairs. Snapshot, 15 August 2018.

The presidency  45 38 Graeme Robertson, Samuel Greene, ‘The Kremlin Emboldened: How Putin Wins Support’, Journal of Democracy, Vol. 28 (October 2017), pp. 86–100; Putin ‘Priamaia liniia’, Kremlin.ru, 7 June 2018, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/57692. 39 ‘Obrashchenie Prezidenta k grazhdanam Rossii’, Kremlin.ru, 29 August 2018, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/58405. 40 See ‘Odobrenie deiatel’nosti Vladimira Putina’, www.levada.ru/indikatory/odobrenie-organov-vlasti, on-going graph accessed 3 September 2018. 41 ‘Peskov iskliuchil vozmozhnost’ uchastiia Putina v posviashchennoi emu programme’, Vedomosti, 3 September 2018; ‘Russian TV has a new show dedicated to fawning over Putin, and it said even bears are afraid of him’, Business Insider, 3 September 2018. 42 On the importance of the ‘Immortal Regiment’ demonstrations, well beyond Putin’s participation, see Ivan Kurilla, ‘Memory of the War and Other Memories in Russia, 2019’, PONARS Eurasia, 8 May 2019. 43 On this, see especially ‘Russian Siloviki’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 223, 12 September 2018; Peter Reddaway, Russia’s Domestic Security Wars: Putin’s Use of Divide and Rule Against His Hardline Allies. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, and the earlier study by Mikhail Zygar, All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin. New York: Public Affairs, 2016. 44 See Jack Sharples, Gazprom and the Russian State: The Political Economy of Russian Gas. London: Routledge, 2018. 45 Kremlin, ‘Information on incomes, expenditure and assets of the President, the Presidential Executive Office staff, and of their family members has been published’, Kremlin.ru, April 12, 2019, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60277. See also Elisabeth Schimpfössl, Rich Russians: From Oligarchs to Bourgeoisie. London: OUP, 2018. 46 Anders Åslund, Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy. New Haven: Yale UP, 2019. 47 ‘Dan start protsedure formirovaniia novogo sostava Obshchestvennoi palaty RF’, RAPSI, 26 February 2020. 48 ‘Russia Creates New Police Unit to Protect Fans at 2018 FIFAS World Cup’, The Moscow Times, 2 April 2018; MVD website, ‘Vladimir Kolokol’tsev prinial reshenie o sozdanii podrazdelenii turisticheskoi politsii v gorodakh, gde proidut matchi chempionata mira po futbolu’, 2 April 2018, https://xn--b1aew.xn--p1ai/news/ item/12682997/. 49 See, e.g. ‘FSB general, who was involved in espionage and treason cases, resigns’, Lenta.ru, 5 August 2020; ‘“Generaly nedogliadeli ili v dole vyli”’, Lenta.ru, 20 April 2020; ‘Nastoiashche polkovniki’, Lenta.ru, 27 April 2020. 50 Alexey Navalny tweet @navalny, 8:06 AM – 24 Apr 2018; ‘Moscow Approves Left-Wing Protest of Presidential Inauguration’, The Moscow Times, 26 April 2018; ‘Navalny soobshchil ob otkaze merii soglasovat’ aktsiiu 5 maia v tsentr Moskvy’, Vedomosti, 24 April 2018. 51 Navalny site, https://.vk.com/wall-55284725_791667, 4 April 2018; ‘V Mosdve okolo 300 chelovek zaderzhali na aktsii protesta “On nam ne tsar”’, Vedomosti, 5 May 2018. See also ‘Russian Police Detain More than 1,000 People at Anti-Putin Protests’, The Moscow Times, 5 May 2018. 52 Elena Mukhametshina, ‘Neskol’ko tysiach moskvichei vyshli na ulitsy iz-za vyborov v Mosgordum’, Vedomosti, 27 July 2019. 53 For a general discussion of the various streams of protest in Russia, see Mischa Gabowitsch, Protest in Putin’s Russia. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2017. 54 SOVA, ‘Presledovaniia grazhdamn za oskorblenie gosudarstva i obshchestva v internete’, 24 March 2019, www.sova-center.ru/misuse/news/persecution/2019/04/ d40942/; Leonid Bershidsky, ‘Want to Insult Putin? It Will Cost You $462’, The Moscow Times, 1 October 2019; For the law itself, http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/ Document/View/0001201903180022.

46  The presidency 55 ‘Kak borot’sia s oskorbleniiami na rabote?’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 4 May 2020. This clarification came as an answer to a query from a reader. 56 Daria Nikolaeva, ‘Maiskie ukazy 2.0’, Kommersant, 7 May 2018. The May Decree was titled ‘On National Purposes and Strategic Challenges for the Development of the Russian Federation until 2024’. 57 ‘The President signed Executive Order on National Goals and Strategic Objectives of the Russian Federation through to 2024’, Kremlin.ru, 7 May 2018, en.kremlin. ru/events/president/news/57425. 58 Leonid Bershidsky, ‘Why Russia Is Struggling to Build Putin’s Grand Scheme’, Bloomberg Opinion, 15 November 2019. 59 Putin, ‘Rabochaia vstrecha s Predsedatelem Pravitel’stva Dmitriem Medvedevym’, Kremlin.ru, 18 May 2018, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/57492. 60 ‘Gosudarstvennaia Duma naznachila Alekseia Kudrina na dolzhnost’ Predsedatelia Schetnoi palaty’, 22 May 2018, duma.gov.ru/news/27032/; ‘Liberal Economist Kudrin Returns to Russian Government After 7-Year Hiatus’, The Moscow News, 22 May 2018. 61 “Institutsional’noe doverie’, www.levada.ru/2018/10/04/institutsionalnoe-doverie-4/; ‘Pensionnaia reforma perecherknula Krym. Doverie k prezidentu vernulos’ k urovniu 2013 goda’, Kommersant, 4 October 2018; ‘Trust in the Russian President Drops to 5-Year Low – Poll’, The Moscow Times, 4 October 2018. 62 ‘Doverie politikam’, www.levada.ru/2018/10/08/doverie-politikam-2/. 63 ‘Vozmozhnye rezulty vyborov i otvetstvennost’, www.levada.ru/2018/11/22/19281/; ‘Majority of Russians Hold Putin Responsible for National Woes, Poll Says’, The Moscow Times, 22 November 2018. 64 ‘Trust in Putin slides to 13-year low of 33.4% in January’, www.intellinews.com/ trust-in-putin-slides-to-13-year-low-of-33-4-in-january-155055/; ‘Odobrenie deiatel’nosti Vladimira Putina’, www.levada.ru/indikatory, accessed 20 January 2019. 65 For a cross-section of Russian commentary on this, see Elena Mukhametshchina, ‘Reiting Vladimira Putina perestal byt’ neuiazvimym’, Vedomosti, 20 January 2019; Ivan Rodin, ‘Reitingi vlasti nikak ne mogut podniat’cia’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 20 January 2019. 66 ‘Odobrenie deiatel’nosti Vladimira Putina’, Levada-tsentr, March 2019, www. levada.ru/indikatory; Aaron Schwartzbaum, ‘Zastoi Story: Why Putin Remains Unchallenged’, The Moscow Times, 27 March 2019. ‘Zastoi’ refers to the stagnation under Brezhnev. 67 ‘Chetvertyi krizis reitingov Putina za 20 let: chto delat’ vlasti?’, Levada-tsentr, www.levada.ru/2019/02/22/chetvertyj-krizis-rejtingov-putina-za-20-let-chtodelat-vlasti/; ‘Reitingi doveriia politikam, odobreniia raboty gosudarstvennykh institutov, reitingi partii’, VTsIOM, No. 3964, 24 May 2019, https://wciom.ru/ index.php?id=236&uid=9707; ‘Politicheskie indikatory. Reiting politikov, FOM, 23 May 2019, bd.fom.ru/pdf/d20p12019.pdf. The FOM survey was conducted 18–19 May, in 207 population centres of 73 components of the RF and among 3000 respondents. 68 Alesandra Chunova, ‘Kreml’ poprosil sotsiologov raz’iasnit’ padenie reitinga doveriia Putinu’, Vedomosti, 30 May 2019. 69 ‘Sobytiia i chelovek goda’, Levada-tsentr, 26 December 2019, https://www.levada. ru/2019/12/26/sobytiya-i-chelovek-goda/; ‘Putin: reiting, otnoshenie, otsenki raboty’, FOM, 30 December 20–19, https://fom.ru/Politika/10946. 70 Sergei Guriev, Daniel Treisman, ‘Informational Autocrats’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Fall 2019), pp. 100–27. Scholars have recently analysed Putin’s political speeches and found consistent patterns revealing his ideological orientation, see Oksana Drozdova, Paul Robinson, ‘A Study of

The presidency  47 Vladimir Putin’s Rhetoric’, Europe–Asia Studies, Vol 71, issue 5 (2019), pp. 805–23. 71 ‘Almost 3/4 of Russians trust Putin, 2/3 approved of him as president – poll’, Interfax, 21 June 2019, http://www.interfax.com/news.asp?pg=3; ‘Putin’s Approval Rating’, Levada Centre, www.levada.ru/en/rating, accessed 25 June 2019. 72 ‘Institutsional’noe doverie’, Levada-tsentr, 24 October 2019, www.levada. ru/2019/10/24/institutsionalnoe-doverie-5/; ‘Russians Trust Putin Less Than Army – Poll’, The Moscow Times, 24 October 2019. 73 ‘Vladimir Putin’, Levada-tsentr, 18 November 2019, https://www.levada. ru/2019/11/18/vladimir-putin-7/. 74 Putin, ‘Interv’iu gazete “Korr’ere della Sera”’, Kremlin.ru, 4 July 2019, http:// www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60912; Putin interview with the Financial Times, 27 June 2019, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60836. 75 See, e.g. Tatyana Stanovaya, ‘Post-Putin Uncertainty Means a Jittery Russian Elite and Brittle Regime’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 1 November 2019; Andrew Wood, ‘Putinist Rule Minus Putin?’, The American Interest, 29 July 2019; Konstantin Remchukov, ‘Who Will Follow Putin? There is no credible successor to Vladimir Putin’, The National Interest, 4 December 2019. 76 ‘Priamaia liniia s Vladmirom Putinym’, Kremlin.ru, 20 June 2019, kremlin.ru/ events/president/news/60795 77 Anna Liesowska, ‘More than two million hectares on fire in Siberia, with tundra on fire destroying the permafrost’, The Siberian Times, 26 July 2019; Max Seddon, ‘Russia’s rubbish mountain piles pressure on Putin’, The Financial Times, 1 August 2019. 78 ‘Deadly Floods In Russia Leave Thousand Homeless’, RFE/RL, 2 July 2019; ‘Flash floods in Russia leave more than 170 people dead’, The Telegraph, 12 August 2019. 79 ‘Poslane Prezidenta Federal’nomu Sobraniiu’, Kremlin.ru, 15 January 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62582. 80 ‘A modest proposal. Putin has suggested a bunch of Constitutional amendments’, Meduza, 15 January 2010; Dmitrii Kamyshev, Elena Mukhametshina, Svetlana Bocharova, ‘Anonsirovannaia prezidentom reforma Konstitutsii daet start tranzitu vlasti’, Vedomosti, 15 January 2020. 81 ‘Vstrecha s veteranami Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny i predstaviteliami patrioticheskikh ob’edinenii’, Kremlin.ru, 18 January 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62609; Andrew Osborn (for Reuters), ‘Putin Rejects “President For Life” Model’, The Moscow Times, 19 January 2020. 82 Typical were Andrew Higgins, ‘Russian Premier Abruptly Quits Amid Swirl of Speculation on Putin. The unexpected move by Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev fueled speculation that President Vladimir V. Putin is maneuvering to stay in power when his term ends in 2024’, New York Times, 15 January 2020, and ‘Glued to the throne. How Vladimir Putin is preparing to rule for ever’, The Economist, 18 January 2020. See also Isaac Chotiner’s interview with Masha Lipman, ‘How Putin Controls Russia’, The New Yorker, 23 January 2020, and Sergey Parkhomenko, ‘The Near-Instant Death of Russia’s Constitution’, Wilson Center (Kennan Institute), 23 January 2020 (translated from the original Russian). The Moscow Times ran a series of articles for two weeks under the ‘January Revolution’ heading. 83 ‘Protiv konstitutsionnogo perevorota i uzurpatsii vlasti. Manifest grazhdan Rossii’, Novaia gazeta, 23 January 2020. 84 On this, see especially Tatyana Stanovaya, ‘The Reality of Russian Politics’, R. politik, Bulletin No. 2 (42), Special edition, 10 February 2020.

48  The presidency 85 See, e.g. Mark Galeotti, ‘The hunt is on for Putin’s successor’, The Spectator, 16 January 2020; Andrei Kolesnikov, ‘Planning for a (Not-So) Post-Putin Russia’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 16 January 2020; Alexander Baunov, ‘Putin Is Planning a Partial Retirement’, FP (Foreign Policy), 17 January 2020; Dmitri Trenin, Alexander Baunov, Andrei Kolesnikov, Tatyana Stanovaya, ‘Did Putin Just Appoint Himself President for Life?’, Moscow Carnegie Center, 17 January 2020; Tatyana Stanovaya, ‘Russia Prepares for a New Tandemocracy’, The Moscow Times, 20 January 2020. 86 ‘Resul’taty vserossiiskogo oprosa levada-tsentra o popravkakh v konstitutsiiu RF’, Fond razvitiia grazhdanskogo obshchestva, 9 February 2020. Over 2000 people took part in the survey. 87 For one explanation, see Alexander Baunov, “Why Aren’t Russians Protesting Putin’s Reforms?’ Moscow Carnegie Center, 30 January 2020. 88 ‘Rol’ Vladimira Putina posle 2024’, Levada-tsentr, 30 January 2020, https://www. levada.ru/2020/01/30/rol-vladimria-putina-posle-2024. 89 ‘Putin Proposes to Enshrine God, Heterosexual Marriage in Constitution’, The Moscow Times, 3 March 2020; Tatyana Zamakhina, ‘V Gosdumu vnesena popravka v Konstitutsiiu o federal’nykh territoriiakh’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 3 March 2020. 90 For detailed and critical Russian discussions of the amendments and their consequences, Anna Mayorova, ‘Rossiia pri novoi Konstitutsii’, Vedomosti, 22 June 2020; and Andrei Kolesnikov, ‘Konstitutsiia El’tsina protiv Konstitutsii Putina’, Vedomosti, 19 June 2020. 91 Putin, ‘Vstrecha s predstaviteliami obshchestvennosti Ivanovskoi oblasti’, Kremlin.ru, 6 March 2020, http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62953. 92 ‘Tri chetverti rossiian govoriat a neobkhodimosti sil’noi ruki v rukovodstve strany’, Levada-tsentr, 25 February 2020, https://www.levada.ru/2020/02/25/ tri-chetverti-rossiyan-govoryat-o-neobhodimosti-silnoj-ruki-v-rukovodstvestrany/. 93 See, e.g. Stephen Sestanovich, ‘The Day After Putin. Russia’s Deep State Holds the Key to Succession’, Foreign Affairs, 4 March 2020. 94 Yuri Litvinenko, Elena Mukhametshina, Alena Yakushova, ‘Tereshkova predlozhila obnulit’ prezidentskie sroki Putina’, Vedomosti, 10 March 2020. 95 ‘Putin podderzhal obnulenie prezidentskikh srokov v slychae soglasiia KS’, Kommersant, 10 March 2020; ‘Russian Lawmakers Back “Reset” of Putin’s Presidency’, The Moscow Times, 10 March 2020. 96 Galina Mislivskaia, ‘Putin otvetil na predlozhenie Tereshkovoi vnov’ izbirat’sia na post prezidenta’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 10 March 2020. 97 Putin, ‘Plenarnoe zasedanie Gosudarstvennoi Dumy’, Kremlin.ru, 10 March 2020, http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62964. 98 Tatyana Stanovaya, ‘First Stability, then Interchangeability. Why Putin decided to stay’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 11 March 2020; ‘The Eternal President. Constitutional Changes mean Putin can rule through 2036’, The Bell, 14 March 2020. 99 Naval’ny, ‘Putin has reset. What to do with it?’, 19 March 2020, https://navalny. com/p/6317/; Ekaterina Schul’man, 16 March 2020, https://www.facebook.com/ Ekaterina.Schulmann/posts/10222199435685807. 100 On this, Alexander Baunov, ‘Putin’s Choice: What do Russia’s Latest Constitutional Maneuvers Mean?’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 11 March 2020. 101 Anastasia Medvedeva, ‘Maski, pesni i kartonnyi deputat: za chto eshche nel’sia zaderzhivat’ na odinochnykh piketakh’, OVD-Info, 29 July 2020. 102 ‘Chto, uzhe ukhodite? Kak Rossiiane otnosiatsia k otstavke Putina v 2024 godu’, Levada-tsentr, 5 March 2020, https://www.levada.ru/2020/03/05/chto-uzheuhodite-kak-rossiyane-otnosyatsya-k-otstavke-putina-v-2024-godu/; Evan Gershkovich, ‘“President for Life”: Putin Opens Door to Extending Rule until

The presidency  49 2036’, The Moscow Times, 10 March 2020; Joshua Yaffa, ‘Vladimir Putin Positions Himself to Become Russia’s Eternal Leader’, The New Yorker, 12 March 2020; Anatoly Katlin, ‘PUTLER, President for Life?’, The UNZ Review, 11 March 2020; Anton Troianovski, ‘A New “Emperor”: Russia Girds for 16 More Years of Putin’, New York Times, 12 March 2020; Tatyana Stanovaya, ‘Putin Forever?’ R. Politik, Bulletin No. 7 (47), 12 March 2020. 103 On this, see Henry Hale, ‘Putin’s End Game?’, PONARS Eurasia Policy memo, 11 March 2020, http://www.ponarseurasia.org/memo/putins-end-game. 104 ‘Odobrenie institutov vlasti i doverie politikam’, Levada-tsentr, 6 April 2020, https://www.levada.ru/2020/05/06/odobrenie-institutov-vlasti-i-doverie-politikam/. 105 ‘Obnulenie prezidentskikh srokov’, Levada-tsentr, 27 March 2020, www.levada. ru/2020/03/27/obnulenie-prezidentskih-srokov; ‘Smeniaemost’ vlasti’, Levadatsentr, 30 March 2020, www.levada.ru/2020/03/30/smenyaemost-vlasti/. 106 Summarized in ‘The Eternal President’, The Bell, 14 March 2020, and in greater detail in Caroline van Gall, ‘The 2020 Russian Constitutional Reform’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 250, 9 April 2020, pp. 2–5. 107 State Duma, ‘On amendments to article 3 of the Federal Law “On guarantees to the President of the Russian Federation who has terminated the exercise of his powers, and members of his family”’, No. 1049598-7, 4 November 2020, sozd. duma.gov.ru/bill/1049598-7. 108 Elena Mukhametshina, ‘Putin vnes v Gosdumu proekt novogo zakona o Gossovete’, Vedomosti, 14 October 2020; Elena Muskhametshina, ‘Vladimir Putin budet vosglavliat’ Gossovet v ramkakh zakona’, Vedomosti, 15 October 2020. 109 Putin, ‘Meeting with members of the Government’, Kremlin.ru, 15 January 2020, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/62585. For details on Mishustin, see Ben Aris, ‘Head of Russian tax service Mikhail Mishustin appointed prime minister’, Intellinews.com, 15 January 2020; Evan Gershkovich, Piotr Sauer, Jake Cordell, ‘How Mikhail Mishustin Rose to the Top: Old Ties, Savvy and a Knack for Systems’, The Moscow Times, 27 January 2020. 110 ‘Iurii Chaika pokinet post general’nogo prokurora RF’, Interfax, 20 January 2020; Ekaterina Eremenko, ‘Putin predloshil naznachit’ Chaiku polpredom na Severnom Kavkaze’, Vedomosti, 21 January 2020; 111 Pavel Aptekar’, ‘Povyshenie iz Belogo doma v Krem’, Vedomosti 26 January 2020. 112 ‘Vladislav Surkov osvobozhden ot dolzhnosti pomoshchnika Prezidenta’, Kremlin.ru, 18 February 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62818; ‘Putin Sacks Prominent Kremlin Ideologue, Ukraine Hardliner’, The Moscow Times, 18 February 2020; ‘Vladislav Surkov Vladimiru Putinu ne pomoshchnik’, Kommersant, 18 February 2020; Mark Galeotti, ‘Surkov’s End and the KPlocrats’ Triumph’, The Moscow Times, 19 February 2020; Aleksandra Chunova, Ekaterina Eremenko, ‘Putin naznachil Oreshkina i Medinskogo svoimi pomoshchnikami’, Vedomosti, 24 January 2020. 113 Andrei Muchnik, ‘Who Is Olga Lyubimova, Russia’s New Culture Minister?’, The Moscow Times, 22 January 2020; Leonid Bershidsky, ‘Putin Puts Russia Inc. Under New Management’, Bloomberg Opinion, 23 January 2020. 114 Tatyana Stanovaya, ‘Russia’s New Government is its Least Political Yet’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 23 January 2020; see also ‘Putin’s Power Games’, special issue of the Russian Analytical Digest, No. 46, 7 February 2020. 115 ‘Urven’ doveriia k Vladimiru Putinu za dva goda snizilsia pochti v dva raza’, Levada-tsentr, 12 February 2020, www.levada.ru/2020/02/12/uroven-doveriya-kvladimiau-putinu-za-dva-goda-snizilsya-pochti-v-dva-raza/; FOM, ‘Vladimir Putin: otsenki raboty, otnoshenie’, 17 February 2020, fom.ru/Politika/10946; ‘Doverie politikam’, VTsIOM, 28 April 2020, https://wciom.ru/news/ratings/ doverie_politikam/.

50  The presidency 116 Andrey Pertsev, ‘Unstable Putin’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 1 April 2020; see also Tatyana Stanovaya, ‘Keeping His Options Open: Why Putin Decided to Stay On’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 13 March 2020. 117 ‘Putin rejects “tsar” label’, TASS 19 March 2020. 118 Putin, ‘Meeting of the Prosecutor General’s Office Board’, Kremlin.ru, 17 March 2020, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62998. 119 Putin, ‘Obrashchenie k grazhdanam Rossii’, Kremlin.ru, 25 March 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/63061. 120 ‘Soveshchanie o sanitarno-epidemiologicheskoi obstanovke v Rossii’, Kremlin. ru, 13 April 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/63194. 121 ‘Mikhail Mishustin zarazilsia koronavirusom’, Kommersant, 30 April 2020; ‘Russian PM Mishustin Diagnosed With Coronavirus’, The Moscow Times, 30 April 2020. 122 ‘1 in 5 Russian Lawmakers Have Had Coronavirus – Speaker’, The Moscow Times, 26 October 2020. 123 ‘Otnoshenie k Vladimiry Putinu’, Levada-tsentr, 14 April 2020, https://www. levada.ru/2020/04/14/otnoshenie-k-vladimir-putinu-4/. The survey offered a card with multiple choices, the respondent could choose more than one, ranking them in order of preference. See also, Andrei Kolesnikov, ‘Are Russians Finally Sick of Putin?’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 7 April 2020. 124 On this, see Gunter Deuber, ‘Two Economic Crises at the Same Time – Too Much Even for Russia’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 251, 20 April 2020, pp. 10–18. 125 Petr Mironenko, Irina Malkova, Sofia Samokhina, ‘Den’ pobedy nad virusom. Pochemu Moskva sniala karantin’, The Bell, 8 June 2020. 126 Neil MacFarquhar, ‘Putin Has Vanished, but Rumors Are Popping Up Everywhere’, New York Times, 13 March 2020. 127 Khronika. Pandemiia koronavirusa, ‘V Kremle zaiavili, chto prizyv ostavat’sia doma na Putina ne rasprostraniaetsia’, Interfax, 23 March 2020. 128 Putin, ‘75-letie Pobedy’, Kremlin.ru, 9 May 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/ news/63329. 129 ‘“In order not to risk people’s health”’, ZNAK.com, 11 June 2020; ‘V Penza. Cheliabinske i Iakutske iz-za koronavirusa otmenili parad Pobedu’, Kommersant, 15 June 2020. 130 ‘Ne menee 30 regionov Rossii otkazalis’ ot parad v Pobedu ili provedut ikh bez zritelei’, Znak, 16 June 2020. 131 ‘Putin to Mark Russia Day as New Virus Cases Approach 9,000’, The Moscow Times (APF), 12 June 2020; Alena Yakushova, ‘V Rossii vyiavili pochti 9000 novykh sluchaev zarazheniia koronavirusom’, Vedomosti, 12 June 2020 132 Leon Aron, ‘The Coronavirus Could Imperil Putin’s Presidency’, Wall Street Journal, 23 April 2020; Anton Troianovski, ‘As Local Health Systems Buckle, Russia’s Oligarchs Take Charge’, New York Times, 7 May 2020; Tatiana Stanovaya, ‘The Putin Regime Cracks’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 7 May 2020; Jake Cordell, ‘Russia’s Economic Woes Continue to Mount During Coronavirus Outbreak’, The Moscow Times, 7 May 2020; Mark Galeotti, ‘Putin Withdraws From the Coronavirus Crisis in a Political Abdication’, The Moscow Times, 12 May 2020. 133 ‘“Rage is Brewing”: Navalny Warns of Public Anger Over Russia’s COVID-19 Response’, RFE/RL, 21 May 2020; Paul Goble, ‘2020 Intended to be Putin’s Triumph Year’, Window on Eurasia – New Series, 15 May 2020; Lilia Shevtsova, ‘How a Wuhan bat undermined a power’, kasparov.ru, 13 May 2020, https:// www.kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5EBBBB4744968. 134 Aleksandr S. Tsipko, ‘Istoki i sud’ba sakralizatsii vlasti Putina’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 20 May 2020. ‘Sakralizatsii’ translates as ‘sacrilization’.

The presidency  51 135 Paul Robinson, ‘Twice Doomed’, Irussianality, 1 May 2020; ‘Rossiia pobetit: zapadnye SMI o putinizme v period pandemii i slaboi nefti’, Aktual’nye kommentarii, 30 April 2020. 136 Stephen F. Cohen, ‘Testing Putin’s Leadership – and the System He Created’, The Nation, 9 April 2020. Stephen Cohen died in September 2020. 137 See Golos website, golosinfo.org; ‘“Takogo minimuma u nas nikogda ne bylo”. Ella Pamfilova – o zhalobakh na prinuzhdenie k golosovaniiu po Konstitutsii’, Meduza, 23 June 2020; Evan Gershkovich, ‘As Russia’s Constitution Reform Vote Kicks Off, Election Watchdog Decries “Manipulative” Process’, The Moscow Times, 26 June 2020. 138 Putin, ‘Obrashchenie k grazhdanam Rossii’, Kremlin.ru, 30 June 2020, Kremlin. ru/events/president/news/63584. 139 ‘TsIK: V distantsionnom golosovanii priniali uchastie uzhe 700 tysiach chelovek’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 26 June 2020. 140 ‘Human rights activists announced plans to challenge the 58 million votes cast by early amendments’, Mezhdy strok, 2 July 2020; Ben Aris, ‘Evidence of massive ballot stuffing emerges in Russia’s referendum on constitutional changes’, Intellinews, 3 July 2020. 141 There are too many Western examples to even try to list some here; for a few Russian items: Putin, ‘Zasedanie Rossiiskogo organizatsionnogo komiteta “Pobeda”’, Kremlin.ru, 2 June 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/63591; Jonathan Brown, ‘Result of Vote Extending Putin Rule a “Triumph” – Kremlin’, The Moscow Times, 2 July 2020; Anastasia Kornya, Elena Mukhametshina, ‘Konstitutsiia-2020 oboshla Konstitutsiiu-1993 po iavke i chislu golosov “za”’, Vedomosti, 2 July 2020; ‘V Kremle nazvali triumfom itogi golosovaniia po popravkam v Konstitutsiiu’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 2 July 2020; GOLOS, ‘Preliminary statement on the basis of public monitoring of the all-Russian Vote on the amendment of the Constitution’, 2 July 2020, golosinfo.org/articles/144477; Evan Gershkovich, ‘“All We Have Is Putin”: Russians Vote to Grant President Ability to Extend Rule Until 2036’, The Moscow Times, 1 July 2020. 142 Putin, ‘Zasedanie Soveta po strategicheskomu razvitiiu i natsional’nym proektam’, Kremlin.ru, 13 July 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/6363. 143 Foreign Policy Research Institute BMB Russia, ‘Putin shakes up development agencies’, Intellinews, 25 November 2020; Putin. ‘Vstrecha s Sergeem Kulikovym’, Kremlin.ru, 2 December, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64536. 144 Georgii Panin, ‘Kak oblegchat zhizn’ rossiian zakony dekabria’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 11 December 2020. 145 ‘Odobrenie organov vlasti i doverie politikam’, Levada-tsentr, 29 July 2020, https://www.levada.ru/2020/07/29/odobrenie-organov-vlasti-i-doverie-politikam. The survey was conducted with 1,617 respondents; ‘Odobrenie institutov vlasti’, Levada-tsentr’, Levada Center, 26 August 2020, https://www.levada. ru/2020/08/26/odobrenie-institutov-vlasti-25/. 146 ‘Prezident Rossii podpisal zakon “O pravitel’stve RF”’, RAPSI, 6 November 2020. 147 Tatiana Zamakhina, ‘Portfolios await ministers’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 9 November 2020 (in translation); Tatiana Morozova, ‘Vladimir Putin otpravil v otstavku srazu trekh ministrov’, Vedomosti, 9 November 2020. 148 ‘Rebooting the State Council Increases Putin’s Power’, Chatham House, Expert Commentary, 28 October 2020. 149 ‘Ezhegodnaia press-konferentsiia Vladimira Putina’, Kremlin.ru. 17 December 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64671. 150 Putin, ‘Novogodnee obrashchenie k grazhdanam Rossii’, 31 December 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64852.

2 The Russian Federation Internal strengths and strains

Introduction When they took it upon themselves to dissolve the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on 8 December 1991, the presidents of the three large Slavic SSRs, Stanislav Shushkevich (Belarus), Boris Yeltsin (Russia) and Leonid Kravchuk (Ukraine), declared themselves the founders of a Commonwealth of Independent States and left its membership open for any former republic of the USSR. Before the month ended they were joined by eight others, the Baltic republics and Georgia staying out. The right of all Union Republics to secede from the USSR had long been part of the Soviet Constitution, but that right was overridden by constitutional articles and laws that made secession impossible and by Union and All-Union communist parties that wielded unchallengeable dictatorial powers. These powers were finally overruled by far-reaching legislation approved by the Supreme Soviet in 1990, including a Law on Secession adopted in April that year.1 That law had important manifestations for the Russian Federation well into the post-Soviet years. Titled the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) during the Soviet era, the Russian republic contained 20 constituent autonomous republics, 8 autonomous oblasts and some 40 other regions (okrugs, krais), each with its own defined level of autonomy within the RSFSR. The law that enabled Union Republics to secede granted the same right of secession to autonomous administrative regions contained in the RSFSR, such as Chechnya and Tatarstan. Similar territories inside the boundaries of other former Union Republics, Georgia (Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Ajaria), Ukraine (Crimea), Moldova (Transdniestria, Gaugazia) and Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh), had the same constitutional right to secede. After much blood-spilling, some of these were successful in choosing their own status, others were not. Following dissolution, made official by Soviet president M.S. Gorbachev on 25 December 1991, and the referendum accepting its new Constitution in 1993, the new Russian Federation had 89 components, officially called ‘subjects’ in the Constitution. This number was reduced to 83 after a few of the smaller units amalgamated. When the Soviet-era Chechen-Ingush Republic DOI: 10.4324/9781003158646-3

The Russian Federation  53 was divided in 1992, the newly created Chechen half proclaimed its independence from Russia as the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. The Kremlin’s refusal to let it go led to civil war in 1994. Chechnya was the only republic to try to leave the RF by force. Under the leadership of President Mintimer Shaymiev, Tatarstan declared its sovereignty in 1992 and in 1994 signed a power-sharing treaty with Russia. That treaty expired in July 2017. Until then, Tatarstan had the right to its own laws and tax regimes, control over its resources and even limited participation in international affairs. It was the last of the regions to call its elected head ‘president’, over 40 others having given that label up by 2010 when Chechnya did so voluntarily.2 A significant difference between Chechnya and Tatarstan is that Chechnya is on Russia’s border with a foreign country, Tatarstan is not.

General structure With the addition of the Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol in 2014, the Russian Federation increased to 85 constituent entities. The new additions are still recognized as part of Ukraine by most other countries. The 85 subjects, or components, of the Federation include 22 republics, nine krais, three federal cities (Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sevastopol), 46 oblasts, one autonomous oblast and four autonomous okrugs. Each component has its own parliament, head (usually now called governor) and constitutional court; they are represented equally (two members each) on the Federation Council, the upper chamber of Russia’s Federal Assembly.3 According to the 1993 Constitution and its 2020 amended version, the subject components are equal in station and representation, though they vary tremendously in size, population numbers and wealth. The central government has jurisdiction over such matters as defence, foreign economic relations and judicial systems (Art. 71), and there is joint jurisdiction over the possession of land, subsoil and natural resources (Art. 72). The Russian language is the sole language of state (Art. 68), though the 22 republics have the right to declare a national language of their own for internal use. The ruble is the national medium of exchange (Art. 75), the free flow of goods between subjects is guaranteed (Art. 74) and local laws of the subjects must not contradict federal law (Art. 76). Considerable autonomy is laid out for the subjects in the Constitution, yet autonomous incentives tend to be overwhelmed by other, more centralizing, articles, and especially by federal purse strings. Constitutional amendments 2020 Only a few of the ‘January Revolution’ alterations to the Constitution in 2020 were directly relevant to the structure of the Federation. In the first place, an amendment provides legal mechanisms to create federal territories, and also ‘closed territories, especially protected natural territories and the Arctic’, plus in such areas as Lake Baikal and the Vostochny Cosmodrome if the

54  The Russian Federation government so wishes. Secondly, the ban on ceding Russian territory guarantees that Russia will keep Crimea and the Kuril Islands, and ignore land claims by Estonia or Finland, no matter who is president. The clause that now gives Russian law precedent over international law also could have significance for the Federation (Figure 2.1). The federal legislature The 145 million citizens of the Russian Federation are represented in the country’s national legislature, the Federal Assembly, which is comprised of an Upper House, the Federation Council (Senate), and a Lower House, the State Duma. The latter body has 450 members (deputies), half of them taken from political party lists on the basis of proportional representation (PR). To share in these seats a party must achieve 5 per cent of the votes cast (there was a brief period when 7 per cent was required); the other half of the Duma seats are deputies elected in single constituency ridings, not on the basis of party affiliation, though party preferences of candidate are often known. The Federation Council has two representatives (Senators) from each subject of the Federation. Since the incorporation of Crimea, this means 170 ‘senators’, plus 17 more named by the president on the basis of an amendment made to the Constitution in July 2014. As we have seen, more presidential nominees were added in 2020, bringing their number to 30. All except seven of these nominees are appointed by decree for six years. The seven, whom the president can name at any time, will hold the position for life. That number could include an ex-president.4 Seats on the Federation Council are coveted because they carry parliamentary immunity, a rent-free dwelling in Moscow and other perquisites. The chairman, or speaker, of the Council is the third-ranked official in the Federation, behind the president and prime minister. The governors The top executive of each federal component is the governor or, in three cases, mayors who are elected directly by citizens who live in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sevastopol. The position is a powerful one, because the governor has some control over government budgets and the appointment of local senior officials. The line of authority between governors and Putin’s envoys to Federal Districts is loosely defined, though the envoys are appointed by the president, so are more likely to have his ear than locally elected governors. In 2000, the president prevented governors from naming themselves to the Federation Council, mostly by threatening to open criminal investigations on some of them. Before that and until 2005, the governors were elected directly by the people of their region; from 2005 to 2012, they were chosen by members of the local legislature from a list presented by the Russian president. After 2012, the right to choose their own head of regional government

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The Russian Federation  55

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56  The Russian Federation reverted to the subjects of the Federation, and representatives to the Upper House are now selected by local legislatures. These recovered rights were among several concessions granted after massive political protests over vote rigging in late 2011 and early 2012. A governor’s term in office is five years and, as of 2020, they are allowed no more than two consecutive elections. The president retained the right to dismiss governors after 2012, but only on the grounds of ‘inadequate performance of duties and loss of confidence’. This article (No. 19.2) of the law, ‘On the general principles of organization of legislative (representative) and executive bodies of state power’ (1999) has been used 12 times, the most recent in July 2020 against Khabarovsk’s Sergei Furgal shortly after he was arrested for alleged serious crimes. In some parts of the Caucasus, subjects have decided to leave the selection of their governor up to the president, otherwise a representative of the largest of several sizeable ethnic groups would always be elected. Dagestan, for instance, has twelve official languages after Russian, and eight ethnic groups with over 100,000 people in a population of about three million. Less than 5 per cent are ethnic Russians. If the president dismisses a head of a region and fills the vacancy temporarily, an election must take place within six months. Needless to say, it is important for Putin to have governors in place who support the policies of the central government. As of June 2019, 70 of the governors were members of the UR. *** As he had done in earlier terms, Putin began nominating new governors shortly after the inauguration ceremony in 2018. For the most part, these appointments followed the resignations of incumbents whose electorates produced low results for United Russia. He dismissed the governor of Magadan Region, and resignations came from heads of the Sakha, Tyumen, Altai, Yakutia and Yamal-Nenets republics. The Altai Territory and Yakutia had the lowest support for Putin among all the regional governorships. Some of the resigning officials were offered other, presumably pre-arranged, posts in government.5 One can assume that Putin’s nominees for governorships are people whom he regards as both loyal and competent, though sometimes these qualities are not enough. Many of the regions are dominated by local ‘clans’ who manipulate local authorities and business combines, making it very difficult for new governors, especially if they come from the outside, to implement centralized planning for the national benefit. In theory, governors are supposed to be from the region in question, or closely associated with it, but that rule does not always hold up. During the September 2018 election cycle, most of the Kremlin’s favoured gubernatorial aspirants did well, although at least four of the UR-sponsored incumbents failed to reach a majority in the first round and fell to candidates from the LDRP or the CPRF in a re-run. The anti-pension reform campaign was a major contributor to this turn of events. After the election, Putin

The Russian Federation  57 replaced three governors who would have difficulty winning in the next series of votes and two more resigned on their own.6 The old guard was vulnerable, as Putin looked for younger, administrativeminded personnel. For example, at age 30 the new acting head of Tyumen and subsequent electoral victor, Dmitry Artyukhov, was the youngest such office-holder in post-Soviet history. One of the replaced governors was St. Petersburg’s Georgy Poltavchenko, who had held the post for seven years. The Governor of Kursk, Aleksandr Mikhailov, gave up early in October after 13 years in the office. Ten more republic heads were dismissed or quit before the year was out.7 The UR and the Kremlin launched a second round of pressure against governors they wanted to move in March 2019, encouraging some to give notice and dismissing others. Elections in 16 regions were scheduled for that year. The governors of Chelyabinsk, Altai and Kalmykia resigned. Among those who fell in disgrace was Mikhail Ignatiev, head of the Chuvash Republic who was fired in January 2020 for insulting local firefighters and also allowing his local officials to treat regular citizens badly. He was expelled from the UR party as well.8 In addition to new gubernatorial resignations and nominations, arrests of several key regional figures for corruption, such as former governor of Khabarovsk Viktor Ishaev in 2019, prompted some Russian analysts to think that the Kremlin was losing control over the regions to local clans. Increased levels of regional protest activity seemed to confirm this notion. Noting that the UR had lost a few mayoralty and gubernatorial seats to the LDPR and CPRF, Tatyana Stanovaya foresaw rifts opening up among the siloviki, disrupting the nationwide power vertikal established by Putin and sustained by them.9 This may have been wishful thinking, for the UR was still an unchallenged political force almost everywhere. The crises of 2020 were politicized for the fall gubernatorial elections (see Chapter 3). Communist and LDPR candidates faulted the government for the extent of the pandemic and its debilitating social consequences, while the UR declared that electing its nominees was necessary for the post-pandemic national economic recovery plan. Language matters An increasingly important and controversial matter for the Federation is the issue of language and the right to an education in a mother tongue. Although the population of the Federation is nearly 80 per cent ethnic Russian and the sole official language of the state is Russian, there are around 185 different ethnic groups designated as nationalities and 21 of the 85 components of the Federation are nominal homelands of peoples other than Russians. The largest minority after Russians is Tatar, with slightly over 10 per cent of the population, followed distantly by Ukrainians, Bashkirs, Chuvash and Chechens. Minorities in reasonably large numbers locally have had the right to be taught at least partially in their native language. Individual republics

58  The Russian Federation can declare more than one official language. Hundreds of newspapers, magazines, TV channels and radio stations use minority languages, and there are myriad public organizations and cultural entities whose purpose is to maintain local languages and cultures. During Putin’s final half-decade, this phenomenon was strained by the Kremlin’s emphasis on a patriotism that accentuates Russians and Russian culture. The issue of language training attracted national attention when, in July 2017, Putin attended a meeting of the Council on Interethnic Relations (est. 2012) in Yoshkar-Ola, the capital of Mari-el. The agenda prioritized the implementation of the State National Policy in the regions, and ways and means to preserve ethno-cultural diversity in the Federation. When it came to language instruction, Putin made his position clear: in the field of teaching the Russian language and languages of ​​ the peoples of Russia in schools. I want to remind you, dear friends, that the Russian language for us is the state language, the language of interethnic communication, and it cannot be replaced with anything, it is a natural  spiritual framework of our entire multinational country. Everyone should know it.10 He added that, while everyone has the right to learn the language of their forebears, no one should be compelled to do so. He meant, of course, that ethnic Russians should not be forced to learn a language that was not his or her native language and was unique to their region. This was the basic tenet of a new language law passed in 2017 that increased hours allocated for Russian language and culture, decreased the number of school hours per week in a native language and made learning it voluntary. The indigenous language had been compulsory in some republics. Whereas the Kremlin’s interest in these matters was both to make Russia more uniform and more efficient, local cultural leaders saw the language law as a threat to their own cultures. While Putin also assumed that Russian speaking might generate a greater level of patriotism among non-Russians, non-Russians worried that the language law might limit their access to government employment. These matters were political ones for activists in Tatarstan, Chuvashia, Bashkortostan and Yakutia, who protested language issues regularly, often with one-person pickets. Such concerns prompted the creation of the Democratic Congress of the Peoples of Russia, which opposed the language bill because it made the ‘mother tongues and state languages of the republics … elective subjects [in schools], losing state support’.11 Language activism burst out again in Tatarstan in February 2020, after school officials cut optional language instruction in Tatar from four to two hours a week. Although quiescent in most republics, the language question remained a source of unrest that could spread.12 The matter of language and ethnicity attracted attention during discussion of the constitutional amendments in the winter of 2020. By referring to Russian as the language of the ‘state-forming’ people, rather than merely the

The Russian Federation  59 national language of the Federation, the amended Constitution (Art. 68) could alienate up to 20 per cent of the population whose mother tongue is not Russia. The amendment also undercut the traditional idea of Russia as a multinational state, a concept confirmed by Putin himself when he wrote in 2012 that ‘inter-ethnic harmony is one of our country’s key requisites’, and that ‘hundreds of ethnic groups live in their native lands alongside Russians. The development of vast lands throughout Russia’s history has been a joint affair between many different peoples.’13 In that paper, titled ‘Russia: The Nationality Question,’ which served as part of Putin’s campaign for the presidency that year, he spoke of Russia as a ‘multi-ethnic civilization with Russian culture at its core’. His purpose then, Ulrich Schmid wrote, was in part to mute aggressive Russian nationalism by presenting ethnic Russians as the ‘link holding together the fragile Russian (Rossiiskii) multi-ethnic state’. Eight years later, the new constitutional wording represented an official proclamation of Russian dominance of the Federation. The fact that ethnic Russians do not form a majority in some republics in the North Caucasus (e.g. Dagestan, Ingushetia, Chechnya) or elsewhere (e.g. Tatarstan, Sakha), makes the change a potentially explosive one.14 Coronavirus pandemic and the federation When Putin handed the management of the coronavirus pandemic off to regional leaderships, he professed to be doing so because of the vast differences in size, population numbers and general demography of the Federation’s components. He assumed, too, that the infection would strike in different places at different times and with different levels of severity. In these assumptions, he was quite right, yet he might also have intended to shift blame if things went wrong. Unwittingly, by decentralizing responsibility Putin may also disrupted the power vertikal. We have seen that the president’s popularity dipped to record depths during the pandemic. Left in charge of crisis management within their jurisdictions, regional governors and mayors gained authority and, sometimes, popularity. Moscow’s Sobyanin was a case in point. Even Putin’s strongman image slipped and all his hopes for a glorious 2020 faded away.15 As one Russian pundit put it, ‘the pandemic has weakened Putin’s vertical of power and intensified conflict within the country’s ruling elite’. While that judgement remains to be seen, there is little doubt that some, perhaps many, governors gained local public support that they otherwise might not have had.16 COVID-19 divided the components themselves. When some of the subject republics mooted closing down their internal borders, Prime Minister Mishustin called the practice illegal. That didn’t prevent Ramzan Kadyrov from giving people a five-day notice to get out, or back in, before he banned entry and exit from Chechnya in April.17 Chechnya, where police patrolled the streets to enforce self-isolation, had the lowest rate of coronavirus of any republic in the North Caucasus, whereas other republics in the area, such as

60  The Russian Federation Dagestan, Ingushetia and North Ossetia, had much higher rates per capita than anywhere else in Russia. Poverty and distrust of officials were factors in the asymmetrical spread of the disease.18 As of mid-May, more than 40 of the 700 deaths registered in Dagestan (most of them officially attributed to ‘community-acquired pneumonia’) were healthcare workers. These data came from Dagestan’s health minister, Dzhamaludin Gadzhiibragimov, whose admission quickly attracted headlines in Russian and international media. Putin reacted by sending immediate aid that the republic should have had earlier, and also blaming Dagestanis for gathering in crowds.19 Religious affiliation opened another crack in the unity of the Federation’s response to the pandemic. In some areas, for example, Islamic leaders refused to shut down communal prayers and festivities during Ramadan week even though Mecca and Medina, two of Islam’s holiest cities, were closed to the faithful. The Orthodox Church also caused confusion, as some priests refused to follow the Patriarch’s request to restrict public worship. Several towns in other components of the Federation, including Crimea, set up roadblocks, and by early April almost all of the republics and regions had instituted lockdowns with only essential traffic allowed to enter. Although Mishustin continued to insist that the federal government was in charge and that neither municipalities nor subjects could close internal borders unilaterally, many areas ignored Moscow in this matter. The de facto delegation of decision-making authority to regional leaders instilled levels of confusion about the order of command.20 Whatever the effectiveness of the Duma, it too was decimated by the pandemic. Within a few weeks of its return in September 2020, for example, 18 of its members were hospitalized. This brought the total number of deputies infected over the previous six months to 60. Although they all recovered, constant disruption of personnel and no-shows slowed the work of committees, the work of which was done mostly by video conferencing in the autumn.

Crimea Crimea’s current position as a new component of the Russian Federation endures as a bitterly controversial issue in the international arena, and a permanent bone of contention between Moscow and Kyiv. The status of Crimea has been a sensitive one since the dissolution of the USSR. Part of Russia since 1783, when it was taken from the Ottoman Empire after a series of Russo-Turkish Wars, it became the seat of Russia’s prestigious Black Sea Fleet. The peninsula persisted as an important strategic part of Imperial Russia, a theatre for war between Russia on the one hand, Britain and France on the other (Crimean War, 1854–6), and subject matter for many of Russia’s most famous writers, among them Pushkin and Tolstoy. Crimea was an Autonomous SSR within the RSFSR from 1921 to 1945, when it was demoted to autonomous oblast ranking. The oblast was turned over to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954 as a commemorative ‘gift’ from

The Russian Federation  61 Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Neither the people nor the administrators of Crimea were consulted. Crimea recovered standing as an autonomous republic within Ukraine when the UkrSSR became an independent country in 1991, and renamed itself the Republic of Crimea in 1992. A few months later, the Crimean parliament proclaimed self-government within Ukraine. Its relationship with Kyiv was uneasy.21 Yuriy Meshkov established a movement for independence in late 1991 and registered it the next year as the Republican Party of Crimea. The Crimean parliament created its own office of president in 1993 and Meshkov, campaigning on an independence platform, won the position in 1994 with over 73 per cent of votes cast. His efforts were stifled by the Ukrainian government, which abolished the office of Crimean president and replaced it with an envoy chosen in Kyiv. The point here is that the annexation of 2014 was not something that the Russian military forced on an unwilling Crimean population, though it was probably a startled one. The Ukrainian census tabulated in 2001 concluded that ethnic Russians made up 60.4 per cent of the people living in Crimea in 2014 and that 77 per cent of all inhabitants were native Russian-speakers. Only 10.4 per cent spoke Ukrainian at home. The territory is also the nominal homeland of Crimean Tatars, who were almost all deported to Siberia by Stalin in 1944. Slowly trickling back to their homeland from the late 1960s, they returned massively only by the late 1980s and early 1990s, and their territorial (property) prerogatives are still disputed. The Crimean Tatar Qurultay, or representative body, has mixed opinions on whether its people would be better off as part of Ukraine or Russia, neither of which is appealing, or independence, which they know is an unlikely scenario. In 2001, Tatars made up about 11 per cent of the Crimean population, and ethnic Ukrainians 24 per cent. After 2014, Tatar numbers neared those of ethnic Ukrainian Crimeans, whose percentage in the population fell. From the Russian perspective, Crimea was a ‘red line’ at which the expansion of NATO had to be stopped (see Chapter 5). Although Russian organizations and political parties, Zhirinovsky’s LDPR for example, were constantly meddling in Crimean affairs in the 1990s, the Russian government was more concerned about reaching agreements with Ukraine on housing the Black Sea Fleet. This was achieved in 1997, when a Russia–Ukraine Treaty of Friendship granted Russia a 20-year lease on Sevastopol. In 2010, the recently elected Yanukovych government extended that lease to 2042 in return for investments and a 30 per cent cut in natural gas price to the value of about $40 billion. Even though Ukraine confirmed its constitutional posture as a neutral state in the 1990s, and Russia guaranteed Ukrainian territorial integrity, joint naval exercises with NATO and the Ukrainian navy in 1997 (Sea-Breeze-97) kept the spectre of Ukraine joining NATO alive in the mind’s eye of the Kremlin. The possibility in 2014, indeed probability after the Euromaidan uprising, of Ukraine acceding to NATO and Sevastopol becoming a NATO base forced Russia’s hand. Putin had already warned a NATO–Russia

62  The Russian Federation Council in 2008 that if Ukraine was admitted to NATO he would take ‘adequate measures’. NATO paid no attention. He made it clearer in 2014 after the fact, telling a questioner that when the infrastructure of a military bloc is moving toward our border, it causes us some concerns and questions. We needed to take some steps in response … NATO ships would have ended up in the city of Russian navy glory – Sevastopol.22 To Western leaders, this was an excuse; to Russians it was a reason. *** Along with geopolitical complications, Crimea was still the source of multiple economic and legal issues outstanding between Russia and Ukraine in 2018. In May, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled that Russia owed 18 Ukrainian businesses and one private entity a total of $159 million for assets seized on the peninsula. Russia’s Ministry of Justice refused to recognize the Court’s jurisdiction in this case and rejected the idea of payment.23 Shortly thereafter, Ukraine expanded its sanctions regime against Russian individuals and entities to include over 1,000 persons and 400 companies altogether, and continued to blockade Crimea by land.24 The inability of Crimeans to cross easily into Ukraine, trade with Ukraine or access Russia via Ukraine, and Moscow’s own desire to permanently link Crimea to the Russian mainland, persuaded Putin to construct a rail and vehicle bridge across the Kerch Strait, upgrade airports, build thermal power stations and tie Crimea into the Russian electric grid system. Huge groundwork projects such as these came at great expense. The Russian military rebuilt defences and enlarged the Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol. Five years after the annexation, it was difficult to imagine how any return of Crimea to Ukraine would come about without a European war. The rhetoric of race and name-calling confused relationships as well. For instance, Crimeans were angered when a member of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and professor of linguistics, Irina Farion, called all Russiaspeaking Ukrainian citizens mentally retarded. Although her reference was to the people of the Donbas, it had equally poor resonance in Crimea. The fact that at least 30 per cent of the population throughout Ukraine, let alone Crimea, spoke Russian at home before the civil war broke out and many still speak a combination of Ukrainian and Russian (Surzhik), made her comments symptomatic of a divide that may never heal.25 Having lost the prominent place it had held in Ukraine’s interim government in 2014, in a parliamentary election, Svoboda’s extreme nationalism as defined by PACE (‘racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic’) is nonetheless still widely shared. Farion, who lost her seat by a large margin too, can spread her venom as a member of the Ukrainian Language Department at Lviv Polytechnic. Instead of fading into the background after Ukraine gained official association with the EU in 2015, far-right and anti-democratic nationalists strut with impunity

The Russian Federation  63 outside the Rada in Ukraine, and inadvertently stoke pro-Russian sentiments in Crimea.26 It may well be that the extreme nationalists in Ukraine, like Farion, are more bark than bite, but that does not minimize the perception of threat among Russian speakers in Ukraine and Crimea. A VTsIOM poll conducted in March 2019, in Crimea, showed that 60 per cent of the respondents viewed accession to the Russian Federation as ‘undoubtedly positive’ and another 24 per cent said it was “rather positive’; 83 per cent said they would vote for admission to Russia if a referendum were held that week.27 Granted, VTsIOM is a Russian state-funded polling institution, yet the results of its survey coincide with findings obtained by North American, European and even Ukrainian polling agencies regularly since 2014.28 That did not mean that there were no domestic difficulties in Crimea. There were plenty. Western and Ukrainian sanctions against Crimean businesses, and food price inflation were among the difficulties faced by the people of the peninsula. Water shortages caused by a semi-drought were exacerbated when Kyiv ordered the North Crimean Canal blocked. The canal provides Crimea with 85 per cent of its water, and its failure created political, health and agricultural problems.29 Political issues, including resistance from Tatars and political chaos in the city of Sevastopol, disrupted social calm. The latter problem was symbolized in the fact that, in July 2019, the city district ‘welcomed’ its third governor in five years. Mikhail Razvozhaev, former acting head of Khakassia, was entrusted with completing large-scale development projects left undone by his predecessors, resolve conflicts with and between local clan bosses and to raise the UR profile in the city. Clarifying the line of command between civilian and military authorities in Sevastopol was also on the agenda.30 Russian foreign relations, and its domestic budget, were consumed by the Ukraine dilemma generally, and Crimea particularly, for every year since 2014. This unresolved issue may have been another reason why Putin wanted to stay on. In the midst of the constitutional furore in 2020, Putin flew to Sevastopol as part of a working trip through the Southern Federal District. He met with representatives of public organizations en masse and separately with head of the Crimean Republic, Sergei Aksyonov, and Razvozhaev. The occasion was the 6th anniversary of the peninsula’s ‘reunification’ with Russia. Putin gave a rousing patriotic speech in which he presented that event as a ‘fair and, as time has shown, long-expected event both for Crimeans and for the entire country’.31 He was speaking to the converted. At the public meeting, he boasted of the ‘progressive’ development of the region, including the restoration of energy supply and infrastructure building, such as the ‘Crimean bridge’. A speaker from the All-Russian Popular Front (ONF) praised the inclusion of a ban on ‘the alienation of territories’ in the amended constitution, while pointing out that the new rule preventing anyone who once held a non-Russian citizenship from becoming president discriminated against Crimeans. Putin replied that exemptions are made in the document for residents of Crimea and Sevastopol.

64  The Russian Federation In an extraordinarily wide-ranging session, speakers from the floor asked about such things as the writing of history, health care and pensions for veterans, hospital services, education, fighting the coronavirus and communicating accurate information about it. Concerns about protecting archaeological sites, museum holdings and memorials, and the environment, were raised as well. There seemed to be no one present from the Tatar cohort. In his turn, Putin urged everyone to vote for the constitutional amendments in April and told the pro-Russian audience mostly what they wanted to hear. Although there were kernels of truth in the rosy picture he and his audience painted, independent observers were well aware that the place of Crimea as part of the RF remains a wellspring of international friction that is not going to go away anytime soon.

Siberia and Russia’s far East Russia’s Siberia and Far East featured prominently in Putin’s annual address to the Federal Assembly in 2019, as they had many times in the past. In touting infrastructure projects, including major extensions of the BAM (Baikal– Amur) and TransSiberia Railways, he asserted that these regions were central to his plans for economic development and the state’s ability to raise ‘the quality of life of people’.32 These too were old stories. To achieve his ambitions for the huge area, he needed labour. Herein lay another, unexpected, problem. Large-scale migration fuelled white nationalism in Russia, characterized by rhetoric about an ‘invasion’ and mythical rising crime rates (see Chapter 9), just as it did in the US, the UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Tensions shaped by xenophobia made work in Russia less attractive to migrant labour and, by 2019–20, economic conditions shaped by sanctions, oil price wars and the pandemic made it even less so. The necessary labour became difficult to find. Siberia deals with climate change – or doesn’t Adjusting to climate change complicated daily life and labour in Siberia and the Far East still further. While Moscow and St. Petersburg ‘enjoyed’ their warmest January (2020) in recorded history, dramatic planning modifications had to be made for Siberia and the Arctic, where historically warm temperatures were also recorded. Scientists in Russia and Finland testified in February that Russia’s north was heating up more than twice the global average, bringing with it unprecedented problems, such as thawing tundra and Arctic ice, and massive releases of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Bearing in mind that about 15 per cent of its oil and 80 per cent of its gas operations rest on permafrost, global warming has unique implications for Russia. Among other things, it threatens serious damage to pipelines, roads, houses and other structures built on permafrost. Russia doesn’t have the technology or resources to protect this infrastructure. Even cities like Norilsk are facing major issues as the soil thaws.33

The Russian Federation  65 In the case of Norilsk these issues came home to roost on 29 May 2020, when thawing permafrost contributed to the collapse of a huge diesel fuel oil storage tank close to the city. Over 20,000 tons of toxic fuel spilled into the surrounding soil and a river that feeds a major lake and other rivers vital to the Taymyr region. Local authorities reacted slowly, warning Moscow two full days later. Putin declared a state of emergency and held a video conference with Emergency Measures Minister Zinichev, head of Rosprirodnadzor Svetlana Radionova, the governor of Krasnoyarsk Territory and several others on 3 June, and demanded immediate action. Zinichev maintained that the spill was fully contained by 5 June. He erred, or prevaricated. By that time the fuel had spread about 20 kilometres, seriously tainting water sources and soil, probably for many years to come. TASS announced that the concentration of ‘harmful substances’ in waters around Norilsk had risen by 200 times, and Greenpeace Russia termed it the worst spill in the history of the Arctic Ocean. Clearly, the long-term clean-up will cost billions of rubles for health care, water and soil clean-up, and general repair.34 The contaminates seeped into Lake Pyasino, an Arctic glacial body of water that feeds the important Pyasino River that in turn flows into the Kara Sea and Arctic Ocean. Vladimir Potanin, main shareholder in Norilsk Nickel, said the company would pay for the clean-up. Four criminal cases related to it were opened, one of them against the mayor of Norilsk for negligence and failure to organize containment of the spill quickly enough. In July, the government fined Nornickel ₽148 billion ($2 bln), and in November a report by an environmental consultancy group listed design flaws in the tank itself and management failures as part of the problem.35 Unfortunately, the diesel fuel was only one of a series of climate and environmental crises that hit Russia’s North in 2020 (see Chapter 9). Moscow’s first reaction to climate alerts was to move the Arctic up on its schedule for state investments, both as a military front line and as a source of wealth. Arctic sea ice shrank so rapidly, from 7.9 million sq. kms. in 1980 to 4.6 million in 2018, that tankers may now carry LNG produced by Novatek’s Yamal facilities and Gazprom’s Sakhalin-2 project through Russia’s Northeast Passage to Europe and Asia relatively unimpeded (see Chapter 4). Russia’s fleet of strengthened tankers has become more active, and the government pledged 11 billion rubles over the period 2019–25 to develop the route. The rapid warming has left Siberia and the Russian Far East more vulnerable to fires, drought and floods.36 Northern sea route New economic opportunities presented by the warming prompted an accelerated militarization of the Russian North, which includes almost half of the world’s Arctic coastline. The Kremlin ordered the construction of new bases and stepped up air and naval activity there. In addition to protecting the untapped resources of the Arctic, Russian military personnel were deployed to guard the Northern Sea Route, which was expected to be a key component

66  The Russian Federation of Beijing’s Polar Silk Road connecting China with Europe via the Bering Sea. The same potential prompted Russia to try to reach accommodation with Canada in the Arctic, as both countries want to ward off attempts by the US and China to ‘internationalize’ the Arctic.37 Speaking to an Arctic Forum in St. Petersburg in April 2019, Putin announced that cargo shipments across the Northern Sea Route were about to increase dramatically and that three nuclear icebreakers were under construction to add to Russia’s existing fleet of four. He outlined special tax relief incentives to encourage foreign and domestic investment in the Arctic, funding for eco-tourism and a new Russian Arctic National Park. Finn, Danish, Icelandic and Norwegian leaders attended the meeting, along with some 3,600 businesspeople and officials.38 Putin especially hoped to attract foreign investors in the construction of port hubs at either end of the Northern Sea Route. To do so, he had to break through the thick coating of scepticism built up over years of failed grandiose schemes related to development in Russia’s North, and that proved to be a formidable task.39 Although some of the foundational projects linked to the Northern Sea Route were already underway, the government approved a vast 15-year undertaking in late 2019 that was signed into law only on 5 March 2020. Titled ‘On the Basics of State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Arctic for the Period until 2035,’ it included icebreakers, improved port facilities, rail links and mapping projects. 40 Russia will chair the Arctic Council in 2021–23. The diesel fuel spill was just the latest roadblock thrown in the way of Moscow’s many years of trying to develop and modernize Russia’s Arctic. Cost overruns and corrupt officials continue to plague northern projects, while inland transportation facilities, such as roads, airfields and bridges, are victims of climate change and permafrost melt. Pride of place in the document went to the Northern Sea Route, one of the few projects that delivers a strategic advantage over China by providing a faster trade route to European markets than the Suez Canal.41 In 2020, a re-emergence of Siberian regionalism complicated an already difficult situation for the Kremlin. The region’s vast spaces (two-thirds of the Federation), home to only about 20 per cent of the country’s population, are where most of the country’s natural resources are located. Siberiaks believe they are short-changed in the value of those resources. While traditional irritations have always been easily triggered by unwanted political decisions made in Moscow, recent land-use concessions to Chinese companies and, more importantly, the uncontrolled second COVID-19 wave brought unrest to the boiling-over point late in the year.42 The expression of anger in Khabarovsk (see Chapter 3) may have been the tip of the iceberg.

The North Caucasus The North Caucasus posed a quite different challenge for the Russian people and authorities to deal with in both the short and long terms.

The Russian Federation  67 Thrust into the prime ministerial office a matter of days after the second Chechen war broke out, Putin was well aware of the fragility of the Federation. In addition to fighting a civil war in the North Caucasus, he had to deal with tens of thousands of refugees flooding into Dagestan and Ingushetia, where violence and corruption were also endemic. These two republics plus Chechnya are Islamic, poor and heavily subsidized by Moscow. Moreover, the border between Chechnya and Ingushetia, constituents of the Federation in 1992 that existed as one republic in Soviet days, was not yet settled in 2000. Old territorial disputes still simmered between Ingushetia and South Ossetia as well. In the former case, the border was not demarcated finally until 2018 and, in the latter case, the territorial issues were instrumental in Ingush terrorist participation in the Beslan tragedy (see ahead). Within a week of becoming prime minister, Putin introduced a package of measures to bring ‘order and discipline’ to Dagestan specifically and stabilization to the Caucasus generally. ‘Lawbreaking and manifestations of terrorism’ throughout the region had to be dealt with firmly and immediately, Putin told a meeting of the Russian Security Council and the newly-formed federal anti-terrorist commission. In the long run, he said, the ‘conditions and causes’ that give rise to the violence must be eradicated so that Russia might find peace and unity.43 Though sometimes eased, various forms of these ‘conditions and causes’ popped up like ‘whack-a-moles’ for the next two decades no matter Moscow’s efforts to tame them. Constant tensions, unemployment, territorial rifts and religious extremism were still features of Caucasus life as Putin’s fourth term started. Attempting, again, to resolve such issues, he named Major General Aleksandr Matovnikov presidential envoy to the North Caucasus Federal District. Formerly a close associate of Viktor Zolotov, director of the Russian National Guard, and an agent with Special Operations Forces, Matovnikov’s experiences fit the region’s needs, or so it seemed.44 Less than a year after that appointment, the head of the MID’s Anti-Extremist Centre in Ingushetia, Ibragim Eldzharkiev, and his brother, were murdered in Moscow, reportedly as a result of a ‘blood feud’. He had been named to the post after his predecessor was imprisoned for torturing prisoners.45 The turnstile search for a capable presidential representative in the North Caucasus may have been halted by the appointment of Yuri Chaika as the new envoy to the district in January 2020. Changes were made in Dagestan as well. A series of gubernatorial replacements kept Dagestan unsettled at the top. Ramzan Abdulatipov resigned in 2017. After nearly a year of interim leadership, Vladimir Vasiliev took over in October 2018, only to resign in September 2020. Putin appointed Sergei Melikov interim head. Vasiliev was named to the group of presidential advisers.46 Ethnic antagonisms bubbling under the surface burst into the open as economic conditions worsened in 2018. The first major ethnic-related incident that year came in Kabardino-Balkaria where disputes over historical events

68  The Russian Federation brought widespread fighting between Balkars and Kabardins. Local police and National Guard troops were called in to maintain order in several villages.47 Aggravating the situation was the fact that the Caucasus had the highest unemployment rates in Russia, especially among young males. For example, while the national average for unemployed was a low 4.4 per cent in the fall of 2019, two digit numbers were the norm in several of the Caucasus Republics: Ingushetia (26.2%), Chechnya (13.4%) and Dagestan (11.7%).48 Only Chechnya remained relatively stable, though that was clearly a result of the strongman tactics applied with impunity by its leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, and the personalized relationship between Kadyrov and Putin. The Chechen leader’s aggressive support of Russia as a great power and his antiWest rhetoric made him an ideal point man for the Kremlin in the North Caucasus (Figure 2.2).49 Although the number of violent acts in the North Caucasus dropped by nearly 40 per cent between 2010 and 2017,50 carnage and corruption were ever present. For instance, two traffic policemen were killed and another was wounded when their car was fired upon in Dagestan’s Kizilyurt district in July 2018.51 In the meantime Dagestan’s prime minister, Abdusamad Gamidov, was under investigation for corruption, as was his minister for public health. Troubles in the North Caucasus had ripple effects as far away as Moscow, where anywhere between 20 and 200 students from that area, mostly Ingush, were arrested at the University of Moscow in December. Reports were confusing, but it seemed that police and the National Guard seized drugs and airguns as ‘preventative measures’.52 The North Caucasus was unsettled further when a long-discussed territorial swap between Ingushetia and Chechnya (see ahead) triggered existing antipathies. Rallies in Ingushetia against the exchange that began in October 2018 and continued off and on for months finally forced the governor, YunusBek Yevkurov, to call in the militia to re-establish order. He was induced to resign in June 2019 after the Russian Constitutional Court decided that the swap was not anti-constitutional.53 Holder of the position since 2008, Yevkurov had been considered a pro-Kremlin stabilizing force in the region. Perhaps for that reason, he was the target of at least two assassination attempts. When the demonstrations morphed into attacks on corruption and calls for transparency, he was pushed out by Moscow – though not far. Putin named him a deputy minister of defence.54 Recognizing the futility of his previous assumption that only outsiders could bring some semblance of calm to Ingushetia, Putin appointed, a member of a well-connected Ingush family, Makhmud-Ali Kalimatov, in Yevkurov’s stead.55 Since most of the North Caucasus is subsidized heavily by Moscow, the pandemic of 2020 exacerbated local government budget shortfalls and caused a huge share of small businesses in the region that rely on the ‘grey’ market for profit to fail altogether. The number of actual unemployed, already elevated, soared because many of the employed are not registered as such. The people of the Caucasus also have the lowest saving rates in Russia.56 More trouble is inevitable.

Source: GPF. Geopolitical Futures. https://geopoliticalfutures.com/north-caucasus-russias-southern-buffer/. Note: Dotted lines in Georgia (South Caucasus) show Abkhazia on left and South Ossetia on right, both self-proclaimed independent republics, recognized as such by Russia, but few other international states.

The Russian Federation  69

Figure 2.2  Russia’s North Caucasus.

70  The Russian Federation Chechnya Stability in Chechnya was a product of both a forced calm maintained by the Kadyrov regime and also a general population that was tired of mayhem. Old scores between Russians and Chechens were re-opened in October when the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) finally made a decision on the fate of 18 people who ‘disappeared’ during a Russian military raid on a Chechen village in 2000. Relatives who took their case to the ECHR via a Dutch-based NGO were awarded €1.5 million in damages. There was no appeal, and it’s doubtful that Moscow ever paid.57 Given the political ties between Kadyrov and Putin, it was unlikely that the Chechen government would push the issue very strongly, if at all. Indeed, Kadyrov could very well be the subject of such charges himself. Chechnya returned to international headlines in May 2018 when, in a bizarre turn of events for the Russian LGBT community, the Russian Justice Ministry announced that its investigation of accusation of harsh discrimination against gays in Chechnya had to be aborted because it could not find any representatives of the gay community to interview. Stopping short of pretending that there were no gays in Chechnya, as Kadyrov had alleged, it called for representatives to present themselves to the investigators.58 Not surprisingly, no one dared do so, and reports of further anti-gay purges in Chechnya surfaced in January 2019 (see Chapter 8).59 Stability, or repression, was such in Chechnya that it was one of only two Federation components (the other was Chukotka) in which mass political demonstrations were not common in the spring or summer of 2019.60 Moreover, Kadyrov had become a stand-in for Putin in the Middle East. In August 2019, he welcomed Islamic leaders from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, the UAE and Kuwait at the grand opening of a huge mosque at Shali, Chechnya, and paid an official visit to Jordan, the UAE and Bahrain in October. According to one commentator, Kadyrov began to play the role of Russia’s unofficial emissary for Islamic affairs.61 Chechnya was also the one republic that declared itself protected from COVID-19, in part because Kadyrov closed its borders to foreigners and all but essential traffic – medical personnel and food supplies – from the rest of Russia early on, and in part because Chechen police were given strict orders to act against anyone seen to break self-isolation and distancing rules. A general lockdown was announced on 28 March.62 Ironically, Kadyrov came down with the disease himself. Militants took advantage of the pandemic, especially in Chechnya and Ingushetia. Counter-terrorist operations were introduced in parts of Grozny in October 2020, and there were shootouts between extremists and police in Ingushetia. Kadyrov blamed outsiders coming in from Syria, analysts suggest that Kadyrov’s own brutal practices generated home-grown violence.63

The Russian Federation  71

The Islamicist cancer: Terrorism The North Caucasus has served as a wellspring for another source of anxiety on the part of Russian citizens – terrorism. Although acts of terrorism in Russia decreased in frequency during Putin’s two final terms, scattered horrendous acts were nonetheless a feature of his entire tenure in office.64 Indeed, it opened with the previous mentioned apartment bombings in September 1999, killing civilians in Moscow and two other cities. As we have seen, those acts of terrorism helped persuade the Russian population to support the brutal bombing campaign in Chechnya. At the time, Putin rationalized his actions against Chechnya as an ‘anti-terrorist’ operation in a piece written for the New York Times (14 November 1999), where he insisted that Americans would react in the same way under similar circumstances. ‘Terrorism todays knows no boundaries’, he wrote, while noting links between Chechnya’s Basaev and Osama bin Laden. The essay was published in Russia two days later, alongside a piece warning that Bin Laden was preparing to attack America, and another that described a public meeting of Islamic fundamentalists in London where a Holy War was declared against Russia.65 This warning and a later one that Bin Laden was preparing attacks were ignored until the New York tragedy of 11 September 2001 woke people up. International terrorism became everyone’s bête noire at that time. Explosions in Moscow metro stations in 2000, 2001, 2004 and 2010 set a pattern and confirmed for Russians that the anti-terrorist operation was necessary. Terrorist acts have killed Russians almost every year of the twentyfirst century, in numbers ranging from 1200 in 2004 to 24 in 2015. In 2013, for instance, Putin declared to a meeting of the Russian Interior Ministry board that 637 terrorism-related crimes were recorded in Russia in 2012, including 24 actual acts of terrorism. Prosecutor General Chaika later reported that 565 of these acts were committed in the North Caucasus, where over 600 law enforcement officers were killed or wounded.66 This was not an atypical year. A much better-trained security force, an alert and fearful public and restrictions related to public assemblies, especially around metro and other transport stations, helped curb the number of incidents. Russian opponents of their government and Western observers treat the strict rules solely as tools for reducing and controlling public political protest. Russian officialdom describes them as a means to protect citizens from terrorism, vandalism and disruption. Whatever the case, the vulnerability of certain sites in Russia and the frequency of such attacks are legitimate reasons for strict security measures, which includes the prohibition of rallies and demonstrations at select historical and collection sites. Russia’s reminders that the terrorist threat was an international one rang true when two young brothers originally from the North Caucasus set off a device that killed three and wounded over 100 people during the Boston Marathon in April 2013. It was learned later that Russian intelligence

72  The Russian Federation services had warned the FBI in 2011 that the older brother and his mother were ‘adherents of radical Islam’. The Russian media again carried ‘we told you so’ commentary, as it had in 2011.67 Al-Qaeda and ISIS relentlessly called for jihad in Russia and were responsible for most of the many violent acts, including a 2017 suicide bomber who killed 15 people and injured dozens more in a St. Petersburg Metro station. Some of the earlier acts were related directly to the Chechen war effort; for example, in 2002 Chechen rebels took over 900 hostages in Moscow’s Dubrovka Theatre where the musical Nord-Ost was playing, and demanded that Russian forces withdraw from Chechnya. Some hostages were released, a few escaped and others were shot. After a three-day standoff, the authorities released a gas into the building and attacked, over 130 people were killed as a result of both sides firing. Blame-shifting was the order of the day. Not long afterward a rock festival in Moscow was terrorized by two female suicide bombers, who killed 18 and injured many more. Two other female terrorists were responsible for explosions at two Moscow metro stations in 2010. Other devastated targets included the Domodedovo airport in 2011, two bus terminals on the same day in Volgograd in 2013, and a domestic airplane blown up in mid-air in 2015. There were dozens of lesser acts, if there can be such a thing, and many thwarted attempts reported annually by security forces. The terrorist act that left the deepest scars was the seizure of a school in Beslan, South Ossetia. On opening day in September 2004, over 30 Chechen and Ingush militants took teachers, parents and children hostage and again demanded that Russian forces withdraw from Chechnya. Treatment of the hostages was brutal and, after three days of futile negotiations, authorities stormed the building. This time, more than 300 people, including 186 schoolchildren, were killed, and some 800 injured. Once again, the actions of Russian authorities were questionable and questioned, though not many viable alternatives have come to light.68 In December 2019, Putin told the Russian Human Rights Council that the Beslan incident remained an eternal ‘pain’ for him and the country. At that Council meeting, he included vandalism and hooliganism as acts that needed to be pre-empted. He outlined how innocent actions like throwing a plastic bottle during a demonstration could spiral out of control, leading to throwing stones, then ‘shooting and looting stores’. Everyone has the right to protest, he said, but it must be done legally. Putin recognized that there are injustices in Russia, ‘though you can see injustice everywhere’, in Europe and the US.69 He was speaking at a time when courts were still sentencing people for their activities during the electoral rallies in Moscow (see Chapter 3), so his appeal was a general one for order and stability. A fear of terrorism and coloured revolution was the sub-text, which meant that suspicion and clamp downs were too often the first, rather than last, options. Legislation introduced by Putin during his third term granting broader powers to the FSB and other law enforcement agencies to combat extremist

The Russian Federation  73 groups reaped benefits in the spring of 2018. A lengthy investigation into the 2017 bombing at a St. Petersburg metro station resulted in the arrest of 11 suspects identified as members of a radical Islamicist group. Because these individuals did not know each other, rather they communicated by a popular messaging service, Telegram, Roskomnadzor ordered the service to turn in its encryption keys. Telegram appealed; lawsuits ensued; the Kremlin threatened to ban the mobile application, or app, which had 10 million users in Russia. The owner, Pavel Durov, who lives abroad, vowed to maintain the fight. Russia is not alone in this type of effort. The US, the UK and several other countries have also demanded access to encrypted computer traffic because of its potential use by terrorists and organized crime.70 Roskomnadzor began blocking Telegram apps in mid-April and, in a classic Catch-22 situation, sparked public protests (see Chapter 8). Terrorism in the North Caucasus Not surprisingly, the North Caucasus is the most susceptible to terrorism of all Russian regions. Indeed, Putin’s fourth term was greeted with a shootout between militants and special forces in Derbent, Dagestan. Nine terrorists were killed in two separate actions in April 2018. Another militant who, apparently, was planning to attack regional government buildings, was killed in Stavropol.71 Chechnya’s calm was broken too, by an assault on an Orthodox Church that saw two police officers, a member of the church and all four assailants slain. ISIS took credit for the raid. Kadyrov, as usual, impugned an unnamed Western country.72 These confrontations served as a preliminary to a new wave of coordinated strikes against police vehicles and stations across the republic. In mid-August, for example, one officer was killed and three others wounded in four separate acts of violence. Four terrorists were ‘neutralized’ and another was captured. ISIS congratulated itself for these attacks as well.73 In November, a young woman blew herself up as she approached a police station in Grozny. Identified as Karina Spiridonova from Dagestan, she was the only victim.74 There were fewer incidents in 2019, but the year ended with an Islamic State attack on a police post in Magas, capital city of Ingushetia. Another officer was killed, three more were injured, and one 23-year old terrorist was arrested. ISIS again claimed responsibility. A year later Karachay-Cherkessia was hit by a suicide bomber who injured six while blowing himself up near a FSB office in the village of Uchkeken.75 Terrorist acts elsewhere in Russia From the Kremlin’s perspective, the greatest danger in 2018 was the threat of attacks on World Cup events. A massive influx of tourists and games conducted in multiple cities posed a monumental security problem from everything ranging from petty crime to football hooligans, to political terrorists. Experience in making the Winter Olympic Games safe in Sochi in 2014

74  The Russian Federation proved helpful. In April, the FSB professed to have forestalled one plan to conduct a series of raids on World Cup sites by arresting 20 people connected to an ISIS sleeper cell.76 To counter threats to the games issued by ISIS, and against Putin himself, Russian authorities spent up to $480 billion, deployed thousands of police, firefighters and mounted Cossack brigades, drones, antiram barriers, metal detectors on railway and metro lines, and so on (see also Chapter 9).77 Just as the authorities heaved a sigh of relief because World Cup events were kept safe, they were jolted by the country’s worst act of violence in 2018. In October, an explosive device filled with shrapnel and one or more shooters with automatic weapons massacred at least 18 and wounded many more in the Kerch Polytechnic School. Most of the victims were teenage pupils. Within hours an 18-year old student at the college, Vladislav Roslyakov, who apparently took his own life, was named the single guilty party. The Russian National Anti-Terrorism Committee continued to treat the event as a terrorist attack and, because the act took place in Crimea’s port city of Kerch, where Putin had recently opened the bridge connecting Crimea to mainland Russia, suspicion fell on Ukrainian nationalists – at least from the Russian side – thereby raising further tensions between Moscow and Kyiv. Commentators compared the event to the tragedy at Beslan. Putin promised immediate investigation and compensation for the victims’ families, neither of which soothed the fear and anxiety generated by the event.78 A few weeks later the FSB arrested members of an ISIS cell in Tatarstan. Officers seized weapons and extremist literature and detained 17 people in a sweep of 18 different addresses. The ISIS branch, the pan-Islamic Hizb utTahrir, boasted of assaults in several Russian cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod.79 Even central Siberia was not immune to terrorist activities. In April 2019, Russian Spetsnaz forces conducted a two-day sweep in parts of Tyumen. After evacuating about 100 residents, cutting off electricity and streetlighting, two ISIS operatives were killed and two more captured. As an important Siberian business centre, especially energy firms, and a transport hub bordering Kazakhstan, the city is a ready target for Islamicists.80 COVID-19 didn’t stop the terrorist plague. A member of an unnamed banned group was killed in a gun fight in Murmansk during the first week of April 2020. Official reports say the man was planning to plant a bomb and then move to the Middle East.81 At the other end of Russia’s North, FSB agents masquerading as doctors who needed to test them for COVID-19 arrested a trio of terrorists in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. The agents searched their homes and claimed to have found hand grenades and plans to overthrow the government. The three Russian men were airsoft (pellet gun) enthusiasts, had no criminal record or strong religious affiliations.82 When the FSB declared that it had prevented a terrorist plot during a major political protest in Khabarovsk (see Chapter 3) in July 2020, many observers believed this to be a cover for a clampdown against political activists.

The Russian Federation  75 Russian and international anti-terrorism activities The international counter-terrorism scene was set back in June 2018 when the US cut its pledge of $2 million for the UN Counter-Terrorism Office. The fact that the UN decided to exclude NGOs from part of an inaugural conference in June on counter-terrorism was the expressed reason for the cut; the fact that the one-year old office was headed by a Russian, Vladimir Voronkov, was an unstated reason. Even without the US-supported interest groups for key meetings, the conference attracted national security heads from 120 countries and some 100 civil society agencies.83 Apparently, US intelligence agencies provided Russia with information that helped thwart several attacks in Russia. Putin called Trump in December 2019 and thanked him for this help, prompting another flurry of conspiracy theories in Washington.84 In his turn, Shoigu informed intelligence colleagues from the ASEAN in October 2018 that Russian forces in Syria had helped ‘neutralize’ over 87,000 ‘militants’, mostly from ISIS, and destroyed almost all of their infrastructure, while only 112 Russian servicemen lost their lives in the three years of their involvement in the Syria conflict. These numbers are impossible to verify, and it’s not clear how many non-terrorist Syrian civilians also died. Nevertheless, Shoigu’s message contained the sub-theme that a certain percentage of the dead militants were Russian citizens who would not be returning to wreak havoc at home.85 Speaking to the UNSC’s 18th Meeting of Heads of Special Services, Security Agencies and Law-Enforcement Organizations, which gathered in Sochi in late October, 2019, Bortnikov said that law enforcement in Russia foiled 39 planned acts between January and October, killed 32 terrorists and detained another 679. On the FSB’s advice, Roskomnadzor blocked over 8,000 internet sources used by subversive organizations. Bortnikov warned participants that terrorists were increasing their use of drones and hackers, urged all governments to cooperate on anti-terrorist activities, and calculated that about 5,500 citizens of Russia had joined various international organizations. Most of them have had their bank accounts at home frozen and are subject to arrest when, and if, they return to their homeland. Given that the international counter-terrorism data bank lists 116 organizations and over 43,000 names of individuals, he said, the task of countering plots requires the de-politicization of anti-terrorist efforts.86 That isn’t going to happen. In fact, in October 2020 the MVD reported an averted terrorist attack against an administrative building in Moscow by a man identified only as a 21-year-old ‘from the Central Asian region’. According to the FSB, he had hidden components of an explosive device and had plans to leave for a combat zone in the Middle East immediately after the device went off. A report published on the MVD website at about the same time showed that there was an increase in such activities during the first nine months of 2020. Of the 1,851 ‘terrorist’ crimes registered between January and September, 651 were ‘extremist’. Though there was no clear definition of what the police

76  The Russian Federation designated as ‘terrorist’, those numbers still reveal a lot of potential antipersonnel violence.87 Opponents of ISIS, including Russia, were pleased in October 2019, when US special forces killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Donald Trump thanked Russia among others for support in that endeavour. In the meantime, the Russian military deployed S-300s to its ‘permanent’ base (leased until 2042) in Tajikistan, close to the Afghan border. This was the first time such weapons were sited that close to Afghanistan and their purpose, one can only assume, was to caution Taliban forces against threatening Russia’s allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).88 This deployment took on greater importance in November, 2020, when Donald Trump, now the lame duck president, ordered a further draw down of US troops in Afghanistan. Terrorism of another kind Russians found themselves subject to hundreds of false bomb threats in 2019, just as they had in 2017. In February alone, over 130 venues were forced to clear customers and workers because of telephone hoaxes. These continued into 2020, when over 50,00 Muscovites were evacuated as a result of threats in January. Warnings came over the telephone to schools, hospitals, courtrooms, cathedrals, metro stations and airports.89 In March 2020, similar bomb messages targeted passenger planes while they were in the air on domestic routes. Several pilots decided not to divert the planes, they all landed and no bombs were found. Others made emergency landings and no bombs were found. Authorities linked some of the threats to a scheme in which blackmailers demanded bitcoin currency, though the disruptions could also have been purposeful acts of terrorism – or malevolent pranks.90 The future of terrorism in Russia Headline acts of terrorism aside, their overall numbers decreased dramatically after Putin’s first decade, dropping to nine in 2018. They began rising again in his fourth term, in part because the label, ‘terrorist’, was applied to specific groups for political reasons. In that regard, the arrest in 2017 and 2018 of seven members of a group of young people calling themselves Set’ (Network) and their sentencing in 2020 to anywhere between 6 and 18 years confinement for planning terrorist acts during the 2018 presidential elections and the World Cup, was particularly controversial. Set’ members referred to themselves as ‘anti-fascist’ and ‘anarchist’ liberals demonstrating to help free political prisoners in Russia. Navalny and other liberal groups protested their arrest. The FSB placed Set’ on a terrorist list in April, 2019, and equated them with the Taliban, ISIS and al-Qaeda. The investigation was launched first in 2017, and arrests in the Penza region and St. Petersburg came after one member collaborated with law enforcement in return for a lesser sentence. Authorities said they found weaponry and explosives in a training

The Russian Federation  77 camp near Penza; the arrestees said that the munitions were planted and that an early confession was the result of torture. In this case, and others, both ‘sides’ exploited the situation to further their political agendas.91 Russians have no reason to be complacent about terrorist threats. Even while the pandemic limits travel opportunities, after Islamicist terrorist groups are defeated in regions outside Russia, such as the Middle East, Russian citizens who have fought for al-Qaeda or ISIS still trickle home and add to turmoil there. At the end of November 2020, the FSB claimed to have frustrated an ISIS-planned attack in the Moscow region and, in a separate case, police arrested a departmental head of the MVD in Dagestan for alleged membership in the banned Imarat Kavkaz (Caucasus Emirate).92 Four other members of ISIL were caught by the FSB in Makhachkala, Dagestan, a month later. They had planned a bombing in during New Year’s Eve celebrations. Earlier in December, a shootout in Grozny left two militants and one policeman dead.93 Summing up the year, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee claimed that it and the FSB prevented 61 ‘terrorist crimes, including 41 terrorist attacks’ in 2020. Dozens of militants were killed and hundreds arrested over the year.94 So, the only outward change was in police efficiency. An outburst of brutally violent acts in France in late October, early November, served as a warning to everyone that hydra-headed international terrorism was by no means dead. *** The constitutional ‘revolution’ of January 2020 did not alter the basic structure of the Russian Federation. It did strengthen the executive offices in Moscow, however, making the country more centralized in terms of presidential authority, and it diluted the regional influence on the Federation Council by confirming more direct presidential nominees to that body, including seats for former presidents. For different reasons, the Arctic, the Far East and the North Caucasus have taken on greater importance for the centre. Regional governors have therefore been handed more responsibilities, even if sometimes by default. Frustrations generated by the pandemic, global warming, eternal corruption and international terrorism, make 2020 a pivotal year for the Russian Federation as its leaders search for a glue to keep it together.

Notes 1 ‘Zakon o poriadke resheniia voprosov sviazannykh s vykhodom soiuznei respubliki iz SSSR’, Pravda, 7 April 1990, Article 3. Translation available in USSR Documents Annual, 1990, Vol. 1. Restructuring Perestroika. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1991, pp. 197–201 (hereafter, USSR Documents Annual; after 1991, REDA). See also J.L. Black, Into the Dustbin of History. The USSR from Coup to Commonwealth August–December 1991. A Documentary Narrative. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1993. 2 ‘Tatarstan, the Last Region to Lose its Special Status Under Putin’, The Moscow Times, 25 July 2017.

78  The Russian Federation 3 For a detailed map and full list of all the administrative subdivisions of the Russian Federation, see Russian Analytical Digest, No. 230, 21 December 2018, p. 11. 4 Zakonoproekt [draft law] No. 1048141-7, ‘O poriadke formirovaniia Soveta Federatsii Federal’nogo Sobraniia Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, 30 October 2020, https:// sozd.duma.gov.ru/bill/1048141-7; Tatiana Zamakhina, ‘Putin vnes v Gosdumu proekt zakona o pozhiznennykh senatorakh’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 31 October 2020. 5 ‘Russia’s Latest Governor Reshuffle’, The Moscow Times, 29 May 2018; ‘Putin naznachil dvoe gubernatorov Amurskoi oblast i Altaiskogo kraia’, Vedomosti, 30 May 2018. 6 ‘Kokov vmesto Kokova: zachem Kremliu novaia volna ostavok v regionakh’, RBC.ru, 26 September 2018; ‘Putin otkryl novyi sezon gubernatorskikh otstavok’, Vedomosti, 26 September 2018. 7 ‘Vtoroi za den’ gubernator ushel v otstavku’, Vedomosti, 11 October 2018; Administratsiia Kurskoi oblasti. Offitsial’nyi sait, ‘Gubernatoir Kurskoi oblasti A.N. Mikhailov ob’iavil o dosrochnom slozhenii svoikh polnomochii’, 11 October 2018, adm.rkursk.r_ u/index.php?id=13&mat_id=84241; ‘10th Russian Governor Replaced Amid Falling Ratings for Ruling Party’, The Moscow Times, 12 October 2018. See also, e.g. BMB Russia, ‘Special Report: Regional Elections Rundown’,bearmarketbrief.com/2018/09/28/special-report-regional-elections-

rundown/.

8 ‘Komissiia po etike rekomenovala iskliuchit’ glavu Chuvashii iz “Edinoi Rossii”’, Kommersant, 27 January 2020. 9 Tatyana Stanovaya, ‘The End of Kremlin’s Dominance in the Regions’, The Moscow Times, 2 April 2019. 10 Putin, ‘Meeting of the Council for Interethnic Relations Presidium’, Kremlin. ru, 14 September 2017, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/councils/by-council/ 28/55633/. 11 ‘Natsional’nye obshchestvenniki ob’ediniaiutsia v kongress’, Kommersant, 22 June 2018. 12 Dmitry Lyubimov, Ramazan Alpaut, Robert Colson, ‘A Common Language: Russia’s “Ethnic” Republics See Language Bill As Existential Threat’, RFE/RL, 20 June 2018. 13 Putin, ‘Rossiia: natsional’nyi vopros’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 23 January 2012, available in English, http://archive.premier.gov.ru/eng/events/news/17831/. 14 Ulrich Schmid, ‘Nationality Policy: Russian Nation vs. Russian People?’ Russian Analytical Digest, No. 250, 9 April 2020; on Putin’s earlier position, Peter Rutland, ‘Putin’s Nationality Dilemma’, The Moscow Times, 29 January 2012. 15 Felix Light, ‘How COVID-19 is transforming Russia’s power structure’, New Statesman, 29 May 2020; ‘Pandemiia: mery vlastei i “nerabochie nedeli”’, Levadatsentr, 30 April 2020 https://www.levada.ru/2020/04/30/pandemiya-mery-i-nerabochie-nedeli/; Evan Gershkovich, ‘As the Coronavirus Contagion Grows in Russia, Putin’s Strongman Image Weakens’, The Moscow Times, 14 May 2020; ‘Putin’s Virus Response Earns Lower Marks Than Local Leaders – Poll’, The Moscow Times, 30 April 2020. 16 Alexander Baunov, ‘Where Is Russia’s Strongman in the Coronavirus Crisis?’, Foreign Affairs, 27 May 2020. 17 ‘Chechnya polnost’iu zakroet granitsy respubliki’, RIA Novosti, 1 April 2020. 18 Felix Light, ‘Coronavirus Hits hard in Russia’s Volatile Republic of Ingushetia’, The Moscow Times, 23 April 2020. 19 Ruslan Kurbanov, ‘In Dagestan, COVID-19 and community-acquired pneumonia affected 13 thousand people. 29 died from coronavirus, 657 from pneumonia’, Meduza, 17 May 2020.

The Russian Federation  79 20 ‘Chechnya polnost’iu zakroet granitsy respubliki’, RIA Novosti, 1 April 2020; Putin, ‘Obrashchenie k grazhdanam Rossii’, Kremlin.ru, 2 April 2020, Kremlin. ru/events/president/news/63133. 21 See Doris Wydra, ‘The Crimea Conundrum: The Tug of War Between Russia and Ukraine on the Question of Autonomy and Self-Determination’, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, Vol. X, Issue 2 (2004), pp. 111–30. For a timeline of separatist attitudes in Crimea, and documentation, Ivan Kachanovski, ‘Crimea: People and Territory Before and After Annexation’, in Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska, Richard Sakwa, eds. Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives. Bristol, UK: E-International Relations, 2016, pp. 80–9. 22 See J.L. Black, ‘Crisis in Ukraine 2013–2015: A Paradigm for the New World Disorder’, in Black, Johns and Theriault, eds. The New World Disorder (2019), pp. 11–38, here p. 20. 23 Cour permanent d’arbitrage: Permanent Court of Arbitration, ‘Press Release: Everest Estate LLC et al. v. The Russian Federation’, PCA Case No. 2015–36, 9 May 2018. 24 Hanna Shteppa, ‘New Ukrainian Sanctions against Russia’, Sanctions & Export Controls Update, 25 May 2018, sanctionsnews.bakermckenzier.com/new-ukrainiansanctions-against-russia/. 25 ‘Irina Farion: “Russian-Speaking People in Ukraine are Mentally retarded!”’, Stalker Zone, 30 April 2018, translated by Ollie Richardson & Angelina Siard, https://www.stalkerzone.org/irina-farion-russian-speaking-people-in-ukraineare-mentally-retarded/; see also Stephen F. Cohen, ‘America’s Collusion with Neo-Nazis’, The Nation, 2 May 2018. 26 See, e.g. Josh Cohen, ‘Ukraine’s Got a Real Problem with Far-Right Violence (And No, RT Didn’t Write This Headline)’, Atlantic Council, 20 June 2018; Christopher Dickey, ‘Ukraine’s Anti-Russia Azov Battalion: “Minutemen” or Neo-Nazi Terrorists?’, The Daily Beast, 15 November 2019; Volodymyr Ishchenko, ‘The limits of change and wishful thinking: Lessons from Ukraine’s Euromaidan uprising’, The Broker Online, 26 July 2017. For PACE’s description of Svoboda, see European Parliament/Legislative Observatory. Resolution adopted by Parliament, single reading, No. 2889, 13 December 2012. 27 Ekaterina Grobman, ‘VTsIOM: bol’shinstvo zhitelei Kryma po-prezhnemu podderzhivaiu egoi vkhozhdenie v sostav Rossii’, Kommersant, 14 March 2019. 28 For details on this, see Chris Kaspar de Ploeg, Ukraine in the Crossfire. Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, 2017, pp. 117–19; and Black, Putin’s Third Term, pp. 103, 119 (Endnotes #45–47). 29 Ridvan Bari Urcosta, ‘The Geo-Economics of the Water Deficit in Crimea’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 26 February 2020; Polina Vynogradova, ‘Backgrounder: The Water Crisis in Crimea’, Geopolitical Monitor, 24 April 2020. 30 Ridvan Bari Urcosta, ‘Newly Appointed Governor of Sevastopol Faces Looming Showdown with Local Elites’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 29 July 2019. 31 ‘Vstrecha s predstaviteliami obshchestvennosti Kryma i Sevastopolia’, Kremlin. ru, 18 March 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/63021. 32 Putin, ‘Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu Sobraniiu’, Kremlin.ru, 20 February 2019, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59863. 33 ‘Why the Thawing Arctic Is Full of Opportunity and Danger for Russia and America’, The National Interest, 13 September 2020; Yuliya Fedorinova, Olga Tanas, ‘Russia’s Thawing Permafrost May Cost Economy $2.3Bln a Year’, The Moscow Times (from Bloomberg), 18 October 2019. 34 Putin, ‘Soveshchanie o merakh po likvidatsii razliva dizel’nogo topliva v Krasnoiarskom krae’, Kremlin.ru, 3 June 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/ news/63450; Ariel Cohen, ‘Diesel Spill In Russian Arctic Could be Putin’s Exxon Valdez’, Forbes, 4 June 2020; ‘Russia Says Has Stopped Spread of Arctic Fuel

80  The Russian Federation Spill’, The Moscow Times, 5 June 2020; Greenpeace, ‘Mass environmental damage from the accident in Norilsk amounts to billions of rubles’, 3 June 2020, https:// greenpeace.ru/news/2020/06/03/25629/; ‘TASS: normy vrednykh veshchestv v zagriaznennnykh vodoemakh v Noril’ske prevysheny v 200 raz;’, Vedomosti, 6 June 2020. 35 ‘Governor Alexander Uss told what is happening in Norilsk’, Enisei News, 8 June 2020, https://www.enisey.tv/news/post-22918/; ‘Russian Mayor Charged Over Failure to Contain Arctic Spill’, The Moscow News, 11 June 2020; Alex Kimani, ‘Who Will Pay For Russia’s Unprecedented Oil Spill?’, Oilprice.com, 11 June 2020; Independent Environmental Advisory Support to the Nornickel Environmental Task Team (ETT), ‘Review of May 2020 Catastrophic Tank Failure, HPP-3, Norilsk’, 25 November 2020, https://www.nornickel.com/files/en/ media-library/presentation/erm-1a-report-for-nornickel-ett-public-issued25-11-20-en.pdf. 36 For the overall effect of climate change on Russia, see ‘Climate Change and Russia’, special issue of Russian Analytical Digest, No. 243, 11 December 2019. 37 Sergey Sukhankin, ‘Russia’s Arctic Agenda and the Role of Canada’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 15 April 2020. 38 Zack Budryk, ‘Lavrov defends Russia’s military buildup in the Arctic’, The Hill, 4 April 2019; Putin, ‘Plenarnoe zasedanie Mezhdunarodnogo arkticheskogo foruma’, Kremlin.ru, 9 April 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60250; ‘Highlights From Russia’s International Arctic Forum’, The Moscow Times, 10 April 2019. 39 For background and analysis, see Maria L. Lagutina, Russia’s Arctic Policy in the Twenty-First Century. National and International Dimensions. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. 40 ‘Utverzhden plan razvitiia infrastruktury Severnogo morskogo puti do 2035 goda’, 30 December 2019, http://government.ru/docs/38714/; ‘Prezident itverdil Osnovy gosudarstvennoi politiki v Arktike’, Kremlin.ru, 5 March 2020, Kremlin. ru/acts/news/62947; Nurlan Aliyev, ‘Development in Difficult Times: Russia’s Arctic Policy Through 2035’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 256, 5 September 2020, pp. 2–6. 41 Sergey Sukhankin, ‘Russia’s Arctic strategy melts under scrutiny’, Riddle, 8 May 2020. 42 Paul Goble, ‘Siberian Regionalism a Growing Threat to Moscow’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 4 August 2020; Sophie Pinkham. ‘Normal is Over for Russia’s Hinterland’, FP (Foreign Policy), 7 August 2020; Mikhail Sokolov, Robert Coalson, ‘An Isolated Case? Observers Doubt Far East Unrest Will Spread Over Russia’, RFE/RL, 23 July 2020. 43 ‘Kompleks mer po povedeniiu poriadke i distsipliny v Dagestane odobren Prezidentom Rossii i budet posledovatel’no pretvoriat’sia v zhizn’, zaiavil Vladimir Putin’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 11 August 1999. 44 R-Politik, Analytical Bulletin, #8 (9), 2018. See also items in ‘North Caucasus’, Russian Analytical Digest, No’s. 222 & 238, 18 June 2018, 22 July 2019. 45 ‘Versiia o krovnoi mesti ozvuchena posle ubiistva El’dzharkieva’, Kavkazskii Uzel, 3 November 2019. 46 Kira Latukhina, ‘Sergei Melikov naznachen vrio glavy respubliki Dagestan’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 5 October 2020. 47 ‘V Kabardino-Balkarii iz-za mezhnatsional’nogo konflikta usileny mery bezopasnosti’, Kommersant, 20 September 2018; Sledstvennoe upravlenie … po Kabardino-Balkarskoi Respublike, ‘Sledstvennym upravleniem initsiirovano provedenie dosledstvennoi proverki po sobytiiam v selenii Kendelen’, 19 September 2018, kbr.sledcom.ru/news/item/1256940/; ‘Reported Ethnic Clashes in Russia’s Caucasus Prompt Investigation’, The Moscow Times, 20 September 2018.

The Russian Federation  81 48 ‘Bezrabotitsa v Rossii: v kakikh regionakh slozhnee vsego naiti rabotu’, Aktual’nye kommentarii, 28 October 2019. See also ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ [in North Caucasus], special issue of Russian Analytical Digest, No. 255, 14 July 2020. 49 Ekaterina Sokirianskaia, ‘Chechnya under Ramzan Kadyrov’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 238, 22 July 2019. 50 ‘In 2018, the count of conflict victims in Northern Caucasus dropped by 38%’, Caucasian Knot, 13 May 2020. This is the English-language version of Kavkazskii Uzel. 51 ‘Dvoe politseiskikh pogibli pri napadenii na nariad DPS v Dagestane’, Vedomosti, 20 July 2018. 52 ‘Police Detain Over a Dozen Students in Raid on Moscow University Dorm – Reports’, The Moscow Times, 17 December 2018. 53 ‘Ingush MPs demand to cancel ratification of agreement on borders with Chechnya’, Caucasian Knot, 5 October 2018; ‘Shots Fired at Protest in Russia’s North Caucasus Over Land Swap Deal’, The Moscow Times, 4 October 2018; ‘Magas rally demands Evkurov’s resignation’, Caucasian Knot, 26 March 2019. 54 ‘Head of Russia’s Ingushetia Resigns Following Months of Border Deal Unrest’, The Moscow Times, 24 June 2019; Aleksandra Chunova, ‘Glava Ingushetii zaiavil o namerenii dosrochno uiti v otystavku’, Vedomosti, 24 June 2019. 55 Konstantin Kazenin, ‘New Model North Caucasus: Kremlin Tries New Approach in Ingushetia’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 9 July 2019. 56 Valery Dzutsati, ‘Russian Regions Face High Budget Deficits and Little Support from the Central Government’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 12 May 2020. 57 European Court of Human Rights, ‘Case of Bitsayeva and Others v. Russia’, Application No. 14196/08, https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-1897240; ‘European Court Orders Russia to Pay 1.5M Euros to Relatives of People Abducted in Chechnya’, The Moscow Times, 24 October 2018. 58 United Nations Human Rights Council, Universal Periodic Review – Russian Federation, www.ohcr.org/EN/HRBodies/UPR/Pages/RU/index.aspx, 14 May 2018; ‘Russia Tells UN There Are No Gays in Chechnya’, The Moscow Times, 15 May 2018. 59 Nataliya Vasilyeva, ‘Reports: several gay men and women detained in Chechnya’, AP, 9 January 2019; ‘Putin Has Given Chechnya Free Rein to Persecute LGBT People (Op-ed)’, The Moscow Times, 17 January 2019; ‘“They will kill you anyway, be it family or strangers”: Gay about life in Chechnya and flight from Russia’, Caucasian Knot, 24 January 2019. 60 ‘Russia’s Protest Movement is Expanding and Becoming Political, Study Says’, The Moscow Times, 4 October 2019. 61 ’Vizity Kadyrova na Blizhnii Vostok pokazali ego rol’ doverennogo litsa Moskvy’, Kavkazskii Uzel, 31 October 2019. 62 Valery Dzutsati, ‘The COVID-19 Pandemic Starts to Have Its Toll on the North Caucasus’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 2 April 2020. 63 Valery Dzutsati, ‘Chechnya and Ingushetia Exhibit Growing Signs of Destabilization’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 26 October 2020. 64 ‘Sovbez otmetil snizhenie kolichestva teraktov v Rossii v desiat’ raz’, RIA Novosti, 12 December 2017. 65 Vladimir Putin, ‘Why We Must Act’, New York Times, 14 November 1999; ‘Pochemu my dolzhny deistovovat”, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 16 November, 1999; ‘Dvoinoi standart. Ben Laden gotovim voinu SShA’, Rossiiskaya gazeta, 16 November 1999; ‘Rossii ob’iavili dzhikhad. V Anglii’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 16 November 1999. 66 ‘Russian prosecutor-general says terrorism increased in 2012’, RFE/RL, 17 April 2013.

82  The Russian Federation 67 ‘Russia warned U.S. about Boston Marathon bomb suspect Tsarnaev: report’, Reuters, 25 March 2014. 68 For first-hand journalistic reports, see Anna Politkovskaya, A Russian Diary. New York: Random House, 2007. 69 Putin, ‘Meeting with regional human rights ombudsmen’, Kremlin.ru, 10 December 2019, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62287; ‘Putin Speaks About Beslan Tragedy – Will Remember Pain From the Attack For rest of Life!’, Vesti. ru, 12 December 2019. 70 ‘Roskomnadzore ob’iasnil blokirovku ir-adresov Google’, Vedomosti, 21 April 2018; Max Seddon, ‘Russia moves to block messaging app Telegram’, Financial Times, 20 March 2018; ‘11 Terrorist Suspects in Custody, One Year After St. Petersburg Metro Bombing’, The Moscow Times, 3 April 2018. 71 ‘Russia Says Nine Militants Plotting Dagestan Attack Killed after Gun Battle’, The Moscow Times, 21 April 2018. 72 Ivan Nechepurenko, Megan Specia, ‘Gunmen Attack Church in Russia’s Chechnya Region, Killing Three’, New York Times, 19 May 2018; ‘Three Dead in Chechnya Church Attack, Police Kill Attackers’, RFE/RL, 19 May 2017; ‘News From Russia’, The Moscow Times, 21 May 2018. 73 ‘Kadyrov nazval tsel’ napadenii na politseiskikh v Chechne’, Vedomosti, 20 August 2018; ‘IG vzialo otvetstvennost’ za ataki na silovikov v Chechne’, Kavkazskii Uzel, 20 August 2018. 74 Sledstvennoe upravlenie … Chechenskoi Respublike, ‘Vosbuzhdeno ugolovnoe delo po faktu posiagatel’stvo na zhizn’ sotrudnikov pravpookhranitel’nykh organov’, 18 November 2018, chr.sledcom.ru/news/item/1272839/. 75 ‘Attack on police officers became the third armed incident in Ingushetia in a year’, Caucasian Knot, 31 December 2019; Natsional’nyi antiterroristicheskii komitet, ‘V Karachaevo-Cherkesii pri popytke zaderzhaniia prestupnik osushchestvil samopodryv’, 11 December 2020, http://nac.gov.ru/hronika-sobytiy/v-karachaevo-cherkesii-pri-popytke-zaderzhaniya-prestupnik.html. 76 ‘Russia’s FSB Says It Thwarted Islamic State Attack in Moscow Ahead of World Cup’, The Moscow Times, 27 April 2018. 77 ‘Amid Concerns of Terrorism and Hooligans, Russia Puts in Place “Ring of Steel”’, The Moscow Times, 15 June 2018. 78 For Putin’s initial remarks, ‘Condolences to the families and friends of those killed in the explosion in Kerch’, 17 October 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/ news/58840; Kirill Bulanov, ‘Vzryv v kolledzhe v Kerchi priznali teraktom’, Vedomosti, 17 October 2018; ‘Russia Reacts to Deadly Shooting Spree in Crimean College’, The Moscow Times, 17 October 2018; ‘Russia Says Bomb Blast Killed 18 at Crimean School, Terrorism Suspected’, RFE/RL, 17 October 2018. 79 Federal’naia sluzhba bezopasnost RF, ‘The FSB, in cooperation with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Russian Guard, carried out a special operation in the Republic of Tatarstan to curb the activities of the secret ITO “IG”’, 30 October 2018, www.fsb.ru/fsb/press/single.htm%21id%3D10438310%40fsbMessage.html; ‘IS Cell Shut Down in Russia’s Tatarstan, Security Forces Say’, The Moscow Times, 30 October 2018. 80 ‘V Tiumeni likvidirovali podozrevaemykh v podgotovke terakta’, Vedomosti, 12 April 2019; ‘Alleged Islamic State Members Killed During FSB Raid in Siberia’, The Moscow Times, 13 April 2019. 81 Svetlana Tsygankova, ‘V Murmanske neytralizovali planirovavshego terakt bandita’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 4 April 2020. 82 ‘Sakhalin airsoft players suspected of terrorism’, Sakhalin.info, 6 April 2020, https://sakhalin.info/news/187546; ‘Russian Terrorism Suspects Detained Under Guise of “Coronavirus Test”’, The Moscow Times, 8 April 2020.

The Russian Federation  83 83 Eric Rosand, ‘Where is civil society in the U.N.’s counterterrorism efforts?’ Brookings, 15 May 2018; Michelle Nichols, ‘U.S. pulls funding for U.N. counterterrorism office headed by Russian’, Reuters. World News, 27 June 2018. 84 Rishika Dugyala, ‘Kremlin: Putin calls to thank Trump for help on terrorism’, Politico, 29 December 2019; Putin, ‘Telephone conversation with US President Donald Trump’, Kremlin.ru, 29 December 2019, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/ news/62518. 85 ‘Shoigu otchital’sia ob itogakh operatsii v Sirii’, Vedomosti, 20 April 2018. On this generally, see essays in Jean-Francois Ratelle, Laurence Broers, eds. Networked Insurgencies and Foreign Fighters in Eurasia. London: Routledge, 2017. 86 ‘U.S. Helped Moscow Foil Recent Terror Plot With Intel, FSB Says’, The Moscow Times, 17 October 2019; ‘S nachala 2019 goda v Rossii predotvratili 39 teraktov’, TASS, 16 October 2019. 87 ‘V Rossii v etom gody uvelichilos’ chislo teraktov’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 21 October 2020. For the MVD website, MVD.rf; ‘Terrorist attack prevented in Moscow, FSB reports’, TASS, 22 October 2020. 88 Minoboronu Rossii, Voennye okruga, ‘Sistemy S-300PS vpervye postupili na vooruzhenie rossiiskoi voennoi bazy v Tadzhikistane’, [MoD], 26 October 2019, structure.mil.ru/structure/okruga/centre/news/more.htm?id=12258864@egNews; ‘Russia Deploys S-300 Missile System Near Afghanistan for First Time’, The Moscow Times, 28 October 2019. 89 ‘Moscow’s Record Wave of Bomb Hoaxes Continues Into 2020’, The Moscow Times, 15 January 2020. For earlier hoaxes, see Black, Putin’s Third Term, p. 53. 90 ‘Russian Planes Targeted in Wave of Bomb Threats’, The Moscow Times, 4 March 2020; 91 ‘“Penzenskoe delo”. Prigovor’, Mediazona, 10 February 2020. https://zona.media/ online/2020/02/10/penza; ‘Russian Anti-Fascists Jailed on Terror Charges Despite Outcry’, The Moscow Times, 11 February 2020; ‘“No serious evidence” in highprofile terrorism case against Russian anti-fascists’, OVD-Info, 25 March 2019; ‘Figurantov dela “Seti” v Penze prigovorili s srokam do 18 let kolonii strogogo rezhima’, OVD-Info, 10 February 2020. 92 Roman Mereliakov, ‘Glava otdela MVD v Dagestane arestovan po podozreniiu v podgotovke terakta’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 23 November 2020; ‘FSB: V moskovskom regione predotvrashchen terakt’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 25 November 2020. 93 ‘At Least 3 People Killed in Chechnya Shootout’, The Moscow Times, 28 December 2020; ‘Alleged militant killed during CTO in Chechnya’, Caucasian Knot, 16 December 2020; ‘Week in the Caucasus: review of main events of December 21–27, 2020, Caucasian Knot, 28 December 2020. 94 Peter Nikolaev, ‘Sotni voevikov, desiatki teraktov: NAK I FSWB podveli itogi goda’, Gazeta.ru, 8 December 2020, www.gazeta.ru/social/2020/12/08/13391245. shtml.

3 The political arena

Introduction A few members of Putin’s first government in 2000 were still prominent when he began his fourth term in 2018. Eighteen years before that, Shoigu was Minister of Emergency Measures, Gordeev was Minister of Agriculture and Nikolai Patrushev was head of the FSB. Valentina Matviyenko and Aleksei Kudrin were two of four deputy prime ministers that first year. Matviyenko went on to have a distinguished career as mayor of St. Petersburg and then speaker of the Federation Council. Prime minister in 2000, Mikhail Kasyanov, followed a different path and became a leader of a liberal-democratic opposition movement. Parties elected to the State Duma in 1999 were Gennady Zyuganov’s Communist Party (24%), followed by Shoigu’s Unity Party (23%) and Fatherland-All Russia (13%), a bloc headed by former prime minister and foreign minister, Yevgeny Primakov. Kiriyenko’s Union of Right-Wing Forces (9%) was aggressively supportive of Putin. Zhirinovsky’s right-wing LDPR and Yavlinsky’s Yabloko took the remaining party seats. Zhirinovsky (six times) and Zyuganov (four times) repeatedly ran for the presidency. Except for Primakov, whose disciples dominated the ministry of foreign affairs for the rest of the decade, these players were still active on Russia’s political stage twenty years later. The Unity Party, formed precisely to support Yeltsin and his clear favourite, Putin, was created only two months prior to the election in 1999. Its populist message and an expressed aim to make government accountable to the people were timely mirrors of what voters wanted. Russians took to its nickname and logo, Medved (Bear). Unity and Fatherland merged in 2001 to form United Russia, the ‘Putin’ party that topped every subsequent parliamentary election. Army General Shoigu’s reward was to remain emergency measures minister for 20 years (1991–2012), then briefly hold the governorship of Moscow Oblast before Putin named him minister of defence in November 2012. He has been with Putin every step of the way. Altogether, nearly 30 parties were listed on ballots in that 1999 election, a time when 5 per cent of the votes cast were enough to earn PR seats in the Duma. When that percentage was changed to 7 per cent for the 2007 election, DOI: 10.4324/9781003158646-4

The political arena  85 the number of competitive parties dropped precipitously.1 Restrictions on political party activity were adopted as early as the spring of 2001 by means of a law, ‘On Political Parties’, that forced them to adhere to the following requirements: have 100-member branches in more than half the constituent entities of the federation and 10,000 members altogether, plus a charter with clear political goals and a complete list of candidates for state and local government.2 Party politics were limited further over the next few years by laws outlawing blocs and exclusively regional parties, and requiring 200,000 signatures drawn from at least half of the regions before a national party could qualify for the ballot. Between the elections for 2007 and 2016, all seats in the Duma had to be filled from party lists. During most of that period, before the political crises of 2011–12 inspired change, there were only seven registered political parties in Russia. The system reverted to 5 per cent minimum votes for a share of party seats for the 2016 election, and half the Duma was again elected from single constituencies. Only 5,000 signatures were needed for party registration. Although parties still had to have a legitimate platform and charter, and branches in no less than half of the regions, almost overnight there were over 170 parties competing to get on the ballot. Main street politics Although there have been anywhere from four to seven political parties earning representation in the Duma and dozens of organized parties and movements outside parliament, the most visible and constant political activity in Russia is the street demonstration. Research published in 2020 by the Institute of Modern Russia found that there were about 12,000 street protests during Putin’s first twenty years in high office, with approximately 2.5 million participants and 11,000 detainees.3 The first large events in the Putin years came in 2001 in defence of NTV, the television channel owned by Gusinsky and taken over by Gazprom, but it wasn’t until 2004 that mass social protests brought thousands out. Workers gathered to dispute wage arrears and a bill replacing in-kind benefits, such as free transportation, subsidized medicines and utilities for pensioners, with cash payments. Pensioners formed a political party and national unions called for a general strike. The result was a 15 per cent increase in pensions and a compromise that gave pensioners a choice of free monthly bus passes or the equivalent in cash.4 The population learned the power of direct action, at least when it came to social issues, and Putin learned that even when the economy required belt-tightening measures he could challenge traditional perquisites only with great care. He seemed to have forgotten that lesson when the government attempted an even greater pension reform in 2018. Before that, there were flurries of demonstrations against electoral rigging. The first of these was authorized and took place in Moscow on 5 December 2011, one day after elections to the Duma. Up to 10,000 people

86  The political arena came out and, when it evolved into a march on government buildings, police detained about 300 participants. Over the next few weeks tens of thousands took to the streets across the country waving placards calling for free elections, some labelling United Russia a party of ‘crooks and thieves’. Thousands gathered on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow on 10 December and took the protest beyond electoral grievances to demand the release of political prisoners and an annulment of the recent parliamentary election. When the government ignored these demands, the largest demonstration in postSoviet Russia, more than 100,000, turned out. The rallies continued sporadically through the presidential elections in March 2012, taking on the form of ‘March for Millions’, and including another huge rally on Bolotnaya Square just prior to Putin’s inauguration in May. On that day, 6 May, activists broke through police lines, violence ensued, dozens were injured on both sides and over 600 people were arrested. Some 30 of the detainees were charged with ‘using violence against the authorities’ and given prison sentences. Shortly thereafter, a harsh anti-protest bill set heavy fines for infringements of rally protocols. Even though a few of the demonstrators on Bolotnaya Square remained in prison, the political concessions forced from the government were important ones. In addition to the return to a 5 per cent threshold for political parties to earn seats, the direct election of governors was re-instated. In July 2012, Duma deputies protected themselves by re-criminalizing libel and slander (‘defaming the honour and dignity’) of political opponents.5

The post-presidential election political scene, 2018 The State Duma The 2016 election to the State Duma left the UR with an unexpected super majority, manufactured by shifts in allegiance of more than half of the 225 technically unaligned deputies. Among other things, the large body of support in the Duma gave Putin an opportunity to amend Russia’s Constitution, if he wished, for which a two-thirds majority was necessary (Table 3.1). The importance of the Duma had diminished over the years. It became little more than a rubber stamp for executive policies and its approval rating dropped, especially after the UR and its allies supported the pension reform bill in 2018. A poll conducted by VTsIOM in October 2018 recorded a loss of nearly 15 per cent in appreciation of the Duma (at 36%) and about the same decline for the Federation Council (41.5%). The top institutional approval ratings went to the military (85.5%) and the Orthodox Church (69.5%). Respondents split on endorsing political parties generally, 38.7 per cent for and 33.2 per cent against. Trade unions were at the bottom of the approval rate, at 31.1 per cent, with 36.5 per cent disapproval.6 These numbers demonstrated that polled Russians were not happy with their official political and union hierarchies.

The political arena  87 Table 3.1  Duma Election Results. Parties in order as they appeared on ballot, September 2016 Party name Rodina Communists of Russia Russian Party of Pensioners for Justice United Russia Russian Ecological Party, Greens Civic Platform LDPR PARNAS Party of Growth Civilian Power Yabloko CPRF Patriots of Russia A Just Russia Party of Rural Revival (only ran in single member constituencies) Independent Invalid ballots

Votes (Pty)

%

783,316 1,187,220 905,456

1.51 2.27 1.73

28,271,600 396,231 114,623 6,869,802 380,351 672,149 73,408 1,038,579 6,966,146 307,316 3,242,284

54.20 0.76 0.22 13.14 0.73 1.29 0.14 1.99 13.34 0.59 6.22

1.87

Seats*

Total

0/1 0/0 0/0

1 0 0

140/203 0/0 0/1 34/5 0/0 0/0 0/0 0/0 35/7 0/0 16/7

343 0 1 39 0 0 0 0 42 0 23 0 1 NA

* Includes seats by Party and, after slash, commitments from single constituencies. Source: Central Electoral Commission of the Russian Federation (www.cikrf/ru).

United Russia Success at the polls compared to other parties in September 2018 did not forestall a post-election downward slide that persuaded the UR leadership that the party’s place at the top could be in jeopardy. Only 9 per cent of respondents to a survey conducted in late November rated UR activities ‘entirely positively’; 38 per cent judged the UR ‘rather positively’; 25 per cent held ‘rather negative’ opinions; and 19 per cent were ‘entirely negative’ about the ruling party. These opinions were the result, respondents said, of deteriorating economic conditions in the country.7 Putin made his discomfort with the party clear at the XVIIIth UR Party Congress in December, 2018, telling members that they must learn to ‘show respect for the people’. He urged them to avoid rudeness and arrogance, and to act as a team throughout the country. If they did not do so, he said, in difficult times they and Russia could get ‘left behind forever’. Official party leader, Medvedev, echoed this warning and made it plain that personnel changes were in the offing, particularly for unsuccessful candidates and regional officials deemed incompetent.8 A new code of conduct included an admonition to respond publicly to any accusation of wrongdoing, or resign from the party. Members should avoid any action or statement that could infringe on someone’s human rights or freedoms. The stress on ethics was driven by a series of embarrassments

88  The political arena involving statements and actions by individual party members. One delegate summarized this position during a radio interview, saying that all UR members, including deputies, had ‘to think, weigh every word, especially in public spaces.’ To monitor the recommendations, the Party created an in-house Ethics Commission.9 The jury is still out on its level of success. The Duma opposition Opposition parties in the Duma, usually referred to as the ‘systemic’ opposition, changed very little in the decade prior to the ‘January Revolution’. They tended to be conservative and opportunistic, rarely offering agendas to suggest that they were trying very hard to take power. This was especially clear in the opposition’s feeble stabs at winning the presidency. The CPRF’s Pavel Grudinin came second in the presidential election of 2018, with fewer votes than Zyuganov took in 2012. It was obvious that the CPRF needed rejuvenation. Leader since 1993, Zyuganov’s image was stale. Grudinin’s status was controversial. The CPRF’s decisions on nominees for 2018’s gubernatorial elections, above all for the Moscow region, were the next big test. A party plenum discussed ways and means to reach traditional communist sources, such as labour unions, and to generate an active youth movement. No major changes in approach were agreed, however. A year after the presidential election, a FOM poll placed the CPRF support at 13 per cent, which suggested that inertia had set firmly into place.10 With the UR riding high, the other parties seemed stuck in a time warp. They weren’t done, though. Polls conducted by FOM in late September 2018 found that, while the ruling party still held a substantial lead over the Communists and Liberal Democrats, its lead was narrowing.11 One Communist deputy warned that Putin should resign before he was ‘dragged out feet first’.12 The CPRF’s limited surge was fleeting and by 2020 Zhirinovsky kept his second place standing in general approval ratings while Zyuganov ratings fell. Asked to rank five or six politicians whom they trusted the most in September, Zhirinovsky’s name showed in 14 per cent of the responses, behind only Putin’s 33 per cent, and far ahead of Zyuganov’s 5 per cent.13 Zhirinovsky’s party agenda was closer to Putin’s and benefitted more from some of the Constitutional amendments (Table 3.2). Parties with seats in the Duma draw public funds. Based on the number of seats they hold, the CPRF and LDPR received around a billion rubles ($16 mln) each and A Just Russia about half that in 2018. With over two-thirds of the seats and votes, the UR took 4.3 billion ($68.7 mln). In all cases, these monies make up over 75 per cent of a party’s budget.14

The extra-systemic opposition The wide cross-section of political parties, groups and movements outside the Duma, usually referred to as the ‘extra-systemic’ opposition, seemed to

The political arena  89 Table 3.2  Survey: ‘Which politicians do you trust the most?’, 2020 2020

Aug

May

June

July

Aug

Sept

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Zhirinovsky Mikhail Mishustin Sergei Shoigu Sergei Lavrov Gennady Zyuganov Aleksei Navalny

28 11 13 13 11 6 4

25 10 11 14 9 4 4

26 9 14 12 8 5 3

23 10 10 10 6 4 2

33 12 13 9 8 4 4

33 14 11 9 8 5 3

Source: compiled by the author from a Levada Centre survey. Respondents were asked to name the 5-6 politicians or social activists they most respected. There were other names with less than 3.

have even less public appeal by the end of Putin’s third term than they did when it started. Other than their uniform desire to get Putin out of office and weaken United Russia, they failed to provide any real prospects for the future, that is, a plan for what they would do when Putin left.15 The extra-Duma opposition also faced dangers beyond public apathy and regular interventions from various law-enforcement agencies. In 2016, Chechnya’s Kadyrov posted an Instagram video that showed Mikhail Kasyanov and Vladimir Kara-Murza – project director for Khodorkovsky’s Open Russia – in cross hairs. Instagram took it down the next day, but not before Russia’s human rights leaders called the video an incitement to murder and foreign ambassadors lodged complaints with Russian authorities.16 The political atmosphere was charged further when Kasyanov was physically attacked in a restaurant and Navalny filed separate lawsuits against Putin for failing to report a conflict of interest, against Chaika for corruption, and against several media outlets that he claimed were biased against him. As one Russian liberal joked to this author in 2016, the only person left then for Navalny to sue was himself.17 Because they tended to rely on highly personalized leaderships, the extrasystemic opposition suffered a setback when Kara-Murza was hospitalized in 2017. His illness was officially said to be kidney failure. According to his wife, the problem was ‘acute poisoning with an unknown substance’. He and his supporters argued that he was poisoned for reasons of politics.18 The case thus became another headliner for the domestic activist opposition and foreign critics of Putin, such as American senators McCain and Rubio who immediately cast evidence-free blame directly on the Russian president. Kara-Murza’s wife also told journalists in the US that she had no proof that Putin was personally responsible and his father acknowledged that his son suffered from chronic kidney problems. Neither statement slowed the allegations of purposeful poisoning.19 After hospital treatment in Moscow, Kara-Murza travelled to the US to recover, and then toured North American cities touting his film on Nemtsov (see ahead), granting interviews and railing against Putin. While in Canada, he teamed up with William Browder to lobby for a Magnitsky law (see Chapter 6). 20

90  The political arena Navalny to the forefront While parties in the Duma struggled to find an effective political role, the foreign and Russian media believed that Navalny and other unrepresented parties and movements had taken the initiative away from them. Yet, in the spring of 2018, VTsIOM polls found that Navalny’s following was also waning and that he was trusted by almost no one.21 If that were true, then the general dissatisfaction had a fuse of its own and Navalny’s role was to light the match. He opened the political fight for Putin’s fourth term by calling for a nationwide protest just two days before the inauguration ceremonies of 7 May 2018.22 If nothing else, unauthorized rallies set up by Navalny and his allies provided dissenters with an agenda for the next few years, for he used social media to set out broad ‘requirements’ for protesters to demand from government, as follows, a real fight against bribery and poverty, − − return of elections at all levels of government, ensuring real political competition, − full-scale judicial reform, − release of all political prisoners, − freedom of the media and the Internet, − dissolution of Roskomnadzor, − observance of the rights of Russians to the secrecy of correspondence and peaceful assembly already guaranteed by the Constitution of the Russian Federation.23 On his website where these requirements were listed, Navalny added leaflets, poster layouts and pictures to share on social media. The campaign for hearts and minds was underway. Pussy Riot joined the demonstrations for what they posted as a ‘lil anti-putin walk’.24 Well over a thousand marchers in some 26 cities were held by police, including 700 in Moscow, and Navalny was carted away by law enforcement.25 This time he spent a month in prison. The Russian Union of Journalists charged that at least 23 journalists were beaten or detained during the protests.26 Activism built up over the next two years until it was stalled by the pandemic. Navalny was picked up again in August, two weeks before a scheduled pension protest, and sentenced by a Moscow court to another 30 days for antigovernment rallies organized the previous January. On his release in September, he was immediately jailed for another 20 days, charged this time with staging an illegal protest on election day, 9 September.27 He denied any involvement in that campaign, noting that he was in jail at the time, yet his never-blocked website, blogs and tweets were clearly instrumental in the outburst of demonstrations. It was equally plain that the powers to be were tightening their watch on Navalny. Released on 15 October, he found himself facing a slander suit brought by an ex-MVD officer whom he had accused of corruption.28

The political arena  91 A month later Navalny was at first prevented and then allowed to leave the country to attend a ruling on a case before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). As was his wont, Navalny promised to sue the Federal Bailiffs Service for losses incurred during the one day he was held at the airport, where he posted photos of himself at passport control and told followers on Instagram and Facebook that he was not allowed to leave. The brief detention was justified, the FSB said, because Navalny still owed money for a fine in Russia.29 The fine was paid and away he went to Strasbourg, where the court found in his favour, judging that ‘some of the arrests [in 2012 and 2014] had actually aimed at suppressing political pluralism’, and ‘his allegation of being a particular target’ was correct. The court imposed a €64,000 ($72,000) fine against the Russian government. The decision, one of many taken by the court against the Russian judiciary, prompted calls in Russia for withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights.30 Authorities apprehended an aide to Navalny, Leonid Volkov, in 2019 and sentenced him to 20 days for his role in organizing a September 2018 protest. The fact that he was out of the country at the time of the demonstration made no difference to the court. When his time was up in June the sentence was extended to September. Volkov’s repeated arrest signalled to the extrasystemic opposition that the state was in a ‘get-tough’ mode. Many Western commentators took the clampdown to mean that Putin and his allies saw their power diminishing and, rather than grant concessions as they had in 2012, instituted a response worthy of a police state.31 Re-modelling political movements outside the Duma The appeal of street demonstrations for political ends faded for a while after the 2011–12 massive objections to election rigging. Even as the number of protest events rose again in 2017, with 1,500 during the year, by the spring of 2018 a large majority of Russians (88%) said they had little interest in political activism. They voiced willingness to demonstrate for specific local social purposes, such as unwanted property developments and dump sites, but not political ones.32 The hesitation could also have been due to an increase in physical attacks on protesters and political people. According to Agora, a human rights monitoring agency in Russia, there were over 80 such incidents registered in the first two-thirds of 2018, more than took place during each of 2016 and 2017.33 By increasing fines on organizers who violate the rules of public assembly, the Russian government had a hand in the apparent decline of political protest participation. Organizers may now be fined for giving notice of a public event with no intention of actually holding one, thereby causing local government to set up police and medical presences, at considerable cost, for events that are never held.34 Then again, demonstrations for economic reasons were increasing and political parties took advantage of a rising sense of grievance.

92  The political arena Although it won no PR seats in the Duma, Yabloko remained the bestknown mainstream liberal democratic party. Meeting in May, 2018, the party congress extended Sergei Mitrokhin’s leadership for six months, and determined that he would step down after that. Long dominated by its founder, Grigorii Yavlinsky, who supported Mitrokhin, the party was aware that it needed a major shake-up if it was ever to repeat earlier successes. Yabloko’s St. Petersburg branch resented continued attempts to centralize from the party’s Moscow HQ to the extent that around 50 members defected and helped form a new public organization called the Democratic Renewal Movement. The Yabloko Party Congress revealed that the Moscow branch itself was sharply divided between proponents of Mitrokhin on the one hand, Maksim Katz and Dmitry Gudkov on the other.35 Nikolai Rybakov won the leadership in December 2019 and promised a revitalization. Within a few years it was obvious that that promise, while probably sincere, was unfulfilled. Navalny’s party re-organized too. While its leader was sitting out one of his 30-day administrative sentences, a scheduled constituent congress met and settled on a new name, ‘Russia of the Future’ (Rossiia budushchego). The Ministry of Justice had refused to register it in 2015, when it had only a ‘working name’, because the application lacked proper documentation.36 Navalny’s choice of title, Party of Progress, was ‘stolen’ by a former staff worker and lawyer for the Anti-Corruption Foundation (Fond bor’by s korruptsiei, FBK), Vitaliy Serukanov, who registered a new political party of his own. Confusing the name recognition factor in Russian politics further, Gudkov’s Civil Initiative party changed its name to the Party of Changes and created a seven-person political council led by Ksenia Sobchak. They named Gudkov as their official candidate for mayor of Moscow.37 There was no love lost among this mixed bag of extra-systemic opponents to the government. Searching for a cause via social media Assertions by pollsters that support for street protests was diminishing did not mean that they disappeared or that radical activism faded away; nor that they couldn’t come back in an instant. In fact, during the spring and summer of 2019 Russians were out on the streets somewhere almost every weekend. Of the 434 rallies across the country from April to June, 130 were political. Since these numbers were counted by the Russian Centre for Social-Labour Rights before electoral rallies burst out in Moscow, they represented a major shift in an established pattern that had seen social issues dominate protest movements.38 The struggle for loyalties within Russia’s militant circles began early in the new term when authorities arrested two demonstrators from the Left Opposition at a rally labelled ‘For a Free Russia without repression and arbitrariness’. One of them, ‘Red Darya’ Polyudova, had been released in October 2017 after two years in a prison colony for posting ‘extremist’ materials on

The political arena  93 VKontakte.39 A few days later, police raided an office opened by the Khodorkovsky-funded Open Russia in Vladivostok. They detained five activists, including the branch’s chairman Andrei Pivovarov, who then tweeted about the event, while another arrestee reported it on Facebook. Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s website alleged that the arrestees were beaten.40 Open Russia is one of the organizations officially categorized as ‘undesirable’ because it is entirely political and is funded from abroad, so the raid would hardly have been unexpected. There were also rallies in support of political prisoners, such as the Ukrainian film-maker Oleg Sentsov, who was serving a 20 years for alleged terrorist acts in Crimea and who went on a hunger strike in June, and activist Anastasia Shevchenko, who was placed under house arrest in January 2019 for supporting Open Russia. She was the first person to be charged for violating the 2015 law that banned ‘undesirable organizations’. When Putin’s Human Rights Council called on the Duma to decriminalize the law, its request was ignored. A month later police raided Open Russia’s offices in Moscow and put at least one person behind bars for ‘disobeying’ police orders. At the time of the raid, members were hosting a video conference with Khodorkovsky.41 Shortly thereafter, police took four activists into custody from outside Moscow State University where they were picketing in support of Azat Miftakhov, a student who had been imprisoned for allegedly manufacturing explosives. One of the picketers was said to be a provocateur from a proKremlin movement. Others represented a movement called Unlimited Protest, and a Telegram channel titled Protesting Moscow State University (https://t.me/msuprotest/354).42 Few of the authorized protests in 2018 were exclusively political; rather, they expressed anger over state control of the Internet (see Chapter 8), labour grievances, wage arrears, housing closures, pollution, developers’ fraud, LGBT rights, hospital closings and rising food prices.43 Complaints against incompetent and illegal waste disposal practices prompted Medvedev to dismiss the head of the Federal Service for Supervision of the Use of Natural Resources (Rosprirodnadzor), Artem Sidorov, who was also deputy minister of Natural Resources and Environment. Demonstrations against Moscow’s plans to dump its garbage in Russia’s North continued late into 2019 and grew increasingly volatile; for instance, police arrested eight leaders of an unauthorized rally of some 3,000 in Arkhangelsk in April. The proposed permanent mega dump on marshy land at Shiyes threatened the region’s water supply. Large groups demanded the resignation of governors in that region and in the Komi Republic.44 The objectors prevailed, at least temporarily. In May, Moscow suspended work on a $162 million landfill in northern Russia, and called for public hearings on the matter. Rallies and some violence persisted at the controversial landfill sites at Shiyes and in Arkhangelsk, while smaller assemblies were held in several other northern towns. In January 2020, a regional court ruled that construction of the Shiyes landfill was illegal. In October, a higher court upheld that decision and ordered the construction company to return the

94  The political arena land to its original state. This was an important victory for Russian environmental activists.45 Clashes were not limited to the North. Violence broke out after police tried to move environmentalists protesting proposals to clear parts of a forest in a suburb of Moscow to construct a garbage processing plant, and thousands came together in Krasnoyarsk objecting to what they thought was their governor’s inaction over raging wildfires.46 Elsewhere, dozens were detained following three days of demonstrations against the construction of an Orthodox cathedral in the central park of Yekaterinburg. That city’s mayor suspended the project.47 In the summer of 2020 crowds protested a new law allowing forestry operations close to Lake Baikal, and thousands of locals gathered to oppose plans to mine limestone on a protected natural landmark (Kushtau shihan [hill]) in Bashkortostan. 48 With the dramatic exception of four members of Pussy Riot rushing on to the field wearing police-style uniforms while the final match was underway, there were few attempts at political demonstrations during World Cup events. They were carted off and sentenced to 15 days in jail. At about the same time a consequence of Russia’s loss of voting rights in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in 2014 became apparent. To wit, Russia had no say in choosing judges for the ECHR in Strasbourg.49

The politics of pension reform The usually very mixed extra-systemic opposition found a common cause briefly in the spring of 2018 when two mainstream parties, Yabloko and the Communists, joined with Navalny’s group, Udaltsov’s Left Front and various trade unions to demonstrate against reforms of the pension system that included raising retirement ages. Surveys conducted during the wave of rallies against raising the age at which one could collect a state pension showed that the largest demographic group ready to attend demonstrations were people aged 46–60; that is, individuals approaching retirement under the old terms. Overall, however, 80 per cent of respondents opposed the policy and that number included the age group 18–30 (77%).50 Because nearly half said the new policy influenced their opinion of the president opposition in and out of the Duma was energized. Though it was muted temporarily because of World Cup fever, the widespread negative reaction to the much-discussed policy gave opposition politicians an opportunity to exploit public dissatisfaction. All but one of the UR’s deputies voted in support of the bill, 51 enabling the Communists and others to take credit for opposing it in the House and gain somewhat in popular ratings (Table 3.3). The bill triggered a new enthusiasm for participation in economic and political rallies, marking a clear change in attitude from earlier in the year. Levada Centre surveys conducted in late July saw 28 per cent willing to take part in protests against a declining quality of life, the highest since 1999; nearly 40 per cent said they would march against the pension reform, and a

The political arena  95 Table 3.3  VTsIOM polls post- retirement age bill, 2018

United Russia CPRF LDPR A Just Russia Non-Duma parties Will spoil ballot Will boycott Difficult to answer

July 1

July 8

July 15

July 22

38.1 14.5 10.5 5.7 7.6 1.3 8.6 13.5

38.8 13.6 10.3 5.9 8.2 1.1 8.6 13.5

38.6 14.4 10.2 6.0 7.9 1.1 8.7 13.1

37.1 15.5 10.7 5.8 7.6 1.3 8.8 13.4

Q: Tell me, please, if the elections to the State Duma of Russia were held next Sunday [29 July], which of the following parties would you most likely vote for? Source: compiled by the author from several VTsIOM survey postings

third said they would consider a political protest.52 For the moment, this was good news for opposition organizations. In August, the CEC approved three separate initiative group petitions for referenda on raising the retirement age. These came from the CPRF (its second try), A Just Russia led by its Moscow mayoralty candidate, Ilya Sviridov, and another Moscow-based group, called the All-Russia Association of Organization for Large Families, headed by Marina Semenova and Oksana Sharabokova. The authors then had to collect at least two million signatures to have their petition move forward, which none was able to do.53 Changes in the pension bill proposed by Putin in August, about a week before a planned demonstration against it, muted disapproval slightly by appealing to pension-age women. A Levada Centre questionnaire at about that time revealed that up to 77 per cent of the respondents would vote against the pension age reform if a referendum was held on the question.54 With that kind of resentment, it is no wonder that Putin’s intervention could not forestall a CPRF rally on 3 September, that brought some 10,000 (officials said 6,000) out in Moscow carrying anti-Putin signs and pro-Communist banners. A Just Russia held a smaller march at another location. Coupled with surveys showing that Russians were more concerned about price rises, poverty, unemployment, corruption and the widening gulf between rich and poor than they had been even in the 1990s, angry rallies posed special problems for United Russia in the upcoming election cycle. Making matters worse, acts of violence against opposition candidates and their campaign workers increased in the regions.55 As he watched from a cell on 9 September, Navalny’s team orchestrated outbursts against the pension reform all across the country. According to both Western and Russian reports, more than 800 people were jailed during simultaneous demonstrations in about 80 towns and cities, the largest number in St. Petersburg. The anti-government marches and anti-Putin political banners were widely seen on Russian TV and described in print media. The independent Russian human rights media project, OVD-Info, reported

96  The political arena incidents of violence on the part of police, and even Kudrin and several other senior officials criticized unrestrained use of force by law enforcement.56 Searching for a party to support A study released by the Russian Presidential Academy of the National Economy and Public Administration in October 2018 showed that as many as 42 per cent of potential voters thought that none of the mainstream political parties represented their interests. Only 23 per cent felt that the UR fit the bill, while the CPRF (11%), LDPR (10%) and A Just Russia (4%) trailed behind. Over 70 per cent had negative feelings towards the entire party system as it operated in Russia.57 That sentiment helps explain why so many citizens showed up for antipension reform demonstrations on Election Day, while citizens in 80 of Russia’s regions competed for 22 governorships, plus seats in 16 legislative assemblies and 12 city councils. There were seven single constituency seats up for grabs in the State Duma. Competition for those latter vacancies suffered from manipulative acts from officialdom and litigations launched against each other by contending parties. For example, the LDPR and Patriots of Russia took the Republican Party of Russia-People’s Freedom Party (PARNAS) to court, forcing it to drop out of one race on a technicality. A requirement that signatures of support must be obtained from sitting deputies in municipal representative bodies, the ‘municipal filter’, made it difficult for candidates to get enough support to run, and regional elites continued to dominate the local political process.58 Still, several UR and Putin-favoured candidates did poorly in the gubernatorial elections and, as we have seen, Putin’s own trust rating fell substantially. More important for the political arena was the fact that the same Levada Centre poll that showed drops in public confidence in Putin placed political parties collectively at the very bottom of a long list of entities judged.59 Soon after the September 2018 elections, seven members of the radical Other Russia movement were behind bars for throwing smoke bombs outside the office of a major petro-chemical company, while shouting anti-oligarch slogans, such as ‘Dekulakization for the Oligarchs!’ (Oligarkhov — Raskulachit’!).60 This coincided with another CPRF-led rally of some 3,000 against pension reform. As noted in Chapter 2, the elections may have been a sign that the Kremlin’s hold over the regional political scene was weakening. This trend, if true, was a consequence of a decline in quality of life in the regions, for which the pension reform protests were a symptom.

Moscow’s mayoralty race, 2018 The first big post-presidential election political test was the 2018 race for Moscow’s mayoralty office. Opposition militant and municipal deputy Ilya Yashin of PARNAS threw his name into the ring in April, irritating Gudkov,

The political arena  97 who had announced his intention to compete ‘as the only democratic candidate’.61 Other liberal-left groups and individuals squabbled, while Yabloko’s central bureau still argued for and against party centralization. Yabloko’s poor showing in the presidential election prompted a switch to a more horizontal management. Its earlier leader, Yavlinsky, was given more authority and his opponents were demoted. 62 Incumbent mayor of Moscow, Sobyanin, announced at the end of May that he would seek re-election and would run as an independent. Rumours flew in June that city officials were poised to reject the candidacies of Yashin, Gudkov and gay rights activist and journalist Anton Krasovsky.63 Yabloko shot itself in the foot again when the party’s federal executive rejected its Moscow branch’s nominee for candidate, Mitrokhin, who then sued his own party and was granted the right to continue campaigning by a Moscow court.64 As the election grew nearer, Putin and Medvedev both voiced indirect support for Sobyanin, who appeared unaffected by the renewed spread of protest movements. He won with a little over 70 per cent of the votes cast, in a voter turnout of only 31 per cent of eligible voters. Communist candidate Vadim Kumin was a distant second, followed by A Just Russia’s Sviridov and the LDPR’s Degtyarev. Incumbent governor of the Moscow region, Andrei Vorobyov, was returned with over 62 per cent. Mitrokhin failed to complete appropriate documentation and did not get on the ballot (Table 3.4). Electoral fallout Public resentment of United Russia and a perception that the CPRF was the only political party to rally opposition to pension reform, gave the Communists a new political lease on life. Their numbers rose as the UR’s fell almost everywhere. Zyuganov tried then to raise the party profile by calling for Russian annexation of the Donbas to forestall an alleged Ukrainian plan to launch an offensive against the rebel region.65 A new party, the Communist Party of Social Justice, won seats in one region, as did the newly formed Pensioners of Russia. Prominent oppositionists were kept off the ballot in many of the regions by means of the municipal filter, leaving protest votes to Table 3.4  Results of Moscow Mayoralty Election, 9 September 2018 Candidate

Party

Votes

Percentage

Sergei Sobyanin Vadim Kumin Ilya Sviridov Mikhail Degtyarev Mikhail Balakin

Indep. CPRF A Just Russia LDPR Union of Citizens

1,582,762 256,717 158,106 151,642 42,192

70.17 11.38 7.01 6.72 1.87

Eligible voters = 7,296,529; Votes cast = 2,255,698 (30.91%); Blank ballot = 64,279; Valid votes = 2,191,419 Source: Compiled by the author from Moscow’s electoral committee’s website, www.moscow_ city.vybory.izbirkom.ru/region/

98  The political arena relative unknowns.66 Runoffs were declared in four of the gubernatorial elections where pro-government candidates failed to win 50 per cent in the first round. A close election in the Far East Primorye region was annulled after Communist Andrei Ishchenko accused supporters of the UR’s Andrei Tarasenko of election rigging. A spontaneous rally of people called on Tarasenko to resign, which he did. Head of the CEC, Ella Pamfilova, demanded a re-run within three months.67 The re-scheduled vote represented a rare admission of cheating on the part of the UR. In the Siberian republic of Khakassia, the UR incumbent quit after not receiving a majority in the first round, leaving a Communist, Valentin Konovalov, to run unopposed. He won with 57.57 per cent of votes in a ‘for’ or ‘against’ ballot.68 In other second round votes, a 40 per cent turnout gave the Khabarovsk Krai governorship to LDRP Duma Deputy Sergei Furgal over a UR candidate who had held the post for nine years. Another LDPR challenger, Vladimir Sipyagin, defeated a Kremlin-backed incumbent in the Vladimir region. The LDPR and the CPRF formed coalition governments in these regions and Khakassia. In the meantime, the UR launched a purge of its regional executives, dismissing party leaders in seven regions where their party fared worse than expected.

2019–20 – turning points? With support for the central government fading in late 2018, Putin’s approval rate dropping to the lowest level in five years and real incomes also falling, Navalny went on the offensive. He launched a nationwide independent trade union (Profsoyuz Navalnogo) for the purpose of assuring that state-funded workers actually received wage increases they had been promised. At a packed meeting in a large conference hall in St. Petersburg, Navalny outlined a political agenda for electing supporters in the forthcoming municipal elections in that city, where 1,570 positions were open for competition. Navalny’s tactics included cooperation with the Communists and other parties to defeat United Russia candidates. He rejected the suggestion that he run for the Governor’s position himself. This stage of the Navalny saga was marked by a move away from an emphasis on corruption to focus on working conditions, workers’ rights and wages. Anti-corruption activism had been his stepping stone into the political arena, but his leadership of these campaigns was challenged by the All-Russia People’s Front (Obshcherossiiskii Narodnyi Front – ONF), to which Putin had assigned the task of battling corruption.69 Navalny’s new catchment was the working class generally and government employees specifically. In this sector, he competed with both the Communist Party and the large trade unions, whose membership for the most part supported pro-government parties. Aleksandr Shershukov, head of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russian, showed his concern by accusing Navalny of ‘parasitism’, feeding off other people’s problems.70

The political arena  99 Navalny wasn’t the only activist looking to benefit from the UR’s alleged vulnerability, nor was he the only target of the government. Leader of the movement ‘For Human Rights’ (Za prava cheloveka), Lev Ponomarev, spent two weeks in jail for an unauthorized protest in support of several teenagers detained for ‘extremism’. For his pains, the movement was designated a ‘foreign agent’ because it engaged in political activities in Russia while receiving funds from abroad.71 Ponomarev headed two other human rights NGOs, both of which were also named ‘foreign agents’. A year later, when the PGO declared the European Endowment for Democracy ‘undesirable’ because its endeavours ‘constitute a threat to the foundations of the constitutional system and security of the Russian Federation’, the number of foreign NGOs so labelled reached 20.72 These organizations were accused of influencing election campaigns, luring minors into riots and ‘creating tolerance for the use of narcotic drugs.’ 73 Quite a package! Nemtsov’s name continued to draw crowds as well. Although his very public murder was in February 2015, anniversary memorials continued. In 2019 about 6,000 people showed up for a commemorative demonstration in Moscow, and similar rallies were held in 20 other cities. Dissenters took the opportunity to wave a wide variety of placards, including some in English calling Putin a ‘liar’.74 On the fifth anniversary, Nemtsov’s daughter, Zhanna, called on the government finally to seek out the leading organizer of the killing, making it plain that she thought Kadyrov responsible.75 The West, of course, pointed fingers at Putin, and responded oddly. For example, the city of Prague re-named the square at the Russian Embassy after Nemtsov, Kyiv designated a city park to him in 2019 and a small square in front of the Russian Embassy in Washington was transformed into the Boris Nemtsov Plaza in 2018. A similar name change was enacted in Vilnius. The bridge on which he was killed in Moscow was informally re-named ‘Nemtsov Bridge’ (Nemtsov Most) by Muscovites. Whatever the merits of Nemtsov’s decadelong criticism of Putin’s regime, he was much more popular after his murder than he had been during his lifetime. May Day 2019 saw an unusual level of political protest. Normally a day of celebration, with official parades and organized demonstrations saluting workers, this one saw the arrest of 131 people, half of them in St. Petersburg, others in Moscow, Tomsk, Kursk, Novosibirsk and elsewhere. Anti-Putin and anti-UR banners and placards calling for fair elections dotted the political landscape. Some leaders were taken in by force, such as the head of Navalny’s office in St. Petersburg and the chair of Khodorkovsky’s Open Russia group in that city. They were given 10-day sentences.76 A few weeks later, a burst of single-picketers and newspaper support for journalist Ivan Golunov, who was in prison for alleged drug-dealing, churned up the political arena again. An on-line petition in his support drew over 100,000 names before the first week was out, and about 500 people were held briefly during an unauthorized rally on 12 June, suggesting that there was a lot of dissatisfaction bubbling beneath the surface.77 Four days after that, a smaller but authorized gathering in Moscow supporting Golunov and protesting

100  The political arena ministerial abuse of power proceeded peacefully. The outcry was effective. On Putin’s recommendation, Minister of the Interior Vladimir Kolokoltsev ordered Golunov released, two MVD generals dismissed, and several other officers suspended. This was a major victory for grassroots political activism in Russia.78 A Levada Centre poll conducted in late May 2019 showed that 27 per cent of respondents would ‘absolutely’ protest a fall in living standards. Up to 69 per cent said they were ‘less’ likely to do so.79 As we have seen, this new frame of mind pushed the siloviki towards more stringent regulation against political activism. In fact, the Golunov case was followed by an outbreak of demonstrations calling for the release of political prisoners and individuals imprisoned on charges believed to be trumped up by police. ‘The Public Demands Justice!’ (Obshchestvo trebuet spravedlivosti!) was a common slogan sponsored by the Libertarian Party of Russia and taken up by others. By that time, the Moscow-based human rights NGO, Memorial, calculated that Russian prisons held about 65 political prisoners, 248 religious inmates and over 200 falsely indicted people.80 According to one report, the Kremlin’s internal political agency, supervised by Sergei Kiriyenko, was handed the task of reducing protest potential by activating patriotic youth groups and presenting a constant optimistic message. Attracting youth to their political agenda was an ambition of all parties, and not an easy one. A major study conducted jointly by the Levada Centre and Germany’s Friedrich Ebert Foundation in 2019 and published in 2020 showed that 57 per cent of ‘young people display no apparent interest in politics’. The reference was to ‘Generation Z’, ages 14–29. The study also showed that up to 76 per cent of Russia’s youth held more or less the same political views as their parents and, in contrast to a widely-held assumption, this was more the case in Moscow than elsewhere in Russia.81 In terms of values, two-thirds of the individuals polled put ‘human rights’ at the top, leaving specific ‘rights’ like freedom of speech (58%), right to own property (50%), freedom of assembly (40%) or of religion (28%) far behind. Whereas just under 50 per cent agreed that ‘Democracy is a good form of government in general’ and 40 per cent disagreed that under some circumstance a dictatorship could be preferable, 65 per cent agreed that Russia ‘should have a leader who rules Russia with a strong hand for the public good’.82 New electoral crisis in Moscow That study may have come a little too soon. Political demonstrations grew more frequent and more radicalized as the year went on. Chants against Putin and Medvedev proliferated. Crowds demanded that governors in Magas, Arkhangelsk and Yekaterinburg resign.83 Still, these scattered outbursts were nothing compared to the uproar in July, when electoral officials removed some 30 names of mostly opposition candidates from the ballot for September’s election to the Moscow City Duma. After Moscow’s CEC claimed that the individuals did not have enough legitimate signatures of

The political arena  101 support, people began to gather in front of City Hall. The politicians, among them municipal deputy Ilya Yashin, lawyer for Navalny’s FBK, Lyubov Sobol, and former Duma deputy Dmitry Gudkov, alleged that the election commission rigged the ballot. About 40 demonstrators were placed in detention.84 Moscow has 45 single-member constituencies, and nearly 4,000 polling stations. If they are not nominated by a political party represented in the municipal Duma, candidates need voter signatures from 3 per cent of their riding (circa 4,500–5,000 names). If more than 10 per cent of the signatures are invalidated, the candidate is disqualified. Herein lay the problem. The CEC decides which list of signatures to test: 233 candidates were registered; 57 were rejected. Yashin was declared ineligible for failing to authenticate some 12 per cent of the signatures on his list. Gudkov, Sobol, Mitrokhin and two of Navalny’s aides were also among the disqualified candidates.85 As a result, simmering social unrest took a quick turn to politics, just as it had after the rigged elections of 2011–12. This fact was brought home on 20 July, when an authorized demonstration organized by the Libertarian Party in Moscow drew some 20,000 (officialdom said 12,000) carrying posters saying, for example, ‘I have the right to choose!’, ‘We exist’, ‘Putin – No!’ and banners emblazoned with the names of Gudkov, Yashin and others. Many waved Russian flags. Some of the disqualified candidates and Navalny spoke to the crowds from a stage, and the rally turned from one opposing Sobyanin to a demonstration against Putin.86 The crowd, which had to pass through metal detectors, gathered without incident. Navalny, who called for an unauthorized rally to be held in front of City Hall the following week, was taken into custody on 24 July for repeated violations of the rules for public assembly and given another 30-day stretch. Four other candidates were handed shorter sentences, and police searched the homes of several opposition candidates. This time the CEC opened up criminal cases, charging some protesters with obstructing the elector commissions by blocking entrances to commission buildings. Investigators subsequently (30 July) said they were treating the on-going demonstrations as civil unrest, whose organizers could be subject to a penalty of 15 years in prison. For a start, Mikhail Svetov, leader of the Libertarian Party was condemned to 30 days.87 Plainly, the state was not going to back off this time. Few minds were changed when Pamfilova met with the disqualified candidates on 24 July. They demanded that they be allowed to register without a verifying process; she argued that it was Navalny, not the CEC, who most wanted them de-registered so he could take political advantage of the crisis. The city of Moscow had suddenly become a hotbed of discontent, with groups also protesting the city’s renovation projects in parks and squares, so Navalny already had a collective anger to exploit.88 Hundreds of riot police and National Guard cordoned off City Hall before the unauthorized rally was held on 27 July, and over 200 protesters were detained after they broke through police barricades. Participation numbers ranged between 3,500 and 6,000, depending on who was asked. Dozhd TV

102  The political arena streamed live videos of the events. According to one human rights group, by the end of the next day police had picked over 1,300 individuals, 150 of whom spent the night in jail. Moscow’s MVD set the number of detainees at 1,074.89 Navalny was hospitalized because of an allergic reaction to something unknown, and was released back to prison within two days. In a blog sent from prison, with photos of his swollen face, Navalny said ‘I have never had an allergy. No food, no pollen, no matter what’, hinting therefore that he might have been poisoned. His lawyer, personal doctor and supporters spread the tale, while the chief doctor at the treating hospital said he wasn’t poisoned. As in so many other such cases, the perception of the ‘truth’ depended on where the speaker, and listeners, stood on the political spectrum.90 Sobol, who had been on a hunger strike since 13 July, called for more radical measures, asking supporters to reject the demonstration site offered by the municipality and meet instead on Moscow’s central Boulevard Ring. Sobol’s Facebook pages included a map of her preferred route and suggested that over 1,300 people planned to attend the rally set for 3 August.91 The Kremlin had offered major concessions to protesters in 2012. Seven years later it wasn’t as clear what options the government had, other than to give in or to clamp down. Doubtless, fear of a coloured revolution shaped government responses.92 At first, Russian state-run TV either ignored most of the events or blamed provocateurs for the violence, while independent TV and press, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and other social media ran photos and daily stories of the chaos in Moscow. In a televised interview, Sobyanin characterized the protests as ‘riots, pre-planned and well prepared’ and accused the disallowed candidates of calling for action even before decisions had been made about their eligibility. He went on, Anarchy, unrest and permissiveness only exacerbate real problems. And this ends with tragedy. There are more than enough examples in the history of our country. I’m sure Muscovites understand this well. This is not for the good of the people, but for someone’s political and selfish goals.93 The US Embassy in Moscow, the EU’s press office and the UK’s Foreign Office all expressed concerns about the police actions in Moscow, calling them ‘disproportionate’, undermining ‘freedom of expression’ and ‘disregarding’ peoples’ rights.94 Russia’s Foreign Ministry took exception to the US Embassy ‘meddling’ in Russia’s political affairs, and pointed out, rightly, that much of Western Europe itself was beset with angry demonstrators and harsh responses. An editorial in one mainstream Russian newspaper noted that there could be no winners in the situation, upbraided Sobyanin for letting it get out of control and warned that a promised rally set for the following weekend could lead to real bloodshed.95 Assuming that Moscow was teetering on the edge of chaos, the municipal officers acted to curb further political activism. Law enforcement detained

The political arena  103 Sobol, opened a criminal investigation into Navalny for alleged money laundering by his Foundation and, on rally day, locked up about 1,000 participants. Most were soon released, and Sobol was fined. Police, National Guard and OMAN officers set up lines and also wandered among the gathering people. The Moscow Times and other media carried many videos of the action, showing hundreds of people, the majority of them young, walking around central Moscow, taking photos on their phones, and media conducting interviews. Nothing could be kept from the public eye. Activists quoted the Constitution, which allows freedom of assembly and speech, while law enforcement cited laws that require agreement on the timing and location of all demonstrations in advance. These requirements were not met ahead of the 3 August protest, and staging such events in the city centre is usually forbidden – for reasons ranging from worries about congestion, the locations of government buildings and because that area of the city had been the target of acts of terrorism.96 Caught in a Catch-22 situation, the Kremlin condemned the ‘absolutely unacceptably disproportionate use of force’ by police agencies, and at the same time insisted that firm action to curb unrest was necessary.97 Zyuganov called for the resignation of the head of Moscow’s CEC, Valentin Gorbunov, who had been in that position for more than 20 years and had been the subject of electoral abuse complaints for years.98 Gorbunov resigned in March 2020. When Sobol’s appeal for reinstatement was turned down, she used Twitter and Facebook to appeal for another demonstration. On this occasion, 10 August, the fifth week in row, the crowd was much larger, up to 60,000 according to OVD-Info, 20,000 according to police sources. Rapper bands performed and other musical celebrities showed up and urged their social media followers to come out. The gathering was authorized by the city. Over 250 people were detained anyway, especially after participants began moving toward the presidential administration building chanting ‘Putin is a thief!’ (Putin - Vor!). Rallies in solidarity with the Moscow opposition candidates were held in St. Petersburg, where about 50 were locked up, as were another 10 in Rostov-on-Don.99 Roskomnadzor demanded that Google and Facebook stop accepting YouTube advertisements of illegal events. Threatened with a response ‘adequate’ to a foreign agency interfering in the affairs of a sovereign state, Google responded, somewhat disingenuously, that it obeyed all electoral laws and supported ‘responsible’ political advertising.100 The Investigative Committee stepped up its investigation of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation by raiding its HQ in Moscow and several branches in the regions. By that time, the unrest approached a danger point and the state had to find solutions other than merely arrest people. As momentum gathered for rallies on behalf of free elections in Moscow on 17 August, the Communist Party was the only applicant granted permission to demonstrate. Similar requests by municipal opposition deputies for a march along the Boulevard Ring and other boulevards were rejected. The

104  The political arena CPRF rally attracted about 4,000 and proceeded without incident. Other crowds in Moscow were mostly solo and peaceful, with few opposition leaders in sight. Leaders of unauthorized demonstrations in Moscow and St. Petersburg were quickly picked up.101 Speaking at a press conference in Finland, Putin downplayed the protests, saying that there were too many false signatures (‘dead souls’) on the candidates’ applications and noting again that recent political protests in Europe were larger, longer and more violent.102 Sobol became the political face of unrest in Moscow, where she and her husband were the victim of several physical attacks, and had faeces thrown at them by government supporters. These acts didn’t prevent her from calling for another peaceful march for the 31st, again using Twitter and roving a map.103 The march would coincide with Strategy 31 marches, that is, regular civic action in support of Article 31 of the Constitution that guarantees peaceful freedom of assembly. Leaving street activism to Sobol, Navalny urged Moscow’s electorate to vote strategically, intimating that rallies were important though not effective. His ‘Smart Voting’ (Umnoe golosovanie) tactic called on voters to register their place of voting on a Navalny team website where, on the eve of the election, they would receive the name of a candidate of Navalny’s choice.104 The website included a large photo of Navalny overshadowing one of Putin, with a caption ‘How we shall defeat United Russia!’105 His bid to control opposition votes divided the extra-systemic opposition further.106 As it turned out Sobol’s rally on the 31st was authorized and peaceful. Up to 2,000 people participated, some chanting ‘Russia without Putin’. Even Sobol took part without hindrance. Navalny stayed away, and Sobol was arrested a few days later. As a result of all the disturbances, several activists were given harsh sentences of up to four years for taking part in illegal protests. Public outcry helped reduce punishments for some, including that of actor Pavlov Ustinov, who was found guilty of dislocating a National Guardsman’s shoulder during a confrontation at one of the rallies. A Russia court quashed the sentence after viewing videos showing four guards seizing him while he was scrolling his phone. Widespread condemnation from celebrities and the general public prompted his release on bail and a recommendation of leniency.107 Navalny, Sobol and Ivan Zhdanov were among the speakers in defence of detained protesters at another rally in Moscow, where 25,000 showed up on 29 September. Also speaking were individuals freed from jail, who stood on a stage and thanked protesters for helping to secure their release. From their perspective, the demonstrations were deemed a great success.108 The apparent ease with which such occasions were organized can be explained in part by the extensive use of foreign sites, Google and Facebook, and other social media to broadcast time and place of both legal and illegal demonstrations.109 Russians were aware that the official narrative of foreign interference was a red herring. Less than a third of respondents to a Levada Centre survey agreed that Western meddling caused the protests and over 40

The political arena  105 per cent felt that the police used inappropriate force. Approval and disapproval of the protest actions were about equal (23% for, 25% against), and 45 per cent were indifferent to it.110 The latter number was not encouraging for the opposition. By the end of the year, 30 people had been prosecuted for their part in the Moscow affair and about the same number were still under investigation. Many others had been held briefly and released.111 Regional elections The 2019 regional elections in September told the tale. United Russia lost one-third of its seats on the Moscow City Council, cutting its majority to 25 of 45 places. Navalny declared victory for his ‘Smart Voting’ ploy. The CPRF (13), Yabloko (3) and A Just Russia (3) also took seats in Moscow. Elsewhere, the UR retained 15 regional governorships and the mayor’s post in St. Petersburg. The LDPR won a majority of seats in Khabarovsk region, and the Novosibirsk mayoralty was taken by a Communist. The fact that voter turnout was only a little over 20 per cent in both Moscow and St. Petersburg rendered Navalny’s boasts a little overdone. Golos recorded about 2,000 complaints of violations across the country and the police received even more. St. Petersburg suffered the most infringements of the rules. Eleven criminal cases were opened in this connection.112 It took a while for the dust to settle. Protesters in Buryatia demanded a re-run of an election that saw a pro-government candidate narrowly defeat a Communist Party contender for the mayor’s post in Ulan-Ude. Several of Navalny’s regional offices were searched by police professing to be investigating a money-laundering scheme operated by the FBK.113 Navalny insisted that the deed was done because of his ‘smart voting’ approach.114 It would seem that the state’s tactic now was to bankrupt the Navalny-led opposition. In October, a Duma Commission established to investigate foreign media violations of Russian election law alleged that Deutsche Welle, Meduza, BBC Russia, MBKh-Media (Khodorkovsky-funded), the RFE/RL, Voice of America (VOA) and Nastoiashchee vremia (Current Time) had all ‘meddled’ in the elections by promoting protest, taking sides and violating the ‘day-ofsilence’ rule. Nastoiashchee vremia is a Russian-language TV and digital network of the RFE/RL and VOA broadcasting to Russian audiences. Reactions from deputies ranged from demands that Roskomnadzor ban these outlets from Russia to fines. No immediate action was taken.115 Later in the year, the Commission claimed to have discovered ‘training camps’ for protesters in Russia, funded by foreign NGOs, media and governments. Although the Commission submitted its findings to federal prosecutors and recommended legislation restricting such establishments, it was left unclear as to what and where these sites were; or even if they actually exist.116 Contrary to assertions from Navalny and his supporters in both Russia and abroad that the popular tide was swinging in his favour, Levada Centre

106  The political arena polls conducted at the end of October found that only 9 per cent of respondents ‘respected the performance of Navalny’. One quarter of the respondents had a ‘rather negative’ view of the activist, and those who were ‘indifferent’ or knew nothing about him were both at 31 per cent. Nearly 60 per cent knew little or nothing about court proceedings against activists in the ‘Moscow Affair’ and about half of the respondents had not heard of the office searches conducted by the FSB. Of those who knew of the searches their belief was divided almost evenly between respondents who saw them as a means to suppress opposition (18%), protect the state from the influence of foreign agents (18%), or curb money laundering (12%).117 If these reactions represented the norm, then either the state-controlled TV (whence a majority of Russians still got their news) was doing its job well or the Navalny group had lost control of the message on social media – or both. It was also plain that the state had made public political protest riskier, as the number of arrests and charges levelled against organizers increased exponentially. According to data compiled by OVD-Info in 2019, the number of protest-related ‘offences’ outlined in Russia’s Administrative Code (Article 20.2) had quadrupled over the previous 15 years, as had the amounts called for in fines.118 More parties One consequence of renewed political bustle was the creation of new political movements, some of which developed into political parties. According to the Ministry of Justice, some 40 new groups formed in 2019. Critics charged that some of them were sponsored by the government for the purpose of watering down the opposition before the 2020 regional elections. Parties that reach the 5 per cent vote minimum in the regionals will be eligible to campaign for the 2021 Duma election without having to collect signatures. Among the new parties were a Green Alternative, For Truth, Decent Life, Party of Direct Democracy and many others. To register they needed at least 400 members and branches in half of the regions. In some cases, funding came from oligarchs, who may have been trying to whittle down electoral support for Navalny or prevent extra-systemic opposition from coalescing around any one party. By the end of 2019, 59 parties had the right to participate in the Duma elections and 13 of them could do so without gathering signatures.119

Nationalists – riding high Right-wing and xenophobic groups have thrived in post-Soviet Russia, drawing international attention first when Zhirinovsky’s LDPR topped all parties in the 1993 election to the Duma. Neither liberal nor democratic, the LDPR has earned seats in the House ever since, tending for the most part to support Putin. Outside the Duma, a wide range of skinheads, neo-fascist movements, Slavic union groups and patriotic agencies have left their mark. They tend to act more brazenly than the so-called liberals, and are arrested more often.120

The political arena  107 In 2018, for instance, a Russian nationalist group ripped to shreds a wreath laid at Nemtsov’s memorial in October by US National Security Adviser John Bolton. In Moscow to discuss the INF treaty, Bolton’s rather undiplomatic act drew the ire of the South East Radical Bloc (SERB), the extremely nationalistic anti-Maidan organization blamed in 2017 for throwing green dye in Navalny’s face, and now called the Russian Liberation Movement (Russkoe osvobitel’noe dvizhenie).121 Another group is the Russian Imperial Movement (Russkoi Imperskoe Dvizhenie, RIM), which states that it protects traditional Russian values, promotes the idea of monarchy and supports Russian territorial expansion. Headed by Stanislav Vorobev, RIM organizes two paramilitary training camps in St. Petersburg that attract neo-Nazis from Europe, and has spread its message to Sweden, Germany and Spain. Russia has proscribed several of its publications, and the US has declared it a terrorist ‘white supremacist’ organization.122 Since 2014, nationalist movements have played on increased anti-Ukrainian and anti-immigrant sentiments held, according to the Levada Centre, by up to 20 per cent of the population. On the other hand, anti-Semitism has decreased and ethnic-centred riots declined.123 Organized annual nationalist rallies diminished too. A few extremists took advantage of National Unity Day, 4 November 2018, to parade in several cities. They rallied in the name of ‘Russian march’ (Russkiy marsh), which usually draws a wide range of nationalist, patriotic and anti-immigrant groups, and the Right Bloc, whose leaders were held and released within a day.124 Compared to other kinds of demonstrations, the extreme right draws smaller, but more aggressive numbers. Deeply felt nationalist sentiments have spread. Surveys suggested that about half of Russians approved the notion of ‘Russia for Russians’ in 2018, and over 70 per cent wanted to limit the influx of foreigners into the country. Immigrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia were resented the most. Echoing false generalizations levelled by populists around the world, respondents complained that immigrants bring in crime, take jobs from Russians, live in ghettos and fail to assimilate.125 Widespread right-wing activity also spawned non-violent, but more conservative monarchist movements. One of them, the Double-Headed Eagle Society (Obshchestvo dvuglavyi orel), hatched about 90 small branches across the country by 2018. Funded by telecommunications oligarch and former A Just Russia member, Konstantin Malofeev, it has vocal support from the Orthodox Church. Its programme includes resurrecting the history of tsarist Russia and, in current affairs, disparaging United Russia. Criticism of Putin is ‘absolutely forbidden’ in the Society. In fact, Malofeev insinuated that if Russia decided to restore the monarchy, Putin might well be a suitable tsar. Maloveev’s springboard for political activity is a business conglomerate called Tsargrad, which has had links to Eurasianist Aleksandr Dugin and the US religious right. Russian authorities have been looking at Malofeev in connection with tax evasion and fraud, so the future of his movement is uncertain.126

108  The political arena

Constitutional amendments and the political arena Some of the constitutional revisions in 2020’s ‘January Revolution’ appealed particularly to Russian nationalists. One of these was the reference to Russian as the language of the ‘state-forming’ people. Making criticism of the USSR’s role in World War II a crime was another overt appeal to nationalist sentiments. We have seen that granting Russian law precedence over international law and banning any attempt to cede existing Russian territories were other patriotic clauses. 127 Whereas the European Council adopted a resolution urging Russia to remove the amendment about prioritizing domestic over international law, one governor epitomized nationalist sentiment by praising the amendment as a means of taking control of Russian affairs away from ‘Uncle Sam’.128 The selection of a new prime minister who carried far less political baggage than Medvedev and the introduction of a mixed bag of constitutional amendments, with something for everyone, left the extra-systemic opposition with little to say. Before it was clear that there would be a reset of Putin’s presidential terms, they organized rallies and waved signs calling the amendments a cynical attempt by Putin to retain power by other means, but still had to join demonstrators with other grievances to boast large turnouts. It took the reset to bring them out. In the midst of the confusion, Putin told a TV interviewer that individuals who participate in unauthorized demonstration should expect to be detained. The law ‘must be obeyed’, he said, ‘otherwise, the country’s stability will break down’. He went on to declare that without law, ‘today they throw bottles, tomorrow a chair, and then cars will be smashed. You can’t allow this.’ He recommended that protesters get permission and express their points of view peacefully, use the internet and media, ‘but why block traffic?’ If groups break the law collectively, their principals will be arrested and ‘have their heads shaved’, he joked.129 Plainly, the tightening-up process was not going to abate. Putin did not meet with leaders of the four major parties in the Duma until 6 March, after the amendments bill had its first reading. Leader of the UR in the Duma, Sergei Neverov, Zhirinovsky, Zyuganov and Mironov were joined by Duma Speaker Volodin and Kiriyenko. Putin chaired the meeting and told them that many of their proposals had been taken into consideration in preparation for the second reading and thanked them for their general support. He asked for solidarity in passing the bill through the next two readings. They all agreed.130 Political reset As we have seen, no Duma deputy opposed the clauses that made it possible for Putin to run again for the presidency, though 43 abstained from the final vote on the bill. The extra-systemic opposition, however, immediately seized the moment to organize resistance. Single-person pickets formed outside the

The political arena  109 Duma and Federation Council buildings and opposition groups applied for permission to organize demonstrations later in the month. They were handicapped by the fact that, one day before the Duma vote, Sobyanin banned all ‘sports, entertainment, public and other mass events’ in Moscow that might attract over 5,000 participants.131 The fact that he had warned earlier that shutdowns were expected in order to curb the spread of the coronavirus and Rospotrebnadzor had already cautioned people to avoid crowded public spaces, did not prevent critics from accusing Sobyanin of issuing the ban to limit actions against the constitutional reforms.132 Whether the pandemic was used as an excuse to muzzle activists or not, as it grew more serious Moscow was locked down and all public meetings were curtailed. New faces took over the political screen. Sobyanin earned a larger share of television time than even Mishustin. Putin’s close allies, such as Volodin, Matviyenko and, to a lesser extent, Lavrov and Shoigu, all appeared more often during the crisis period than the usually prominently displayed Zyuganov, Zhirinovsky and Mironov, who practically disappeared from sight. Whether this was a natural phenomenon because of COVID-19, or evidence of a power swing bringing the city of Moscow and cabinet more in line with the presidential administration – or separating from it – remained to be seen. The old Bolshevik challenge, kto-kogo? (lit. who-whom? Or, who will win?), was the gist of questions asked by many observers of the Russian political scene. Jarred by frequent political outbursts from outside the Duma, Putin coopted some of Navalny’s agenda in his proposals for constitutional changes. In addition to transferring more power to the prime minister’s office and the Duma, that is, to elected officials, emphasis in his annual address to the Federal Assembly on a social contract and poverty reduction, while insisting that Russia needed to be a strong presidential republic, provided talking points for his political supporters. Whether his appeals to popular sentiment were responsible or not, reaction on the streets was relatively calm. In addition to the Manifesto mentioned in Chapter 1, a crowd of 1,500 demonstrated peacefully in Moscow five days after the address. Ilya Yashin announced an anti-Putin event to coincide with February’s march in memory of Boris Nemtsov.133 At that authorized rally of up to 22,000 (city officials said 10,000) in Moscow with smaller ones in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, the constitutional issue was less prominent than continued anger over Nemtsov’s fate and other political issues.134 Overall, in fact, the first public reactions to the proposed amendments were slightly more favourable than unfavourable. Echo Moscow (Ekho Moskvy) broadcast and then printed another open letter on 15 March, signed by over 350 scientists, journalists, lawyers and writers who called the change in presidential terms in office an ‘unlawful anticonstitutional coup in pseudo-legal form’. Citing articles in the existing Constitution that rendered, in their opinion, the proposed changes illegal, they urged all concerned citizens to reject the amendment.135 Neither the letter, the manifesto, nor demonstrations had any influence whatsoever on the Administration.

110  The political arena

Back to work – Pandemic, Khabarovsk and Navalny variables Politics and the pandemic All major parties rallied around the flag during the pandemic. There were some public complaints against compulsory workplace closings, for which employees demanded compensation. This was particularly true in the North Caucasus, where the National Guard detained several leaders in North Ossetia and forbade video-taking.136 In Chechnya, Kadyrov warned doctors and journalists not to complain about shortages in medical supplies and in Moscow, several city councillors called for on-line rallies urging government to provide more financial aid to people who lost jobs because of self-isolation restrictions, small businesses that were required to continue paying full salaries after shutdowns, and amnesties for prisoners. Protest placards were shown on line as well.137 Not to be left out, Navalny launched a campaign on YouTube that he called the ‘5-steps for Russia’ (5 shagov dlia Rossii). He urged people to join a public campaign to persuade the government to issue universal coronavirus payouts of specific amounts to adults and children: ₽20,000 ($260) per adult and ₽10,000 per child from Russia’s reserve funds. In addition to the individual remuneration, he demanded cancellation of utility payments, a general relief fund for small and medium-sized businesses and cancellation of all 2020 taxes for them. Navalny drew over two million viewers within hours of his post appearing.138 In fact, the pandemic period saw Navalny make his greatest inroads on the public consciousness. Almost always close to the bottom of pollster lists of personalities whom the public trusted or knew much about, Navalny suddenly found himself among the most ‘inspiring’ Russian celebrities in a survey conducted by the Levada Centre in April 2020. Overall, he placed behind Putin and ahead of Shoigu, Zhirinovsky, Lavrov and Sobyanin in that order and ahead of Putin in the 40–54 age group.139 The questionnaire was openended and respondents were asked to list names as they came to mind. This was not an assessment of trust or confidence; rather, it asked for names of people who ‘inspired’ by their civic activity. Whatever the reason for this change in Navalny’s public profile, it was a good sign for the opposition going forward, and perhaps an ominous one for Putin and United Russia. It may also have been the trigger for an assassination attempt in August (see ahead), especially as Navalny took credit for compensation packages that the government had been planning well before the ‘5 Steps’ appeared. Acutely conscious of unrest in Siberia and the North Caucasus, which was exacerbated by the political tumult in Khabarovsk (see ahead) and a huge spike in coronavirus cases beginning in October, Putin allocated large sums of money specifically to the regions to help manage the pandemic (see Chapter 9) and, though he didn’t say so, to defuse frustrations before they became too political. Perhaps the most egregious political exploitation of the pandemic, however, was the Communist Party’s attempt to take advantage of the

The political arena  111 anti-vaccination mood (see Chapter 9) by distributing leaflets comparing the vaccine campaign to a ‘rebirth of fascism’ (vozrozhdeniem fashizma) and called the vaccine a ‘nanotech product that will radiate an electromagnet field’ causing death.140 Back to political theatre In their turn, political oppositionists tried to harness on-line and social media to suit their agenda needs. For example, plans were laid for a debate on Facebook between Navalny and Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. These plans fell through because of disagreement over the use of a moderator, or so the official version went. Navalny continued to grant interviews on YouTube and he, and others, kept their blog sites active.141 The ‘No’ campaign against the constitutional amendments proceeded on-line, meeting on 28 April with Dmitry Gudkov, publisher Irina Prokhorova and economist Sergei Guriev among the speakers. They tended to focus on the pandemic more than the Constitution.142 Scattered protests against the constitutional amendments continued, while police mostly stood aside. One of them, made up of several hundred people, came together on Pushkin Square in Moscow on All-Russia Vote day. Not authorized, it still proceeded peacefully while police wandered among demonstrators warning them of its illegality and handing out protective masks. Single pickets chanted anti-Putin refrains and carried placards with phrases such as ‘Down with the Tsar’, ‘Putin forever’, with the ‘forever’ heavily crossed out, ‘Putin the thief’, and face masks with ‘No’ emblazoned on them.143 Several municipal deputies and lots of reporters attended. The gathering fell far short of Navalny’s hopes in both numbers and vocalized anger, but the message was carried in the Russia media. Unrest in the regions The first big post-vote rally had nothing to do with the Constitution. It came in Khabarovsk, the largest city in Russia’s Far East, where over 10,000 challenged the arrest on 9 July of popular Governor Sergei Furgal. Accused of murdering business competitors 15 years earlier, the former LDPR deputy was ordered confined for two months as a ‘preventative measure’ while the FSB gathered evidence. Whether the charges against Furgal were accurate, or not, the appearance of a political vendetta was plain – he had defeated a Kremlin-supported candidate in the gubernatorial race of 2018. Just as Furgal was taken away, police seized two more LDPR members of the regional Duma for fraud, and searched the homes of three other party members.144 Furgal denied the charges. According to Navalny, the street protest was the largest in the region’s history. Local websites showed marchers shouting ‘Moscow go away’ and shouting ‘Freedom!’ and ‘Furgal is our choice’. The LDPR organized a petition calling for Furgal’s release.145 Smaller marches

112  The political arena took place in Khabarovsk and Komsomol-on-Amur the next day, as local officials complained about ‘provocative slogans’ and warned that all such gatherings were illegal during the pandemic.146 There was very little reaction from Moscow even as tens of thousands turned out in Khabarovsk for the next five Saturdays in a row, most of them in support of Furgal, but increasingly with anti-Kremlin messages. By that time the demonstrators were supported by similar crowds in Vladivostok.147 Navalny cheered them on by Instagram. In addition to its obvious political implications this protest was a further sign of festering hostility in the regions towards Moscow. The Kremlin was well aware of widespread discontent, and acted to forestall more serious actions. The unauthorized protests were, for the most part, allowed to proceed by police with only a few detainees, and Putin named LDPR Duma deputy Mikhail Degtyarev as Furgal’s temporary replacement. Attempting to mollify the crowds, Degtyarev announced that Mishustin promised an additional ₽1.3 billion to the territory, purportedly to compensate for lost incomes, though more likely to appease the protesters.148 As the protest rallies continued, Degtyarev stated that he had ‘irrefutable evidence’ that foreign agents were organizing them, but even Peskov debunked this old Kremlin-style trick. He allowed, instead, that there might be oppositionist ‘special brawlers’ moving in. Local authorities had everything well in hand, Peskov continued, and no help from Moscow was necessary.149 No matter that Degtyarev was a member of the LDPR, he was treated as a carpetbagger by the local citizenry and even by some local party officials. If his appointment was part of an attempt by Putin to keep the in-house political parties on side, it didn’t seem to be working very well.150 The weekly (Saturdays) demonstrations showed no let-up, though police began arresting leading participants.151 For example, when on 15 August solidarity processions were held in 16 regions of Russia, police detained from one to six individuals in Tver, Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Vladivostok and Khabarovsk. OVD-Info published regular lists of detainees along with the charges laid against them. Most were released within the day; a few spent a night in jail. Official reaction remained subdued until 10 October, when police beat demonstrators and apprehended over 20 participants. The unauthorized processions grew smaller and quieter, yet they continued into December as weekly fare.152 The fact that they were openly anti-Putin made the rallies unique in Siberian activism and made it unlikely that the president could come in on his white horse and save the situation. Siberia was not the only site for post-Vote actions against oppositionists. Police raided the homes of several Open Russia adherents in Moscow and Tomsk. These included homes of a Moscow municipal councillor and the chief editor of the oppositionist MBKh-Media, Sergei Prostakov. The organization had planned protests against the amended Constitution for 15 July, when about 1,000 gathered to sign a class action suit against the constitutional revisions.153 In what could only be interpreted as a national crackdown, Navalny’s Moscow office was raided again and he was prevented from leaving Moscow because of new criminal investigation opened against him. Police

The political arena  113 also raided Mediazona, accused a LGBT artist of ‘gay propaganda’, and searched a Pussy Riot activist’s house. Journalists were charged with abetting terrorism, or even treason.154 Bystanders caught many of the police actions against individuals and offices on video and distributed pictures by social media. A Navalny riddle, again A bigger post-Vote shock to Russia’s political world came on 20 August when Navalny was rushed to a hospital in Siberia. He had gone there to support independent candidates running for posts in September’s regional elections and fell seriously ill during a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, where he was treated with atropine, intubation and mechanical ventilation. Russian oppositionists and Western commentators immediately assumed that he was poisoned and denounced Putin and the Russia state. The Kremlin wished him a ‘speedy recovery’. After 48 hours of mixed messages from doctors, officials and political partisans, Moscow allowed a chartered medical jet from Germany to fly Navalny to Berlin for treatment.155 The health ministry in Omsk insisted that no poisons had been found in Navalny’s system. After 10 days in Berlin with Navalny in a medically induced coma, the German government pronounced, ‘unequivocally’, that he had been poisoned with a substance from the Novichok (Novice) group, that is, the military-grade toxin used in the Skripal affair in 2018. The incident then became a cause célèbre in the new Cold War. Merkel, Macron, Boris Johnson and Pompeo demanded that Russia conduct full and transparent investigations, seek out the guilty parties and hold them accountable. Russian police said they were conducting a preliminary probe to establish ‘all circumstance of the incident’. Shortly after Navalny emerged from the coma, on 15 September, his team members claimed that they found and preserved three courtesy water bottles from his hotel room in Tomsk only a few hours after they learned of his illness. They smuggled the bottles and Navalny’s clothes out of Tomsk to Germany, where military medics found traces of Novichok on the neck of one of the bottles. Here’s where the riddles set in. Several people entered the room without protective gear (a video showed at least one in bare feet), yet neither they nor anyone else was infected. Labs in France and Sweden confirmed the German finding. For some inexplicable reason, they all refused to submit evidence of any kind to Russia.156 One can only wonder how a ‘full and transparent investigation’ could be possible in Russia when the crime scene had been tampered with, ‘evidence’ stolen and all discoveries in Germany remained closed to Russian investigators?157 Similarities to riddles and inconsistencies surrounding the Skripal door knob case were striking (see Chapter 5). After a month in hospital, Navalny was released with prospects of full recovery. Now he had to decide where to go. His flat in Moscow and his

114  The political arena financial assets had been seized as a result of a lawsuit launched against him by the Moscow Schoolchild catering company owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an associate of Putin. Navalny and the FBK had circulated a video accusing the company of responsibility for an outbreak of dysentery in Moscow schools in 2018. One of the catering companies, Moskovsky Shkolnik (Moscow School Student), filed a defamation suit in April 2019; a court ordered Navalny, Sobol and the FBK to pay a large fine. They had not done so, which is why Navalny needed special permission to leave the country.158 All ‘sides’ read from an old playbook. In October, Navalny told Der Spiegel that Putin was ‘behind this act’. Peskov continued to complain that the Kremlin had seen no evidence that he had even been poisoned. He and Volodin called Navalny a puppet of the West, working with the CIA. Peskov added that, by allowing him to go to Germany, Putin may have saved his life. Conspiracy theories proliferated.159 Answering a Levada survey conducted during the last week of September, only 9 per cent of respondents expressed outrage over Navalny’s fate, 21 per cent felt sympathy for him and 45 per cent didn’t care. 55 per cent did not believe that he was ‘intentionally poisoned’, if he was poisoned at all. Queried about his activities in general, 50 per cent disapproved and 20 per cent approved. That and other surveys showed that, while his name was now wellknown (82%), support for his politics was still low.160 A questionnaire distributed by Levada a month later asking respondents to list five or six politicians and public figures whom they trusted saw Putin again at the top and even improving his numbers, at 34 per cent, Mishustin came next (13%) and Zhirinovsky third (12%). Zyuganov and Navalny were tied for 8th with 4 per cent.161 These rankings changed very little in December when respondents were asked who they would vote for if an election was held that weekend: Putin (38%), Zhirinovsky (4%), Zyuganov and Navalny (2%). However closely, or loosely, these numbers represented public sentiment, one can safely conclude from them that Putin’s star still rode high among Russians and Navalny’s did not. Several Russian analysts concluded that reasons for both figures included the reaction of many Russians to the West’s harsh and immediate criticisms of Putin over the Navalny case.162 Blaming Putin is too easy, though not necessarily inaccurate. As one Western author put it, ‘Navalny has assembled no shortage of specific enemies: prosecutors, governors, oligarchs, not to mention shadowy officials from the powerful security services and the Kremlin’s inner sanctum.’ The many individuals and organizations that Navalny has taken to court could also be suspect. Any one of these might have done the deed on their own recognizance, without Putin’s knowledge, for the Kremlin is acutely aware that such acts harm the state both at home and abroad. Putinism itself is the problem, the writer went on, calling it a system that has allowed violence against opposition figures to become a ‘normal aspect’ of Russian political life. If this is the reality, then the regime will have an increasingly fraught lifespan.163

The political arena  115 Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian critic of Putin’s regime, also said it was ‘doubtful’ that Putin ordered the assassination attempt, primarily because it could turn Navalny into a ‘hero’ just as the September elections were coming up. Instead, she wrote, people who were seeking revenge for his corruption revelations, or special service personnel who voluntarily thought they were helping the regime, were more likely suspects.164 Questioned directly about the Navalny case by a German guest at the Valdai Club in October, Putin asked why, if his government was responsible, would it send him for treatment to Germany? ‘Immediately, as soon as the wife of this citizen turned to me, I immediately instructed the prosecutor’s office to check the possibility of sending him abroad for treatment, … because he had restrictions related to the judicial investigation and criminal case. … I immediately asked the General Prosecutor’s Office for permission to do this.’ Putin went on to charge the German establishment with obstructing the investigation in Russia by refusing to produce any evidence to back up their accusations.165 The issue came up again, at some length, in a December meeting of the presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights. Asked again why there was no criminal investigation underway in the ‘odious’ Navalny matter, Putin replied that no case can be opened without documentation and, in spite of multiple requests by the PGO, German officials still had sent none, nor would they agree to offers of Russian scientists to go abroad for information: ‘Nobody invites us. We invited them, they won’t come. No official materials are provided. Biological materials are not provided. What can we do?’166 A few days later a widely-circulated combined CNN–Bellingcat–Der Spiegel–The Insider report identified an FSB team (with toxin experts among them) that, they claimed, had been following Navalny since 2017. Although no one should have been surprised that the FSB was keeping track of Navalny’s movements, the report took detailed information about the FSB surveillance as proof that the FSB committed the crime on the Kremlin’s orders.167 Lavrov and other Russian diplomats scoffed at the report, and Putin told international journalists that he assumed the report was prepared by US ‘special services’. Of course, he added, the FSB kept a watch on him, but Russian agents could not have poisoned him: ‘If they really wanted [to poison him], they would have finished the job’.168 Absent German evidence, the MVD’s Siberian branch again announced that the doctors who treated Navalny for two days confirmed the original diagnosis of ‘disruption of carbohydrate metabolism and chronic pancreatitis’.169 They were challenged on 22 December by The Lancet, which published the German case report confirming the poisoning.170 The real bombshell came the day before that. In a 49-minute YouTube video, Navalny presented a telephone interview he conducted with one of the FSB men who had been tailing him. By pretending to be an assistant to Nikolai Patrushev, Navalny was able to lure the agent, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, into admitting that poison had been applied to the crotch of

116  The political arena Navalny’s underwear by men from the toxin team who broke into his room. Navalny’s video was viewed 12 million times within hours, and the Russian Internet filled up with memes playing on the underwear theme.171 Caught with his pants down, the Kremlin’s Peskov accused Navalny of ‘pronounced delusions of persecution’, megalomania and ‘an obsession with his own codpiece zone’. 172 Among many other things, the Navalny and Skripal affairs demonstrate that the agencies, or individuals, who wanted them dead are staggeringly ineffectual. At any rate, after five months Navalny was still in Germany, pondering a return to Russia where he could face prison terms for a variety of real or made-up crimes. First test: Regional elections, September 2020 The first post-poisoning political test for the government came with the regional elections set for three days, 11–13 September. Twenty-two regions elected municipal deputies, 18 governors, 11 regional legislatures and four State Duma deputies in 41 of the 85 regions. A Levada Centre survey conducted in late August showed support for the UR down to 31 per cent. The LDPR (11%), CPRF (7%) and ten other lesser parties did not fare well either. Nearly a quarter of the respondents said they would not vote.173 By vote time, with the Navalny and Furgal issues still making headlines and the spectre of a second wave in the pandemic looming, government forces were clearly under enormous pressure. As results trickled in both the UR and Navalny’s team declared victories, the UR because its choices won in all 18 contested governorships and it maintained majorities in the 11 regional legislatures where elections were held. Navalny’s team boasted that its ‘Smart Voting’ tactic was successful in several city councils and in one by-election for a Duma seat. Two of Navalny’s political allies won seats on the Tomsk city council and another took a seat on the Novosibirsk council. Pamfilova stated that there were no major violations of election protocols; Golos said it received over a thousand complaints from 57 regions. The Public Chamber and presidential human rights council sided with Pamfilova.174 In reality, neither side proved anything. The UR maintained its leadership role, even as its overall popularity crept lower. Navalny gained little. All political eyes now are on the general election set for September 2021. *** An early sign came just before the end of October. As Table 3.2 demonstrated, Navalny was still not the answer to the old question, ‘if not Putin, who?’ That did not mean that the Navalny phenomenon could be shrugged off. His promise to return to Russia when he recovered was taken as a threat by some and as a portent for political rejuvenation by others. Russian law enforcement decided, in November, to investigate an interview granted by Navalny in April in which he said that the ‘regime should be overthrown right now’ if it

The political arena  117 didn’t take more steps to counter the effects of COVID-19, and treat it as an incitement to terrorism.175 The Duma stepped in as well, adopting eight bills in December that restrict protest activity. Dubbed the ‘Vyatkin Package’ because six of them were introduced by UR deputy Dmitry Vyatkin, they ban foreign funding for protest organizers and make the areas outside police and security buildings rallyfree zones. Single-pickets may now be labelled as ‘mass rallies’ and municipal officials can now cancel protest authorization at the last minute. Social media must now block information about unauthorized assemblies, and authorities are given more time to respond to applications. Critics saw these bills as a direct challenge to freedom of assembly in Russia, rightly All three opposition parties in the Duma voted against, but stood little chance against the UR majority.176 The Duma enacted legislation providing prison sentences, rather than just fines, for heads of NGOs that refuse to register as ‘enemy agents’ when ordered to do so, and taking voting rights away from Russian citizens employed by ‘foreign agent’ NGOs. Campaigning on the Internet was also made difficult and fines for libel were increased, and Roskomnadzor gained more power to block websites and social media if their messages were deemed to threaten the national interest. More areas, e.g. around the MVD and FSB buildings, were designated free from political action, including single pickets.177 The state stood ready for any renewed post-Navalny poisoning, post pandemic political uproar. Insofar as political parties were concerned, the Navalny affair appeared to have very little effect on voter preferences. A survey conducted by the Levada Centre in late November found that the UR still rode far higher than any other party, at 29 per cent support, with the LDPR the only other entity with a two-digit following (11%). Three separate communist parties competing with each other showed that Zyuganov was still incapable of uniting the Marxist stream, and the fact that 35 per cent would not vote, were uncommitted or would spoil their ballot did not speak well for the Russian party system.178 *** The constitutional changes of 2020 granted the State Duma a few more powers, yet it stayed in the hands of the UR, with the CPRF and LDPR amounting to little more than decoration. Real political activity endured on the streets and in social media. The degree to which that activity could change the state of affairs in Russia depended almost entirely on the reset presidency.

Notes 1 For the 2007 State Duma election, see documentation in REDA, 2007. Vol. 1 (2009), Chapter 3, passim. 2 ‘Federal’nyi zakon ot 11 iulia 2001 g. N 95-F3 “O politicheskikh partiiakh”’, Rossiiskaia Gazeta, 11 July 2001. See also REDA 2001, Vol. 1, (2002), p. 50.

118  The political arena 3 For an outline, see IMR Institute of Modern Russia Report, ‘Russia Under Putin: 20 Years of Protest’, 26 March 2020, https://putin20.imrussia.org/en/. 4 See items in REDA, Chapter 7, Vol. 1, 2004 & 2005. 5 Rebecca Di Leonardo, ‘Russia President Signs Law Re-Criminalizing Libel and Slander’, Jurist, 30 July 2012; see also Vedomosti, 6 July 2012, and Black, Putin’s Third Term, pp. 60–5. 6 ‘Kak rabotaiut glavnye obshchestvennye instituty Rossii’, VTsIOM, 20 November 2018, https://wciom.ru/index.php?id=236&uid=94536, 7 ‘Edinaia Rossiia’, Levada-tsentr, 4 December 2018, www.levada.ru/2018/12/04/ edinaya-rossiya; ‘Chislo rossiian, polozhitel’no i otritsatel’no otnosiashchikhsia k “Edinoi Rossii” pochti sravnialos’, Vedomosti, 4 December 2018. 8 ‘Putin poruchil edinorossam stat’ partei proryvnogo razvitiia Rossii’, Vedomosti, 8 December 2018; ‘President spoke at the congress of the party “United Russia”’, Kremlin.ru, 8 December 2018, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59359. 9 For speeches and resolutions at the Congress, see party website https://er.ru/core/ news/subject/145.html. 10 ‘Politicheskie indicatory. Reitingi politikov’, FOM, 23 May 2019, bd.fom.ru/pdf/ d20p12019.pdf; Olga Churakova, ‘Kak KPRF budet zhit’ posle prezidentskikh vyborov’, Vedomosti, 27 March 2018. 11 ‘Reiting V. Putina i partii “Edinaia Rossiia”’, FOMinbus, bd.fom.ru/pdf/ d39pi2018.pdf; ‘Support for Russia’s Ruling Party Drops to 10-Year Lows, Poll Says’, The Moscow Times, 5 October 2018. 12 ‘Deputat posovetoval Putinu uiti v otstavku, ne dozhidaias’, “kogda vynesut vpered nogami”’, Znak, 9 October 2018; ‘Deputy Calls on Putin to Resign Before “Being Dragged Out Feet First”’, The Moscow Times, 9 October 2018. 13 ‘Zhironovskii stal vtorym po urovniu doveriia politikom’, Levada-tsentr, 12 October 2020, https://www.levada.ru/2020/10/12/zhirinovskij-stal-vytorym-pourovnyu-doveriya-politikom-reiting-putina-ot-skandala-s-otravleniem-ne-postradal/. 14 ‘Russian Parties Receive Record-Setting Public Funds’, The Moscow Times, 15 June 2018. 15 For an editorial on precisely this matter, see ‘Oppozitsiia deistvuet po printsipu “potom razberemsia”. Protivniki vlasti ne govoriat, kak budut rukovodit’ stranoi posle smeny rezhima’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 26 December 2018. For background, see Cameron Ross, ed. Systemic and Non-Systemic Opposition in the Russian Federation. Civil Society Wakens? London: Routledge, 2017. 16 Anna Dolgov, ‘Instagram Removes Kadyrov’s Video of Russian Opposition in the Crosshairs’, The Moscow Times, 2 February 2016. 17 Dana Litvinova, ‘Navalny Launches New Lawsuit Against Russian Prosecutor General’, The Moscow Times, 25 January 2016; ‘Russian Opposition Leader Navalny Files Lawsuit Against Putin’, The Moscow Times, 11 February 2016; ‘Russian Opposition Leader Attacked in Moscow Restaurant’, The Moscow Times, 10 February 2016. For the ‘liberal’ comment on Navalny, Putin’s Third Term, op. cit., p. 79, endnote #88. 18 ‘Po slovam zheny Kara-Murza, sostoianie ee myzha stabilizirovalos’, no ostaetsia tiazhelym’, Vedomosti, 7 February 2017. 19 Wolf Blitzer in the Situation Room, CNN, 8 February 2017. Kara-Murza’s wife and children live in the USA and she was interviewed from her home in Virginia. ‘Opposition figure Kara-Murza out of coma, father denies allegations of poisoning’, RT, 9 February 2017. The RT is, of course, a state organ and so rightfully suspect; but the more reliable Moskovsky Komsomolets carried an interview with Kara-Muza Sr., who again denied that his son was poisoned. 20 See, e.g. Michelle Zilio, ‘Russian dissident calls on West to take stand against Putin’, Globe and Mail, 1 June 2017.

The political arena  119 21 ‘Doverie politikam’, VTsIOM, 15 April 2018, https://wcviom.ru/news/ratings/ doveriue_politikam/. The survey was conducted on 8 April among 1,000 people in at least 80 Russian regions. 22 ‘Navalny Calls for Russian Protests Before Putin’s Inauguration’, The Moscow Times, 13 April 2018. 23 ‘Bulk Team’, https://vk.com/wall-55284725_791667, 28 April & 4 May 2018. For Navalny’s speech, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zgJwJIL08o&feature=yo utu.be&t=3v?8. 24 ‘Russian Police Round Up Navalny Allies Ahead of Inauguration Protests’, The Moscow Times, 4 May 2018. On Pussy Riot, see Black, The Russian Presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, pp. 85–6. 25 For descriptions, see OVD-Info website, www.opendemocracy.net/author/ovdinfo, which monitors police repressive activities in Russia. 26 ‘23 Journalists Detained or Beaten at Anti-Putin Rallies Before Inauguration’, The Moscow Times, 7 May 2018. 27 ‘Navalny Sentenced to 20 Days After Month-Long Jail Stint’, The Moscow Times, 25 September 2018; ‘Sud arestoval Alekseia Naval’nogo na 30 sutok’, Kommersant, 27 August 2018; ‘Navalny Sentenced to 30 Days Ahead of Pension Protests’, The Moscow Times, 27 August 2018. See also Vedomosti, 24 September 2018 28 ‘Naval’ny rasskazal o vizite k sledovateliiu iz-za dela o klevete’, Vedomosti, 15 October 2018. 29 ‘On Second Try, Navalny Leaves Russia for European Court Ruling’, RFE/RL, 14 November 2018. 30 European Court of Human Rights, ‘Grand Chamber judgement concerning the Russian Federation’, https://echr.coe.int/Pages/home.aspx?p=home, 15 November 2018; Leonid Bershidsky, ‘A Dissident Wins a Bittersweet Victory Over Putin’, Bloomberg, 16 November 2018. 31 Andrew Higgins, ‘As Putin Era Begins to Wane, Russia Unleashes a Sweeping Crackdown’, The New York Times, 24 October 2019; Evan Gershkovich, ‘Arrest of Navalny Aide Highlights Latest Trend in Protest Clampdown in Russia’, The Moscow Times, 17 June 2019. 32 ‘Kto zhdet protestov’, Levada-tsentr, www.levada.ru/2018/05/08/ktozhdet=protestov/; ‘100 Years After Revolution, Protests in Russia Are on the Rise’, The Moscow Times, 7 November 2017. 33 ‘Attacks on Russian Activists and Journalists on the Rise, NGO Warns’, The Moscow Times, 21 September 2018; for Agora website: mstrok.ru/news/ mezhdunarodnaya-pravozashchitnaya-gruppa-agora-zapustila-proektapologiya-protesta-dlya. 34 Federal’nyi zakon, No. 377-F3, publication.pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/000120 1810310006?index=3&rangeSize=1, 30 October 2018. 35 ‘Mitrokhin uidet s posta rukovoditelia moskovskogo “Yabloka” posle vyborov mera’, Vedomosti, 12 May 2018. 36 ‘Partiia Naval’nogo budet nazvyvat’sia “Rossiia budushchego”’, Interfax, 19 May 2018. 37 ‘Dmitrii Gudkov vozglavil Partiiu peremen. Ksenia Sobchak voshla v politsovet partii’, Vedomosti, 23 June 2018; ‘How one of Navalny’s former staffers teamed up with a notorious strategist to steal his political party’, Meduza, 22 February 2018. 38 See Birgit Beumers et alia, eds. Cultural Forms of Protest in Russia. London: Routledge, 2017; Mischa Gabowitsch, Protest in Putin’s Russia. London: Routledge, 2017; Samuel A. Greene, Graeme B. Robertson, Putin v. the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2019; Tsentr sotsial’no-trudovykh prav, ‘Kak protestuiut rossiiane’, September 2019, http:// trudprava.ru/images/content/Monitoring_2_Quart_2019.pdf.

120  The political arena 39 ‘“Red Darya Polyudova Arrested Again’, The Russian Reader, 18 January 2020; ‘Imprisoned Russian Activist Facing Abuse Behind Bars, Mother Says’, RFE/ RL, 7 September 2017. 40 Twitter.com/brewerov/status/1006439558001709057, 12 June 2018; ‘Open Russia Activists Detained in Far East Office Opening’, The Moscow Times, 12 June 2018. 41 ‘Police Raid Open Russia’s Offices After Khodorkovsky Live Feed’, The Moscow Times, 28 February 2019; Khodorkovsky tweet, ‘Politsiia pytaetsia popast’ v ofis “Otkrytoi Rossii” v Moskve’, mbk-news.appspot.com/news/policiya-otkrytoj, 27 February 2019; ‘First Victim of Russia’s “Undesirable Organization” Law Declared Prisoner of Conscience’, The Moscow Times, 25 January 2019; ‘Russian Opposition Rallies Calling for Release of Political Prisoners’, The Moscow Times, 10 February 2019. 42 ‘V Moskve zaderzhali troikh uchadtynikov skhoda v podderzhku Azat Miftakhova’, OVD-Info, 2 March 2019. 43 Yevgenia Kuznetsova, ‘Center for Economic and Political Reform: Protests on Rise in Russia’, The Russian Reader, 10 July 2017. 44 ‘Medvedev otpravil v otstavku rukovoditelia Rosprirodnadzor’, Vedomosti, 3 July 2018; ‘Thousands in Russia’s North Protest Moscow Landfills, Demand Governor’s Resignation’, The Moscow Times, 8 April 2019; ‘Eight More Activists Detained in Northern Russia Following Landfill Protests’, The Moscow Times, 10 April 2019; Richard Arnold, ‘Ongoing Environmental Protests in Russia Pose Threat to Kremlin in 2019’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 23 January 2019. 45 Karina Zabolotnaya, Robert Coalson, ‘Russian Landfill Protesters Grapple With What Comes Next Following Court Win’, RFE/RL, 2 November 2020. 46 ‘Miting za otstavku gubernatora Ussa: “Lesnye pozhary stali tochkoi kipeniia”’, Regnum, 2 August 2019; Evan Gershkovich, ‘As Anger Simmer Over Wildfires, Protesters Demand Resignation of Siberian Governor’, The Moscow Times, 2 August 2019; Ekaterina Mereminskaia, ‘Stroitel’stvo musornogo poligona v Arkhangel’skoi oblasti priostanoviat’, Vedomosti, 15 May 2019; ‘Violence Erupts Between Protesters, Riot Police at Russian Landfill Site’, The Moscow Times, 4 June 2019; ‘Clashes Erupt at New Garbage Protests in Moscow Suburb’, The Moscow Times, 16 July 2019. 47 ‘Dozens Arrested in Russian City Rocked by Protests Against Church Building’, The Moscow Times, 16 May 2019; ‘Russian Mayor Halts Church Construction Amid Protests, Clashes’, The Moscow Times, 16 May 2019; ‘Russian Officials Scrap Yekerinburg Church Plan After Public Outcry’, RFE/RL, 23 May 2019. 48 Ivan Zhilin, ‘V Bashkortostane tysiachi chelovek vyshli na aktsiiu v zashchitu shikhana Kushtay’, Novaia gazeta, 9 August 2020. 49 See Lauri Mälksoo, Wolfgang Benedek, eds. Russia and the European Court of Human Rights: The Strasbourg Effect. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2017. 50 ‘Povyshenie pensionnogo vozrasta: reaktsii grazhdan’, Fond obshchestvennoe mnenie (FOM), 29 June 2018, fom.ru/Ekonomika/14057. 51 ‘“Edinaia Rossiia” edinoglasno poddershit pensionnuiu reformu’, Kommersant, 16 July 2018. 52 ‘Protestnye-nastroeniya’, Levada-tsentr, 1 July 2018, www.levada.ru/2018/08/01/ proytestnye-nastroeniya/; ‘Gotovnost;’ rossiian k protestam vernuklas’ k dokrymskomu maksimumu’, Vedomosti, 1 August 2018; ‘Russians’ Willingness to Protest is Highest in 2 Decades, Survey Says’, The Moscow Times, 1 August 2018. 53 ‘TsIK odobrila tri voprosa dlia referenduma po pensionnomu vozrastu’, Vedomosti, 8 August 2018; ‘Russia Approves Petitions for Referendum on Retirement Age Hike’, The Moscow Times, 8 August 2018. 54 ‘Referendum o povyshenii pensionnogo vozrasta’, Levada-tsentr, 3 September 2018, www.levada.ru/2018/09/03/referendum-protiv-povysheniye-pensionnogo-vazrasta/. The survey was conducted 23–30 August, with the participation of 1,600 people over the age of 18 in 136 cities and villages located in 52 components of the RF.

The political arena  121 55 See ‘Russian Opposition Candidates Beaten, Cars Torched Ahead of Elections’, The Moscow Times, 6 September 2018; ‘U rossiian pribavilos’ problemu: Levadatsentr zafiksiroval rezkii rost napriazhennosti v obshchestve’, Kommersant, 6 September 2018. 56 ‘Zaderzhaniia, izbieniia, ugolovnye dela: kak proshli aktsii protiv pensionnoi reformy’, OVD-info, 10 September 2018; ‘More Than 150 Detained in Pension Protests Across Russia’, The Moscow Times, 9 September 2018; ‘Russian Officials Condemn Police Violence During Moscow Protests’, The Moscow Times, 21 August 2019. 57 ‘Politicheskie indicatory. Reiting politikov’, 29–30 September 2020, FOM, https:// bd.fom.ru/pdf/d39pi2018.pdf; ‘42 Percent of Russians Say No Existing Political Party Represents Their Interests – Poll’, The Moscow Times, 26 October 2018. 58 For background, see William M. Reisinger, Bryon J. Moraski, The Regional Roots of Russia’s Political Regime. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2017, and ‘Russian Regional Elections’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 239, 26 September 2019. 59 ‘Institutsional’noe doverie’, Levada-tsentr, 4 October 2018, www.levada. ru/2018/10/04/institutsionalnoe-doverie-4/. 60 ‘V Moskve zaderzhali semerykh aktivistov “Drugoi Rossii” vo vremia aktsii u “Sibir-Kholding”’, OVD-Info, 23 September 2018. ‘Kulak’ was the label given ‘rich’ peasants during the early Stalin era, when a policy of ‘liquidating the Kulaks as a class’ originated. 61 ‘Russian Opposition Politician Ilya Yashin Announces Bid for Moscow Mayor’, The Moscow Times, 11 April 2018. 62 Daria Harmonenko, ‘Yavlinskii ukrepliaet “Yabloke” vertikal’s vlasti’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 13 April 2018. 63 ‘Reports: Opposition Candidates Denied Spot in Moscow Mayoral Run’, The Moscow Times, 15 June 2018. 64 ‘Sud priostanovil reshenie “Yabloka” zablokirovat’ vydvizhenie Mitrokhina v mery’, Vedomosti, 27 June 2018. 65 ‘Zyuganov vystupil za priznanie Donbassa rossiiskim’, 10 September 2018, ria.ru/ politics/20180910/1528230259.html; ‘Russia Should Annex Donbass, Communist Party Leader Says’, The Moscow Times, 11 September 2018. 66 For discussion of this phenomenon, see Andrey Pertsev, ‘Depoliticization in Russia: The Growth of the Protest Vote’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 14 September 2018. 67 ‘Pamfilova nazvala zakonnomernoi otmenu rezul’tatov vyborov v Primor’e’, Vedomosti, 20 September 2018; ‘Communist Protesters Rally in Vladivostok Against Alleged Election Rigging’, The Moscow Times, 17 September 2018. 68 ‘Povtornoe golosovanie na vyborakh Glavy Respubliki Khakasiia …, 11 Noiabria 2018 goda’. Protokol. Izbiratel’naia kommissiia respubliki Khakasiia. 69 On this, see Mari Aburamoto, ‘The Politics of Anti-Corruption Campaigns in Putin’s Russia: Power, Opposition, and the All-Russia People’s Front’, Europe– Asia Studies, Vol. 71, issue 3 (2019), pp. 408–25. 70 ‘Shershukov: “Navalny’s Trade Union” – Political Parasitism on Current Topics’, Solidarnost’, 24 January 2019 (solidarnost.org/news/), quoted in Irina MeyerOlimpieva, ‘Navalny’s Trade Union: Channeling Economic Discontent into Political Activism’, The Russian File, Wilson Center Blog, 7 February 2019; ‘Workers of Russia, unite!’, The Economist, 11 May 2019, p. 44. 71 Ministry of Justice, ‘Obshcherossiiskoe obshchestvennoe dvizhenie zashchity prav cheloveka “Za prava cheloveka” vkliucheno v reestr nekommercheskikh organizatsii, vypolniaiushchikh funktsii inostrannogo agenta’, https://minjust.ru/ ru/novosti/obshcherossiyskoe-obshchestvennoe-dvizhenie-zashchity-prav-cheloveka-za-prava-cheloveka, 12 February 2019; ‘Dvizhenie L’va Ponomareva “Za prava cheloveka” priznali inoagentom’, Kommersant, 13 February 2019.

122  The political arena 72 General’naya prokuratura Rossiiskaia Federatsii, 11 March 2020, https://genproc.gov.ru/smi/news/genproc/news-1805344/. 73 Gosudarstvennaia Duma, ‘Mozhet byt’ ustanovlena otvetstvennost’ za obuchenie “spetsialistov po vmeshatel’stvu”’, 12 December 2019, http://duma.gov.ru/ news/47306/; ‘Russia Labels European Democracy NGO “Undesirable”’, The Moscow Times, 11 March 2020. 74 ‘Protesters March in Memory of Boris Nemtsov Four Years After His Murder’, The Moscow Times, 24 February 2019. 75 ‘Ot Moskvy do Vashingtona: kak uvekovechivaiout pamiat’ Borisa Nemtsova v raznykh gorodakh mira’, Vedomosti, 27 February 2020; Zhanna Nemtsova, ‘From the Archive: Around Nemtsov’s Murder, Key Questions Remain Deliberately Unanswered’, The Moscow Times, 27 February 2020. 76 ‘Detention on May 1, 2019. List’, OVD-Info, 1 May 2019, ovdinfo.org/ news/2019/05/01/zaderzhaniya-1-maya-2019-goda-spisok; ‘Massovye zaderzhaniia na soglasovannom pervomaiskom shestvii v Peterburge’, Vedomosti, 1 May 2019; ‘Over 100 Activists Detained at Russia’s Labor Day Marches’, The Moscow Times, 2 May 2019; ‘Navalny, Khodorkovsky Aides Jailed After Violent Arrests’, The Moscow Times, 3 April 2019. 77 ‘Petitsiiu s trebovaniem osvobodit’ Golunova podpisali bolee 100,000 chelovek’, Vedomosti, 9 June 2019. 78 ‘Kolokol’tsev ob’iavil o reshenii osobodit’s Golunova ot otvetstvennosti’, Interfax, 11 June 2019; ‘Putin Sacks High-Ranking Police Generals Over Golunov Case’, The Moscow Times, 13 June 2019; ‘Podpisan Ukaz ob osvobozhdenii ot dolzhnosti sotrudnikov organov vnutrennykh del Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, Kremlin.ru, 13 June 2019, kremlin.ru/events/news/president/60742; ‘Sud otkazalsia vosstanavlivat’ na rabote eks-politseiskogo, prichastnogo k delu Golunova’, RAPSI, 10 October 2019. 79 ‘Protestnyi potentsial’, Levada-tsentr, 4 June 2019, www.levada.ru/2019/06/04/ protestnyj-potentsial-9/. 80 Memorial, ‘Spisok politzakliuchennykh, presleduemykh za religiiu’, n.d., accessed 4 March 2020, https://memohrc.org/ru/aktualnyy-spisok-presleduemyh-v-svyazis-realizaciey-prava-na-svobodu-veroispovedaniya. 81 Lev Gudkov, Natalia Zorkaya, Ekaterina Kochergina, Karina Pipiya, Alexandra Ryseva, Russia’s ‘Generation Z’: Attitudes and Values 2019/2020. Bonn & Washington: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2020, pp. 31–2, 38. The research polled 1,500 ‘youth’ from across Russia, and also used focus groups. 82 Ibid., pp. 55–6, 121–3. 83 See Andrey Pertsev, ‘Symbolism and Radicalization: The New Russian Protest’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 29 June 2019. 84 ‘Zaderzhaniia na vstreche s nezavisimymi kandidatami v Moskodumu’, OVDInfo, 14 July 2019; Evan Gershkovich, ‘Moscow Police Detain Opposition Politicians Rallying for Inclusion on City Legislature Ballot’, The Moscow Times, 15 July 2019. 85 ‘Yashina ne pustila na vybory v Mosgordumu’, Vedomosti, 15 July 2019. 86 Dar’ia Korzhakova, Elena Mykhametshina, ‘Oppozitsionery vydvinuli vlastiam Moskvy ul’timatum’, Vedomosti, 20 July 2019; Ivan Gershkovich, ‘“A PreRevolutionary Situation”: More Than 20,000 Rally in Moscow for Free Elections’, The Moscow Times, 20 July 2019. 87 ‘Investigative Committee opens criminal case over unauthorized protests in Moscow’, TASS, 30 July 2019; Kirill Bulanov, ‘SKR vozbudil delo iz-za stikhiinogo mitinga u Mosgorizbirkoma’, Vedomosti, 24 July 2019; Glavnoe sledstvennoe upravlenie, ‘In Moscow, a criminal case on the fact of obstruction of the activities of election commissions’, (translated online), https://moscow.sledcom.ru/news/ item/1375815/; ‘Moscow Police Raid, Interrogate Opposition Candidates Ahead of Election Rally’, The Moscow Times, 25 July 2019; ‘Obyski u nezavisimykh kandidatov v deputaty Mosgordumy. Chto izvestno’, OVD-Info, 25 July 2019.

The political arena  123 88 Andrey Pertsev, ‘Moscow Protests: A Crisis of the Authorities’ Own Making’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 25 July 2019; BBC Monitoring, ‘Russian election chief accuses Navalny of fanning election dispute’, 24 July 2019, reprinted as #5 in JRL, 25 July 2019. 89 ‘Bolee 150 zaderzhannykh na aktsii v tsentre Moskvy proveli noch’ v OVD’, OVD-Info, 27 July 2019; ‘1373 stol’ko liudei zaderzhali v sviazi s aktsiei’, OVDInfo, 28 July 2019. 90 Naval’nyi blog, ‘Very strange things’, 29 July 2019, https://navalny.com/p/6183/; ‘Kremlin Critic Says He May Have Been Poisoned’, The Moscow Times, 30 July 2019. 91 ‘3.08 v 14:00. Progulka po bul’vardam’, https://www.facebook.com/events/ 871923563187010/. 92 ‘Rally at the Moscow City hall on July 27, 2019. Online’, OVD-Info, 27 July 2019; ‘Police in Moscow Detain Opposition Figures Before Protest’, The Moscow Times, 27 July 2019; ‘Spisok zaderzhannykh na aktsii u merii Moskvy 27 iulia 2019 goda’, OVD-Info, 27 July 2019. 93 ‘Sobyanin commented on Saturday’s opposition rally in Moscow;’, TVU, 30 July 2019, www.tvc.ru/news/show/id/165334. 94 For US Embassy remarks, Andrea Kalen @USEmbRuPress, 28 Jul 2019; for the EU, https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/65919/statement-spokesperson-detention-over-thousand-peaceful-protesters-moscow_en; for the UK, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/russia-fco-spokespersonstatement-in-response-to-moscow-arrests. 95 ‘Ni mera, ni voiny’, Vedomosti, 30 July 2019. 96 ‘“Vernem sebe parvo na vybory”, 3 avgusta’, OVD-Info, 3 August 2019. ‘Russian Police Detain Over 800 Opposition Protesters in Central Moscow’, The Moscow Times, 3 August 2019. 97 Ekaterina Eremenko, Svetlana Bocharova, Alisa Shtykina, ‘Kreml’ osudil zhestokost’ politsii na mitingakh’, Vedomosti, 13 August 2019 98 ‘Ziuganov prizval otpravit’ v otstavku predsedatelia Mosgorizbirkoma’, Vedomosti, 14 August 2019. 99 ‘TsK poluchil 19 zhalob ot nezaregistrirovannykh kandidatov v Mosgordumu’, RIA Novosti, 6 August 2019; CECof Russia@VCIKRussia, 7 August 2017, https://twitter.com/CIKRussia/status/1159074300000985088; TeamNavalny@ teamnavalny, 7 August 2019, calling for the demonstration and posting on Facebook, https://twitter.com/teamnavalny/status/1159077876148461570; ‘Nearly 50,000 Protest for Fair Elections in Moscow’, The Moscow Times, 10 August 2019; ‘Za chestnye vybory i protiv politicheskikh repressii. Itogi aktsii 10 avgusta’, OVD-Info, 10 August 2019. 100 Dar’ia Korzhakova, ‘Roskomnadzor potreboval ot Google perestat’ reklamirovat’ nezakonnye mitingi’, Vedomosti, 11 August 2019; ‘Google, Facebook Rebuff Russia Over Political Advertising Accusation’, The Moscow Times, 9 September 2019. 101 ‘V Moskve nachalsia miting KPRF za chestnyi vybory’, Vedomosti, 17 August 2019; ‘Pikety za chestnye vybory v Peterburge 17 avgusta 2019 goda. Onlain’, OVID-Info, 17 August 2019. 102 Putin, ‘Sovmestnaia press-konferentsiia s Prezidentom Finliandii Sauli Niiniste’, Kremlin.ru, 21 August 2019, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/61349. 103 ‘31 avgusta, v 14:00. Ot Chistykh prudov do Pushkinskoi ploshchadi. Ya vyidu i vas prizybaiu: youtu.be/R2a9ecBm6Qvc’, @SobolLubov – August 28, twitter. com/SobolLubov; Andrew Higgins, ‘“I am Always Asked If I am Afraid’: Activist Lawyer Takes On Putin’s Russia’, New York Times, 6 September 2020. 104 For Navalny’s ‘Smart Voting’ site, see ‘vote2019.appspot.com’. 105 ‘Umnoe golosovanie’, ‘Zdes my ob’ediniaemsia, chtoby pobedit’ “Edinyiu Rossiiu”, vote2019.appspot.com.

124  The political arena 106 Evan Gershkovich, ‘What Appeared to Be a United Opposition During Moscow’s Vote Protests Is Fraying – Again’, The Moscow Times, 27 August 2019; Elena Mukhametshina, ‘Dlia Vladimira Putina net edinorossa’, Vedomosti, 28 August 2019. 107 ‘Delo a vyvikhnutom pleche natsgvardeitsa. Osvobozhdenie Pavla Ustinova iz CIZO’, Mediazona, 20 September 2019; ‘Jailed Russian Actor Released Ahead of Appeal After Moscow Protest Verdicts Spark Outcry’, The Moscow Times, 20 September 2019. 108 ‘Miting na prospekte Sakharova Glavnoe’, Vedomosti, 29 September 2019; Evan Gershkovich, ‘“The Dragon Has Unclenched Its Jaws”: 25,000 Rally in Moscow to Demand Release of Jailed Protesters’, The Moscow Times, 29 September 2019. 109 ‘Roskomnadzor predostereg Google i Facebook ot vmeshatel’stva vo vnutrennie dela Rossii’, Vedomosti, 6 September 2019. 110 ‘Protestnaia aktivnost’, Levada Tsentr, 3 September 2019, https://www.levada. ru/2019/09/03/protestnaya-aktivnost-5/; Paul Goble, ‘Russians Learn about Protests from State TV but No Longer Accept Official Explanations, Levada Poll Finds’, Window on Eurasia, 3 September 2019; Elena Mukhametshina, ‘Bol’shinstvo rossiian zametili protest v Moskve i ne veriat vo vmeshatel’stvo Zapada’, Vedomosti, 2 September 2019. 111 ‘“There Will Be More Arrests”: New Opposition Protesters Face Trial’, The Moscow Times, 29 November 2019. 112 ‘V edinyi den’ golosovaniia vozbudili 11 ugolovnykh del’, RIA Novosti, 9 September 2019; GOLOS, ‘KARTA narushenii na vyborakh, 8 sentiabria 2019/2037 soobshchenii’, https://www.kartanarusheniy.org/2019-09-08/stat. 113 ‘Opposition Leader Navalny’s Offices Across Russia Searched After Election’, The Moscow Times, 10 September 2019; ‘Vrio glavy Ulan-Ude vyigral pervye za 12 let priamye vybory mera s 52%’, RIA Novosti, 9 September 2019; ‘Protest Erupts in Far East Russia After Pro-Kremlin Candidate’s Victory’, The Moscow Times, 10 September 2019; ‘Miniust priznal fond Naval’nogo inostrannym agentom’, Vedomosti, 9 October 2019. For the Ministry of Justice’s accusations vs. the FBK, see https://minjust.ru/ru/novosti/nekommercheskaya-organizaciya-fondborby-s-korrupciey-vklyuchena-v-reestr-nekommercheskih, 9 October 2019. 114 ‘Na “umnoe golosovanie” vlast’ otvetila politseiskoi spetsoperatsiei’, Vedomosti, 13 September 2019; Pavel Felgenhauer, ‘Russian State Carries Out Massive Repressions After Local Elections’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 12 September 2019. 115 State Duma. The Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, ‘Commission on Foreign Interference in Internal Affairs completed investigation into Deutsche Welle case’, 27 September 2019, https://duma.gov.ru/en/news/46406/; ‘Russian Lawmakers Accuse BBC, Meduza, RFE/RL of Violating Election Law’, The Moscow Times, 18 October 2019; ‘Russian Duma Commission Accuses Foreign Media of Breaking Election Law’, RFE/RL, 17 October 2019. 116 ‘Protestuiushchim nashli lageria podgotovki’, Kommersant, 18 November 2019; ‘Russian Lawmakers Claim Foreign-Funded “Camps” Train Protesters’, The Moscow Times, 19 November 2019. 117 ‘Obyski v ofisakh FBK i “Moskovskoe delo”’, Levada-tsentr, 5 November 2019, https://www.levada.ru/2019/11/05/obyski-v-ofisah-fbk-i-moskovskoe-delo/. 118 ‘Chto takoe stat’ia 20.2 KoAP?’, OI (OVD-Info) 20.2 KOAP: Primenenie, November 2019, https://data.ovdinfo.org/20_2/#/regions/RU; ‘30,000 Russians Charged Under Protest Law in 15 Years – Monitor’, The Moscow Times, 8 November 2019. 119 Elena Mukhhmetshina, ‘Kreml’ pridumal novyi sposob pomoch’ “Edinoi Rossii” na vyborakh v Gosdumu’, Vedomosti, 2 December 2019; Andrey Pertsev, ‘Rise of the Spoiler Parties’, Meduza, 14 January 2020; Mathew Luxmoore, ‘Ahead of 2021 Vote, Critics Say Kremlin Is Curating A New Crop of Spoiler Parties’, RFE/RF, 17 February 2020. 120 Richard Arnold, ‘Violent Extreme-Right Movement Attracts New Generation of Russian Youth’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 2 March 2020.

The political arena  125 121 ‘Pro-Kremlin Group Tears up Wreath Laid by Bolton at Nemtsov Memorial – Reports’, The Moscow Times, 31 October 2018; for Bolton’s perspective, which included the hint that Nemtsov was murdered by ‘Kremlin operatives’, see Bolton, The Room Where It Happened. A White House Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020, p. 168. 122 US Department of State, ‘Designation of the Russian Imperial Movement’, remarks by Nathan A. Sales, coordinator for Counterterrorism, 6 April 2020, https://www.state.gov/designation-of-the-russian-imperial-movement/; Russian Federal List of Extremist Materials, https://minjust.ru/ru/extremistmaterials?field_extremist_content_value=imperskoe+dvizheniia; ‘Russian “Terrorists” Training German Neo-Nazi Youth in Combat – Reports’, The Moscow Times, 5 June 2020. 123 ‘Levada-tsentr rasskazal ob otsutstvii problemy antisemitizma v Rossii’, RBC. ru, 6 September 2018; ‘Russia has one of lowest rates of anti-Semitism in the world, survey conducted by Russian Jewish Congress finds’, World Jewish Congress, 3 November 2016. 124 For a breakdown of arrests, see ‘Zaderzhaniia v Den’ narodnogo edinstva’, Mediazona, zona.media/chroncle/rm/, 4 November 2018. 125 ‘“Rossia dlia russkikh”: sotsiolog ob’iasnil, pochemu v strane krepnut natsionalistskie nastroeniia’, Levada-tsentr, 10 October 2019, radiokp.ru/obschestvo/ rossiya-dlya-russkikh-sociolog-obyasnil-pochemu-v-strane-krepnut-nacionalistskie-nastroeniya_nid2682_au414au66. 126 Irina Pankratova, ‘Russia’s “Orthodox Tycoon” Is Bankrolling a Monarchist Movement. But Where Does He Get His Money?’, The Bell, 22 November 2019. 127 Article 15 of the 1993 Constitution gave precedence to the ‘rules of international agreement’. Putin overruled this with a law in 2015 permitting Russia’s Constitutional Court to not recognize international courts if their rulings contradicted Russian law. 128 Omsk Oblast TV, ‘Dialogue with the Governor. Release from 06/18/2020’, http:// www.globalaffairs.ru/; ‘Vote on Putin’s Reforms Will “Wrest Soviet Rule From Uncle Sam” – Official’, The Moscow Times, 18 June 2020. Council of Europe, ‘CDL-AD (2020)009-e. ‘Russian Federation – Adopted Opinion on draft amendments to the Constitution …’, 18 June 2020, https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/?pdf=CDL-AD(2020)009-e. 129 ‘“Vy nastoiashchii?” V interv’iu TASS Putin otvechaet na samye neozhdannye voprosy’, Argumenty i fakty, 4 March 2020. 130 Putin, ‘Vstrecha s rukovoditeliami fraktsii Gosudarstvennoi Dumu’, Kremlin.ru, 6 March 2020, http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62949. 131 Ukaz Mera Moskvu, ‘O vnesenii izmeneniia v Ukaz Mera Moskvu ot 5 Marta 2020 g. No, 12-UM’, 10 Marta 2020 g. No. 17-UM, https://www.mos.ru/upload/ documents/docs/17-YMot10032020(2).pdf. 132 ‘Coronavirus in Russia: The Latest News’, The Moscow News, 8–11 March 2020. 133 See Yashin on Twitter (@IlyaYashin), https://twitter.com/IlyaYashin/status/ 1219152576412823552. 134 Evan Gershkovich, ‘Thousands Across Russia Rally for Slain Opposition Leader’, The Moscow Times, 1 April 2020; ‘Marsh pamiati Nemtsova v Moskve sobral bolee 22,000 chelovek’, Vedomosti, 1 April 2020; the NGO WhiteCounter (BelyiSchetchik) gave the count as 22,300, https://twitter.com/WhiteCounter/ status/1233723307830194177. 135 ‘Prevent a constitutional crisis and an unconstitutional coup. Appeal of scientists, writers and journalists to Russian citizens’, Echo Moscow Blog, 15 March 2020, echo.msk.ru/blog/echomsk/2606224-echo/. 136 ‘In Vladikavkaz, several hundred people came to a national gathering against the regime of “self-isolation”’, MBX media, 20 April 2020, https://mbk-news. appspot.com/news/narodniy-sxod/. 137 ‘Russian Opposition Plans Online Coronavirus Lockdown Protest’, AFP and The Moscow Times, 21 April 2020.

126  The political arena 138 ‘5 steps for Russia. Report after the first day of the campaign’, 21 April 2020, https://navalny.com/p/6338/. 139 ‘Vdokhnovliaiushche lichnosti’, Levada-tsentr, 11 June 2020, https://www. levada.ru/2020/06/11/vdohnovlyayushhie-lichnosti/. 140 First reported on the Podyom Telegram news channel, t.me/pdmnews/36387; and ‘What you need to know today’, The Moscow Times, 10 December 2020. 141 See Facebook post by Aleksei Pivovarov, designated original moderator for the debate, https://www.facebook.com/alexey.pivovarov.16/posts/10219760292631041. 142 For the online protest, http://youtube.com/watch?v=gYDkz-tjn7E, and for commentary, Paul Goble, ‘First Russian Opposition Online Meeting Attracts Widespread Interest and 4800 Participants’, Window on Eurasia – New Series, 2 May 2020. 143 For a dozen photos of the demonstrators, see ‘Na Pushkinskoi ploshchadi sobralis’ protivniki popravok v Konstitutsiiu. Fotografii’, Vedomosti, 1 July 2020. 144 Irina Chevtaeva, Yurii Litvinenko, ‘Sud arestoval Furgal do 9 sentiabr’, Vedomosti, 9 July 2020; ‘Sud arestoval gubernatora Furgala po delu o zakaznykh ubiistvakh biznesmenov’, RAPSI, 10 July 2020. 145 Yurii Litvinenko, Sergei Mingazov, ‘Zhiteli Khabarovskaia vyshli na stikhiinyi miting v podderzhku arestovannogo Furgala’, Vedomosti, 10 July 2020; ‘Giant Protests in Russia’s Far East After Popular Governor’s Arrest’, The Moscow Times, 10 July 2020. 146 Irina Chevtaeva, ‘V Khabarovske snova proshli protestnye aktsii v podderzhku Furgala’, Vedomosti, 12 July 2020; ‘New Russia Protest Over Governor’s Arrest’, The Moscow Times, 12 July 2020. 147 ‘Zhiteli Vladivostoka i Khabarovska vyshli na sovmestnuiu aktsiiu protesta’, Vedomosti, 18 July 2020, with photos; see regular updates in OVD-Info, e.g. https://ovdinfo.org/news/2020/08/08/spiski-zaderzhannyh-po-vsey-rossii-naakciyah-v-podderzhku-furgala. 148 ‘Degtyarev zaiavil o zvonke Mishustina i obeshchanii vydelit’ ₽1,3 mlrd’, RBC. ru, 23 July 2020; Evan Gershkovich, ‘Anger at Kremlin Grows in Latest Massive Russian Far East Protest’, The Moscow Times, 26 July 2020; Elena Mukhametshina, Sergei Mingazov, ‘Putin nashel zamenu Furgalu v LDPR’, Vedomosti, 20 July 2020; ‘Politsiia vo Vladivostoke zaderzhala trekh uchastnikov aktsii v podderzhku gubernatora Khabarovskogo kraia’, OVD-Info, 19 July 2020; Artyom Hirsch, ‘Na Dal’nem Vostoke vozobnovilis’ mitingi v podderzhku Furgala’, Vedomosti, 19 July 2020. For daily reports, see OVD-Info (opendemocracy.net/en/author/ovd-info/) or vl.ru (Vladivostok news). 149 ‘Degtyarov obvinil priletevshikh iz Moskvy inostrantsev v organizatsii mitingov’, Vedomosti, 24 July 2020; ‘Peskov iskliuchil organizatsiiu mitingov v Khabaraovske iz-za rubezha’, Vedomosti, 24 July 2020. 150 On this, see Tatyana Stanovaia, ‘Russia’s In-System Opposition Gets Second Chance in Kharbarovsk’, The Moscow Times, 27 July 2020; ‘Tens of thousands continue to rally in fresh Khabarovsk Protest’, AFP, 8 August 2020; Anton Troianovski, ‘Protests Swell in Russia’s Far East in a Stark New Challenge to Putin’, New York Times, 25 July 2020. 151 ‘Actions in support of the Khabarovsk Territory on August 1, 2020. Online’, OVD-Info, 1 August 2020; Evan Gershkovich, ‘Russian Far East Protesters Out by the Thousands as Crackdown Intensifies’, The Moscow Times, 1 August 2020. 152 Alexander Litoi, ‘Cleaning up on the Amur. Authorities increase pressure on protesters in Khabarovsk’, OVD-info, 17 November 2020, https://ovdinfo.org/articles/2020/11/17/zachistka-na-amure-vlasti-usilivayut-davlenie-na-protestuyushchihv-habarovske; ‘Participants of rallies in support of Furgal detained in Khabarovsk’, OVD-Info, 25 September 2020; ‘Spiski zaderzhannykh na aktsiiakh v podderzhku zhitelei Khabarovskogo kraia 15 avgusta’, OVD-Info, 15 August 2020.

The political arena  127 153 ‘Russian Police Raid Homes of Opposition Group Coordinators, Independent Lawmakers’, RFE/RL, 9 July 2020; for access to MBKh Media in English, twitter.com/mbkhmedia?lang-en; Mikhail Shubin, ‘Protiv izmeneniia Konstitutsii. Itogi aktsii 15 iulia’, OVD-Info, 16 July 2020. 154 ‘V ofis Fonda bor’by s korruptsiei prishli s obyskom’, Vedomosti, 17 July 2020; ‘A Timeline of Russia’s Crackdown Since the Constitutional Reform Vote’, The Moscow Times, 10 July 2020; Ilya Klishin, ‘Russian Authorities Are Targeting Journalists, Historians and Activists. The Rest of Us Could Be Next’, The Moscow Times, 10 July 2020. 155 ‘In Omsk, Alexei Navalny was hospitalized with poisoning. His plane made an emergency landing’, OVD-Info, 20 August 2020; ‘V Kremle prokommentirovali gospitalizatsiiu Naval’nogo’, Vedomosti, 20 August 2020; Evan Gershkovich, ‘Doctors Bar Navalny’s Evacuation to Germany as Confusion Surrounds Presence of Poison in System’, The Moscow Times, 22 August 2020. 156 Andrei Zakharov, Roman Badanin, ‘Yadovityi istochnik. Rassledovanie o tom, gde byl otravlen Aleksei Naval’nyi’, Proekt, 17 September 2020, https://www. proekt.media/investigation/gde-otravili-navalnogo/; ‘Navalny Likely Poisoned Before Arriving at Siberian Airports – Reports’, The Moscow Times, 17 September 2020; ‘Russia Accuses Germany of Refusing to Cooperate on Navalny Medical probe’, The Moscow Times, 24 September 2020. 157 For doubts expressed by sceptics, ‘Novichok found in water bottle in Navalny’s hotel room’, Intellinews, 18 September 2020; Paul Robinson, ‘Cups of tea and bottles of water’, Irrussianality, 17 September 2020; Bryan MacDonald ‘Latest Navalny Novichok water bottle poisoning claim stretches all credibility, but Western media swallows it without question’, RT, 18 September 2020; John Helmer, ‘Tale of two bottles – Navalny poison slowest acting weapon in assassination history’, Dances with Bears, 17 September 2020; ‘Otvety pravitel’stva Germanii na voprosy deputatov Bundestaga ob otravlenii Alekseia Naval’nogo’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 30 October 2020. 158 ‘Alexei Navalny has “bank accounts frozen and flat seized”’, BBC.com, 23 September 2020; ‘Prigozhin likvidiruet kompaniiu rabotala, kotoraia so shkolami’, The Bell, 12 April, 2019. 159 Gosudarstvennaia Duma, ‘Viacheslav Volodin: Naval’nyi rabotaet v interesakh zapadnykh stran’, 1 October 2020, http://duma.gov.ru/news/49632/; ‘Alexei Navalny blames Vladimir Putin for poisoning’, BBC.com, 1 October 2020; Benjamin Bidder, Christian Esch, ‘Alexej Nawalny über den Giftanschlag. “Es war kein Schmerz, es war etwas Schlimmeres”’, Der Spiegel, 1 October 2020. See also Alexander Baunov, ‘The Kremlin Takes On a Resurrected Navalny’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 5 October 2020; for a ‘Putin did it’ view, Amy Knight, ‘Aleksei Navalny, Ready to Run Again in Russia’, New York Review of Books, 3 December 2020. 160 ‘Reiting Putina ot skandala s otravleniem ne postradal’, Levada-tsentr, 12 October 2020. 161 ‘Doverie politikam’, Levada-tsentr, 12 November 2020, www.levada. ru/2020/11/12/doverie-politiki-6/. The question was asked of 1,601 people in 137 population points in 50 subject states. 162 ‘Bol’shinstvu rossiian vse ravno, kogo podderzhivaiut Putin i Navalnyi’, Levadatsentr, 8 October 2020; ‘Prezidentskie elektoral’nye reitingi i uroven’ doveriia politikam’, Levada-tsentr, 10 December 2020, www.levada.ru/2020/12/10/ prezidentskie-elektoralnye-rejtingi-i-uroven-doveriya-politikam/. 163 See Joshua Yaffe, ‘What Navalny’s Poisoning Really Says About the Current State of Putin’s Russia’, The New Yorker, 21 August 2020. See also Anna Arutunyan, ‘Maybe the Kremlin Doesn’t Know Who Poisoned Navalny. It’s Still Responsible’, The Moscow Times, 6 September 2020. 164 Tatiana Stanovaya, ‘Navalny Poisoning is the Act of a Sickly Regime’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 26 August 2020.

128  The political arena 165 Putin, ‘Zasedanie diskussionnogo kluba “Valdai”’, Kremlin.ru, 22 October 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64261. 166 ‘Zasedanie Soveta po razvitiiu grazhdanskogo obshchestva i pravem cheloveka’, Kremlin.ru, 10 December 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64638. 167 See Tim Lister, Clarissa Ward, Sebastian Shukla, ‘CNN–Bellingcat investigation identifies Russian specialists who trailed Putin’s Nemesis Alexey Navalny before he was poisoned’, 14 December 2020, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/14/ europe/russia-navalny-agents-bellingcat-ward/index.html; ‘Media Investigation Names FSB Agents Behind Navalny Poisoning’, The Moscow Times, 14 December 2020; for criticism of a British rendering of the affair, Paul Robinson, ‘Navalny’s Underpants’, Irrussianality, 14 December 2020. 168 ‘“Funny to Read”: Russia Reacts to Navalny Poisoning Investigation’, The Moscow Times, 16 December 2020; ‘Ezhegodnaia press-konferentsiia Vladimira Putina’, Kremlin.ru, 17 December 2020, www.kremlin.ru/events/president/ news/64671. 169 ‘Russian Police Rule Out Navalny Poisoning, Diagnose Pancreatitis’, The Moscow Times, 6 November 2020. 170 David Steindl, et alia, ‘Novichok nerve agent poisoning’, Case report, The Lancet, 22 December 2020. 171 Some of the video responses can be seen in ‘Navalny’s Underwear Poisoning Takes Over the Russian Internet’, The Moscow Times, 22 December 2020. 172 For the entire video, with introductions by Navalny and accompanying pictures of the FSB toxin team, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibqiet6Bg38&feature =youtu.be; ‘Naval’nyi opublikoval razgovor s “otravitelem iz FSB”’, Vedomosti, 22 December 2020; ‘Peskov zaiavil o manii velichiia u Naval’nogo’, ibid.; Mark MacKinnon, ‘Navalny says he duped Kremlin agent into revealing poisoning plot’, Globe and Mail, 22 December 2020. For opposing opinions, ‘Putin’s Novichok ambiguity’, The Bell, 19 December 2020, and Gordon M. Hand, ‘Navalnyigate’, 17 December 2020, https://gordonhahn.com/2020/12/17/ navalnyigate/. 173 ‘Elektoral’nye reitingi partii’, Levada-tsentr, 7 September 2020, https://www. levada.ru/2020/09/07/elektoralnye-rejtingi-partij-4/. 174 ‘Pamfilova zaiavila om prakticheski polnom otsutstvii narushenii v khode golosovaniia’, Izvestiia, 14 September 2020; ‘“Golos” soobshchil o bolee tysiachi zhalob na narusheniia na vyborakh v Rossii’, Kommersant, 13 September 2020; Ben Noble, ‘The Meaning of Victory in Russia’s Sept. 13 Elections’, The Moscow Times, 14 September 2020. 175 For the interview, ‘5 shagov dlia Rossii’, Ekho Moskvy, 27 April 2020, https:// echo.msk.ru/programs/razvorot-morning/2631218-echo/. ‘Authorities Probe Navalny’s Coronavirus Interview for “Extremism”’, The Moscow Times, 1 December 2020. 176 Gosudarstvennaia Duma, ‘O proekte federal’naia zakona No. 1057230-7, “O vnesenii izmenenii v federal’nyi zakon, ‘O sobraniiakh, mitingakh, demonstratsiiakh, shestviiakh i piketirovaniiakh’”’, 9 December 2020, http://vote.duma.gov. ru/vote/112867; ‘How the State Duma wants to toughen the law on rallies and where this will lead. Analysis of OVD-Info’, OVD-Info, 10 December 2020; ‘Russia Moves to Further Curb Protests’, The Moscow Times, 10 December 2020. 177 Elena Mukhametshina, ‘Gosduma v osenniuiu sessiiu bespretsedentno ogranichila osnovnye prava grazhdan’, Vedomosti, 25 December 2020; ‘Russian Lawmakers Back New Restrictions On Free Speech’, The Moscow Times, 23 December 2020. 178 ‘Elektoral’nye reitingi partii’, Levada-tsentr, 9 Dec 2020, https://www.levada. ru/2020/12/09/elektoralnyj-rejtingi-partij.

4 Economic patterns and the sanctions saga

Introduction By the time Putin stepped into the prime ministerial office in August 1999, the Russian economy had been sliding downhill for more than a decade. Yeltsin’s devaluation of the ruble wiped out individual savings, brought soaring inflation and bankrupted banks and private companies. Russia’s stock, bond and currency markets imploded in 1998. The country was forced to default on its domestic debt and declared a moratorium on foreign debts. Wage arrears and strikes were endemic. To make matters worse, early in 2000 the European Union (EU) threatened economic sanctions against Russia because of the conflict in Chechnya. The EU backed off, but the Kremlin was soon to discover that economic sanctions would become the go-to knout wielded by Westerners to lash Russia’s back.1 The apparent ‘triumph’ of liberal internationalism, with its emphasis on a global economy and relatively unrestricted movements of capital and people, didn’t help Russia in the 1990s. That dose of reality persuaded many Russian economic planners that their country must have a home-grown capitalist system. Although recovery actually began before Putin’s nomination as president, mostly because of a sharp increase in oil prices, the need for change was clear. Prime Minister Putin took the matter in hand in December 1999 by establishing a Strategic Research Centre and ordering its chair, Minister of Economics and Trade German Gref, to devise a national economic plan and also help wrestle the economy out of the hands of the oligarchs. The consequent strategy prepared by Gref and Deputy Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin outlined a simplified tax system, most importantly a 13 per cent flat income tax that Putin set in place as of 1 January 2001. The reform included lower payroll taxes and abolished sales taxes and taxes on the purchase of foreign currency. By the end of 2001, for the first time in decades government revenues covered expenditures and reduced the debt to the IMF by half. By any measure, this was an astonishing leap forward. With some justification, Putin blamed the sudden application of Westernstyle capitalist methods for the collapse of the Russian economy in the 1990s, yet he also made it plain that the long-term villain was the stifling communist regime. Outlining ‘the lessons Russians should learn from their past’, he DOI: 10.4324/9781003158646-5

130  Economic patterns wrote in his 1999 ‘Manifesto’ that ‘Communism vividly demonstrated its ineptitude for sound self-development, dooming our country to a steady lag behind economically advanced countries. It was a road to a blind alley, far away from the mainstream of civilization.’ He went on to insist that Russia must ‘search for its own way of renewal’, not copy others.2 This was the purpose of the Gref–Kudrin Centre. It remained to be seen how the ‘Russian idea’, or Russian distinctiveness, could apply to the economy. The tax reform, an attempt at rule of law, and new codes for labour and government budgeting all helped attract investments from abroad. A 2003 law introducing private ownership, purchase and sale of agricultural land for Russian citizens was another significant innovation. Russian GDP doubled by 2008. Yet reliance on oil revenues and the reserves they helped accumulate kept deeper reform on the back burner. In December 2003, these reserves were combined in a Stabilization Fund to be used when the prices fell. Then came the global recession of 2008–09, against which Russia was protected somewhat by a 2007 budget amendment that split the Stabilization Fund into a Reserve Fund and a National Welfare Fund. The new Reserve Fund was designated for investments abroad in low-yield securities and when oil and gas incomes dropped; the National Welfare Fund targeted riskier, higher return vehicles, supplemented the federal budget and supported the Russian pension system. The finance minister at that time, Kudrin, was instrumental in setting these funds up with billions of surplus energy revenues and later credited Putin for agreeing to and supporting the scheme against the wishes of many of the oligarchs.3 To guard Russians from the harshest impact of the recession the state quickly expanded its share in the economy. Huge state-owned corporations with access to government funding spread out over the system. While the Russian economy suffered less than its European counterparts during the crisis, reliance on the state and energy export revenues became even more entrenched than previously. One of Russia’s major problems, of course, was the time it took to shift from its long-time command economy to a market economy, especially after help expected from the West never materialized. A sign of this was its difficulty in gaining accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). In 1993, Yeltsin’s government applied for admission to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the WTO’s predecessor, and was turned down. The initial reason for rejection was the US’s refusal to recognize Russia as a market economy, yet, even after that recognition came in 2002, Russia wasn’t admitted to the WTO until 2012. Russians perceived these delays as Americanled efforts to keep their country down and isolated. Gas ‘price wars’ between Russia (Gazprom) and Belarus (Beltransgaz) since 2004, and Russia and Ukraine (Naftohaz) since 2006, bedevilled economic relations between the three East Slav countries. The rows included fights over transit fees, the actual price of Russian gas, which for the first decade of Putin’s tenure was considerably lower than the global market price, and ownership of pipelines. The main Russian pipeline to Europe, the

Economic patterns  131 Druzhba (Friendship), transits both Ukraine and Belarus (see ahead) and was often the object of international confrontation. In the case of Belarus, there were also squabbles over agricultural products (e.g. a ‘milk war’ in 2009), and Minsk’s profits from re-selling petroleum products refined from surplus duty-free oil from Russia. Sanctions and declining oil prices caused the ruble to drop to record lows between 2014 and 2016. Three years later, at the end of 2019, the ruble had become one of the world’s most sought-after currencies and a budget regulation that allocates oil revenue surpluses to Russia’s international reserve holdings brought that fund up to more than a half trillion dollars. In this sector, too, Putin’s policies seemed to have been successful. That said, the rosy reports of 2018–19 came to a screeching halt in 2020.

Sanctions and the oligarchs4 Less than a month after Putin’s electoral victory in 2018, the US Treasury Department launched a new round of economic prohibitions against Russia, targeting 24 more individuals and 14 entities associated with the Kremlin, bringing the totals to well over a thousand individuals and entities. This time, assets of oligarchs and government officials in the US were frozen because of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.5 Dozens of separate economic sanctions levelled by the US against Russian individuals, entities and vessels were related to the annexation of Crimea, ‘malicious’ cyber activities, alleged human rights abuses, corruption and use of chemical weapons, and various relationships with Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela.6 Although the US led the way, by far, 36 other countries and the EU imposed sanctions against Russia, albeit more cautiously and with much greater economic consequences for themselves. The broadest purposes of the restrictive regimes were to force Russia to reverse its foreign policy, especially in connection to Ukraine, to undermine Putin’s popularity at home and to inflict economic pain on his country and his wealthy associates. They were successful only in the last-named: Russia did not alter its foreign policies and Putin’s popularity rose for a time. To mitigate the impact of sanctions, Russia’s financial institutions were encouraged to support struggling domestic companies, while the state offered larger procurement contracts and invested directly in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors. In fact, for the first time, post-Soviet Russia approached economic independence and national unity, which were hardly the results sanctioning countries hoped for.7 Rather than bend to economic pressure, in 2015 the Kremlin imposed counter-sanctions, mostly on imports of foodstuffs from the EU, the US and Canada, and established an import substitution commission to find new sources of items no longer available from traditional suppliers. Russia also made its economy more efficient and turned eastward for new trade partners, thereby permanently re-tooling its political economy. Because, in practice,

132  Economic patterns economic sanctions represent a collective action against an entire people, not just businesses and individuals, they pushed Russian citizens to rally around their flag.8 Economists calculated that the oligarchs and their businesses lost billions in cash, investments and assets. Oleg Deripaska, whose eight companies include Rusal (Aluminium) and the EN+ Group, and Viktor Vekselberg (Renova) were the individuals most hurt financially. Subsidiaries of Gazprom, Rosoboronexport, Russian Financial Corporation and Renova were also hit hard.9 Among other things, US legislation forbade American companies and citizens from doing business with listed people and companies and obligated them to sell whatever shares they might have in some of the black-balled concerns. As a result, shares in many Russian companies fell drastically and, in April 2018, the ruble experienced its largest one-day drop since 2016.10 To cite one example of forced changes: Deripaska resigned his executive positions with En+ and Rusal.11 Rusal changed its management team and board of management and hinted that it might withdraw from the global market altogether if that move did not sway the US Treasury office to lift sanctions. They were, in fact, lifted in January 2019. As a result, Rusal joined with an American firm to build a rolling mill in Kentucky. Metal for the mill, of which Rusal will own 40 per cent, will come from Rusal’s new smelter in Siberia, and its market will be the US Automobile industry.12 The company’s largest shareholder after Deripaska, who remained sanctioned personally, was Vekselberg. When information emerged that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen received payments from Columbus Nova, an American subsidiary of Vekselberg’s Renova, the salivating media headlined the discovery.13 A week later, Vekselberg repaid loans amounting to about $1 billion to foreign banks, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse and UBS, and sold a number of shares to several Russian groups. Renova took a credit line from Promsvyazbank, through which the government set up a support bank for large state contracts.14 In short, the oligarchs adjusted to the restrictive conditions as well as they could. Putin gave Russia’s billionaires a chance to recoup in December 2017, when he allowed them to bring up to $3 billion of their off-shore holdings back to Russia anonymously. The ‘return’ of such assets could be made in the form of special bonds that would then be used to invest in domestic enterprises. The ‘capital amnesty’ ensured that no penalties would be assessed for previous tax violations. It seemed, however, that many of the oligarchs continued to keep much of their funds abroad, some holding less than a third of their financial assets in Russian banks. This was made plain by a report published in October 2018 by the Russian marketing and banking analysis company, Frank RG. Other reports suggested that capital outflow from Russia had increased with the new sanctions.15 The oligarchs lost little of their clout. When the government announced plans in 2019 to amend residency rules to force wealthy Russians still living abroad to pay taxes, a group of oligarchs lobbied against it to the Minister of Finance, Anton Siluanov. At that time, a taxable resident was one who lived

Economic patterns  133 183 days per year in Russia; the ministry had proposed cutting that number of days to 90. Challenged by the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Siluanov ‘postponed’ the reform.16 In its turn, the Russian government launched a quick sell-off of about 80 per cent of its US Treasury securities. By the end of May 2018, Russian holdings of American debt dropped from about $96 billion to $14.9 billion, and continued to drop until it hit single digits.17 As the share of US dollars in Russia’s gross international reserve (GIR) fell, Russia’s Central Bank began boosting its gold holdings, reaching $569 billion by mid-2020, the highest it had been since 2014. Russia’s holdings in US debt rose again in 2019, bringing it up to $11.5 billion by January 2020. According to the Central Bank, this was part of a programme to diversify.18 Import substitution Meeting with his commission on import substitution in April, 2018, Medvedev said that he was ‘instructed to work out’ a programme of support for companies most hurt by the ‘unprincipled and non-competitive’ sanctions imposed by Western countries.19 Although the import substitution package was expected to be temporary in 2014, it was still firmly in place and growing by 2018. Legislation giving goods and services produced in Russia priority over items of foreign origin applied to all government purchases, natural resource monopolies and companies in which the state has more than a 50 per cent stake. Products labelled ‘Made in Russia’ became a more common sight as domestic production in agriculture, machinery and other manufacturing sectors grew. Government subsidies, grants and loans provided incentives for many projects. That said, progress was slow as trade patterns shifted. Even in 2019, Russian companies were still purchasing most of its machinery technology abroad, buying finished products rather than the means to build the machinery themselves.20 It was their place of origin that changed. Goods from Germany now made up only 7.8 per cent of imports, while China provided 26 per cent of Russian imports. Total imports from the EU fell to 30 per cent of all Russia’s imports, down from 43 per cent in 2013. Due to ‘sanctions breakers’ it has been increasing again, slowly, since 2017.21 Doing its bit, the Russian Duma proposed an upgraded series of countersanctions, which included more bans on agricultural products, raw materials and food products, alcohol, tobacco, medicinal products, technological equipment and software, from sanctioning countries, plus select visa bans, and any participation in privatization projects. This extensive draft bill was discussed at great length, and then not acted upon. It was returned to the floor in mid-May 2018 after more sanctions were levelled against Russia by the US, this time with an added resolution to suspend international cooperation with ‘unfriendly foreign states’. The second draft eliminated names of goods, foods, services and economic sectors, leaving it up to the government to designate specific items as need be. The restrictions were mild compared to

134  Economic patterns sanctions imposed on Russia. According to reports released by the Centre for Economic and Financial Research in October 2019, the import substitution programme saw the cost of fish, meat, cheese and vegetables increase even while domestic production in all these areas improved. 22 In November 2020, Putin renewed the counter-sanctions against EU food imports until the end of 2021 and, in December, Peskov called the import substitution a ‘great achievement’, even though food imports were still important. He may have been exaggerating its level of success, but the claim that Russia’s ‘food industry meets the needs of citizens fully’ was not entirely wrong (see ahead).23 Sanctions become American weapon of choice Almost before he settled into office for his fourth term, Putin was tested by the US State Department’s proposal of a new set of sanctions. These included measures to deny credit and prohibit the export of security-sensitive goods and technology to Russia. Wide-ranging limits on investment in new Russian sovereign debt and bank operations followed. Seven Russian banks in the US were on the expanded list. Americans were prevented from investing in Russian debt, energy projects, and sales of technology. Geopolitical considerations were built in to the bill as well (see Chapter 5).24 In response, Sberbank, which holds nearly half of Russian savings, raised its interest rates for ruble accounts and paid consumers to keep dollars in their accounts to stop capital outflow, which had reached about $67 billion in the private sector. It didn’t work very well, as the outflow increased in 2019.25 With inflation rising, Russia tried to protect the ruble by shifting away from using the US dollar as a medium for international exchange. When the central bank dumped billions in US Treasury holdings in 2018, it replaced them with euros, yuan and yen. By the end of 2019, Chinese currency made up about 15 per cent of Russian reserve holdings.26 These holdings were large. Putin’s decision in 2016 to sequester all government energy revenue surplus to $40 per barrel of oil led to an accumulation of over $475 billion in reserves. Cutbacks in spending, a greatly improved tax collection system and much-reduced debt left Russia in a position to fend off the worst effects of sanctions. In February 2019, the IMF agreed that Russia had recovered, while recommending that the state reduce its footprint in the economy and support private business. Withdrawal would be problematic, however, for state intervention provides a firewall defending Russia’s economy from Western-imposed sanctions.27 The new American prohibitions prompted organizers for the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos to cancel invitations already sent Deripaska, Vekselberg and Andrei Kostin (VTB Bank). The restrictions were lifted when Medvedev threatened a boycott of the annual event if Russia could not choose its own delegation. It was reported that Russian delegates were told by organizers that they must avoid sitting on panels with Americans or attending US-organized events.28 The silly season ran on.

Economic patterns  135 Further rounds of sanctions in November and December 2018 were related to the Skripal affair, assertions that Russia had not eliminated all chemical weapons, Russia’s meddling in the 2016 US presidential election campaign, and other misdeeds. The list of newly sanctioned individuals included the two Russians who were accused of poisoning the Skripals, 15 GRU members, and entities involved in meddling, hacking into WADA files and other ‘malign activities’.29 Trump signed the second round of these sanctions into law in August 2019, this time forbidding all American banks from issuing loans to Russians, blocking international banks from doing so and preventing the IMF and World Bank from lending assistance to Russia. Russian companies and entities were hit from the South as well. In late June 2018, Ukraine added 30 companies and 14 persons to its sanctions regime against Russia. This action raised its list to 1,762 individuals and 786 entities, and included the Russian CEC and political parties that participated in elections to the Russian State Duma held in Crimea.30 The US’s Best Western hotel chain left Crimea in July, joining McDonald’s and Radisson Hotels and other Western investors forced out by US-imposed sanctions regimes. Russia’s retaliation came at the end of the year when it expanded an existing ban on Ukrainian goods to include about $500 million in annual imports of industrial products.31 Morgan Stanley closed its banking businesses in Russia because, it said, sanctions made it difficult for Russian firms to access international capital markets.32 The company’s consulting business remained because it does not require a licence. The significance of the post-2014 disruption of Russian–Ukrainian economic links can only be understood in connection with the degree to which the economies of the two countries had been connected. Russian banks, investment and contracts were major parts of Ukraine’s financial system; the fact that Russian energy (gas, electricity, coal, atomic energy), both for domestic use and, in the case of gas, also cross Ukraine to the EU, was even more important. So, too, were co-production projects and general trade. Mutual visa-free regimes, migrating labour and, no less significant, numerous inter-marriages between ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians made economic and cultural relations apparently invaluable to both countries – until they weren’t.33 On the same day, 20 June 2019, that the EU extended its economic sanctions against Russia until January 2020, Putin claimed to his annual Q&A audience that, ‘starting in 2014, [Russia] has lost about $50 billion as a result of all these sanctions and restrictions, while the European Union lost $240 billion and the U.S. lost $17 billion’. A few days later he signed a decree extending Russia’s ban on food imports from Europe until the end of 2020. Injunctions on meat, fish and dairy product imports from the US, Australia, Canada and Norway were maintained. The original purpose of the sanctioning regimes was lost in the mists. They were now deployed almost solely as instruments of punishment or, perhaps, domestic political platform padding in the US, the EU and Russia.34

136  Economic patterns The sanctions saga had reached its great leap forward in October 2018 in the form of US Senate legislation castigating Russia for almost everything. Adopted in the winter of 2019, the Bill titled ‘Defending American Security from the Kremlin Aggression Act of 2019’ (DASKA) tightened up provisions in the draft version of August 2018 and included the following specific provisions: — prohibiting US investors from investing in new issues of Russian debt bonds, or in oil projects in Russia; — imposing sanctions on Russian banks that contribute to interference in elections in foreign countries; — imposing sanctions on all foreign energy projects which have Russian state-owned companies participating, including projects for the production of liquefied gas with Russian participating companies outside the Russian Federation; — imposing sanctions against 24 FSB agents, whom the United States deemed involved in the conflict in the Kerch Strait and the detention of Ukrainian sailors.35 Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov complained that new penalties violated international law and provided US companies with unfair advantages in international trade. By this time the number of Russian companies sanctioned by the US Treasury Office since 2014 had reached about 750, making a mockery of earlier US outrage at Russia’s perceived use of its energy power as an instrument of foreign policy. Peskov and Finance Minister Siluanov said that Russia would withstand the storm.36 Weathering the storm Some large foreign enterprises with self-sustaining branches in Russia took advantage of weakened competition. McDonald’s, for example, nearly doubled the number of its restaurants in Russia, reaching 416 by 2020. Already the largest fast food service in the country, McDonald’s worked with partners, Yandex, Sberbank and the Delivery Club, to open a delivery-only business in Moscow in 2020. The purpose of this ‘Dark Kitchen’ was to curb the loss of time and money caused by delivery service from the working outlets, and the pandemic, and to get a jump on Burger King, McDonald’s main competitor in Russia.37 The ministries of finance, trade and development were encouraged when, in February 2019, Moody’s Investor Service raised Russia’s rating to investment grade, agreeing that recent policies strengthened the country’s public finance sector, and noting specifically that Russia was now better able to withstand further sanctions imposed by the US.38 S&P Global Ratings and Fitch both affirmed that rating, stating that the country’s solid balance sheets  could offset potential sanctions. Fitch elevated Russia’s investmentgrade rating again in August, to BBB from BBB–, also citing better policy

Economic patterns  137 and external balance sheets.39 A few weeks later, the World Bank’s Doing Business report ranked Russia 28th of 190 economies, an increase of three places over 2018’s listing. The report noted improvements in such scattered matters as regulation efficiency, access to permits, protection for minority shareholders and speed in providing electricity.40 The German agency, Scope Ratings, raised its assessment of Russia’s government debt too, from BBB– to BBB in January 2020. Low debt, increased tax revenues, abundant reserves and inflation management made Russian government debt an attractive purchase for foreign investors, it reported. Ironically, Russia’s policies to protect itself against sanctions brought an increase in foreign direct investment in non-strategic areas.41 Confirming this trend, Russia and Saudi Arabia agreed to several major projects during a visit to that country by Putin in October 2019. These included a joint project with a German company to lease passenger aircraft for the Russian market, and the allocation of $600 million to modernize civilian aircraft in Russia. Saudi investments in Russian rolling stock and a partnership in agricultural investment (livestock and fertilizer companies) were agreed at the time. Also endorsed were more than a dozen other MOUs in the energy, petro-chemical and artificial intelligence fields. Putin participated in the first meeting of a new Russian–Saudi Economic Council, where he pointed out that trade between the two countries had increased by 15 per cent in 2018 and was growing even more quickly in 2019.42 Existing sanctions against Russia appeared to have no impact on this relationship. Both sides remained committed to OPEC+, and the super cartel of 24 countries that support it (the Vienna Group). After explosions in important Saudi oil facilities in 2019, Russia offered defence systems for their protection. On leaving Riyadh, Putin travelled to the United Arab Emirates, where his team picked up guarantees of other investments.43 Reports published in Europe in 2019 suggested that Western financial market and banking sector sanctions ‘produced hardly any lasting negative market effects’ during the previous two years. Of several reasons for this, the most compelling one was that both international and Russian investors learned to manage the sanctions and build their potential impact into their business operations.44 Pandemic panic The coronavirus pandemic disrupted the economies of individual countries and also the global supply chain. When, in March 2020, G-20 leaders met in a video conference chaired by Saudi King Salman, Putin called on them to provide sanctions relief for certain countries. He didn’t mention any specific countries; rather, he said it was a humanitarian issue, a matter ‘of life and death’. Suggesting that the economic consequence of the pandemic could be worse than the global recession of 2008–09, he said that no country should act on the principle ‘each for himself’. To combat it, the G-20 ought to create ‘green corridors, free from trade wars and sanctions for the mutual supply of

138  Economic patterns medicines, food, equipment and technology. Ideally, we should introduce a moratorium, a joint moratorium on restrictions on essential goods, as well as financial transactions for the procurement.’45 Similar statements came from other G-20 leaders, who agreed to a ‘united front’, pledged $5 trillion for the global economy to help counter the pandemic and set up a joint action committee made up of central bank leaders. Countries and entire regions deemed most vulnerable to the scourge, such as Africa, were given priority. Russia agreed to support a UN appeal for $50 billion to help the world’s poorest countries and provide humanitarian aid to refugee agencies. The IMF had already pledged $50 billion and the World Bank another $12 billion financial package to help emerging markets combat the outbreak of COVID-19. Meanwhile, Russia had to manage the effects of the pandemic on its own economy. At home, in addition to the measures mentioned in Chapters 1, 3 and 9, Putin signed bills to simplify bankruptcy proceedings, provide credit payment deferrals for anyone whose income was decreased by a third and also tax payment deferrals for small and medium-sized businesses. In April, he signed a separate package of laws initiated by the Cabinet to protect and promote investment in the economy. To be eligible for investment aid, a company had to invest at least ₽250 million in a project dedicated to healthcare, education, culture, physical education or sports; at least ₽500 million in the digital economy, ecology or agriculture, or at least ₽1.5 billion in manufacturing. The parcel excluded projects related to ‘gambling, alcohol and tobacco production, most of the oil and gas sectors, wholesale and retail trade, banking and other financial activities’. The government also limited the size of penalties for persons unable to maintain payments to banks on loans.46 Another important change loomed when, in his address to the nation on 23 June 2020, Putin said that, after it stood at 13 per cent for 20 years, he would raise the flat income tax to 15 per cent for everyone with incomes over ₽5 million (71,000). This will greatly augment needed government revenues and not anger many, if any, Russians.47 On the other hand, the ‘paid vacation’ for workers (see Chapter 9) did not come with compensation for employers, and the tax on interest earned in bank deposits fell on far more people than the government expected. Unable to dismiss employees, some smaller businesses were forced to file for bankruptcy. In May, the day before the non-working days ended, Putin ordered the government to prepare a National Recovery Plan. In the meantime, he released information on the third economic stimulus package of some $42 billion, and a list of more than 1,000 ‘strategically important’ companies that were entitled to support. The payout in May focussed on small and mediumsized businesses.48 Salaries still had to be paid, even when businesses closed, so the state now offered subsidies and loan programmes to employers for that purpose. Tax write-offs were possible as well, both to businesses and to the self-employed. In October, he extended tax deferrals for small businesses, and on insurance premiums for another three months.49

Economic patterns  139 The Kremlin had several advantages over other countries, not the least being the fact of its economic semi-isolation over the previous six years, and the huge gold and foreign-exchange reserves it built up over that time. Austerity budgeting, the pension reform, improved tax intake by new digital technology and near self-reliance on domestic agriculture, all gave it a head start on crisis management. So, too, did the fact that about 70 per cent of Russians have savings accounts and very little debt.50 Still, the IMF forecast a 5.5 per cent decline in Russia’s GDP for 2020 and a continued drop in disposable income.51 For his popularity to rebound, the economy had to rebound, and there was little evidence of that happening soon.

Domestic issues National projects revisited In the spring of 2018, Putin launched a broader restructuring of the Russian economy by calling for a major shake-up of state-run companies, accusing them of ‘monopolizing’ markets and unfairly squeezing out small and medium-sized businesses. Current practices undermined entrepreneurial initiative, he said, because start-ups could not compete with ‘cartels’ that won all state or municipal orders. ‘Fair and honest competition is a basic condition for economic and technological development’, he continued, as he promoted four recently approved packages of anti-monopoly laws.52 A full year later, the Kremlin announced a vast stimulus plan with an outlay of over ₽25 trillion ($400 billion) to last until 2024. Ranging from largescale infrastructure projects, such as roads and airports, to support for demographic policy, scientific research, sport facilities, and music equipment, the scheme relied on Russia’s huge reserve fund for much of its funding. Critics saw it as a return to Soviet-style planning with greatly increased state involvement in the economy, proponents saw it as a means to reduce poverty and, by providing more employment, raise the quality of life for Russians.53 Theoretically, the plan marked the potential culmination of the National Priority Projects. The National Priority Projects had four main sub-units, healthcare, education, affordable housing and agricultural development. Prime Minister Medvedev was put in charge in 2005 and remained more or less responsible for them, even during the four years he served as president. The fact that their original goals had not yet been reached may have been a reason for his dismissal in 2020. It was plain that Putin’s legacy as president, presumed then to climax in 2024, was tied to the success or failure of these projects. The rescheduling did not go well in 2019. According to the Russian Accounting Chamber, only about half of the year’s allocation for infrastructure (ports and railways) had been spent by the end of the year. Kudrin blamed this on government inefficiency, bureaucratic caution and confusing restrictions related to anti-corruption regulations. That said, corruption was also still in play: the PGO announced in October that it had found over 2,000

140  Economic patterns ‘irregularities’ in the administration of the National Projects, which were given new leadership in January 2020 only to be stymied by the temporary collapse in oil prices and manifestations of COVID-19.54 Infrastructure initiatives and SPIEF-2018 The annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) met in late May 2018 with infrastructure one of the main themes for Russia. American businesses were present on a major scale for the first time since President Obama urged them to stay away, and Ambassador Jon Huntsman delivered a speech.55 One of the other invited speakers was the sanctioned Viktor Vekselberg. France’s President Emmanuel Macron was a guest speaker as well, taking the opportunity to negotiate with Putin on Iran, Syria and Ukraine. So too were Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan, and IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, all of whom participated in the opening plenary session hosted by Putin. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was there a day prior to SPIEF’s opener. The largest foreign delegation at SPIEF was from the US, followed by Japan and France. Among the many economic announcements by Siluanov at SPIEF was the six-year special infrastructure fund noted above and a proposed redistribution of tax revenues to the advantage of the regions. Lukoil and Gazprom agreed on a large-scale joint venture in the Far North to develop gasfields in the Nenets Autonomous District, and France’s Total purchased 10 per cent of Novatek’s LNG-2 project in the Arctic, raising its stake to slightly over 21 per cent of Novatek’s LNG operations. Altogether, 550 agreements were concluded at SPIEF.56 Infrastructure proposals were lent further credence in June when Putin told his phone-in audience that transport links throughout Russia were a priority for his new government.57 This too was an old story. So was his call for a feasibility study of the costs and benefits of the construction of a bridge to Sakhalin, which, he acknowledged, was ‘an old dream’ that would link the mainland to the Island by road and rail, increase the value of the TransSiberian railway and facilitate economic ties with Japan.58 Putin granted pride of place to the Projects in his opening address to Moscow’s 11th ‘Russia Calling!’ (Rossiia zovet!) investment forum in November, 2019. Speaking to an audience of 2,500 people from around the world, he boasted that Russia had a record low unemployment rate and that inflation was curbed in spite of sanctions, while admitting that disposable incomes were ‘standing still’. He expected to resolve that problem by spending money on the National Projects, with about 45 per cent of the funds allocated to infrastructure. In that sphere, roads took up over 60 per cent of the $177 billion infrastructure outlay, followed by railways, waterways and airports. Russian and foreign analysts tended to take the ‘we’ll believe it when we see it’ approach, but the fact that Putin recognized the need, and even Kudrin

Economic patterns  141 agreed that more spending was necessary, was a start.59 Meanwhile, a new high-speed toll road linking Moscow and St. Petersburg (669 km), construction of which began in 2012, opened for traffic with much fanfare. Pension reform and Russian labour The biggest economic issue for Russian citizens early on was the government’s decision to raise pensionable retirement ages for men and women, a policy deemed necessary as life expectancy improved, the population aged, the active working population declined in numbers and state pension funds hovered around depletion. As we have seen, public reaction to the proposal was immediate and angry. The government’s timing was not great. Complaints from Kudrin that funds set aside to fulfil the May decrees would not be enough and the Ministry of Finance’s call for tax increases to fill the gap had already irritated citizens.60 Responding to the outcry, Putin offered a series of concession to potential retirees, making it clear at the same time that the Russian economy would not survive if pensionable ages stayed as they were. The purpose of the reform, he said, was ‘to ensure that the pension system remains sustainable and financially sound’. Before the reform, Russia spent ₽20 billion ($380 mln) per day on pensions.61 Relevant to the pension issue was the low productivity of labour, which the leadership had being trying to improve for years. To address this long-standing phenomenon, the government introduced a new national strategy in July 2018, titled ‘Improving Labour Productivity and Supporting Employment’. The plan involved inviting large international consulting companies, such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, to retrain managers of up to 10,000 Russian companies over the next five years, beginning with 50 big working enterprises over five regions. At the time, Russia occupied 36th place in the OECD’s ranking of countries by labour productivity. A year later, Putin said that improved ‘labour productivity’ was the best means to raise Russian standard of living. 62 It still isn’t clear if the plan worked. Available work in the shadow economy was part of the problem. Although the percentage of workers in the shadow economy had been falling, by the end of 2017 there were still about nine million unregistered workers who paid little or no taxes, and the black market occupied about 20 per cent of Russia’s GDP in 2018.63 As the infrastructure projects were launched, however, many of these illicit labourers were absorbed into the regular workforce where increasingly favourable conditions and strong demand for labour kept unemployment levels very low.64 Revising the budget, and the pandemic Within a few weeks of Putin’s address to the Federal Assembly in January 2020, new Prime Minister Mishustin ordered amendments to the budget

142  Economic patterns already set for 2020–22. These included several increased allocations designed to alleviate poverty in the country and further develop the National Projects. Mishustin highlighted new spending to boost Russia’s growth rate to 3 per cent or higher.65 That agenda was jolted almost immediately by the coronavirus epidemic. Russian trade with China braked, tourism slowed to a standstill, healthcare and disease prevention costs soared, internal travel by plane and train came to a standstill, and fuel consumption dropped (see ahead). Shutting down borders with China had an especially deleterious effect on regions close to the border where small-business trade and tourism were most pronounced. Fruit and vegetable prices soared in Vladivostok and other parts of the Russian Far East, Chinese demands for local exports dropped, restaurants closed and the absence of Chinese workers weakened the construction trades. Planners cancelled SPIEF-2020, due to be held on 3–6 June. The head of the Federal Tourism Agency, Zarina Doguzova, said that the industry lost about 500 billion rubles ($10.9 billion) between March and August 2020, so desperately needed subsidies.66 Earlier, on 17 March, the government and the Central Bank (CB) announced measures to follow up on several Mishustin decrees. The CB plan allowed banks to restructure loans to transport and tourism industries, and also made it easier for manufacturers of medicine and medical supplies to get loans. The government guaranteed the loans. ‘Socially significant’ companies were monitored and fines for state contract suppliers that missed deadlines because of the virus were lifted. Mishustin added the ministers of finance, economics and transport to the Coordinating Council formed to curb the impact of coronavirus. The head of the CB, Nabiulina, joined them.67

Economic integration Caspian Sea There was at least one major economic development in 2018 when the Caspian Sea littoral states finally settled the legal status of that body of water. After some 20 years of debate, delegations from Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Iran met in Aktau, Kazakhstan, and agreed that the Caspian was a sea, not a lake, which determined the method of division. Kazakhstan gained the largest portion, Iran the least. The agreement authorized littoral states to lay pipelines on the seabed, needing permission only when the line crossed another state’s zones. This made the TransCaspian Pipeline, Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan, possible, whereas Russia and Iran had previously objected to it. In addition to territorial waters and maritime borders, the accord set rules for navigation, fishing rights, environmental matters, and access to the sea’s resources. The economic benefits for Russia lay mainly in the fact that the potential for dispute was diminished or even eliminated in most of the above areas. Vladimir Putin led the Russian delegation to the final session.68

Economic patterns  143 Eurasia Pressured by ever-increasing economic sanctions, Russia finally succeeded in getting Putin’s longed-for Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) off the drawing board. Years of negotiation included a tri-part trade union agreement between Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus in 2006, followed by the formation of a customs union in 2010 and the Single Economic Space in 2011, overseen by a Eurasian Economic Commission made up of vice-premiers and three others from each member country. The EEU’s free trade zone came into effect on 1 January 2015. Armenia joined the next day and Kyrgyzstan acceded later in the year. Although Western commentators were already forecasting the EEU’s failure by 2017, Egypt and the EEU launched negotiations on free trade in 2018, and Serbia signed a free trade agreement with it in 2019, over protests from the EU.69 In 2018, the EEU arranged special trade agreements with Iran and China. The parties agreed to make a decision on permanent association in 2021. The accord with China emphasized trade and economic cooperation and, though there was no attempt to abolish customs duties, tighter regulation standards were set, with intellectual property rights heading the list. Just prior to sessions in Astana, the Supreme Council of the EEU gathered in Sochi and granted Moldova status as an observer in the Unified Energy System.70 There were strains. During a meeting of the EEU’s Supreme Council in December 2018, Belarusian President Lukashenka lashed out at Putin for failing to treat other members, especially Belarus, as equal economic partners. He was angry at the price Minsk had to pay for Russian gas, while Russians pay much less. Putin responded that Germany pays nearly twice as much as Belarus. By September 2019, while Minsk and Moscow were again discussing economic integration (see Chapter 5), gas pricing rows were always close to the surface. In fact, 2020 opened with a stand-off because contracts on oil supply and transit fees for that year had not been signed. Chaos resulting from the suspicious Belarus presidential election in August 2020 put economic negotiations between Minsk and Moscow on hold. The BRICS The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), which began as an association of emerging national economies in 2006, had grown enough by 2012 to open discussions of a mutually-owned investment bank. These negotiations culminated in 2015 with the launching of the New Development Bank (NDB). Although the initial capital distribution saw China provide $41 billion, Brazil, Russia and India $18 billion each, and South Africa $5 billion, each member held 100,000 shares in the bank. It is headquartered in Shanghai. Since then the NDB has proven beneficial for Russia, funding projects to provide clean water to remote villages and helping restore ‘historic cities’ in Russia. Loans from the NDB amounted to about $500 million. Another $450 million helped reform the Russian judicial system. 71 Announcements to this

144  Economic patterns effect came from the president of the NDB, K.V. Kamath, during SPIEF. The NDB has issued similar loans to each of its members, the most to India and China. The BRICS tries to function as an economic and political entity independent of the IMF and other international agencies dominated by Western European and North American governments. In his opening address to the 10th BRICS summit in South Africa in 2018, Putin noted that trade between partners grew by 30 per cent in 2017 and asked for member support for Russia’s bid to host Expo 2025. Putin called BRICS a ‘truly strategic partnership’, claimed that it made up the world’s largest market and emphasized its new cooperation in building a joint digital economy.72 At that time, the BRICS embraced nearly 43 per cent of the world’s population and generated about a quarter of the world’s GDP. Turkey’s Erdogan attended and made a deal to purchase meats from Russia. It was at that meeting that he requested accession to the association.73 Russia is Turkey’s second-largest source of imports, behind the EU. The 11th BRICS summit gathered in Brasilia in November 2019. There, the five leaders invited Columbia and Chile to join their NDB. The new Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro had expressed doubts about the BRICS generally and voiced some antagonism towards China, but still advocated fuller integration of member-countries’ economies. Another guest, Argentina, expressed an interest in accession as a member. Leaders talked about a common payment systems, collaboration on anti-virus programme and priorities for Africa. They also took turns appealing for investments into their own countries. Putin held lengthy bilateral sessions with India’s Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping and encouraged the meeting to be more active as a bloc in the UN, targeting money laundering, organized crime and international terrorism.74 The BRICS faltered during the pandemic. Each of its members suffered huge human and material losses from the COVID-19, behind only the US. Its summit in November 2020, was conducted on-line and was dominated by talk of the virus and its resultant economic slowdown. Xi led the discussion on the pandemic and encouraged members to support the WHO. Modi called for reform of the IMF, the WTO and the WHO, and Putin asked members to manufacture and distribute coronavirus vaccines developed in Russia. Strains between members, especially China and India, meant that the on-line method was timely.75

Industry, trade and development Infrastructure modernization, especially in the North and Far East, was central to Putin’s address to the Federal Assembly in early 2019: ‘This is of great importance for strengthening the entire framework of the state, for unlocking the potential of the territory, for the growth of the economy of the Russian Federation’, he said.76 To most Russians, this was an old story, heard almost every year for more than a decade.

Economic patterns  145 The Kerch Strait Bridge and domestic transportation issues There were examples of progress. Transportation being a key to successful trade and political integration, the inauguration of the auto section of the bridge across the Kerch Strait linking Crimea to the Russian mainland generated great excitement. The bridge’s railway lines were completed in the spring of 2019, for an estimated $4 billion, and Putin ‘drove’ the first engine across it in December, thereby linking St. Petersburg and Sevastopol by direct rail for the first time. The presumption in Moscow was that the bridge would integrate Crimea into Russia’s transport system.77 To abet that process, in February 2019 the Russian government committed $4.7 billion for infrastructure and tourism in Crimea. This money came in addition to a development programme for the Peninsula generally and Sevastopol in particular that included investments of some $300 billion until 2022.78 In addition to their strategic significance (see Chapter 5), both the bridge and the Sea of Azov were part of Russia’s plans to enhance internal transit links between the Azov and the Caspian Seas. Already connected by the Volga–Don Shipping Canal, a proposal announced in March 2019 was for a deeper canal with fewer locks, the Eurasia Canal, to serve both security and trade purposes, and new port facilities on the Caspian. Moscow hoped to integrate this system with the Belt and Road project (see ahead).79 Even before the COVID-19 transportation shutdowns, the Russian government tried to bolster the airlines industry by upgrading amenities at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport and opening it as a terminal for low-cost international carriers from more than 50 countries, including most EU members. Neither the UK nor the US were part of the programme. It was hoped that passenger traffic through Pulkovo would double and that regulations easing access to e-visas would greatly increase tourist revenues in the St. Petersburg and Leningrad regions. Fearing a loss in profits, domestic Russian airline managements were not happy about the possibility of an Open Skies regime in Pulkovo. They were told that this was a five-year pilot project whose consequences would be scrutinized closely at the end of that period. 80 A large new terminal opened at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in January 2020 as well. The new Terminal C, used mainly by Aeroflot, raised the airport’s capacity to 80 million passengers per year, Russia’s largest, just in time for the pandemic to force its closure. In terms of domestic investment in the airplane industry, Aeroflot abruptly cancelled orders with Boeing in October 2019 and, apparently, planned to purchase passenger jet planes in Russia as new models come off the assembly line. This possibility was suspended when the coronavirus pandemic kicked Russia’s (and the world’s) airline industry when it was down. International flights were cancelled altogether and domestic flights curtailed until late August and, in some cases, late September 2020. Thousands of personnel took paid leave. On the other hand, the government announced extensive renovations in the railway sector, assuming that travel by rail might be the only solid link connecting many of the regions in the near

146  Economic patterns future. Transport Minister Ditrich announced a 15-year project in March 2020 to ensure that the regions were better integrated internally and with foreign networks. It would involve shoring up roadbeds and creating new rail lines, both tasks increasingly expensive with permafrost thawing. One of the new lines will cut across the northern regions, and new high-speed networks are planned for the more populous western parts of the federation. On paper, the projects sounded exciting; in reality, the chances of their completion were slim.81 In the automotive sector, Avtovaz, Volkswagen, Kia, Hyundai and Toyota all saw their shares of the market grow in 2018, while Ford suffered losses. The Ford–Sollers joint venture gave notice in March 2019 that it would close two of its operations in Russia. One of its assembly plants remained open and the company promised to compensate Russian workers and suppliers who lost their jobs. The problem lay with a sharp decline in the Russian passenger vehicle market since 2013. Sales began improving in 2017, but still stood at only about two-thirds of the earlier level. The pandemic brought car sales in Russia to a near close.82 Foreign investment Foreign investments in Russian securities reached record levels in the winter of 2019. According to a CB review, purchases of federal loan bonds were the highest in five years. One analyst said that lifting sanctions from UC Rusal was a factor in the improved demand for Russian bonds. Russia became a safe credit risk, and foreign purchases of federal ruble-denominated bonds continued to rise.83 More interesting was the fact that in 2019 Americans were the largest investors in Russia. Traditionally, the main foreign direct investments (FDI) in Russia were said to come from conduit countries, such as Cyprus, Luxembourg or Bermuda, while their original source remained unknown. A new system of estimation developed by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), if accurate, reveals significant increases in US and EU investments in Russia, with the US leading the way.84 The Russian government invested overseas itself, in Africa, where its approach was similar to the one adopted for Latin America: loans, debt forgiveness and investments in return for access to natural resources and strategic considerations. In October 2019, representatives from more than 50 African countries showed up at the first post-Soviet Russia–Africa summit, 43 heads of state among them. Putin told them that he wanted ‘to build further ties with the African continent’, in part by exchanging ‘debt for development’.85 The summit, co-chaired by Putin and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, president of Egypt and chair of the African Union, coincided with a Russia–Africa Economic Forum and attracted representatives from about 2,000 Russian and foreign companies.86 Of the dozens of military, energy and other deals or MOUs signed, investment arrangements with the Republic of Congo, exploration

Economic patterns  147 agreements with Equatorial Guinea, South Sudan and Rwanda, and helicopter sales to Nigeria and the Central African Republic were typical.87 Citing the example of Egypt in his account of the value of Russia to African countries, Putin referred to plans for a Russian industrial zone in the Suez Canal region, the sale of 1,300 railway cars to that country and plans to reconstruct the Egyptian railway network.88 The Africa economic summit was larger than September’s Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok (see ahead), belying dramatically the notion that Western economic sanctions had isolated Russia from the ‘civilized world’, as President Obama put it in 2014. The Africa forum was less energy-related than the EEF, dominated as it was by Russian producers of fertilizers, grains, weapons, machinery and transport equipment, all hoping to expand their market catchment in Africa.89 Pivot to the East A big foreign investment step forward came early in 2018, when the China Development Bank agreed to issue a loan of ₽600 billion ($9.3 bln) to stateowned Vneshekonombank. The transaction was signed just before a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in June. The purpose of the loan was to facilitate integration between the Eurasian Economic Union and China’s One Belt, One Road (BRI) project, which will include the Northern Sea Route (NSR) and high-speed links from China to Europe. The two countries also created a joint investment fund of $1 billion, linking the Russia Direct Investment Fund and the China Investment Corporation. They announced plans to create a joint ruble–yuan currency fund to generate further trade and economic relations between them, as both countries decided to move away from the US dollar as a medium of mutual exchange.90 After a meeting between the new head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, and the head of China’s national space agency (CNSA), the two countries confirmed a MOU on space exploration and navigation. This was a follow-up to agreements reached in March 2018 on establishing a joint data centre.91 Given that direct foreign investment fell by more than 50 per cent in the first half of 2018 and about a billion dollars were pulled out by investors by the end of the year,92 economic contracts with Asian countries generally and China particularly grew in importance to Moscow. These links were strengthened again in September when Putin and Xi met for the third time in 2018, this time at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. Coinciding with a large-scale Russia–China military drill, the Forum was marked by deals on a $2 billion joint venture between the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Alisher Usmanov’s internet service Mail.ru Group Ltd., backed by the Kremlin’s Direct Investment Fund. The deal will enable the Alibaba Group to market goods in Russia via Internet.93 Welcoming guests from 60 countries, Putin invited them to join his attempts to turn Russia’s Far East into a locale for international business and investment activity, stressing especially the NSR, now complemented by on-going improvements on the Baikal–Amur Mainline (BAM) and Trans-Siberian

148  Economic patterns railways. ‘Russia and our Far East are certainly open to expanding business ties’, he added, while commenting that commercial activity ‘serves to bring countries and peoples closer together’.94 He insisted that the Far East was ‘an absolute priority’ for Russia, boasted of new projects with Japan, among them a jointly operated plant for producing automobile engines in Primorsky Krai, and infrastructure, energy and environmental ventures with Mongolia. Announcing a new law that would compel companies benefitting from subsidized projects in the Russian Far East to locate their engineering units, research and development centres there, too, so as to provide employment and training for regional citizens, he projected a ‘large world-class scientific and educational centre’, including a ‘technopark’, at the Far Eastern University in Vladivostok. Putin left little doubt that the ‘pivot to the east’ was well in hand (Figure 4.1).95 While there was a lot of wishful thinking and public relations hype in this opening address, reports that Russia planned to spend $24 billion from its Development Fund to build new highways and airports in its Northern, Central and Far East regions added substance to the projections. According to some contemporary reports, spending on infrastructure could reach as much as five trillion rubles ($75.3 bln) over the following six years.96 A later estimate set the amount at considerably more. Clearly, the government hoped to at least look as if it was investing in a better quality of life for its citizens in Russia’s eastern regions.97 Russia’s shift eastwards gained still more credibility when China announced the completion of its part of the first railway bridge to Russia across the Amur (Hellongjiang) River in October 2018 and the first vehicle bridge in November 2019. These links were expected to provide all-year access and lower transportation costs of imports and export between them.98 Part of China’s Belt and Road project, the bridges were a good omen for the future; so too were Portugal’s (December 2018) and Italy’s (March 2019) decision to join China’s initiative. Switzerland and Luxembourg also signed on to the huge infrastructure venture. Putin attended the three-day Belt and Road summit held in Beijing in April 2019, along with representatives of 36 other

Figure 4.1  Northern Sea Route. Source: Russian Ministry of Transport, nsra.ru, December 2019.

Economic patterns  149 countries and the head of the IMF. The Russian leader praised the Chinese initiative, saying that it fit ‘perfectly’ into Russia’s own plans to strengthen cooperation among Eurasian countries.99 Courting Japan as well, Deputy Prime Minister and Presidential Envoy for Development of the Far East Yury Trutnev travelled to Tokyo in October 2018. He lobbied Japanese economic and trade ministries to participate in the development of Russia’s Far East. Although few specific agreements were reached, Japanese banks decided to consider joint ventures in energy and pulp and paper projects. Several potential investors expressed concern about the limited capacity of Russian railways and ports.100 While the Kuril Islands issue dominated public discussion of Russia–Japan relations, the economic links between the two countries quietly expanded. By 2019, Japanese consortia held 12.5 to 30 per cent shares in Sakhalin-1 & 2 energy projects and 80 per cent of the Sakhalin LNG plant. Automobile manufacturers Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Mazda and others all had plants in Russia, and Japanese direct investment was approaching half of China’s investments. The years 2018–19 were proclaimed the ‘Year of Russia in Japan’ and the ‘Year of Japan in Russia’ and the number of Japanese tourists visiting Russia grew rapidly, especially after visa rules were simplified.101 Putin’s participation in the 2018 East Asia Summit for the first time was another signal of the importance of the area to Russia economically. At that summit, he held bilateral meetings with the leaders of the host country, Singapore, and also of Indonesia and Malaysia. He addressed the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which met at the same time, and appealed for cooperation between ASEAN and the SCO. Russians signed multiple economic transactions, and Rosoboronexport confirmed military sales to Indonesia and Vietnam. Rosneft and Indonesia’s Pertamina confirmed a project to build a refinery.102 Asked at home if economic sanctions hindered Russia’s cooperation with Southeast Asian countries, Putin replied that trade with Asian countries had reached 27 per cent of Russia’s foreign trade, and that free trade pacts between the Eurasian Economic Union, India, China and Singapore were under discussion.103 The EEU already had such an arrangement with Vietnam, an important customer for Russian weapons. Central Asia was also a target of Russia’s aggressive trade campaign. A Putin visit to Tashkent in October 2018, mainly to sign off on a Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) project, resulted in over 700 long- and short-term agreements and memoranda worth about $27 billion.104

The ASEAN A significant consequence of the ASEAN summit in Singapore was the formalization of the existing Russia–ASEAN Strategic Partnership and a MOU between the ASEAN and the Eurasian Economic Commission related to economic cooperation. When Lavrov attended an ASEAN ministerial meeting in Bangkok in July 2019, he remarked on the ‘virtually identical’ foreign

150  Economic patterns policy decisions taken by member countries and called for further mutual efforts to promote the Asia-Pacific region via such agencies as the ASEAN Regional Security Forum, more East Asian summits and ministerial conferences.105 Sixty-five countries were represented at the 2019 Eastern Economic Forum in September, the most prominent after Russia being India, China and Japan. Over 400 global companies sent delegates. About twenty US companies showed up, including McDonald’s, IBM, General Electric and Master Card.106 It was India that showed the greatest interest in the Arctic. The delegation from that country declared its readiness to open a credit line worth $1 billion to invest in Russia’s Far East, presumably because their supply of hydrocarbons from Iran and Venezuela was curtailed. Above all, Delhi looked for increased LNG from Novatek. South Korea, Japan and Australia demonstrated interest in Russia’s Arctic too.107 At the 2019 ASEAN summit a few weeks later, Medvedev met with Thailand’s prime minister privately and then urged members to sign on to a ‘Greater Eurasia Partnership’, that is, go beyond the existing cooperation between the ASEAN and the Eurasian Economic Union to include the SCO in a formal free trade union. Russian trade with ASEAN nations had risen, slowly. To speed the process up, Medvedev suggested using national currencies in trade and joint digitalization programmes to integrate remote territories. The response at the time was interest, but little action.108 In November 2020, the ASEAN signed on to the much-anticipated Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), joining with China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. The RCEP makes up the largest trading bloc in the world, and about 25 per cent of the global GDP. Russia was not part of the long-time negotiations, but its ties with the ASEAN through the EEU and bilateral economic links with Vietnam and China make it an important associate, especially as the economies of every country struggle to recover from the pandemic. Because India was expected to join the RECEP, and did not, analysts assumed that Delhi would turn more to the EEU and Russia for energy and agricultural business.109 Western remnant Even as political pundits everywhere expounded upon Putin’s alleged ambition to divide and conquer the EU, the continuing importance of trade prompted him to tell an interviewer in Austria that he had no such wish because the bloc was still Russia’s ‘biggest trade and economic partner. The more problems there are within the European Union, the greater the risks and uncertainties for us.’110 Rhetorical or not, the practical realities of trade with the EU as a single economic unit were not yet lost on the Russian leadership. Oil and gas were the EU’s main imports from Russia while machinery, transport equipment, chemicals, medicines and manufactured products

Economic patterns  151 moved eastwards from the EU. Still, overall trade with the EU decreased steadily after 2014. In addition to the EU’s sanctions against Russian businesses, as of the spring of 2018 Moscow had imposed 36 trade barriers against the EU, the most recent coming in 2018 when only Russian-flagged ships were allowed to traverse the Russian Arctic coast carrying hydrocarbons and coal.111 But ‘business is business’ – certain members of the EU skirted around the sanctions to take advantage of Russia’s needs. For example, in July 2018, the large Spanish clothing concern Inditex signed a deal to produce Zara brand hats and scarves at a Russian textile factory in Tver. Inditex operates over 550 stores under various brands in Russia. US sanctions notwithstanding, as we have seen, American businesses were the second-largest investors in Russia during 2018 and 2019, behind only China, and American portfolio investors ranked No. 1.112

Energy Oil and gas exports have been the underpinning of the Russian economy for decades and the ebb and flow of energy prices have consistently determined the success or failure of government projects since the late 1980s.113 Gas & gas pipelines Russian natural gas sales to Europe enjoyed a resurgence in 2018. Shortages in Norway and a temporary shutdown in Libya helped boost deliveries by nearly 7 per cent in the first quarter. By the end of July, gas shipments to Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Croatia, Denmark and Poland had all increased, with the Netherlands (53.8% rise), Austria (48.3%) and Croatia (40.1%) leading the way. Overall, Gazprom’s sales of gas to Europe in 2018 reached record levels. Gas reserves in Russia also increased in value in 2019, to about $221 billion, nearly a quarter more than in the previous year. Its volume rose by 3.6 per cent.114 Contrary to critics’ expectations, Gazprom’s promise that its 3,000 km (1,865 mile) Power of Siberia pipeline would be completed before the end of the year proved true. It came on line in December, thereby enabling the huge 30-year, $400 billion gas sale agreement Gazprom signed with China in 2014.115 Putin and Xi Jinping watched the launch via video link. A second gas pipeline to China, the Altai, was under discussion (Figure 4.2). The Nord Stream-2 project faced stiffer opposition in the summer of 2018, as expanded US sanctions complemented vigorous resistance to it from Poland, the Baltic States and Ukraine. The orchestrated objections prompted CEO’s of German companies to initiate a publicity campaign in support of the project.116 The opposition notwithstanding, Gazprom received permits to build Nord Stream-2 from Germany and Finland, and in November completed its offshore section of the TurkStream pipeline to connect Russia and Turkey under the Black Sea.117

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Figure 4.2  Power of Siberia pipeline, 2019. Source: Gazprom website, https://gazprom.com/press/news/2020/november/article518680/.

Economic patterns  153 In its turn, Poland began constructing a pipeline from Norway, also under the Baltic Sea, and said that it would not re-sign contracts with Gazprom when the current one ends in 2022. Paradoxically, when Poland begins taking a greater share of Norwegian gas, less will be available to Germany, which has announced plans to close its nuclear (2022) and coal-powered (2038) plants, making Nord Stream-2 even more important for Germany, assuming LNG stays more expensive than pipelined gas.118 Donald Trump joined the argument in July 2018. During a trip to the UK for a NATO summit, he proclaimed that ‘Germany is totally controlled by Russia because they’re getting between 60 to 70 per cent of their energy from Russia and a new pipeline’.119 Typically, his pronouncement was bolstered by false, or purposely exaggerated, data (only about 9 per cent of Germany’s power is generated by Russian gas), and failed to mention that he wanted Europe to buy more gas (LNG) from America, labelled by the US Department of Energy, childishly, as ‘freedom gas’.120 Russia and Germany would have none of that. When Putin and Merkel met in Germany in August they spoke in support of the Nord Stream-2 and criticized ‘some states’ that levelled tariffs indiscriminately. They had already been joined by Austria’s OMV energy company, which had signed a deal in June to extend and increase supplies from Gazprom until 2040. Their arrangement was signed on the day of a Putin visit to Vienna.121 The pipeline still had a few obstacles to pass. For instance, Denmark hesitated about granting the pipeline passage through its territorial waters and the US threatened further sanctions against participating countries. Yet, even after the Azov Sea affair in November 2018, Germany remained committed to the project (Figure 4.3).122 An enormously important opportunity for Gazprom came in late May 2018 when it and the European Commission resolved a seven-year-old antitrust dispute. The energy giant agreed not to prevent Eastern European customers from reselling their surplus gas, and that the lower price traditionally set for Germany and the Netherlands would now be the standard for all. In return, Russia avoided stiff penalties threatened by the European Commission and, more importantly, was better able to hold its European market in the face of competition from LNG producers, such as the US and Qatar. By 2018 Russia still supplied nearly 40 per cent of Europe’s gas.123 In the meantime, Gazprom won a suit when the WTO agreed that that Croatia, Hungary and Lithuania discriminated against Russia by applying different sets of rules to domestic and foreign (Russian) pipeline operators.124 In October, Gazprom’s Aleksei Miller led a delegation to Ashgabat, met with President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov and renewed gas purchases from Turkmenistan, which had suspended such sales in 2016.125 As well as providing another source of natural gas for Gazprom, this accommodation drew the Caspian littoral states closer together. Other negotiations did not turn out so well. Ukraine’s Naftohaz requested and won part of Gazprom’s South Stream assets in the Netherlands. This served as payment for some of Gazprom’s debt to Naftohaz that had been

154  Economic patterns

Figure 4.3  Nord Streams 1 & 2. Source: Gazprom website, www.gazpromexport.ru/en/projects/5/.

Economic patterns  155 subject to a lawsuit for several years.126 Gazprom faced another setback in March 2020, when the Stockholm Arbitration Court decided against it in a long dispute with the Polish state oil and gas company PGNIG. The court ruled that the Russian company had overcharged since 2014 and that Gazprom owed compensation of up to $1.5 billion. Poland complained of non-compliance a few months later and threatened new court action. At that time, Poland was the sixth largest consumer of Russian gas.127 Three important Russian natural gas pipeline projects were scheduled to start delivering in 2019: The Power of Siberia pipeline to China, Nord Stream-2 to Germany, and TurkStream, which involved lines from Russia to Turkey under the Black Sea and another from Turkey to Europe. Gazprom’s threat to cut off all transit via Ukraine was left open for negotiation as Medvedev sought ways and means to connect Slovakia to both Nord Stream-2 and the TurkStream. In January 2020, Putin and Erdogan launched the TurkStream pipeline formally, with the leaders of Serbia and Bulgaria standing by. Only Nord Stream-2 was delayed. That latter-named pipeline remained a geopolitical point of departure and was a target for a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote to support sanctions against firms involved in its construction (August 2019). Sponsored by Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who hypocritically claimed that such sanctions would protect European security from ‘Russia … using energy as a weapon’, the Committee further weaponized the sanctions file itself.128 The final country needed to agree on passage, Denmark, granted permission for the Nord Stream-2 pipeline to cross its underwater territory in October 2019. The value of shares in Gazprom immediately rose by almost five per cent, even though the US Congress went ahead with legislation to sanction companies providing technical assistance to the pipeline construction.129 It may be that this attempt to impose penalties for an economic decision every sovereign country has the right to make was finally recognized for what it was – economic extortion. A day after the Danish announcement, Putin was in Budapest for a oneday meeting with Viktor Orban, bringing with him representatives of LUKoil and Transneft to sign agreements with Hungary’s MOL to facilitate the transport of Russian fuel to Hungary via the Druzhba pipeline until 2025.130 Hungary remains a hub for the storage and distribution of Russian energy to some other parts of Europe, and is a site for two Russian-made NPPs. In another step forward, Russia and Ukraine, with a representative of the EU as moderator, negotiated a return to natural gas talks in September 2019. Ukraine had stopped buying from Russia in 2016, but found LNG and resold gas from eastern Europe too expensive.131 Later in 2019, several longtime disputes between Gazprom and Naftohaz over gas transit were suddenly settled. Gazprom agreed to pay the $2.6 billion won by Naftohaz in litigation in return for all other claims being dropped. A five-year gas transit contract and direct deliveries of Russian gas to Ukraine were also agreed. Russia had preferred one-year transit contracts, but the delay in Nord Stream-2 gave Ukraine a bargaining chip. These protocols, signed in draft form during

156  Economic patterns trilateral discussions in Berlin, were important to both sides, and marked a difficult political compromise for Moscow, who had long planned on using Nord Stream-2 and the TurkStream to bypass Ukraine altogether. In addition to political considerations, Gazprom’s market in Europe was threatened by LNG competition from the US and Qatar, a new inner-Baltic pipeline (Balticconnector), a Norway–Poland–Denmark link (Baltic Pipe), a Greek, Cyprus and Israel pipeline deal (EastMed.Gas), and a Bulgarian plan to obtain gas from Azerbaijan and also switch to LNG. 132 As 2019 wound down, several more bills enacted in Washington had momentous consequences for the Russian energy sector. On 20 December, Trump signed the US’s defence budget into law, carrying with it the threatened sanctions against Nord Stream-2 and TurkStream. This act prompted Switzerland’s Allseas Group DSA, which was setting out the Nord Stream pipes, to drop out of the enterprise, throwing the project into disarray. Gazprom said it would finish the project itself, but delays were necessary. Russia had only one pipe-laying vessel that met requirements for the Danish permit and it had to travel to the Baltic Sea from the Far East. When the Akademik Cherskii arrived, in May, it had again to wait just off Denmark’s Bornholm Island until it was granted Danish permission to proceed. Meanwhile, Washington broadcast threats of new sanctions against the Gazprom pipeline operation, and Poland’s anti-monopoly agency fined Gazprom $57 million for, allegedly, not providing Nord Stream documentation.133 The new sanctions failed to target key financial backers, Engie, OMV, Uniper, Wintershall DEA and Royal Dutch Shell, all of whom stayed with the project and committed to sharing 50 per cent of its $11.2 billion cost.134 The US sanctions were aimed at companies involved in construction of the pipeline and their top management. While the US Energy Secretary boasted that Russia would not be able to complete the project, the EU generally, and the German, French and Swiss governments specifically, opposed the sanctions.135 The US Congress filed another anti-Russia bill, in June 2020, as a companion bill to the US Senate’s Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Clarification Act and called for still more sanctions against Nord Stream-2. In mid-August 2020, Uniper backed off because of US sanctions. As it happened, over the protests from the US, Poland and Ukraine, in July 2020 Denmark granted final permission for Nord Stream-2 to use pipe-laying vessels with anchors (as opposed to self-positioning ships that were sanctioned) to complete its final stretch.136 Pompeo promised still tougher legislation against the pipeline. He had already warned companies involved in the Nord Stream-2 project that they should ‘get out or risk the consequences’ and later told a Senate panel that the US would ‘do everything we can to make sure the pipeline doesn’t threaten Europe’. This time he said he would sanction insurers and ports involved in the project.137 The German Eastern Business Association called Pompeo’s tactic ‘extortion’, the EU suggested it violated international law and Peskov called it ‘an attempt to force Europeans to buy more expensive gas’.138 It is hard to see it as anything else.

Economic patterns  157 More calls to stop the Nord Stream-2 pipeline came from Washington after the Navalny poisoning in August 2020. The pipeline project had been lying fallow for almost a year when, on 11 December, construction started again. The US asked Germany to impose a moratorium on it. With Trump leaving, very begrudgingly, and a new administration waiting, Berlin had an important choice to make.139 LNG In July 2019, Novatek announced that it had found partners in Sweden, Norway and Finland to help construct 15 more 1,000-foot-long ice-breaking tankers to carry Yamal LNG from its seaport at Sabetta east or west on the NSR. The first of these huge vessels had its successful maiden voyage in December 2017; the second, a nuclear-powered icebreaker launched in May 2019. Putin boasted of the icebreakers and the NSR in his address to the 5th International Arctic Forum when it met in Petersburg in April.140 Over 3,500 businesspeople, scientists and officials attended the sessions. The future of Russia’s LNG brightened in October that year when Riyadh announced investments in two major Russian energy projects, one of them a $5 billion infusion into an LNG project in the Arctic, the other a $500 million stake in a Russia–China investment fund. The Saudis also purchased a 30 per cent equity in Novatek, one of only two Russian companies allowed to work in the Arctic. The other is Gazprom. These investments softened the impact of Western sanctions.141 Italy’s Saipem also signed multi-billion dollar deals with Novatek to build offshore platforms for Russia’s Arctic LNG 2, with export credit agencies from Italy (SACE) and France (COFACE) guaranteeing the loan, and Turkey’s Renaissance providing services. They hope to start producing LNG by 2022–23. The trade war between China and the US boosted Russia’s LNG prospects as well.142 LNG had domestic uses too. In January 2019, Gazprom launched a terminal to feed LNG directly into Kaliningrad, making the exclave energy independent of its neighbours, and shut down the existing pipeline through Belarus and Lithuania.143 After all that promise, however, funding for Novatek’s projects was omitted from the Russian Finance Ministry’s budget for 2020. An energetic lobbying campaign by the company in an attempt to change the ministry’s proposals may have been handicapped by the fact that LNG prices were dropping precipitously. Oil sector The 21st century has seen a huge expansion in the Russian oil export sector. Oil production reached record levels in 2019–20 and Rosneft overtook Saudi Arabia as the largest supplier to China. According to pronouncements from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment in September 2019, the market value of Russia’s oil reserve had doubled since the previous year to an estimated $1.2 trillion.144 That value is important only if the oil can be sold.

158  Economic patterns The market had been looking up in 2018 when, although some foreign companies, such as Exxon Mobil, withdrew from several joint ventures with Rosneft because of the sanctions, the Russian oil producer signed a contract with a subsidiary of France’s Total to export more oil to Germany.145 Saudi Arabia and Russia revealed plans in May that year to revive oil production independently of the other states with which they had agreed to halt output in 2016. Russia is not one of the 13 members of OPEC, rather it is part of the more loosely organized 22-member OPEC+. In June, the Energy Minister Novak attended an OPEC summit in Vienna, where the organization agreed to a modest hike in oil production. Teheran objected to an increase because the US favoured it while at the same time imposing economic sanctions against Iran and Venezuela, thereby limiting the global supply. Discussion about amalgamating OPEC and OPEC+ intensified.146 At a time when the US took over the number one spot among the world’s oil producers and wielded sanction-bearing pressure against countries that purchase Iranian oil – picking which countries it would spare, such as Turkey, India and South Korea – Russian energy interests sought new markets and struggled to find ways to help Iran. Heavy investment in Iran’s oil and gas sectors was one tactic, the reintroduction of the oil-for-goods barter system was another.147 As it happened, in November and December, 2018, Zarubezhneft and Rosneft withdrew plans to invest large sums of money in the Iranian energy sector because they too were apprehensive about US reaction.148 Attempting to forestall consequences of more sanctions expected after the Democrats won control of the House in the US’s mid-term elections, Russian oil companies put pressure on European buyers to use euros instead of dollars. Contracts negotiated for 2019 included penalties if purchasers fail to pay for supplies (because of sanctions) provided under contract. Since Russian producers were still the source for about 10 per cent of global oil shipped to refineries in Europe and Asia, Russian suppliers, especially Rosneft, Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftgaz, had cards to play, yet everbroadening embargoes made it more difficult for purchasers to make payments.149 The Arctic was again a focal point for large-scale oil-field development. When Rosneft released its plans to utilize the Northern Sea Route to get oil to markets, especially in Asia, Gazprom Neft signed a long-term contract to develop the Achimov deposits in the Yamburg oil field, and lobbied the government successfully for a substantial 10-year tax relief to help cover the development of part of its South Priobskoye field, in the Khanty-Mansi AO, Western Siberia, which provides nearly 20 per cent of all its oil production. Rosneft received a similar concession. Legislation adopted in January 2020 called for a $231 billion tax break regime as incentives for major investments in Arctic oil. Petro-chemical projects, exploration in Siberia and the Far East, transport and infrastructure development were also provided for in the bill.150 Speaking to Putin with unbridled optimism in February 2020, with oil price and pandemic crises swirling around them, Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin

Economic patterns  159 proclaimed that the company’s Vostok Oil project in the Arctic would be the biggest project in the modern global oil industry, involving the development of 15 new towns, two airports, a seaport and a new pipeline. It will create 100,000 new jobs and require about $150 billion in investment, or so Sechin said. His assumption that Rosneft would find partners in China, India and Japan, may have been wishful thinking. Foreign capital was going to be very hard to access, in part because of sanctions and in part because of energy market conditions.151 Oddly, Russian exports of oil to the US tripled in 2019 to reach an eightyear high (170 mln barrels), mostly because of American sanctions against Venezuela. Russia became the second-largest energy supplier to the US, ahead of Mexico and behind only Canada. China, the Netherlands and Germany bought the largest amount of Russian oil, while the US ranked 12th, having doubled its purchases over the volume acquired in 2018. The UK, ranked 18th, also doubled its purchases.152 That said, in February 2020, Washington sanctioned Rosneft for giving ‘malign support’ to Venezuela’s Maduro by delivering its oil via a subsidiary located in Geneva. In response, the company transferred all of its assets in Venezuela to a company owned by Russia’s government. This action was expected to protect Rosneft and its minority shareholders, BP and Qatar, from US retaliation.153 The global consumption of oil continued to plummet because of climate warming and the coronavirus outbreak. The ruble also tumbled and Russian firms saw their share prices collapse (e.g. Rosneft 20%; Gazprom 25%), leaving the country weakened in its negotiations with OPEC. Oil exports still provided the Russian government with about 40 per cent of its revenues and remained crucial to government projects. In 2020, Russia had a fall-back reserve of about $150 billion in its National Welfare Fund, which should have come into play if the oil price fell below $42 per barrel.154 It didn’t. Even as Siluanov announced that Russia’s revenues from oil and gas sales would be at least $40 billion lower than expected, the CB hesitated about dipping into reserves, perhaps concerned about the fate of Putin’s National Projects. Money was needed for pandemic recovery as well, but the reserves remained mostly untouched. We have already seen that the National Projects were jeopardized by the oil pricing crisis, declining oil consumption, and the coronavirus pandemic. Relief loomed in April when OPEC and OPEC+ finally agreed to curtail output over May and June 2020. North American producers were not involved, though officials from the US, Canada and Mexico planned a joint response for the upcoming meeting of G-20 energy ministers, and Putin spoke with Trump and King Salman by telephone the day the agreement was announced. After four days of video-conference negotiations, the countries of OPEC and OPEC+ agreed to reduce output by a record 9.7 million barrels per day. Restrictions would be relaxed gradually until the spring of 2022. Mexico came on board. Of non-members, Canada had long since cut production, and US, Norway and Argentina promised unilateral cuts.155

160  Economic patterns Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) On the eve of the 2020 crises, Russia recently had become the world leader in exporting new nuclear reactors, with 39 new NPPs under construction or planned. No other country had even half this number. Before 2018 the file was dominated by the US’s Westinghouse. In addition to needed income, NPPs represent an important strategic commodity, and Russia includes in its NPP market countries not firmly aligned with it or the US, such as Turkey, Bangladesh, India, Argentina, Hungary and Finland.156 Like weapons sales, their value lies in both economic and geopolitical returns. Rosatom celebrated the launch of work on Turkey’s first nuclear power plant in April, 2018, with expectations that the $20 billion project at Akkuyu would start generating power by 2023.157 Six months later, construction began on the first Uzbek NPP, financed by a loan from Russia. Putin and President Shavkat Mirziyoyev presided over a ceremony in Tashkent that marked the onset of geological surveys to decide the best location for the facility.158 That same month, Putin and Egypt’s President el-Sisi discussed the creation of a Russian technology park in Egypt and the construction of a nuclear power plant in El Dabaa. Rosatom signed four NPP agreements with the Chinese government in 2018. Construction details for two units at the existing Xudabao NPP were not finalized until the spring of 2019, and actual work was scheduled for 2021 and 2022. Two more units will be assembled in Tianwan. Total value of the contract was $3.62 billion.159 The world’s first floating NPP (Akademik Lomonosov) was authorized to start work in July. Its purpose is to provide electricity to a resource-rich region in Russia’s Arctic, and to offshore platforms in the area. After years of planning and three years under construction, the vessel began a 5,000-km journey under tow from Murmansk to Pevek in August 2019. At that time, there were seven more such plants under construction. Critics such as Greenpeace refer to them as ‘floating Chernobyls’.160 Some of the NPPs had immediate political implications. Belarus, for example, officially opened its first nuclear plant in November, at the height of antiLukashenka demonstrations. The NPP at Astravyets is sited only 40 kms southeast of Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. Though Rosatom, its builder, and the IAEA endorsed its safety standards, the power plant represents another sore spot between Belarus and Lithuania, a member of the EU and NATO.161 SPIEF-2019 Putin’s address at the annual SPIEF, in June 2019, was optimistic about Russia’s economy even as, he said, the world economic model was ‘in crisis’. The four-day session attracted about 19,000 participants from 145 countries, but Western attendance was low. The presidents of Slovakia and Bulgaria, both members of the EU, Armenia and China delivered addresses at the

Economic patterns  161 opening session, as did UN Secretary-General António Guterres and Putin. Altogether participants signed some 650 economic agreements, valued at about $50 billion, or so Sputnik news proclaimed.162 Speakers agreed on the need for greater cooperation, supported the Belt and Road initiative and warned against the overuse of sanctions and tariffs as foreign policy levers. In the former connection, Putin acknowledged that Moscow had been slow in delivering large-scale infrastructure in Eurasia (roads and rail lines) necessary to make the BRI work for Russia. His promise to speed these projects up were optimistic given their cost and China’s unwillingness to contribute much to trans-Siberian high-speed rail projects.163 SPIEF and Putin’s one-on-one meeting with Xi coincided with the Second Russian–Chinese Energy Forum, the first having taken place in Beijing in November 2018. According to a Chinese spokesperson, some 400 representatives of 100 energy companies participated and reached 17 joint agreements. Energy accounted for 40 per cent of the trade between China and Russia, he said, observing too that he and his Russian counterparts expected the total trade between the two countries soon to reach $200 billion in value. The level of mutual satisfaction was good, at least in public.164 A feature event of the Forum was an intergovernmental deal worth about $1 billion (US) for Russia to upgrade Cuba’s dilapidated railway system. Prime Minister Medvedev travelled to Havana in October to sign more agreements, including a substantial augmentation of the railway undertaking, making it a 10-year project to restore Cuban rail infrastructure.165 As 2019 wound down, Cuba’s financial debt to Russia amounted to about $3.2 billion. Other natural resources Most economists, Russia’s included, realize that the Russian economy relies too heavily on sales of energy resources. Kudrin has been insisting on this for more than a decade, and challenged Putin on it publicly in 2013. If diversity ever becomes a reality, it is worth knowing that in 2019 Russia was the world’s leading producer of diamonds, ranked third in gold production, and was the second largest holder of coal reserves. Nickel deposits at Norilsk-Tainakh are the largest nickel–copper–palladium deposits in the world. With the launch of a new Arctic Palladium joint venture between Nornickel and Russia Palladium, Russia expected to become the world’s leading producer of palladium, a precious metal valued more than gold per ounce.166 Its holding of renewable fresh water is the world’s second largest, just behind Brazil and ahead of the US and Canada. Russia leads the world in forest resources, and in 2020 was sixth in lumber production. In that latter industry, timber exports to China amounted to close to $4 billion worth in 2019, as over 100 Chinese mills operate in Siberia. Worries in Russia about the potential forest depletion by rapacious Chinese companies were drowned out by the economic benefits – jobs – accruing to the region.167

162  Economic patterns In the case of gold, in 2019 a new find at the country’s largest gold mine, in Sukhoi Log, increased Russia’s gold resource by about 10 per cent; and a $283 million sale of a gold development project by a private company, N-Mining in the Khabarovsk region, to Canada’s Kinross kept the industry booming. Kinross has two more gold mines in Russia.168 Among other things, Russia’s access to huge gold deposits strengthened the ruble and softened the impact of sanctions. Government shuffle, coronavirus, price war and an energy strategy for 2035 Energy was one of the departments that retained its minister after the grand cabinet shuffle in January 2020. Energy Minister Novak, and Rosneft’s Sechin were key players in finding markets for Russia’s LNG and managing complications arising from price and production issues with OPEC, via OPEC+.169 The coronavirus was an unexpected variable that seriously impacted the oil sector by causing a drop of fuel consumption for travel and factory work, and therefore also a drop in the world price. As demands for crude slipped to its lowest level since the slump of 2008, OPEC proposed a cut in production if Russia would approve similar cuts. To that time, Russia had agreed only to an extension of earlier reductions. Novak met with OPEC and OPEC+ officials on 4 March and rejected the idea of production cuts; Saudi Aramco responded by increasing its oil output to record levels.170 Before Moscow and OPEC could reach a deal, the oil price hovered at Russia’s solvent line. The Kremlin treated the Saudi decision as a form of blackmail and refused to budge.171 The crisis was such that Putin and Trump agreed in late March by telephone to have their senior energy officials, Novak and US Secretary for Energy Dan Brouillette consult directly on the matter. As we have seen, both sides eventually gave in, and the price of oil returned to as high as $51 per barrel before the year was out.172 Russia emerged less damaged than it might have been if the dispute had gone on. The government was able to avoid drawing heavily from reserve funds, but not before the plunge in prices, combined with the pandemic, ensured that the federal budget would run small deficits between 2020 and 2022.173 In August 2020, the National Wealth Fund (13 trillion rubles), which had grown to slightly less than 12 per cent of GDP, was tapped to help finance the federal deficit.174 Driven by the crisis, in June 2020 Russia adopted a long-term ‘Energy Strategy 2035’ that included the following objectives: 1) raising domestic consumption; 2) diversifying exports by increasing production of LNG; 3) modernizing the energy infrastructure, especially in Eastern Siberia and the Far East, and boosting the gasification of Russia’s regions; 4) achieving technological independence; and 5) digitalizing the fuel and energy complex (FEC). The ‘strategy’ claimed to take into account ‘changes in the global economic and political situation, … and Russian energy’ situations. It also assumed that the energy sector would remain unchallenged as the main source of revenue for the Russian government and that external competition from LNG

Economic patterns  163 would be deemed a threat. The sector was expected to contribute to the ‘dynamic socio-economic development and national security of the Russian Federation’.175 Inevitably, then, larger state subsidies would always be in demand from energy oligarchs, and environmental challenges would always take second place. The Energy Strategy 2035, while encompassing and probably wise, was also probably too much, too late. After much hesitation, in June Moscow cancelled the Eastern Economic Forum scheduled to meet in Vladivostok in November, 2020, purportedly because of the pandemic, though the huge fuel spill may also have a consideration.

Down on the farm: The agricultural sector Of all sectors in the Russian economy, agriculture is the one that made the most substantial progress during the last two decades. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, over half the used arable land in Russia was still collectively owned, food shortages were endemic, and human edibles and animal feed (e.g. 900,000 tons of wheat in 2000) were imported and expensive. Large government subsidies to agriculture seemed to have been wasted, or siphoned off by corrupt officials.176 It took a series of active measures, most of them while Aleksei Gordeev was Minister of Agriculture (2000–09), to bring some order into chaos. These included tariffs on raw sugar (2000) that boosted domestic sugar beet production, a law that legalized private ownership and limited foreign ownership of agricultural land (2005), and priority given to a long-term national project on ‘Development of the Agro-industrial Complex’ (2005, 2008), which provided continuing subsidies to farmers. The government introduced a food security doctrine in 2010 that set percentages on foodstuffs that had to be produced domestically. Russia suffered a major drought in 1998 and such low harvests for that year and 1999 that Moscow had to appeal to Canada and the US for aid in animal feed (soybean, meal and maize) so as to free other grains for food. In addition to feed grains, Canada, the US and the EU sent large amounts of food supplies in 1999 and 2000, including wheat, rice, beef, pork, poultry and dried milk, all on low interest, long-term credit.177 It was an extraordinary achievement, then, that by 2011 Russia had become a world leader in grain exports.178 The agricultural sector modernized even more after the government imposed counter-sanctions against sanctioning countries in 2014 and 2015, compelling state and private investors to introduce new facilities, subsidize farm equipment manufacturing and help farmers increase production. Analyses of the counter-sanctions show that the monetary value of Russia’s food imports dropped by almost half after 2015, and only began to rise again by 2018. Russian import of agricultural machinery slowed to the extent that domestic manufacturers had 60 percent of the market share in 2019, as opposed to 24 per cent in 2014.179

164  Economic patterns Russia had record grain production years in 2017 and again in 2019, and record figures in sunflower, rice, soybean and greenhouse vegetable harvests in the latter year. Dairy producers and food exporters had a very good 2019 too, and Vietnam, Latvia and Turkey increased their purchases of Russian wheat.180 Russia is one of the top exporters of GMO-free products, with Japan, Israel and Europe its main markets, and the world’s second-largest exporter of sunflower oils, behind Ukraine. Low-interest long-term loans from Rosselkhozbank amounted to over ₽80 billion in 2018, mostly to food and food processing industries.181 By 2019, Russia was a principal exporter of fish, a net exporter of poultry, had reached self-sufficiency in pork and was close to doing so in beef.182 Ministry reports claimed that agricultural sales overtook arms sales as the second-place export sector, behind oil and gas. Compared to 2000 and earlier, these gains were remarkable, though there was still a long way to go before Russia could claim to be feeding itself completely, and food price inflation still needed to be controlled.183 The disruptions of 2020 placed some of these gains at risk. The after-effects of drought, heat and floods were apparent in 2020. Traditional grain-producing areas, such as the Stavropol and Kuban regions had lower harvests than usual, while the Black Earth Region, central Russia and part of the northwest had larger harvests. The latter result was due to wider use of previously abandoned land and, in fact, the Ministry of Agriculture insisted in December that it was on track for one of the largestever grain harvests (131 million tons). Potatoes had to be imported and their cost in stores, and that of onions, carrots and beets rose. The loss of sugar beet crops caused sugar prices to double. Peskov’s claims (see above) that Russia was feeding itself was true enough, but needed some qualification. To ease the problem, sugar, butter and sunflower oil producers signed an agreement with the Ministry to regulate prices.184 Russia and China agreed on mutual trade in poultry in 2018, but the most important change came in January 2020 when Beijing opened up its vast market to Russian beef exporters for the first time.185 The coronavirus froze this good news in its tracks, and also cut back Russia’s sales of poultry products to China. The problem was not so much with the pandemic as it was with the fact that refrigeration facilities at Chinese ports of entry were filled because China could not move their own products out. Among the achievements of Putin’s visit to Saudi Arabia in October 2019 was a relaxation of some of the Saudi specification for wheat imports and a joint agreement between the RDIF and a Saudi agency for joint investments in Russia’s agricultural sector.186 The Russian government introduced a new minister of agriculture in May, 2018, when Dmitry Patrushev replaced Aleksandr Tkachev, who had held the post since 2015. Patrushev has a university degree in management and brought with him experience as chairman of Rosselkhozbank’s Management Board and member of the board of Gazprom. Very well-connected because his father, Nikolai, has been secretary of the Security Council since 2008, the younger Patrushev kept his post after the ‘January Revolution’.

Economic patterns  165 Dmitry Patrushev’s first few years saw continued success, and also some controversy. For instance, a decision to lease huge spaces in Russia’s Far East to Asian countries for agriculture use was unsettling to Sibiriaks, who already resented inroads from China. China expanded its crops of soybeans, corn and rice on Russian soil and negotiated joint ventures to build dairy farms. South Korea planned also to develop its land use in Russia to about 150,000 hectares. Leonid Petukhov, CEO of Russia’s Far Eastern Investment and Export Agency, used the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok to invite other Asian countries to apply.187 There were some problems, though, as several large agro-industrial complexes declared bankruptcy, mainly in the poultry sector. Debt, corporate feuds and bird flu were factors in these breakdowns, as large entities grew while pushing smaller operations out of business. One report suggests that bankruptcies in the food industries reached about 20 per month in 2019.188 Coronavirus and protecting the food supply Reacting to the coronavirus epidemic in March, Patrushev ordered all of Russia’s regions to prepare a two-month stock of basic foods so as to offset potential shortages. He also created an operational body to monitor volumes and prices in retail chains and later signed an order establishing an export quota on grains (wheat, barley, maize, rye) until the end of June.189 This measure ensured domestic food supplies during the pandemic and helped keep prices down. Whereas the WTO and WHO warned that countries should not impose restriction that might interfere with the global food supply chain, the EEU instigated rules that were broader than Russia’s, including limits on trade in ‘onions, garlic, turnips, rye, buckwheat, millet, cereals, wholemeal, cereal grains, soybeans and sunflower seeds’. Trade in other food products within the EEU remained open.190

Back to work Budgeting to cover for 2020 As we saw in Chapter 1, the much-revised National Projects were in the news again within days of the All-Russia Vote, with Putin calling for a more realistic approach to the existing $400 billion-dollar undertaking. In addition to important new targets set for social indicators (healthcare, housing, education), he told the Council for Strategic Development and National Projects to reset schedules for foreign and domestic economic investments and economic growth for the next decade, that is, to 2030. Ministry of Finance proposals of budget cuts up to 10 per cent for 2021 revealed that fiscal conservatism was back in place. Observing that it was necessary to improve the business and entrepreneurial climates, the president named the import substitution field and tourism as ones that needed expansion. Equipment production, high tech and

166  Economic patterns engineering were others. Domestic investment should increase at 5–6 per cent rate annually, he said, and new ‘financial instruments’ would make that possible.191 Russia still had substantial foreign exchange reserves and a low debt to work with. He targeted the oligarchs again, too, forcing them to pay more domestic taxes on the monies they deposited overseas, a 15 per cent levy on dividend payments to parent companies in offshore locations. Other taxes were raised in the budget for 2021–23, which built in overall cuts of 10 per cent in all unprotected budget items, and halted cost-of-living increases for bureaucrats. Tax increases included a 2 per cent more VAT (2019) and a moderate progressive income tax for the wealthy, while keeping the flat tax for everyone else. The National Welfare Fund remained untouched, for now, and foreign currency and gold reserves were expected to grow, providing Russia with a ‘fiscal fortress’ to guard against further sanctions. More taxes on the mining and metal industries, reductions in subsidies for oil and gas companies and cuts in defence spending are all features of the new budget. The new taxes came over the objection of Kudrin, who recommended a privatization programme instead.192 The Ministry of Finance compromised in October by announcing that the new tax rate would apply only to salaries, dividends and active income over five million rubles (circa $66 mln), related directly to work, meaning it would not affect the majority of Russians.193 Perhaps the government had learned not to poke the larger hornet’s nest. The reaction of oligarchs, the military and the public is a matter for 2021–24.

Notes 1 Konstantin Ugodnikov, Aleksei Chichkin, ‘Evropa grozit zabit’ okno v Rossiiu’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 28 January 2000. For a recent overview, Torbjorn Becker, Susanne Oxenstierna, The Russian Economy under Putin. London: Routledge, 2020. 2 Putin, ‘Rossiia na rubezhe tysiacheletii’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 30 December 1999. 3 ‘Russia’s Ex-Finance Minister Reveals How Putin Saved the Country’s Economy’, Sputnik, 25 December 2019; Black, The Russian Presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, pp. 92–3. 4 On Russian oligarchs generally, see ‘Russian Oligarchs’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 233, 14 March 2019. For background, see items in ‘Economic Crisis’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 180, 23 March 2016. 5 US Treasury Department, 6 April 2018, www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/OFAC-Enforcement/Pages/20180406.aspx; ‘“Insanity’ and “Terrorism” – Russia Reacts to New U.S. Sanctions’, The Moscow Times, 6 April 2018. For an accounting of the vast web of US-sanctioned Russian people and firms, see Congressional Research Service, ‘U.S. Sanctions on Russia’, Updated January 17, 2020’, https://crsreports.congress.gov, R45415. 6 Congressional Research Service, ‘U.S. Sanctions on Russia: An Overview’, 29 August 2019, fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10779.pdf. 7 On this, see Richard Connelly, Russia’s Response to Sanctions. How Western Economic Statecraft is Reshaping Political Economy in Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2018, pp. 69–74, 192–4. 8 Daniel W. Drezner wrote about this in the 1990s, see his The Sanctions Paradox: Economic State Craft and International Relations. New York: Cambridge UP,

Economic patterns  167 1999, pp. 18–21; ‘Igra ne po pravilam: chto ne tak s amerikanskimi sanktsiiami’, Aktual’nye komentarii, 15 June 2020. 9 ‘Bespretsedentnye sanktsii: chto grozit rossiiskim milliarderam i ikh biznesam’, RBC.ru, 6 April 2018. 10 ‘50 bogateishikh rossiian poteriali za den’ pochti $12 mlrd’, RBC.ru, 9 April 2018; Anton Novoderezhkin, ‘Ruble Experiences Biggest One-day Fall Since 2016’, The Moscow Times, 9 April 2018; Vitalii Petlevoi, Mikhail Overchenko, ‘Chem groziat rossiiskomu biznesu novye sanktsii SShA’, Vedomosti, 8 April 2018. 11 ‘Reuters soobshzhil o zamorazhivanii aktivov “Renovy” Veksel’berga na $1,5 mlrd’, Vedomosti, 22 April 2018; ‘Sanctions-Hit Deripaska Quits Russia’s En+ Board’, The Moscow Times, 18 May 2018. 12 ‘US Rusal planiruet postroit’ zavod v SShA’, Vedomosti, 15 April 2019; ‘Russia’s Rusal to Quit Global Market if Sanctions Remain after Board Shake-up’, The Moscow Times, 27 April 2018. 13 See, e.g. Mike McIntire, Ben Protess, Jim Rutenberg, ‘Firm tied to Russian oligarch made payments to Cohen’, Globe and Mail, 9 May 2018; CNN.com, 9 May 2018. 14 ‘“Renova” Veksel’berga pogasila kredity v zapadnykh bankakh na $1 mlrd’, Vedomosti, 20 May 2018. 15 Frank RG, ‘Private Banking in Russia 2018’, www.frankrg.com/index.php?new_ div_id=1107; ‘Russian Millionaires Hold Two-Thirds of their Money Abroad, Report Says’, The Moscow Times, 31 October 2018; Darya Korsunkaya, Oksana Kobzeva, Polina Devitt, ‘Russian tycoons, fearing new sanctions, float new bond idea: sources’, www.reuters.com, 5 December 2017; ‘Putin To Let Sanctions-Hit Oligarchs Return $3 Bln to Russia, Anonymously’, The Moscow Times, 22 December 2017. 16 ‘Oligarchs still alive & kicking’, The Bell, 12 October 2019. 17 Michael Selby-Green, ‘Russia is dumping US debt and buying gold instead’, Russian Business Insider, 19 July 2018; Thomas Franck, ‘Treasury data shows Russian holdings of US debt plunged 84% since March, but here’s what it really means’, CNBC.com, 29 July 2018. 18 ‘Russia to Continue Investment in US Debt Securities, Experts Say’, Russian Business Insider, 19 January 2020; Central Bank of the Russian Federation, ‘March 2019. Monetary Policy Report, 1 April 2019’, https://www.cbr.ru/eng; ‘Russia’s Gold Reserves Hit Five-Year High’, The Moscow Times, 9 April 2019. 19 Medvedev, ‘Zasedanie Pravitel’stvennoi komissii po importozameshcheniiu’, 12 April 2018, government.ru/news/32268. 20 On this, see the always negative Paul Goble, ‘Import Substitution in Russia Failing as Moscow Buys Products Not Technologies’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 28 March 2019. 21 See European Commission, Trade. Russia, update 13 November 2019, https:// ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/countries-and-regions/countries/russia/. 22 ‘Gordye platiat vsem’, Kommersant, 29 October 2019; A. Bychkov et al., ‘Russia Proposes Harsh New Counter-Sanctions’, Sanctions & Export Controls Update, 16 April 2018; ‘Russian Lawmakers Pass Counter-Sanctions Bill, Restricting U.S. Imports’, The Moscow Times, 22 May 2018. 23 Tatiana Zamakhina, ‘Putin prodlil kontrasanktsii do kontsa 2021 goda’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 21 November 2020; Kira Latukhina, ‘V Kremle nazvali uspeshnoi programmu importozameshcheniia’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 7 December 2020. 24 ‘A Bill to strengthen the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to combat international cybercrime, and to impose additional sanctions with respect to the Russian Federation, and for other purposes’. ROS18A89, 115th Congress, 2nd Session. US Department of State, ‘U.S. Sanctions on Russia Tied to U.K. Attack to Take Effect Monday’ [27 August], The Moscow Times, 24 August 2018.

168  Economic patterns 25 The numbers varied: ‘Capital Flight from Russia triples to $42bn in January– October’, BNE/intellinews, 18 January 2019; ‘Russia’s Capital Outflow More Than Doubled in 2018 to $68 Bln – Reports’, The Moscow Times, 18 January 2019; Scott Johnson, ‘Capital Flight from Russia Carries $750 Billion Price Tag’, Bloomberg, 12 March 2019; ‘Ottok kapitala iz Rossii prevysil s nachala goda $25 mlrd’, RBC.ru, 9 April 2019. 26 ‘Po zakonam sanktsionnogo vremen. Bank Rossii perelozhilsia iz dollara v iuani i evro’, Kommersant, 10 January 2019; ‘Russia Dumps $101 Bln From Dollar Reserves in Pivot to China’, The Moscow Times, 10 January 2019. 27 Nick Butler, ‘How Well are Russia Sanctions Working?’ Russia Matters, 21 December 2018; Stacy Clossen, ‘Diminishing Returns: How Effective Are Sanctions Against Russia?’ PONARS Eurasia, January 2019; ‘IMF Cuts Forecast for Russian 2019 GDP Growth to 1.2%. Calls for Reform’, The Moscow Times, 17 July 2019. 28 ‘Rossiiskikh milliarderov lishili Davosskogo foruma’, Kommersant, 7 November 2018; ‘CMI soobshchili o dopuske rossiiskikh biznesmenov na Davosskii forum’, Kommersant, 15 December 2018. 29 ‘U.S. Imposes Fresh Russia Sanctions for Election Meddling’, The Moscow Times, 20 December 2018; ‘TASS: SShA anonsirovali vtoroi paket sanktsii protiv RF po “delu Skripalei”’, Kommersant, 2 December 2018; Heather Nauert, Press Statement, ‘Imposition of Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act Sanctions on Russia’, U.S. State Department, 8 August 2018, www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2018/08/285043.htm. 30 ‘Ukrainian President imposes sanctions against a number of Russian political parties’, Kyiv Post, 23 June 2018. 31 ‘Rossiia zapretila import ukrainskikh tovarov na polmilliarda dollarov’, RIA Novosti, 29 December 2018; ‘Russia widens ban on Ukrainian imports in tit-fortat sanctions row’, Reuters, 30 November 2018. 32 Dar’ia Borisiak, Ekaterina Litova, Anna Eremina, ‘Morgan Stanley ukhodit iz Rossii’, Vedomosti, 6 May 2019. 33 For a preliminary detailed assessment, see Andrey Sushentsov, ‘A New Russian Ukraine Policy and the Future of Russian–Ukrainian Interdependence’, 2014– 2015 Hurford Next Generation Fellowship Research Papers, No. 2, 2016. These papers are sponsored by the Euro-Atlantic Initiative (EASI) of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Sushentsov is the Director of Programmes, Valdai Club. 34 Vladimir Rubinskii, ‘Kuda vedut antisanktsii’, Vedomosti, 25 June 2019. ‘Priamaia liniiam Vladimirom Putinym’, Kremlin.ru, 20 June 2019, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60795; ‘EU Extends Economic Sanctions on Russia Until 2020’, The Moscow Times, 21 June 2019. 35 For the Bill, https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/482/text#tocid8ECC7DE75C5F408089FFD9B1C838ECEB; Cyrus Newlin, Jeffrey Mankoff, ‘U.S. Sanctions against Russia: What You Need to Know’, CSIS (Centre for Strategic & International Studies), 31 October 2018. 36 ‘Siluanov sravnil novye sanktsii SShA protiv Rossii s “vystrelom v nogu”’, RBC.ru, 14 February 2019; ‘“Insane, Ridiculous”: Russian Lawmakers React to New U.S. Sanctions Bill’, The Moscow Times, 14 February 2019; ‘Russia’s Economy Can Weather New U.S. Sanctions, Kremlin Says’, The Moscow Times, 14 February 2019. 37 Natalya Ishchenko, Tatyana Romanova, ‘McDonald’s otkryl pervyi restoran tol’ko dlia dostavki fastfuda’, Vedomosti, 18 February 2020. 38 ‘UPDATE 1-Moody’s raises Russia rating to investment grade’, Reuters, 8 February 2019. 39 ‘S&P affirms Russia’s rating with stable outlook’, Reuters Business News, 18 January 2019; Fitch Ratings, https://www.fitchratings.com/site/russia; ‘Russia: Fitch Upgrades Russian Credit Rating’, Stratfor/World View, 12 August 2019.

Economic patterns  169 40 World Bank Group, Doing Business 2020, p. 4. 41 Ivan Tkachev, ‘Sanctions: the 2020 Agenda’, Riddle, 9 January 2020; ‘Russia’s Sovereign Credit Rating Upgraded’, The Moscow Times, 20 January 2020; Anna Kholiavko, ‘Priamye inostrannye investitsii vernulis’ na stabil’nyi uroven’, Vedomosti, 19 January 2020. 42 ‘Rossiia i Saudovskaia Araviia podpisali soglasheniia po investitsiiam’, Kommersant, 14 October 2019; ‘Putin podaril koroliu Saudovskoi Aravii kamchatsckogo krecheta’, Vedomosti, 14 October 2019. 43 Rauf Mammadov, ‘Putin’s Gulf Visit Yields Three Energy Deals, Sets Stage for More’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 23 October 2019. 44 Gunter Deuber, ‘Five Years of Financial Market and Banking Sector Sanctions – a “New Equilibrium” Locally and Internationally’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 236, 6 June 2019, pp. 2–5; Henry Foy, ‘Russia: adapting to sanctions leaves economy in robust health’, Financial Times, 29 January 2020. 45 Putin, ‘Sammit “Gruppy dvadtsati”’, Kremlin.ru, 26 March 2020, kremlin.ru/ events/president/news/63070. 46 Vladimir Kuzmin, ‘Pravitel’stvo ogranichit’ razmer neustoiki za prosrochku vyplat po kreditu’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 9 April 2020; Roman Markelov, ‘Putin podpisal paket zakonov o zashchite kapitalovlozhenii’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 1 April 2020. 47 Putin, ‘Obrashchenie k grazhdanam Rossii’, Kremlin.ru, 23 June 2020, Kremlin. ru/events/president/news/63548. 48 ‘Russia government adopts a third economic stimulus package, calls for rescue plans by June 1’, Intellinews, 12 May 2020. 49 Putin, ‘Soveshchanie o sanitarno-epidemiologicheskoi obstanovke’, Kremlin. ru, 11 May 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/63340; ‘Putin predlozhil prodlit’ otsrochku po uplate nalogov dlia malogo biznesa’, Vedomosti, 20 October 2020. 50 On this, see Jon Hellvig in Russian Insider, 14 May 2020. 51 International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook, April 2020: The Great Lockdown, April 2020, Table 1, p. ix; https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/ Issues/2020/04/14/weo-april-2020; Thomas Graham, ‘Kto-kogo: Putin vs. COVID-19’, Russia Matters, 7 May 2020. 52 Putin speech at ‘Meeting of the State Council on promoting competition’, Kremlin.ru, 5 April 2018, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/567205. 53 For an outline of Putin’s economic plans, see Putin, ‘Plenarnoe zasedanie Peterburgskogo mezhdunarodnogo ekonomicheskogo foruma’, Kremlin.ru, 7 June 2019, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60707; ‘Putin’s $400Bln National Projects Will Barely Boost Russian Economy, Study Finds’, The Moscow Times, 31 October 2019. 54 Schetnaia Palata Rossiiskoi Federatsii [RF Accounting Chamber], ‘Analiticheskii otchet o khode ispolneniia federal’nogo biudzheta i biudzhetov gosudarstvennykh … za ianvar’-sentiabr 2019 goda’, http://audit.gov.ru/promo/analyticalreport-federal-budget-2019-3/index.html. 55 ‘Na Peterburgskom forum vpervye s 2014 goda vystupit amerikanskanskii chinovnik’, Vedomosti, 11 May 2018. 56 ‘Na PMEF zakliucheny 550 soglashenii na 2,365 trln rublei’, Kommersant, 24 May 2018; Yulkiya Kotova, ‘Glavnyi ityogi Peterburgskogo foruma – 2018’, Vedomosti, 25 May 2018. 57 ‘Priamaia liniia s Vladimirom Putinym’, Kremlin.ru, 7 June 2018, kremlin.ru/ events/president/news/57692, 58 ‘Putin poruchil otsenit’ tselesoobraznost’ stroitel’stva mosta na Sakhalin’, Vedomosti, 24 July 2018; ‘Kogda sbyvaiutsia bol’shie mechtu’, Vedomosti, 26 July 2018; see also Putin statement to the press after a meeting with Xi in June 2019, Kremlin.ru, 5 June 2019, en/kremlin.ru/events/presidents/transcripts/60672.

170  Economic patterns 59 Ben Aris, ‘Build, Build, Build: Russia’s national projects get underway’, BNE. Intellinews, 21 November 2019; Putin address at ‘Russia Calling! Investment Forum’, Kremlin.ru, 20 November 2019, en/kremlin.ru/events/president/ transcripts/62073. 60 ‘Rost nalogov profinansiruet maiskie ukazy’, Kommersant, 7 July 2018. 61 ’Golikova nazvala stoimost’ smiagcheniia pensionnoi reformy’, RBC.ru, 29 August 2018. 62 ‘Priamaia liniia s Vladimirom Piutinym’, Kremlin.ru, 20 June 2019, kremlin.ru/ events/president/news/60795; Aleksandr Trusahin, ‘Vse vyshe, i nizhe, i nizhe. Kak Rossiia stala rodnoi neproizvoditel’nogo truda’, Kommersant, 23 July 2018. 63 Maksim Solopov et al., ‘Finansovaia razvedka otsenila v R20 trln ob’em tenevoi ekonomiki v Rossii’, Ekonomika, 22 February 2019. 64 Anastasia Manuylova, ‘V teni pokholodalo’, Kommersant, 30 July 2018. 65 ‘Russia’s PM Orders New Spending Plan to Boost Living Standards’, The Moscow Times, 22 January 2020; ‘Mikhail Mishustin poruchil podgotovit’ izmeneniia v zakon o federal’nom budzhete na 2020-2022 gody i zakon o biudzhete Pensionnogo fonda …’, 22 January 2020, government.ru/news/38805/. 66 ‘Poteri Rossii ot zakrytiia granits dlia turistov otsenil v 500 mlrd rublei’, Kommersant, 4 August 2020. 67 Artem Hirsch, ‘TsB i pravitel’stvo vypustil sovmestnoe zaiavlenie po situatsii s koronavirusom’, Vedomosti 17 March 2020. 68 ‘Fifth Caspian Summit’, Kremlin.ru, 12 August 2018, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/58296; Bruce Pannier, ‘A Landmark Caspian Agreement – And What It Resolves’, RFE/RL, 9 August 2018. 69 For background, see Rilka Dragneva, Katerian Wolczuk, eds. Eurasian Economic Integration: Law, Policy and Politics. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2013; for an update. ‘Eurasian Economic Union’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 247, 17 February 2020. On its inevitable failure to deliver ‘on its grand promises’, see Rilka Dragneva, Kataryna Wolczuk, ‘The Eurasian Economic Union. Deals, Rules and the Exercise of Power’. Chatham House, Russia and Eurasia Programme, Research Paper, 2017, p. 24. 70 Announcements by RIA Novosti, 14 and 17 May 2018. 71 ‘BRIKS idet s den’gami po sudam i gorodam russkim’, Kommersant, 26 May 2018. 72 Putin, ‘Press Conference following the results of the BRICS summit’, Kremlin.ru, 27 July 2018, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/58119. 73 ‘Erdogan poprosil chlenov BRIKS priniat’ Tyrtsiiu v svoiu gruppu’, RBC.ru, 29 July 2018. 74 Putin speech, ‘Vstrecha liderov BRIKS’, Kremlin.ru, 14 November 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62045; For details of the sessions, see the BRICS Information Portal, Brazilia 2019, infobrics.org/news//. See also Emily Palios, ‘What Does the Future Hold for the BRICS Bloc?’ Geopolitical Monitor, 19 December 2019. 75 Rajeswari Pollai Rajagopolap, ‘Contradictions Grow Amid Another BRICS Summit’, The Diplomat, 19 November 2020; ‘Putin Urges BRICS to Mass Produce Russian COVID-19 Vaccines’, The Moscow Times, 17 November 2020. 76 Putin, ‘Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu Sobraniiu’, Kremlin.ru, 20 February 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59863. 77 ‘Putin Drives Truck Across Bridge from Russia to Crimea’, RFE/RL, 15 May 2018; ‘Putin Launches Direct Train Service to Crimea’, The Moscow Times, 23 December 2019; ‘Putin otkryl dvizhenie poezdov po Krymskomu mosty’, Kremlin.ru, 22 December 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62388. 78 For the federal target programme, ‘Social and economic development of the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol until 2022’, see Direktsiia po upravleniiu FTsP, https://fcp2020.ru/program/.

Economic patterns  171 79 For further details, Paul Goble, ‘Moscow Plans to Expand Canal System between Caspian and Azov Seas’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 26 March 2019. 80 Ukaz, ‘O porioadke v’ezda v Rossiiskuiu Federatsiiu i vyezda iz Rossiiskoi Federatsii inostrannykh grazhdan …’ (No. 347), 18 July 2019, http://publication. pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001201907190031; ‘European Budget Airlines Push For St. Petersburg Flights’, The Moscow Times, 24 September 2019. 81 Paul Goble, ‘Domestic and Foreign Challenges Prompt Moscow to Announce Unrealistically Ambitious Railway Plan’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 16 April 2020. 82 ‘Russia – Flash report, Sales volume, 2020’, MarkLines. Automotive Industry Portal, accessed 25 April 2020; Gleb Stolyarov, Olesya Astakhova, ‘Ford considers closing two Russian plants – sources’, Reuters, 5 March 2019; ‘Ford Will Pay Out $200M to Laid-Off Russian Workers’, The Moscow Times, 27 March 2019. 83 Anna Tretyak, ‘Inostrantsy vlozhili rekordnye summy v rossiiskie tsennye bymagi’, Kommersant, 12 February 2019; Giancario Perasso, ‘Investors rediscover appeal of Russian bonds’, Financial Times, 1 August 2019. 84 See United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, World Investment Report: Annex Tables, June 2019; Leonid Bershidsky, ‘Where Russia’s Foreign Investment Really Comes From’, Bloomberg. Opinion, 6 November 2019. 85 Putin, ‘Interv’iu informatsionnomu agentstvu TASS’, Kremlin.ru, 21 October 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/61858. 86 Putin, ‘Plenarnoe zasedanie ekonomicheskogo foruma Rossia–Afrika’, Kremlin. ru, 23 October 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/61880 87 ‘Arms, Oil and Influence: What You Need to Know About Russia’s First-Ever Africa Summit’, The Moscow Times, 24 October 2019; Vanand Meliksetian, ‘Oil, Military and Nuclear Tech: Russia’s Influence in Africa’, Oilprice.com, 17 October 2019. For the Russia–Africa Summit agenda and results in English, see its website, summitafrica.ru/en/. 88 ‘Unprecedented Sochi Summit: Russia Back in Africa For First Time Since Break-Up of USSR!’, Vesti.ru, 24 October 2019. 89 Andrey Maslov, ‘No Sentiment, All Pragmatism as Russia Unveils New Approach to Africa’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 31 October 2019. 90 ‘Rossiia i Kitai sozdadut sovmestnyi investfond na $1 mlrd’, Vedomosti, 7 June 2018; Elena Medvedeva, ‘Kitai vydelit VEBu bolee 600 mlrd lei na razvitie ekonomiki Rossii’, Vedomosti, 8 June 2018. 91 ‘Roskosmos. Podpisan memorandum o vzaimoponimanii s KNKA’, www.roskosmos.ru/25173, 8 June 2018; ‘Russia, China Sign Space Exploration Deal’, The Moscow Times, 8 June 2018; for progress on the Belt and Road project, Nadège Rolland, ‘Reports of Belt and Road’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated’, Foreign Affairs. Snapshot, 29 January 2019; Yuen Yuen Ang, ‘Demystifying Belt and Road. The Struggle to Define China’s “Project of the Century”’, Foreign Affairs. Snapshot, 22 May 2019. 92 ‘Investorov importozamestili. Za god inostrannye fondy vyveli iz Rossii $1 mlrd’, Kommersant, 24 December 2018; ‘Foreign Investors Flee Russia in 2018, Pull $1 Bln’, The Moscow Times, 24 December 2018. 93 For details, see Ilya Khrennikov, Dina Khrennikova, ‘Alibaba Sets Up $2 Billion Russia Venture with Kremlin Help’, Bloomberg, 11 September 2018. 94 ‘Plenary meeting of the Eastern Economic Forum’, Kremlin.ru, 12 September 2018, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/58537,. 95 Ibid. See also items in ‘The Russian Far East’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 230, 21 December 2018. 96 ‘Ot Kamchatki do Suetsa: kakie proekty profinansiruet infrastrukturnyi fond’, RBC.ru, 19 September 2020; ‘Russia’s Development Fund to Spend $25Bln on New Highways, Airports – Media’, The Moscow Times, 19 September 2018. 97 Emily Ferris, ‘Putin’s Fourth Presidential Term: Looking East for Answers’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 224, 26 September 2018, pp. 2–5.

172  Economic patterns 98 State Council of the People’s Republic of China, ‘China part of cross-river railway bridge to Russia completed’, english.gov.cn/news/video/2018/10/15/content/_281476346196324.htm, 15 October 2018. 99 Putin, ‘International Forum “One Belt, One Way”, Kremlin.ru, 26 April 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60378; AP, “Putin Lauds China Infrastructure Initiative, Warming Ties’, New York Times, 26 April 2019. 100 ‘Dal’nii Vostok zovet Tokio uskorit’ investitsii’, Kommersant, 31 October 2018. 101 See Russian International Affairs Council, ‘Russia–Japan Relations: New Stage of Development’, Working Paper, 50/2019, Russia-Japan-WP50-En.pdf. 102 Jun Suzuki, Tomoyo Ogawa, ‘Russia draws closer to Southeast Asia with arms and energy trade’, Nikkei Asian Review, 14 November 2018. For more details, see https://www.asean2018.sg. 103 Putin, ‘Answers to Russian Journalists’ Questions’, Kremlin.ru, 15 November 2018, en/kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/59131; Nick Bowie, ‘As US– China tussle and joust, Russia moves on SEAsia’, Asia Times, 26 November 2018. 104 Umida Hasimova, ‘After Putin’s Visit, Russia’s Footprint in Uzbekistan is Set to Grow’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 22 October 2018. 105 Lavrov, ‘Opening Remarks … Russia–ASEAN Ministerial Meeting, Bangkok, 31 July 2019, www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/3745864; ‘Sammit Rossiia–ASEAN’, Kremlin.ru, 14 November 2018, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59120. 106 ‘American Companies to Attend Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok’, Russia Business Today, 2 September 2019; for the Forum’s website, forumvostok. ru/en. 107 For details, Sergey Sukhankin, ‘Eastern Economic Forum Confirms Strong Foreign Interest in Russian Arctic Territories’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 12 September 2019; ‘“Rosneft’” soobshchila ob interesa indiiskikh kompanii k proektu v Arktike’, Vedomosti, 17 September 2019. 108 Evgenia Kryuchkova, ‘Kontinental’naia sverkhideia’, Kommersant, 5 November 2019; for the ASEAN summit, https://www.asean2019.go.th/en/meeting/35thasean-summit-and-related-summits/. 109 For background, see ASEAN, ‘Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)’, https://asean.org/?static_post=rcep-regional-comprehensive-economic-partnership, accessed 8 November 2020; Chris Devonshire-Ellis, ‘India Turns Down the RCEP Free Trade. Will It Turn to The Eurasian Economic Union?’, Russia Briefing, 6 November 2019. 110 Putin ‘Interview for the Austrian TV channel ORF’, Kremlin.ru, 4 June 2018, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/57675,. 111 European Commission, ‘Report on Trade and Investment Barriers (1 January 2017–31 December 2017)’, Fact Sheet, trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2018/june/ tradoc_156979.pdf; ‘Russia’, ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/countries-and-regions/ countries/Russia/, accessed 28 June 2018. 112 Ksenia Zubacheva, ‘These countries are the biggest investors in Russia’, Russia Behind the Headlines, 29 October 2019; Kenneth Rapoza, ‘Wishful Thinking? Trump Wants More Trade with Russia’, Forbes, 12 December 2019. 113 On this insofar as oil is concerned, see Thane Gustafson, Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2012, and Sharples, Gazprom and the Russian State, op. cit. For detailed background, see Ingerid M. Opdahl, The Russian State and Russian Energy Companies, 1992– 2018. London: Routledge, 2020. 114 Charles Kennedy, ‘Russia’s Oil Reserves Now Worth $1.2 Trillion’, Oilprice.com, 22 September 2019; ‘Gas supplies to Europe’, Gazprom Export, www.gazpromexport.ru/en/statistics/, accessed 5 December 2018; ‘“Gazprom” uvelichil eksport v Evropu’, Vedomosti, 1 August 2018.

Economic patterns  173 115 ‘Gazprom zavershit stroitel’stvo “Sily Sibiri” po kontsa 2018 goda’, Vedomosti, 25 April 2018; ‘Russia Launches Gas Exports to China’, The Moscow Times, 2 December 2019. 116 See, e.g. Klaus Schaer, Mario Mehren, Rainer Seele, ‘Misplaced Fears Over Nord Stream 2’, The National Interest, 2 May 2018. 117 Tsvetana Paraskova, ‘Europe Buys More Russian Gas Despite Strained Relations’, Oilprice.com, 8 May 2018; Yekaterina Chulkovskaya, ‘Putin, Erdogan boost Russia-Turkey ties with TurkStream’, Al-Monitor, 21 November 2018. 118 Vanand Meliksetian, ‘The Inevitable Finale Of The Nord Stream 2 Saga’, Oilprice.com, 17 November 2019. 119 Bob Bryan, ‘Germany may not be ‘controlled’ by Russia – but Trump did have a point highlighting a growing connection between the 2 countries’, Business Insider, 11 July 2018. 120 Katherine Dunn, ‘The U.S. Department of Energy’s Rebranded “Freedom Gas” Is a Not-So-Subtle Dig at Russia’, Fortune, 21 May 2019. 121 ‘Russia Extends Austria Gas Deal to 2040 After Putin’s Visit’, The Moscow Times, 6 June 2018. 122 Rauf Mammadov, ‘Nord Stream Two Makes New Headway, as Pressure Mounts to Block the Pipeline’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 14 November 2018; ‘Germany Committed to Nord Stream 2 Pipeline Despite Ukraine Crisis’, The Moscow Times, 28 November 2018. 123 Tim Daiss, ‘Russia Just Won Big in the European Gas War’, Oilprice.com, 28 May 2018; Nick Cunningham, ‘Russia Outmaneuvers U.S. LNG’, Oilprice.com, 28 November 2018. 124 Tom Giles, ‘WTO largely reject Russia’s challenge of EU gas rules’, Globe and Mail, 11 August 2018. 125 ‘Alexey Miller visits Turkmenistan’, www.gazprom.com/press/news/2018/october/article462605/, 9 October 2018; John C.K. Daly, ‘After Three Years Hiatus, Gazprom to Renew Purchases of Turkmen Gas’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 22 October 2018. 126 ‘“Naftogaz”: sud Amsterdam arestoval aktsii “dochki” “Gazprom”’, Vedomosti, 25 October 2019; ‘Pol’she soglasovali stroitel’stvo truby, kotoraia mozhet zamestit’ ei postavki “Gazproma”’, Vedomosti, 25 October 2019. 127 Arthur Toporkov, ‘Pol’sha zaiavila o pobede nad “Gazpromom” v Stokgol’mskom arbitrazhe’, Vedomosti, 30 March 2020; Toporkov, ‘Pol’sha ugrozhaet “Gazpromu” novym razbiratel’stvom v Evrokomissii’, Vedomosti, 24 April 2020. 128 Tim Daiss, ‘The World’s Most Geopolitically Charged Pipeline’, Oilprice.com, 19 January 2019; Nick Cunningham, ‘Will the U.S. Slap sanctions On Nord Stream 2?’, Oilprice.com, 23 May 2019. 129 Danish Energy Agency, Press Release, ‘Permit for the Nord Stream 2 project is granted by the Danish Energy Agency’, 30 October 2019, https://en-press.ens. dk/pressreleases/permit-for-the-nord-stream-2-project-is-granted-by-the-danish-energy-agency-2937696; Brett Forrest, ‘Congressional Moves Against Russia’s Pipeline To Europe Are Running Aground’, Wall Street Journal, 31 October 2019. 130 ‘Rossiisko-vengerskie peregovory’, Kremlin.ru, 30 October 2019, Kremlin.ru/ events/president/news/61936. 131 ‘Medvedev dopustil prodlenie dogovora o tranzite gaza cherez Ukrainu’, Vedomosti, 5 June 2019; Julia Kusznir, ‘The Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia on Gas Transit: A Progress Report’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 242, 3 December 2019, pp. 120–17; ‘Russia–Ukraine Gas Talks Resume as EU Seeks to Avert Supply Cut’, The Moscow Times, 17 September 2019. 132 ‘Rossiia i Ukraina soglasovali tranzit gaza’, Kommersant, 20 December 2019; Joshua Posaner, ‘Sefcovic: Ukraine–Russia gas deal should put Nord Stream criticism in “perspective”’, Politico, 21 December 2019; Alla Hurska,

174  Economic patterns ‘Russia–Ukrainian Gas Transit Deal: A Collapse of Putin’s Gas Strategy or a Temporary Retreat?’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 4 February 2020. 133 ‘Poland Fines Gazprom $57M in Nord Stream Probe’, Shale Directories (Reuters rpt), 2 August 2020; Artur Toporkov, ‘Truboukladchik “Gazprom” priblizhaetsia k Baltike’, Vedomosti, 27 April 2020; Margarita Assenova, ‘Russia’s Push to Complete Nord Stream Two’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 14 May 2020; ‘Russia’s Nord Stream II Handed A Potential Death Knell’, Forbes, 26 June 2020. 134 Martin Jirusek, Robert Dillon, ‘Unilateral sanctions targeting Russia come at cost to transatlantic relationship’, Euractiv, 9 January 2020; Jasmin Bauomy, ‘TurkStream: Europe needs gas and Russia has it – the story behind that new pipeline’; Euronews, 8 January 2020. 135 Daria Korzhova, Arthur Toporkov, ‘Miller raskryl detali soglasheniia o tranzite gaza cherez Ukrainu’, Vedomosti, 20 December 2019; Daria Korzhova, Arthur Toporkov, ‘Sanktsii SShA protiv “Severnogo potoka-2” vstupili v silu’, Vedomosti, 20 December 2019; Patrick Donahue, Mathew Miller, ‘U.S. says sanctions mean Russia can’t finish Nord Stream 2 pipeline’, World Oil, 16 February 2020. 136 ‘UPDATE 1 – Denmark gives Nord Stream 2 nod to restart pipeline work’, Reuters, 6 July 2020. 137 ‘Pompeo Says U.S. Will “Do Everything” to Stop Nord Stream 2 Project’, RFE/ RL, 30 July 2020; ‘U.S. Threatens To Expand Sanctions On Nord Stream 2 As Russia Moves to Complete Pipeline’, RFE/RL, 15 July 2020. 138 Nick Williams, Lars Paulsson, ‘Pompeo Warns Energy Majors Over Russian Gas Pipelines’, Bloomberg. Politics, 15 July 2020; ‘“Attempted extortion”: Germany reaffirms commitment to Russian gas project despite US threats’, RT, 16 July 2020; Vera Eckert, ‘EU “highly concerned” by U.S. stance on Nord Stream pipeline’, Reuters, 14 August 2020. 139 ‘U.S. Calls for “Moratorium” on Nord Stream 2 Pipeline – Report’, The Moscow Times, 5 December 2020; Matvei Katkov, ‘Nord Stream 2 vosobnovila ukladku trub “Severnogo potoka – 2”’, Vedomosti, 13 December 2020. 140 Putin, ‘Plenarnoe zasedanie Mezhdynarodnogo arkticheskogo foruma’, Kremlin. ru, 9 April 2019, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60250; ‘Russia Launches Nuclear Icebreaker as it Eyes Arctic Future’, The Moscow Times, 26 May 2019. 141 For more detail, Stephen Blank, ‘Russia’s Connection to Saudi Arabia Intensifies’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 31 October 2018. 142 Tim Daiss, ‘Russia Could Take Hold of China’s Entire Gas Market’, Oilprice.com, 14 May 2019; Katya Golubkova, Stephen Jewkes, ‘Italy’s Saipem to sign deal this week for Russian LNG work – sources’, Reuters, 18 December 2018; ‘Russia’s Gas Giant Novatek Signs $2.5Bln Contract for Arctic LNG Facility With Foreign Partners’, The Moscow Times, 19 December 2018; see also Saipem website, www. saipem.com/sites/SAIPEM_en_IT/con-sidedx/Press%20releases/2018/Arctic%20 LNG.page. 143 ‘Putin dal komandu na vvod v ekspluatatsiiu plavuchego SNG-terminala v Kaliningrade’, Interfax, 8 January 2019; ‘Putin Declares Exclave’s Energy’, The Moscow Times, 8 January 2019. 144 Charles Kennedy, ‘Russia’s Oil Reserves Now Worth $1.2 Trillion’, Oilprice.com, 22 September 2019. 145 Rosneft website 14 May 2018, www.rosneft.com/press/releases/item/190875/. 146 See Will Kennedy, Elena Mazneva, Wael Mahdi, ‘Russia –Saudi plans for superOPEC could reshape global oil order’, World Oil, 22 June 2018; ‘Strany OPEK+ soglasovali uvelichenie neftedobychi na 1 mln barrelei v sutki’, Kommersant, 23 June 2018; Clifford Krauss, ‘United States, Saudi Arabia and Russia Find Agreement on Oil Policy’, New York Times, 14 June 2018. 147 Arshad Mohanned, et al., ‘U.S. grants waivers to eight allies to buy Iranian oil’, Globe and Mail, 3 November 2018; ‘Russian Oil Producer Quits Iran Projects Due to Sanctions – Sources’, The Moscow Times, 2 November 2018; Vanand

Economic patterns  175 Meliksetian, ‘Can Russia Relieve the Iranian Oil Crisis?’, Oilprice.com, 30 October 2018. 148 ‘“Rosneft” otkazalas’ rabotat’ v Irane’, Vedomosti, 12 December 2018; ‘Rosneft Pulls Out of $30 Bln Iran Oil Project Over Fears of US Sanctions, Media Reports’, The Moscow Times, 13 December 2018. 149 Olga Yagova, Dmitry Zhdannikov, ‘Exclusive: Russia clashes with Western oil buyers over new deals as sanctions loom’, Reuters Business News, 9 November 2018. 150 ‘Zasedanie Pravitel’stva’, 30 January 2020, http://government.ru/news/38878/; ‘Moscow Outlines $231Bln Plan for Arctic Development’, The Barents Observer, 5 February 2020; ‘“Gazprom Neft’” poprosila l’goty dlia svoego krupneishego mestorozhdeniia’, Kommersant, 16 April 2019; ‘“Gazprom Neft’” gotovit novyi mega-proekt v Arctike’, Vedomosti, 16 April 2019; ‘Rosneft, Gazprom Neft to Get $9.4bn in Tax Breaks for Arctic Project’, Russia Business Today, 30 October 2019. 151 Tsvetana Paraskova, ‘The Race For Arctic Oil Is Heating Up’, Oilprice.com, 6 February 2020; Sergey Sukhankin, ‘Russia Prepares Ambitious Economic Strategy for Arctic Region’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 11 February 2020; Putin, ‘Vstrecha s glavoi kompanii “Rosneft”: Igorem Sechnym’, Kremlin.ru, 11 February 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62763 152 ‘Russian Energy Exports to U.S. Set 8-Year Record in October’, The Moscow Times, 6 February 2020; ‘SShA i Velikobritaniia rezko narastili zakupku nefti v Rossii’, RBC.ru, 27 February 2020; ‘Rossiia stala vtorym krupneishim postavshchikom energonositelei v SShA’, RBC.ru, 6 February 2020. 153 Katrina Manson, David Sheppard, Michael Stott, ‘US imposes sanctions on Rosneft subsidiary over Venezuelan oil’, Financial Times, 18 February 2020. 154 ‘Kremlin’s Fiscal Strength Put to The Test by Plummeting Oil Prices’, RFE/RL, 12 March 2020; Andrey Movchan, ‘War with OPEC Can’t End Well for Russia’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 13 March 2020; ‘Ruble falls firmly out of favor’, The Bell, 2 October 2020. 155 Elena Vavina, ‘Rossiia i OPEK zakliuchili krupneishuiu sdelku ob ogranichenii dobychi nefti’, Vedomosti, 12 April 2020; Javier Blas, Salma El Wartdeny, Grant Smith, ‘Oil Price War Ends With Historic OPEC+ Deal to Slash Output’, Bloomberg, 12 April 2020; for a skeptic, Pavel Felgenhauer, ‘Russia’s Oil Production Is Incapable of Making Needed Cuts to Stabilize Price’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 9 April 2020. 156 Ira Martina Drupady, ‘Emerging nuclear vendors in the newcomer export market: strategic considerations’, The Journal of World Energy Law & Business, Vol. 12, Issue 1 (March 2019, pp, 4–20; ‘Russia leads the world at nuclear-reactor exports: China is its only real competitor’, The Economist, 7 August 2018. 157 ‘Russia starts building Turkey’s first nuclear power plant’, WNN [World Nuclear News], 3 April 2018. See also Mehmet Cagatay Güler, Building a Nuclear Empire: Nuclear Energy as a Russian Foreign Policy Tool in the Case of Turkey. Istanbul: Cinius, 2020. 158 ‘Russia and Uzbekistan Start Work on Nuclear Power Plant’, The Moscow Times, 19 October 2018. 159 Zheng Xin, ‘China, Russia to ink deal for two nuclear reactors in Liaoning’, China Daily, 15 May 2019. 160 ‘Russia Allows World’s First Floating Nuclear Power Plant to start Work – Rosatom’, Sputnik News, 27 June 2019; Mary Ilyushina, ‘Russia plans to tow a nuclear power station to the Arctic. Critics dub it a “floating Chernobyl”’, CNN. com, 30 June 2019; ‘Russia Touts Arctic Floating Nuclear Plant’s Safety Despite “Chernobyl on Ice” Concerns’, The Moscow Times, 5 August 2019. 161 Michael Daventry, ‘Belarus opens first nuclear power plant amid criticism from Lithuania’, Euronews, 7 November 2020.

176  Economic patterns 162 See charts in ‘What You Need to Know About St. Petersburg International Economic Forum’, Sputnik News, 5 June 2019. 163 Vladislav Inozemtsev, ‘Integrating the Eurasian Union and China’s Belt and Road: A Bridge Too Far?’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 21 June 2019. 164 ‘Vstrecha s uchastnikami Vtorogo Rossiisko-kitaiskogo energeticheskogo foruma’, Kremlin.ru, 7 June 2019, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60706. 165 ‘$1 billion deal with Cuba to modernize its railways’, Reuters, 7 June 2019; ‘Russia, Cuba sign agreement for upgrading Cuban railways, says deputy prime minister’, Interfax, 7 June 2019. 166 Atle Staalesen, ‘Arctic Palladium invests $15 billion in new projects, will make Russia world’s biggest producer of rare metal’, The Barents Observer, 19 November 2019. 167 See Andrew E. Kramer, ‘China is Leveling Siberia’s Forests’, New York Times International, 3–4 August 2019; see also ‘Canadian and Russian pulp, log exports to China increase amid U.S. trade tensions’, Pulp & Paper Canada, 2 July 2019. 168 Daniel Gleeson, ‘Polyus’ massive Sukhoi gold deposit gets even bigger’, IM– International Mining, October 2019; Thomas Grove, ‘Siberian Gold Find Brightens Ruble’s Future’, The Wall Street Journal, 7 February 2019. 169 Raul Mammadov, ‘Implications of the Government reshuffle for Russia’s Oil and Gas Sector’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 27 January 2020. 170 Galina Starinskaya, ‘Strany OPEK reshil dopolnitel’no sokratit’ dobychu nefti iz-za koronavirusa’, Vedomosti, 4 March 2020; ‘OPEC Backs Biggest Oil Cut Since 2008 Crisis, Awaits Russia’, The Moscow Times, 4 March 2020; Irina Slav, ‘HIS: Oil Demand Set For Largest Decline In History’, Oilprice.com, 5 March 2020; ‘Russia–Saudi Oil Alliance Under Pressure as Moscow Rejects Production Cuts’, The Moscow Times, 6 March 2020. 171 Ilya Arkhipov, Yevgenia Pismennaia, Dina Khrennikova, Olga Tanas, ‘Putin Won’t Bow to What’s Seen as Saudi Oil-Price Blackmail’, Bloomberg Economics, 20 March 2020. 172 Julianne Geiger, ‘Relief On The Horizon? Trump and Putin Discuss Oil Markets’, Oilprice.com, 30 March 2020; Anna Podlinova, ‘Neftianye tsenu vernulis’ na dokrizisnyi uroven”, Vedomosti, 13 December 2020. 173 Tsvetana Paraskova, ‘Oil price Crash Causes Major Recession in Russia’, Oilprice.com, 7 July 2020. 174 ‘Ob’em FNB v avguste uvelichilsia na 298 mlrd rublei’, Vedomosti, 7 September 2020. 175 Pravitel’stvo Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Rasporiazhenie ot 9 iiunia 2020 g. No., 1523-r, Moskva, http://static.government.ru/media/files/w4sigFOiDjGVDYT4IgsApssm6mZRb7wx.pdf; Department of Energy, Russian Federation, ‘The Energy Strategy of the Russian Federation Until 2035 Was Approved’, 10 June 2020, https://minenergo.gov.ru/node/18038; Sergey Sukhankin, ‘Russia’s Energy Strategy 2035: A Breakthrough or Another Impasse?’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 2 June 2020. 176 On this, see ‘Agriculture’, REDA, Vol. 1. The Russian Federation. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 2001, and subsequent years. 177 ‘Agriculture’, REDA 1999, Vol. 1 (2000), pp. 244–45, 283; Michael R. Gordon, ‘Tough Year Is Projected for Farms of Russia’, New York Times, 28 June 1999; Geoffrey York, ‘Food Shortages Prompt Russian Plea for Canadian Grain’, Globe and Mail, 19 February 1999. 178 For overviews, Ekaterina Burlakova, ‘Kak Rossiia za 20 let sama sebia nakormila’, Vedomosti, 22 October 2019; M. Crumley, Sowing Market Reforms: The Internationalization of Russian Agriculture. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013; Zvi Lerman et alia, Russia’s Agriculture in Transition. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2007.

Economic patterns  177 179 See William M. Liefert, Olga Liefert, Ralph Seeley, Tani Lee, ‘The effect of Russia’s economic crisis and import ban on its agricultural and food sector’, Journal of Eurasian Studies, Vol. 10, issue 2 (2019), pp. 119–35; Polina Kuznetsova, Natalya Volchkova, ‘The Russian Food Embargo Five Years later’, Free Network, Policy Brief, 14 October 2019; Stephen K. Wegren, ‘Effects of Russia’s Food Embargo After 5 Years’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 241, 11 November 2019, pp. 6–10. 180 See ‘Grain Exports From Russia’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 244, 17 December 2019. 181 Michael Quinn, ‘Russia Says No to GMO, becomes World’s Biggest Exporter of non-GMO Food’, Russia Insider, 3 December 2018. 182 ‘Agro-superpower Russia will harvest 118mln tonnes of grain in 2019, minister says’, Intellinews, 14 March 2019. 183 ‘Russia’s agricultural exports to hit $25 billion this year’, RT, 20 December 2018. For more detail, Ilya Kuzminov, Leonid Gokhberg, Thomas Thurner, Elena Khabirova, ‘The Current State of the Russian Agricultural Sector’, EuroChoices, Vol. 17, Issue 1 (April 2018), pp. 52–57. 184 Dmitry Beglov, ‘Zhara podogrela tsena’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 11 December 2020; ‘Proizvoditeli sakhara i masla podpisali soglashenie o stabilizatsii tsen’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 16 December 2020. 185 Ekaterina Burlakova, ‘Kruneishii rynok mira otkrylsia dlia rossiiskoi goviadinu’, Vedomosti, 17 January 2020. 186 ‘Saudi Visit Signals Putin’s Deepening Middle East Influence’, The Moscow Times, 15 October 2019. 187 Anatoly Medetsky, ‘Russia Says Asia’s Food Companies Want to Rent Area the Size of Jamaica for Farming’, Bloomberg, 11 September 2019. 188 Mikhail Kuvyrko, ‘Sel’skoe khoziaistvo Rossii rastet za cschet “national’nykh chempionov”’, Vzgliad. Delovaia gazeta, 7 January 2020. 189 ‘Minsel’khoz poruchil regionam sozdat’ zapasy produktov na dva mesiatsa’, RBC.ru, 16 March 2020. 190 ‘Eda na samoizoliatsii. Zachem vvoditsia embargo na eksport prodovol’stvi’, Vedomosti, 3 April 2020. 191 Putin, ‘Zasedanie Soveta po stratigicheskomu razvitiiu i natsional’nym proektam’, Kremlin.ru, 13 July 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/6363; Pavel Golovkin, ‘Putin prizval rasshirit’ gorizont planirovaniia natsproektov’, Vedomosti, 13 July 2020; ‘Russia Resets Ambitious National Development Plan’, The Moscow Times, 13 July 2020. 192 Henry Foy, ‘Russia to cut defence spending in bid to prop up ailing economy’, The Financial Times, 21 September 2020; ‘The Kremlin is hiking taxes for the first time in twenty years’, Intellinews, 21 September 2020; ‘Kudrin predlozhil zamenit’ povyshenie nalogov privatizatsie’, Vedomosti, 21 September 2020. 193 Igor Zubkov, ‘Minfin raz’iasnil, k kakim dokhodam budet primeniat’sia NDFL po stavke 15%’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 21 October 2020.

5 Russia in the world Changing patterns

Introduction The 1993 Russian Constitution assigned international affairs to the president (Art. 86. a.). That was not altered in the burst of Constitutional amendments announced in 2020, though there were several important changes related to foreign policy. In the first place, Russian law now takes precedence over international treaties and other acts.1 Secondly, Russian territory cannot be ceded to any other nation and, thirdly, office holders may not have dual citizenship or foreign residency permits. For the most part, these amendments legalized long-standing presumptions held by Russians. After nearly a decade of Boris Yeltsin’s wavering on crucial foreign affairs issues, Prime Minister Putin took the file in hand. In a long and rambling open letter to voters published just prior to his first presidential election in 2000, Putin wrote that Russia needed an international policy based entirely on ‘the national interests of our own country’, not on the interests of other nations. If Russia is to regain status as ‘great power’, he said, it must harness its resources properly and not be ‘lured into costly global undertakings’ while it is economically weak.2 Maintaining this theme after the election, Putin told BBC interviewer David Frost that Russia should be a ‘strong, powerful state’, but not an aggressive one. He added that, unfortunately, Western countries were still captive of Cold War notions and saw Russia ‘as a potential aggressor’.3 His expectations about foreign responses to Russian assertiveness proved correct as the years went on. Every subsequent major Russian venture on the international arena was termed ‘aggressive’, or ‘malign’, by Western authors and politicians, who tended to ignore or shrug off any possibility that Western policies might have influenced Russian strategic planning.4 Nonetheless, Putin’s first term was one in which he hoped to normalize relations with the West and its institutions. On more than one occasion he made it plain that he would like to see the United Nations and the OSCE play greater roles in resolving international conflicts, supplanting NATO in Europe. Disillusioned quickly by the apparently inexorable enlargement of NATO, Western support of regime change and coloured revolutions, and the US’s apparent lack of faith in existing arms control treaties, his two DOI: 10.4324/9781003158646-6

Russia in the world  179 other ambitions in foreign policy rose to the forefront. The first of these was the preservation of the unity of the Russian state, and the other was to recover the country’s traditional place as an important player in the global arena. These objectives were openly expressed and were never, as some would suggest, secret. Doubtless, after two decades he achieved both, though they came at the cost of alienating the West generally, the USA particularly. Although Russia had no reliable military allies after the dissolution of the USSR, it was the leading member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The CIS was an association of nine former Soviet republics agreed first by the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus in 1991. Six more joined between 1992–3 and the organization was formalized by charter in 1999. It is held together by a political structure, a permanent headquarters in Minsk and hundreds of treaties and agreements. These latter defined commercial, educational, taxation and cultural relationships. Ukraine and Turkmenistan adhered in 1991, but never ratified. Georgia ratified in 1994, and withdrew in 2008. Ukraine left in 2014. The Baltic States never joined. The CIS provides an umbrella for the Collective Security Organization (CSTO), the Eurasian Economic Union and the Union State, a supranational state structure agreed between Russia and Belarus in 1997. As the successor state to the USSR, Russia inherited the Soviet Union’s permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), plus all of its debt and international obligations. Russia’s foreign policy after the 1990s was defined by a new National Security Concept (January 2000) and a Foreign Policy Concept (June 2000), both of which cited NATO’s ‘out-of-zone’ and expansion policies as external threats and, in contrast to Yeltsin’s emphasis on ‘partnership’, stressed only ‘cooperation’ with the West.5 Russian worries about NATO were confirmed in the 1990s by US and NATO engagements in Bosnia (1995) and actions against Serbia, which included bombing Belgrade (1999).6 These, and subsequent Western ‘regime change’ wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria were perceived in Moscow as purposeful threats to its security. As a respected American scholar wrote during the height of the Ukraine crisis: As reprehensible as many aspects of Russian policy might be, both domestic and foreign, the West has contributed to the increasingly hostile relationship ever since the Soviet collapse by ignoring Russian policy concerns and attempting to take advantage of Russian weakness – both charges brought by Russia that have a basis in reality. In some respects, at least, Russian security paranoia has been stimulated by various Western behaviours.7 One such behaviour was the West’s endorsement of Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia in early 2008 without any consideration of terms agreed by the UN in 1999. In that case, UNSC Resolution 1244 guaranteed Serbian territorial integrity and forbade Kosovo secession

180  Russia in the world without consultation with Belgrade. In 2009, however, the United Nations International Court of Justice validated Kosovo’s unilateral action by accepting the judgement that ‘unilateral declarations of independence by a part of the country do not violate any international norms’. This statement echoed an advisory opinion offered by the US State Department. Russia took that to mean South Ossetia and Abkhazia had the right to defend the de facto independence they had won from Georgia more than a dozen years earlier and that Crimea had legal precedent for unilateral secession in 2014. The Armenian inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh make the same claim while demanding their independence from Azerbaijan.8 If there ever had been a real chance of close cooperation between Russia and the West, it was laid to rest by the events of 2014 that earned Putin centre-fold in the world’s most pressing international imbroglio. Russia’s occupation of the Crimean Peninsula and its involvement on one side of a civil war in eastern Ukraine caused it to be drummed out of the G-8, lose its voting rights in PACE, and face an ever-growing list of damaging economic embargoes. American President Obama proclaimed that he hoped to ‘isolate Russia from the civilized world’, by which, of course, he meant the Western world, where Putin soon became a pariah.9 More to the point, the crisis in Ukraine exacerbated international trends that had already begun to challenge the globalist vision of the future, a world united by free trade, liberal-democracy and diplomacy. Instead, geopolitics and national security interests were again ruling the day. In the case of Ukraine, one scholar in a Western university accurately pointed out that all attempts to explain home-grown sources of the conflict and also the humanitarian crisis caused by Kyiv’s Anti-Terrorist Operation in eastern Ukraine ‘fell on deaf ears. Instead, both Western and Ukrainian media launched a vigorous campaign of demonization of all things Russian and Russia-related.’10 The narrative launched in 2014, and given definition by another US scholar who labelled Putin ‘evil’, with a record of ‘inhumanity’, never changed.11 Russian foreign policy before 2014 was determined by what the country’s leaders saw as threats to its security, and its hoped-for restoration as a major power. In addition to the Kremlin’s aversion to NATO’s expansion eastward, the hazards for Russia included Washington’s unilateral abrogation of the ABM Treaty in 2002, and its invasion of Iraq in 2003. NATO’s failure to ratify agreed-upon modifications to the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia in 2008 with, the Kremlin assumed, Western encouragement, the US’s drawn-out reluctance to allow Russia’s accession to the WTO, and the decade-long threat of a European missile defence system that was finally deployed by 2016 also kept Russia– West relations on edge. In turn, Western perception of Russian actions in Chechnya, its war with Georgia and its objections to Georgian and Ukrainian accession to NATO, fuelled suspicions of the Kremlin’s motives. The old Soviet, and even Imperial Russian, assumption that Russia was surrounded by enemies who wanted to keep it weak resurfaced alive and well in Putin’s

Russia in the world  181 Moscow, while visions of a ‘Soviet/Russia threat’ were resurrected in Washington and West European capitals. In international affairs, perception is often more important than reality, so truth lay in the eye of the beholder. 12 That said, Russia has greatly expanded the scope of its multiple ‘soft power’ tools, that is, various propaganda agencies that spread the official Kremlin line on international events and worked to nurture a better image of Russia abroad.13 Whether these efforts have succeeded, or not, is moot. In the two years following Putin’s easily won election in March 2018, Russia became a major player in the Middle East, upgraded its military ties to NATO-member Turkey and built a strategic partnership with China. Israel was outwardly friendly, as was Iran, Israel’s enemy. Saudi Arabia became Russia’s partner in oil production and pricing. As we saw in Chapter Four, huge gatherings of leaders and business representatives from Asia in Vladivostok and from Africa in Sochi solidified Russia’s presence in those areas of the world, and the Eurasian Economic Union was functioning well. By 2019 several EU countries were balking at further economic sanctions against Russia and/or seeking ways to circumvent them.14 For the most part, the Russian public welcomed, even relished, their country’s renewed status as a power to be reckoned with. The Skripal factor Already an outsider to the Western world, Russia’s gradual resurgence was hampered again by the Skripal affair, which sent new waves of anger sweeping over the Kremlin from the West. The British government accused the Russian state, meaning Putin, of poisoning former GRU officer Sergei Skripal, who was living in Salisbury. Sentenced to 13 years in prison after he was caught spying for the West in 2004, Skripal was exchanged in a spy swap in 2010 and sent into exile to the UK. He and his daughter, Yulia, a Russian citizen visiting him, were poisoned on 4 March 2018, with Novichok, the militarygrade toxin said by British Prime Minister Theresa May to exist only in Russia. The issue was confused by the speed at which the British government denounced the Russian state, well before any investigation was completed. May’s virulent accusations were undermined by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which confirmed that the poison was Novichok, but could not determine where it was manufactured.15 Later reports from the German media that samples of the toxin were secured by German intelligence services in the early 1990s and passed on to counterparts in Britain and the US also disputed key elements of the official narrative.16 Although Theresa May called Novichok the deadliest military-grade poison available, the Skripals recovered. Neither the two Russian men accused of placing the poison on the doorknob of the Skripal dwelling, somehow, nor others on the scene who found and helped the Skripals were infected. Britain rejected all of Moscow’s many requests for proof of guilt.17 Contradicting their own government’s passionate declarations, British scientists at Porton

182  Russia in the world Down, where the nerve agent was tested and identified, said they could not verify its origins. When two other British citizens appeared to fall victim to Novichok found in a perfume bottle some 13 km. from Salisbury nearly two weeks later, the UK government again vehemently accused the Russian state.18 The two Russian suspects had long since left the country and the public bin in which the bottle was found had been cleaned out between their leaving and its discovery. Even some of the British media expressed uncertainty this time.19 Whatever the details, the Skripal affair hardened minds set already in 2014, and set a stage for similar accusations in the Navalny affair in 2020. Since the ongoing crisis in Ukraine shaped Russia’s relationship with both the western and eastern world in varying degrees, we start here with Ukraine.20

Ukraine The international crisis generated by Russia’s military occupation of Crimea and the peninsula’s subsequent secession from Ukraine and integration with Russia in 2014 (see ahead and Chapter 2), and the concomitant separatist uprising in parts of eastern Ukraine had reached an impasse by 2020. That said, a few Western analysts began to acknowledge that, long after the fact, independent surveys still showed that over 80 per cent of Crimea’s ethnic Russians (65.3% of the population in 2020; 58.3% in 2014) and Ukrainians (15.1% in 2020; 24.3% in 2014), approved accession to Russia. In fact, in 2014 polls conducted by Ukrainian pollsters and the most actively anti-Russian American propaganda agency, Radio Free Europe, admitted that an ‘overwhelming majority of Crimeans feel that their secession was legitimate, that Russia is playing a positive role in Ukraine, and that the United States should not play a role there at all’.21 After six years, even a slight majority of the Tatar population of Crimea (12% of the population) had come to accept the change. In some cases, this was due to a natural cultural and ethnic affinity and in other cases the deciding factor was economic, for Russia poured funds into the area for infrastructure and other uses. The geopolitical tussle in eastern Ukraine is also the subject of clashing interpretations. One side treats the struggle in the Donbas as a civil war, fought between Ukrainian citizens on Ukrainian soil, and caused in 2014 by an interim government in which people of the rebellious region was unrepresented, and felt threatened by it. That government was dominated by the nationalist (Batkivshchyna) and neo-Nazi (Svoboda) parties. Its leaders ousted, by coup, a president the people of the Donbas elected overwhelmingly and then tried to abrogate a hard-won law that protected their right to use a language of their choice. In the Donbas in 2014, nearly 40 per cent of the population was ethnic Russian, and about 72 per cent were native Russian speakers.22 The forced break-up of the Party of Regions, the largest party in the Rada in 2014 (6.1 million votes in 2012), and the abolition of the Ukrainian

Russia in the world  183 Communist Party’s (1.6 million votes) right to participate in elections disenfranchised Donbas residents further, making Ukrainian electoral democracy suspect. Ukrainian President Poroshenko characterized former Party of Regions members and Communists still in the Rada as ‘fifth columnists’. People of the Donbas, the most populous and industrialized region of Ukraine, had long since believed themselves discriminated against by western Ukrainians and already preferred joining the Russian-led Customs Union over the more stringent EU.23 Given the example set by the Euromaidans, an uprising in the Donbas was hardly surprising. The other side interpreted the conflict as a proxy war launched by Russia against Ukraine for the purpose of acquiring more territory, Novorossiia. Poroshenko rationalized months of indiscriminate shelling of rebel-held parts of the Donbas by labelling his action an ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’. Although it should have been obvious to any observer that thousands of civilian deaths and injuries, and extensive damage to airports, residences, schools and hospitals, were factors driving more people of the Donbas to support separatism, this crucial reality went missing in Ukrainian and Western accounts. By the end of 2015, UN data revealed ‘serious human rights abuses’ in the areas controlled by rebels and equally serious abuses committed by ‘elements of the Security Service of Ukraine’. The Human Rights Monitoring Mission reported that ‘armed groups’ everywhere were not restrained by the rule of law, and civilians in the ‘conflict-afflicted eastern parts of Ukraine … [are] in a very difficult humanitarian and human rights situation’.24 Neither side could claim the moral high ground after two years of bitter conflict. This fact was lost in the fog of blame-casting rhetoric out of Kyiv, Washington, Brussels and Moscow. Giving up the ‘terrorist’ tag after about a year, Kyiv began to call the conflict a defensive war against Russian aggression. This depiction made it easier for Ukraine to acquire arms, funds and advisers from Western countries. In its turn, the government in Moscow designated the Ukrainian forces ‘fascist’ and assisted the rebels with arms, funds and advisers.25 Ukraine cut all remaining ties with the CIS in April 2018, unilaterally terminating articles of the existing Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with Russia. Poroshenko then proposed that Russia be deprived of veto powers at the UNSC.26 Years after the overthrow of the Yanukovych government in 2014, the Ukrainian official and Western narrative remained oblivious to the central roles played in that action by Svoboda and its activist ally, the openly fascist and revolutionary Right Sector (Praviy sektor). The politicization of the events of 2014 in Kyiv meant that individuals responsible for tragic actions such as the sniper fire that led to deaths of Ukrainian protesters (glorious hundred) and Ukrainian police (reviled) on the Maidan, or the ‘Odesa massacre’, were never found – or even truly sought, because a public trial might undermine the official version of events.27 After long and exhaustive research, one scholarly investigator’s conclusion that ‘the absolute majority

184  Russia in the world of the protesters were killed and wounded from Maidan-controlled locations and that the investigation and trials were for this reason stonewalled’ met only deafening silence from authorities in Kyiv and the West.28 The ever-widening split between Russia and Ukraine became a chasm in the spring of 2018, when Poroshenko accused the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) of serving as an agent for Moscow in his country, calling it one of the ‘tentacles with which the aggressor country operates inside the body of our state’.29 His remarks signalled a first step in a process that led to the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the ROC (see Chapter 9). Growing discrimination in Ukraine against the country’s tens of thousands of Russian Orthodox adherents, and laws banning minority language instruction after grade five in all schools encouraged further cultural hostilities between Ukrainians and Russians. Whereas Western governments remained indifferent to these actions, Europe’s human rights and democracy arbiter, the Venice Commission, ruled the Education Law discriminatory, in vain.30 As Ukrainian separatists and the country’s regular army sniped at each other in the Donbas, Gazprom and Naftohaz fought competing lawsuits in European courts, several Ukrainian provinces banned Russian films, TV, newspapers and historical symbols. Well before the pandemic, planes and trains were halted at border crossings, and trade between the two countries slowed to a trickle. In May 2020, President Volodomyr Zelenskiy black-listed a large number of Russian cultural institutions, among them Moscow State University, the Russian Geographic Society, the Hermitage, the Pushkin Museum and a number of research institutions in Crimea. He terminated scientific and educational cooperation, suspended financial obligations, and extended bans on Russian Internet and social networks.31 The relationship was toxic, to say the least. Donbas The death toll in the easternmost parts of the separatist-held Ukrainian provinces Donetsk and Luhansk, the Donbas, climbed to over 13,000 by the winter of 2019, with about 30,000 people wounded since fighting broke out in May 2014.32 As civil war intensified in the spring of 2018, the Dutch Safety Board reported that a BUK anti-aircraft missile shot down the Malaysian Airliner MH17 in 2014, and that it was fired from the Donbas by a Russian military unit. Consequently, international prosecutors charged three Russians and one Ukrainian with murder. None of the four actually fired the missile; rather, they ‘formed a chain’ linking the action to Russia, the prosecutors from Ukraine and the Netherlands said.33 The original Dutch Safety Board report, published in 2015, made it plain that the civil aviation sector (airline operators, state agencies, international organizations, such as the ICAO) ‘bear a major responsibility’ for planes ‘flying over conflict zones’. This very important qualification seems not to have been addressed in later assessments, as the ‘sides’ stuck to their original

Russia in the world  185 tales, no matter mitigating circumstances.34 Malaysia did not blame Russia. Instead, it found fault with Ukrainian air traffic controllers for allowing a passenger plane to fly over a war zone where a Ukrainian military transport plane (Antonov An-26), which resembles a passenger plane on radar, and at least 16 jet fighters and helicopters had already been shot down by rebels with hand-held MANPADS. The trial in absentia bogged down when the court called on the US State Department to produce photographic evidence John Kerry claimed that he had seen in 2014 within hours of the incident (‘We picked up the imagery of the launch …’), and it could not, or would not, produce the alleged evidence. Kerry made that argument twice. Trying to bolster his assertion, he complained that the rebels had shot down a dozen planes, ‘two of which were transport planes’ in the previous weeks, unwittingly begging the key question: why was the MH-17 allowed to fly over the war zone?35 That possible story-changing query remains unanswered to this day. *** During the Putin–Trump agenda-free meeting in Helsinki, July 2018, Putin proposed a referendum in the Donbas as a means to resolve the conflict there, or so he told Russian journalists. When that claim was made public, the US rejected it and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a point of saying that Crimea must be returned to Ukraine before sanctions could be lifted.36 Talking heads in Kyiv and the West chastised Moscow in November for ‘agreeing’ to general elections in the Donbas. These were won easily in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) by Denis Pushilin and in the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) by Leonid Pasechnik, who had forced founding leader Igor Plotnitsky to resign in November 2017. US envoy to the OSCE, Harry Kamian, posted an open letter condemning the ‘illegal so-called “elections” … in Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine’. He and the EU saw the event as a violation of the Minsk agreement. Russia countered by saying that Ukraine had not fulfilled its Minsk obligations and the promised law on special status for the Donbas still had not passed the Rada.37 Neither side would budge. Not surprisingly, Ukraine’s presidential election campaign in the winter of 2019 featured outbursts of anti-Russia rhetoric. When political satirist Zelenskiy won the first round on 1 April with 30 per cent of the votes cast, Poroshenko (16%) and Yulia Tymoshenko (13%) raised concerns that Zelenskiy was a puppet of oligarch Ihor Kolomaisky and too cosy with Russia. Some Western analysts agreed.38 Poroshenko presented himself as the saviour of Ukraine from Russian aggression, and his campaign distributed large posters showing him facing down Putin. Poroshenko’s stepped-up anti-Russian campaign failed to stop Zelenskiy from winning in a landslide. His platform promising to end the war in eastern Ukraine, curb corruption and fix the economy were what Ukrainians preferred.

186  Russia in the world Faint glimmers of hope for compromises didn’t last long. Zelenskiy’s victory coincided with the Rada’s approval of a new language law discriminating against Russian-speaking Ukrainians and a lesser number of Hungarian speakers, and with a Putin order making it easier for residents of the Donbas to obtain Russian passports.39 When Putin said Ukrainians and Russians were one people, Zelenskiy responded that the only thing the two peoples shared in common was a border, and offered Ukrainian citizenship to Russians.40 Meeting with US officials on his first day in office, the new Ukrainian president asked them to increase sanctions vs. Russia and expressed a wish that the EU would follow suit.41 That said, Zelenskiy’s suggestion to the OSCE that there should be a summit comprised of leaders from the Minsk and Normandy Groups (Ukraine, Russia, Germany, France, the UK and the US) to discuss a settlement in eastern Ukraine was met with favour in Moscow, though Lavrov insisted that direct dialogue between Kyiv and the separatist leaders was needed.42 As a follow-up, on 11 May Putin and Zelenskiy held their first telephone conversation and a start was made in July 2019 when Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE agreed to an ‘indefinite’ ceasefire. This came none too soon, because the previous three months had seen a marked increase in violations along the front line.43 Promises of millions of dollars in aid from the US and Canada guaranteed that Zelenskiy would remain focused on integration with the West, where an anti-Russian stance is an effective fund-raising mechanism. Making his position stronger, Zelenskiy’s political party, Servant of the People (Sluha narodu), won a near majority in a summer election to the Rada. He and Putin spoke again in early August and agreed on the need for peace talks, presumably with the recall of the Normandy Quartet (Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France), which had not met since 2016, and to speed up prisoner exchanges.44 An exchange of 35 from each side took place in September. Russia gave up 24 Ukrainian sailors and film-maker Oleg Sentsov, who was in his fifth year in a penal colony. Ukraine released a possible witness in the MH17 case. France’s Macron was credited with acting as middleman in the negotiation process.45 A few weeks later, at a meeting held in Minsk and chaired by the OSCE, Ukraine’s negotiators agreed to allow local elections in the Donbas after the region was granted self-government within Ukraine. According to Zelenskiy, this agreement, a formula put forward earlier by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, was conditional on Ukraine gaining control over the 400 km of borders with Russia. Thus, what purported to be an important breakthrough for the Donbas depended on Russian acquiescence to Zelenskiy’s added conditions. The accord also faced stiff opposition in Ukraine, where nationalists rallied against it.46 If the swap encouraged some to think that a general thaw might ensue, most Western politicians still accepted the Poroshenko–Yatsenyuk narrative, much of which is untrue or skewed.47 In spite of crying wolf many times, claiming that Russia was massing tens of thousands of troops on the border

Russia in the world  187 to invade the Donbas, no evidence of that was ever found. Repeated reference to leaders in the Donbas as Russia’s ‘stooges’ shrug off the fact that rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk had a legitimate cause in 2014 with the Euromaidan example to emulate, and that a majority of civilian deaths early on were the result of random shelling of the Donbas by the Ukrainian army (some of it with illegal cluster bombs) and its volunteer battalions.48 The core of the Poroshenko–Yatsenyuk storyline is that the crisis in the Donbas began with a Russian invasion of the region and that Russia is responsible for all the deaths.49 Neither was true; rather, the government in Kyiv launched the civil war by refusing to negotiate and initiating a brutal ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ against Ukrainian citizens who, for the most part, preferred to stay in Ukraine if only their language rights and some local autonomy were guaranteed. Russia is by no means an innocent, but ignoring the root causes of rebellion in eastern Ukraine renders the mainstream Western narrative false.50 On the other hand, Russia’s continued refusal to acknowledge the extent of its real role in the conflict and its simplified portrayal of Ukrainian leadership in 2014 as fascist, is also a false narrative and an obstacle to the full implementation of the Minsk II and Normandy Four agreements.51 It seemed also that the inhabitants of parts of the Donbas had not changed their minds significantly since surveys conducted in 2014 showed that they too preferred Russia to Ukraine. A detailed face-to-face survey of 1,600 persons in over 50 ‘occupied’ cities and towns taken by a Kyiv-based research team in October 2019 revealed that 76 per cent believed they were in a civil war, not a conflict pitting Ukraine against Russia; and 86 per cent said that Moscow did not start the war. A clear majority (58%) also still considered themselves Ukrainian and the vast majority (81%) wanted to stay in their homes. Whatever the flaws in this extensive survey, published by one of Ukraine’s mainstream newspapers Dzerkalo Tyzhnya (Weekly Mirror), with the admonition that resolution of the crisis ‘must not be based on emotions, fantasies and intuitive beliefs’, its results may have been revelatory for Ukrainians living elsewhere in Ukraine, especially the extensive responses about worsening living conditions – if they cared.52 The first meeting of the Normandy Quartet in three years, in December 2019, and the first Putin–Zelenskiy face-to-face, had some logistical accomplishments. They decided to attempt a full armistice, and an ‘all-forall’ prisoner exchange before the end of the year, plus troop withdrawals and de-mining by March 2020. They opened negotiations about gas transit through Ukraine, and planned to meet again four months later. They agreed as well to three areas of full disengagement, with the promise of three more in the spring of 2020. At a press conference following the session, Zelenskiy again demanded full control of the Donbas border with Russia, ‘complete disarmament’ in Donetsk and Luhansk and withdrawal of all foreign troops. Zelenskiy said he would never permit constitutional changes that could lead to the federalization of Ukraine, even though ‘special status’ for parts of the Donbas is precisely what the Minsk agreement called for.53

188  Russia in the world The all-for-all prisoner exchange, which took place in December, and an important gas deal (see Chapter 4), generated some optimism that a settlement might be reached. This was premature, for Kyiv continued to demand that it get full control of the border with Russia before elections could be held in the Donbas, while the Minsk agreement says that local elections and constitutional amendments must come first.54 It took an intense firefight, with casualties on both sides, in February 2020 to jolt observers back to reality.55 As the sniping continued, Donbas residents who took out Russian passports were allowed to participate in the All-Russia Vote of July 2020, and rumours spread again that Russia planned to annex the region. Kremlin spokesman Peskov insisted that the passports were granted for humanitarian reasons, because Donbas residents were completely ‘thrown away by their own country’.56 The rumours persisted, in part because political advisers to the Normandy Four met in Berlin (3–4 July 2020) and Russia demanded that Ukraine implement long-promised constitutional changes that would recognize special status for parts of the Donbas. Kyiv still refused to negotiate directly with Donbas separatists, rejected the idea of ‘special status’ for the region, and stipulated that it get control over its borders with Russia before any election was held. Neither side would bend on their conditions, though they agreed to a comprehensive ceasefire, further troop withdrawals and prisoner exchanges before the next scheduled Tripartite Contact Group meeting (Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE).57 Crimea By 2020, Crimea was fully incorporated into the Russian Federation (see Chapter 2). An exclamation point to the annexation came on 15 May 2018 when Putin drove a heavy KAMAZ truck to inaugurate the bridge across the Kerch Strait. Ukraine’s mission to the UN described the bridge as a violation of ‘the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine’ and the US State Department and most Western states agreed. The Kremlin shrugged these complaints off, saying merely that ‘Crimea is Russia’ and therefore it needed no permission to construct the bridge. Efforts on the part of Moscow to ‘Russianize’ Crimea intensified. That has meant funding for Russia-centred cultural events, special school curricula and media programming. Young men in Crimea are subject to conscription into the Russian army and, before that, they may enrol in the National Military Patriotic Social Movement Association, or Young Army (Yuarmia), founded in 2015 by the MoD for boys from the ages 8 to 18.58 In addition to augmenting its Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol, the MoD built up its naval forces on the Sea of Azov. An incident in November 2018, when the Russian Navy fired on and seized several Ukrainian vessels (see Chapter 7), confirmed that the Azov region would prove to be another point of conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Russia in the world  189 Ukraine acknowledged that it had two SBU agents on board the ships in question, and Russian pundits maintained that Poroshenko looked for a reason to invoke emergency measures so as to legitimize postponing the election that he ultimately lost. In an interview for Bild and in an op-ed piece for the New York Times, Poroshenko called on NATO to deploy ships to the Sea of Azov, declaring that Russia wanted to annex the entire sea and Ukraine itself. When Ukraine’s infrastructure minister added that Russia was preparing to invade Western Europe, even the usually hostile-to-Russia New York Times accused Kyiv of ‘wild exaggerations’.59 An irony related to the Azov Sea incident is that, in May 2019, Ukraine’s state investigation agency opened a criminal probe again Poroshenko, then no longer president, for ‘deliberately provoking’ Russia by sending naval ships through the Kerch Strait.60 Russia returned the naval vessels to Ukraine in November 2019. Poroshenko imposed severe restrictions on Russian citizens living in Ukraine, forbidding withdrawals of bank deposits, currency exchange transactions or even travel abroad, and forbade entry into the country of all Russian men between the ages of 16 and 60. In the latter instance, he said that his government was acting to prevent the formation of private Russian armies within Ukraine.61 Ukraine and the West were angered by celebrations in Crimea marking the fifth anniversary of what Russians call the peninsula’s ‘reunification with Russia’. Parades with Russian flags, visits by various Russian party leaders and, on the final day, Putin, marked the occasion. They were upset again when Crimeans participated in Russia’s regional elections, September 2019, causing the EU to impose more sanctions and freeze assets of Russians who, by organizing the election, ‘undermined the sovereignty of Ukraine’.62 A new variable was thrown in to the mix in April 2020 when Zelenskiy nominated virulently anti-Russian Micheil Saakashvili as deputy minister and head of Ukraine’s National Reform Council. The former president of Georgia (2004–13), where he created a ministry of national reintegration and instigated the war with Russia in 2008 (see ahead), he fled his homeland where, after separate trials in absentia, he was convicted for covering up evidence in a murder case and abusing the power of his office. Two years after he granted Saakashvili Ukrainian citizenship, and named him governor of the Odesa region, Poroshenko took the citizenship away. Zelenskiy restored it. This very peculiar action gratified Saakashvili’s political friends in Washington, but made accommodation with Russia more difficult and alienated Tbilisi.63 On the international level, for the Kremlin, the addition of Crimea extends Russia’s maritime boundaries, provides it with access to greater oil and gas resources under the Black Sea, gives it a third permanent ice-free port (the others are Murmansk and Vladivostok), and slows Western geopolitical expansion. Strategically, Crimea serves as a base for quick access to the Mediterranean, the Balkans and the Middle East, and brings Russia closer to Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey by sea. Putin acted in Crimea knowing very well what the Western reaction would be, making a strategic decision where the reward (Crimea) was deemed greater than the risk.64

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South Caucasus65 Like Ukraine, Georgia maintains close relations with NATO and the US. In Georgia’s case, relations with de facto independent South Ossetia and Abkhazia are still frozen, as they have been since the mid-1990s. When Georgia launched a sneak attack on South Ossetia in 2008, its army overran a peacekeeping force mandated on that border by the OSCE and the UNSC and killed a dozen Russian troops. Georgian artillery and tanks bombarded Tskhinvali, the capital of the self-proclaimed republic that had won its independence from Tbilisi by bloody fighting in the early 1990s. Saakashvili then raved on TV that the ‘glorious’ Georgian army had won a great victory. The Russian army crossed into South Ossetia and quickly drove the Georgian army out. Relations between Russia and Georgia were growing more hostile prior to the assault on Russian and Ossetian peacekeepers and Saakashvili had won an election on a platform guaranteeing reintegration. He even created a Ministry of Reintegration, so perhaps the attack was inevitable. Nevertheless, Western portrayal of Russia as the ‘aggressor’ in that conflict, while rarely looking either to its origins or to the wishes of the Abkhaz and Ossets, rings more than hollow.66 Nothing much has changed since. Salome Zurabishvili’s success in Georgia’s presidential election, November 2018, brought confirmation of closer ties to Europe and the US. The first woman to hold that post, she was born and raised in France and was granted Georgian citizenship only in 2004, when she was named foreign minister. While the presidential position is more symbolic than powerful, its holder wields influence that worried some Russian strategists at the time. They had reason. In June the next year, protesters shouting anti-Russian slogans tried to storm the General Assembly building in Tbilisi where Russian legislators were attending the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of Orthodoxy. Zurabishvili catered to them by calling Russia Georgia’s ‘enemy and occupier’ and accused Moscow of ‘fifth column’ attempts to divide Georgian society. Riot police used tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon to disperse the crowd. 67 In response, Putin cancelled all passenger air flights to Georgia, citing potential danger to Russian citizens and the Russian Duma adopted a resolution calling for sanctions against Georgia. Putin declined to sign it. 68 Russia increased the number of its troops based in Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2020, prompting Georgia to lobby aggressively for accession to NATO. From Russia’s point of view, further complications in its relations with the West were again worth the risk.69 Things were not going well for Russia’s ally in the region, Armenia, where a political storm posed still more problems for Moscow. When President Serzh Sargsyan’s second consecutive term expired in April, the stacked National Assembly elected him prime minister, creating a tandem like the one in Russia during the Medvedev presidency. But the Armenian public was not nearly so acquiescent as Russia’s and, in contrast to Putin, Sargsyan was not popular. Thousands hit the streets in protest. The uproar caused Sargsyan to

Russia in the world  191 resign. Although pundits referred to events in Yerevan as a ‘colour’ revolution, Putin’s bête noire, the Russian president was quick to congratulate protest leader Nikol Pashinyan on becoming acting prime minister.70 The prominent role of Russian business circles in Armenia and Yerevan’s frozen war with Baku over Nagorno-Karabakh made stability in the region very important to Moscow. Putin handed the ‘Armenia problem’ to Sergei Naryshkin and, in the meantime, welcomed Pashinyan to Moscow where they had a ‘constructive and cooperative’ discussion.71 Running on an economic reform and anti-corruption platform, Pashinyan’s coalition won December’s snap presidential election, securing 70.4 per cent of the vote. What this meant for Russia remained to be seen.72 Putin met twice with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliev in September 2018. At the first one, in Sochi, they signed documents outlining cooperative projects in agriculture and tourism, and a $5 billion arms deal. They met in Baku later to confirm previous agreements while Rosoboronexport initialled more arms sales contracts. Baku appeared to be moving closer to Moscow, in part because its leadership was well aware that no help would be coming from the West in its dispute with Armenia and also because the West continued to criticize Azerbaijan for human rights violations.73 The hot-spot in this case was the decades-old quarrel over NagornoKarabakh, a region within Azerbaijan populated by ethnic Armenians. The danger of the entire South Caucasus becoming a war vortex that would suck in Russia, Turkey, Iran and the West, has been present since 1992. In that year, France, Russia and the US formed the Minsk Group under the OSCE to find a peaceful solution to the conflict, which had been a bloody point of contention between Armenia and Azerbaijan since 1988, when they were both still republics within the USSR.74 The fact that in 2019 the Armenian president called Karabakh ‘part of Armenia, period’ and, at a Valdai Club session with Putin in attendance, Azerbaijan’s Aliev called the Armenian leader a ‘liar’ signalled that not much progress was likely.75 The geopolitical line-up in the region was fraught with dangers for Russia. Armenia is a member of the CSTO, Azerbaijan is a friend of Turkey, a member of NATO (Figure 5.1). Hopes for resolution were shaken by renewed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan in mid-July 2020. After a brief respite, heavier fighting broke out again in September, Azeri forces attacked territory occupied in the 1990s by Armenia and then moved against Nagorno-Karabakh itself. There were dozens of casualties among soldiers and citizens. 76 Erdogan announced support for Baku. Armenia declared martial law and general mobilization; Azerbaijan declared martial law in regions close to the conflict.77 The Kremlin, which has close economic relations and is an arms supplier to both countries, has been avoiding antagonizing any potential protagonist in the region. Putin spoke with Pashinyan and Lavrov was in touch with both foreign ministers, to no avail. Both sides rejected foreign mediation and claimed huge losses for the other side. Pashinyan did not ask for CSTO intervention at that point in time.78

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Figure 5.1 Nagorno-Karabakh. Source: University of Kent, Conflict Analysis Research Centre (CARC) https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/ carc/2018/04/15/the-nagorno-karabakh-conflict/.

Co-chairs of the Minsk group, Putin, Trump and Macron, issued a joint statement condemning the violence and calling for an ‘immediate end to hostilities’.79 As the number of presumed dead, many of them civilians, climbed in October, the sides agreed to talks in Moscow mediated by Lavrov. A ceasefire was agreed as of noon, 10 October. It didn’t last long, and had to be renewed after a week of mutual shelling. That too only slowed the action and the death toll rose. A ceasefire and diplomatic resolution was the Kremlin’s only way to avoid bad choices: alienating either Armenia or Azerbaijan and confronting Turkey or letting Ankara have its way in the Caucasus.80 Lavrov met again with the Armenian and Azeri foreign ministers for separate talks in Moscow on 20 and 21 October. The two Caucasus ministers held talks with US Deputy Secretary of State Stephen E. Biegun two days later, also separately, and a third ceasefire was agreed.81 That too quickly broke down, and the casualty toll continued to climb. Asked about Nagorno-Karabakh during his address to the Valdai Club in October, Putin said that he spoke to both leaders several times, put the death rate at about 5,000 altogether and insisted that he favoured neither side. Both were very important to Russia, so much so that Putin encouraged the US to help resolve the conflict. 82 Iran strengthened its northern borders which they share with both Armenia and Azerbaijan, Putin and Erdogan spoke regularly by telephone and they, and Pompeo, urged both combatants to step down. Neither did; instead, they ramped up their hostile rhetoric. A fourth ceasefire collapsed before it even started.83 On 30 October, Pashinyan asked Moscow for security assistance and was told that Russia would honour their defence treaty by providing ‘all necessary

Russia in the world  193 assistance’ if the territory of Armenia was attacked.84 Responding to a query from a Swedish journalist during the ‘Russia Calling!’ investment forum, Putin said that the best result would have Armenia return the Azeri territory it occupied during the 1990s (‘five plus two regions’) and Azerbaijan provide special status for Nagorno-Karabakh. A ‘consensus and balance’ must be found.85 Iran’s foreign ministry also said that the occupied regions must be returned, and the UNSC warned that shelling of civilian areas by both sides may amount to war crimes.86 Finally, on 9 November, the Kremlin brokered a ‘permanent’ truce. Putin, Pashinyan and Aliev signed a joint statement ending the occupation of Azeri territory by Armenian forces. Russia will provide a peacekeeping contingent of 1,960 troops to keep the Lachin corridor open (connecting Nagorno with Armenia) and displaced persons will return to Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas under the auspices of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. In addition, economic and transport links will be restored. An economic corridor between Nakhichevan and the rest of Azerbaijan was guaranteed. The Kremlin earned a diplomatic victory, the results of which were what Russia had hoped for. Yet the Kremlin may soon have reason to rue the agreement. Fierce public opposition to the ceasefire terms in Armenia will greatly harm Russia’s image there, and Turkey has become a major player in the South Caucasus.87 In fact, by arranging the truce, Russia may have prevented Azeri forces from overrunning Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan won convincingly, defeating a Russian ally, and Turkey, which was not mentioned in the agreement, gained a role in the joint centre for monitoring the ceasefire. As Azeri troops began moving into formerly occupied territories and Russian peacekeepers deployed, the now-vulnerable Armenian prime minister invited Shoigu to strengthen military cooperation with this country. At a virtual meeting of the CSTO in December, ‘in order to ensure a peaceful settlement’, Putin asked members to support Pashinyan, who also spoke to the gathering. For further manifestation of this major confrontation on its southern flank, Russia could do little more than wait it out.88

The Middle East Turkey’s aggressive behaviour in Syria, where Ankara and Moscow had more or less common interests, and in the South Caucasus where their interests parted dramatically, kept the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) in a constant state of uncertainty.89 Before the Nagorno-Karabakh matter prompted Turkey to challenge a member of the CSTO, Russia had reached a state of normalcy in its relationships with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. Lavrov toured Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE in March 2019 to discuss Syria and Israeli–Palestinian issues. These latter were complicated by Trump’s announcement that Washington would recognize Israel’s ownership of the Golan Heights, a decision that Pompeo attributed to God’s work.90

194  Russia in the world Whether God’s hand was in play or not, before the year was out it was Moscow, not Washington, that most observers recognized as the major outside player in the Middle East. Still friendly with Israel, increasingly cosy with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Israel and sometimes Turkey, the diplomatic tide seemed to be shifting in Russia’s favour. It has military bases in Syria and has acted as a mediator between the Assad government and various factions in that country. However, the same observers all knew that the tide could shift almost any time.91 Iran–Iraq–US, 2020. Russia in the middle Friction between Iran and the US escalated quickly in 2018 after Trump pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (nuclear deal) and reinstated severe economic sanctions against Teheran. Relations grew worse at the turn of 2020 when Iranian-backed militias attacked the American Embassy in Iraq and the US retaliated with a drone strike that killed senior Iranian military commander, Qassem Soleimani. That action, at the Baghdad International Airport, also killed the deputy chair of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, and eight others. This was the second such action and reaction in less than a month, all of them on Iraqi territory, and more retribution was promised. Chairman of Russia’s Federation Council’s foreign affairs committee, Konstantin Kosachev, cautioned that war might be next.92 The ripples spread quickly. Iran announced that it would no longer fulfil the requirements of the 2015 nuclear deal. Lavrov and the Iranian foreign minister spoke over the phone; Putin talked with Macron and Merkel separately, both of them calling for calm, and the Iraqi parliament voted to ask US forces to leave their country. Donald Trump, as was his wont, warned Teheran that he had 52 designated sites that US forces would hit if Iran retaliated, including cultural targets, and told the Iraqi government that he would level sanctions against its government if US troops were ordered to leave.93 Afraid of getting caught in the middle, Putin launched a grand tour of key Middle Eastern centres. On 7 January 2020, he paid a surprise visit to Syria, where he held talks with Assad. Putin walked the Christian quarter in Damascus and presented the Patriarch of Antioch an icon, and also visited the oldest and largest mosque in the city. In this way, he confirmed Russia’s traditional role as patron of the Orthodox population in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, and also paid deference to the large Islamic population back home. The next day, he was in Istanbul for the grand opening of the TurkStream pipeline and long talks with Erdogan, and on the 9th he observed Russian naval exercises in the Eastern Mediterranean. He scheduled a visit to Israel before the month was out. The tit-for-tat confrontations between Iran and the US complicated matters for Russia, even though Putin made it clear early on that Russia and Iran were not allies; rather, they shared geopolitical interests. A war between Iran and the US would force Russia to rely more on Turkey. Yet Turkey and Russia

Russia in the world  195 have different, if not quite opposing preferences in regard to the Syria and Libyan governments. Indeed, in January 2020, Turkey’s parliament approved a plan to deploy troops to Libya in support of the government and against forces backed by Russia.94 Turkey also had troops in north-western Syria, preventing Assad from retaking control of his entire country, and had established good relations with Ukraine, making Ankara’s relationship with Moscow more a matter of mutually important economic matters, and not shared geopolitical interests. The situation was such that Syrian and even a few Russian troops were killed by fire from Turkish positions in early 2020.95 Still, the $20 billion unfinished Russia-built NPP in Turkey, the TurkStream and strategically important weapons sales are projects that neither side wants to jeopardize. Attempting to find common ground, Putin and Erdogan talked regularly by telephone, though matters escalated again when Syrian forces attacked and killed over 50 Turkish troops in Idlib. In the meantime, Russia’s Black Sea Fleet dispatched four warships to the region, while Turkey called for a NATO Council meeting to consult on Syria. All of a sudden, as Erdogan prepared to go to war against Assad, the Turkish–Russian relationship was at risk. To their mutual relief, Putin and Erdogan met in Moscow on 5 March 2020 and agreed to break off hostilities. They decided to patrol a security corridor in the Idlib province jointly, Russia to the south and Turkey to the north. Both leaders said they wanted to avoid making the humanitarian crisis worse, as thousands of refugees massed on the Turkish–Greek border after Erdogan gave the 3.6 million refugees housed by Turkey a green light to head for Europe.96 Meanwhile, Trump signed further sanctions against Iran into law, raising the total number of Iranian companies and entities so listed to over 1,000. The inability of Iran to sell its oil benefitted Russian exporters, but caused an escalation of tensions in the region. The US sanctions were maintained during the coronavirus crisis, even though the EU urged Washington to lift them so the IMF could forward economic aid to help Iran deal with the pandemic. The US refused, while Russia and other countries ignored the restrictions and helped Teheran.97 Syria One of the first overseas trips by Putin after his election in March 2018 was to Turkey for a summit on Syria. He and Erdogan were joined there by the president of Iran, Hassan Rouhani. They confirmed their intent to cooperate and pondered the US president’s almost-simultaneous remark in Washington that he wanted to withdraw US troops from Syria. Ankara’s obsession with the ‘Kurdish problem’ already posed some problems for the Kremlin.98 A few days after the Ankara meeting, an emergency meeting with the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) discussed alleged chemical attacks in the city of Douma, eastern Ghouta. The Americans and British charged the Russians with helping the Assad regime deploy nerve agents against

196  Russia in the world civilians, and continued doing so even after reports issued by the OPCW in July 2018 and March 2019 said that, while traces of toxic chemicals containing elements of chlorine were detected in the area, there was no evidence of the alleged poison gases. According to one report, whistleblowers who claimed that the OPCW was pressured by NATO and Western ambassadors to manipulate the results in their favour were dismissed. This was yet another case where blame-casting by both sides obscured whatever actual facts were found.99 Later in April, the US refused a visa to a Russian chemical weapons specialist who was scheduled to brief the UNSC on Russia’s version of the gas attack in Syria.100 Apparently, Washington was not interested in any opinion but its own. Prior to that refusal, the US, the UK and France launched more than 100 missiles from ships and planes against selected military targets in Syria. An outpouring of wild statements followed. Syria boasted that it downed a number of the missiles with S-300 anti-missile systems, the Pentagon denied it. Russia, whose forces were not targeted, and Iran labelled the strikes violations of international law. American representative on the UNSC, Nikki Haley, said that her country was preparing new sanctions vs. Russia; Trump said they weren’t. Another chemical attack, in Aleppo, a city held by the Syrian army, attracted less attention, perhaps because circumstantial evidence suggested that rebels whom the West supported might have been responsible. This last incident led to a break from an existing truce, as Russian planes attacked rebel-held territory in northern Syria. Russian and Syrian jets pounded rebel strongholds in the region unhindered and, by August 2019, Lavrov acknowledged that Russia had ‘troops on the ground’ in the ‘Idlib de-escalation zone’ created by Moscow and Ankara in 2018.101 At a September summit in Ankara, leaders from Russia, Turkey and Iran agreed that Syria should not be divided, and that the ‘terrorist threat’ in Idlib must be contained. The earlier agreement was jolted in October 2019 by Trump’s sudden pullback of US troops from Syria. Turkey quickly launched an air assault on Kurdish-held territories in north-eastern Syria, as it said it would. Since the Kurdish forces had been among the US’s most important allies against ISIS and guarded thousands of Islamicist prisoners of war, the Turkish onslaught had implications for which neither Western countries nor Russia had been fully prepared. In a telephone call, Erdogan told Putin that he did not plan any permanent occupation of Syrian territory and fought only against Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), or Rojava, who were allied with the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey. The next day, the Russian envoy in Syria, Aleksandr Lavrentiev, admitted that an earlier agreement between Ankara and Damascus allowed Turkish forces to push up to 10 km into Syria for anti-terrorist operations, adding that any suggestion of permanent occupation was ‘unacceptable’.102 The situation quickly grew more confused as the ISIS prisoners and their families began to escape and the Kurds turned to Damascus for help. Washington now levelled sanctions against Turkey, promising stiffer ones if Erdogan didn’t reverse course. When Trump sent a delegation led by

Russia in the world  197 Vice-President Pence to Ankara for talks with Erdogan, a five-day ‘pause’ was agreed. Trump called it a ‘truce’ and, bizarrely, a ‘great day for civilization’.103 In fact, the ISIS prisoners continued to escape and fighting continued unabated, with Turks and Kurds blaming each other. Ignoring Trump, Erdogan and Putin met in Sochi and agreed that Syrian and Russian forces would transport the Syrian Kurd militia and their weapons 30 km (19 miles) from the Turkish border. Then Turkey and Russia would jointly patrol a much longer 10-km strip, a ‘safe zone’, in northern Syria, which was what Turkey wanted all along. The tale grew stranger. Trump lifted the sanctions from Erdogan and the oil located in the ‘safe zone’ reverted by default to Assad’s government. The US then sent troops already deployed to Iraq into the Deir al-Zour province of northern Syria to guard oil depots there.104 The Syrian scenario had changed dramatically, almost overnight, but its future was less clear than it had been eight years beforehand. Although refugees were returning to other parts of Syria, renewed Russian air strikes forced thousands to flee Idlib city and towns in December 2019. To sustain Russia’s standing in Syria, in May 2020 Putin created a new diplomatic position, ‘Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for the Development of Relations with the Syrian Arab Republic’, and handed the post to the current ambassador to Syria, Aleksandr Efimov. Consolidating ties further, in September Lavrov accompanied a delegation to Damascus led by Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov. This was the foreign minister’s first visit since 2012. Iran, Israel and further diplomatic muddle Washington’s decision to withdraw from the Iranian nuclear deal and re-institute sanctions on that country saw Moscow and Teheran draw closer together, and Russia finally taking a stand on Israeli air strikes (200 over 2016–18) against Iranian arms convoys in Syria. Moscow had been ignoring such attacks, but condemned one launched in May, 2018. Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu flew to Moscow to discuss the events of the moment. That being Russia’s Victory Day, 9 May, he (and Serbian President Alexander Vucic) joined Putin in the annual ‘Immortal Regiment’ procession in Moscow, where thousands paraded with photos of relatives killed in the ‘Great Patriotic War’. While the Russian foreign ministry declared that it would continue to work closely with Teheran, no matter the new penalties imposed on that country by the US, to appease Israel it also announced that it would not send S-300s to Iran, having only recently said that it would. Washington’s subsequent demand that Iran sign a new nuclear treaty under strict conditions set by the US, or face ‘the strongest sanctions in history’, added to confusion in the Middle East.105 So did Russia’s advocacy that Iran and its proxies leave Syria, which angered Iran and placated Israel. Moscow and Damascus both preferred that Syria’s border with Israel be stabilized and Russia, in particular, had to start making choices, above all one that

198  Russia in the world would guarantee the safety of its naval and air bases on the Syrian coast. As its economic situation deteriorated, Turkey became the weak link in the Moscow, Teheran and Ankara triumvirate and its strained relations with Washington opened the way for Russia to increase its influence on the Black Sea, the crucial waterway between the Middle East, Russia and Europe.106 The diplomatic muddle appeared to settle down somewhat after Netanyahu visited Moscow for the second time in 2018. Their conversation dealt primarily with Syria and Iran. Putin agreed again to urge Iran to leave Syria and Netanyahu agreed not to try to oust al-Assad.107 The very next day, Putin received an Iranian delegation headed by Ali Akbar Velayati, senior adviser to the Supreme Leader of Iran, where they mooted the same issues.108 Although neither Syria nor Israel were mentioned in post-meeting press statements, Velayati told journalists that the meeting was ‘very constructive’, that Iran would cooperate with Russia in Syria and that Moscow was prepared to invest in Iranian oil projects. Russia’s prospects in the region grew, again. Netanyahu was back in Moscow in February and April 2019. In February, he told the Israeli cabinet that he and Putin had approved a joint task force to work on removing foreign troops from Syria. His main intent was to keep Iranian forces out. That wasn’t going to happen. In March, Syrian and Iranian military chiefs met in Damascus and issued a joint demand that all US troops leave and that Kurdish units submit to Syrian state authority. They said they were negotiating opening the borders between Syria and Iraq. Russia seemed not be part of these discussions. The Israeli prime minister’s trip a few weeks later to Moscow, where he and Putin spoke of ‘shared values’, was most likely an attempt by Netanyahu to win a looming election at home by presenting himself as an international negotiator.109 In January 2020, a month prior to the election, Netanyahu flew directly to Moscow from Washington. He returned home with an Israeli-American woman who was pardoned by Putin after serving eight months of a sevenyear sentence for smuggling drugs. Putin noted the warm relations between the two countries and that Israel and the EEC were negotiating a free trade agreement.110 In August and September 2019, Israeli air strikes against Iran-connected targets in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, with expressed support from Washington’s Pompeo, and the devastating bombing of oil wells in Saudi Arabia from drones claimed by Iranian-supported Houthi rebels in Yemen, sent a deeper chill over the Middle East. The US and its allies contemplated, aloud, military actions against Iran. This was a Catch-22 situation for Russia. *** In fact, Russia’s MID had business elsewhere in the Middle East. In October 2018, Egypt’s President Abdelfattah Sisi and Putin signed a pact on strategic cooperation while their respective foreign ministers penned an MOU on political consultations. Meeting in Sochi, they discussed the reopening of tourist traffic between the two countries, a Russian industrial zone in Egypt and also the construction of a NPP.111 This link-up appeared to have a life of

Russia in the world  199 its own, relatively unaffected by the violence and confusion elsewhere in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the war in Syria raged on, forcing Putin to confirm his stance. He messaged President Assad in December 2018 to guarantee assistance against the ‘forces of terrorism’, while Lavrov held discussions with senior officials from Jordan, Palestine and Turkey, all apparently successful attempts to maintain the status quo in the Middle East.112 In that connection, Putin travelled to Riyadh in October 2019 for his first trip to Saudi Arabia since 2007. The visit took place just as Turkish forces were bombarding Kurdish sites in North-east Syria and Russia was trying desperately to curb Ankara’s aggression, stay allied with Damascus and not draw Teheran into an escalating conflict.113 Although the meetings were economic in their expressed purpose, the situation in Syria and the Persian Gulf region, and the Israeli–Palestine dispute, were on the table. Putin took part in the first session of the Russian–Saudi Economic Council, which had been agreed in 2017 when the king of Saudi Arabia visited Moscow, but had not yet met.114 On leaving Saudi Arabia, Putin went to the UAE for similar conversations. Consumed by oil price matters in late 2019–20 and in 2020 by the pandemic, news of Syria fell off the front pages in Russia, but did not disappear. Boasts of victory were quietly overtaken in the Russian non-government media by criticism of Assad for refusing to make any political concessions to opposition forces. Yet Russia had few options other than to keep supporting Assad publicly while in private trying to persuade him to be more flexible.115 When it was clear that persuasion would not work, subtlety was taken over by direct criticisms of Assad, whose regime the Russian state media now called corrupt. Even TASS wrote that Russia, Turkey and Iran might be planning to depose Assad.116 Whether Assad stays or goes, Russia achieved its main objectives in Syria: there was no Western-sponsored regime change, Russia kept its naval base at Tartus and airbase at Khmeimim, and the US was prevented from creating another political vacuum in the Middle East. Moscow’s military strategy based on air power and proxy ground forces worked. Importantly, Russia and the US were both careful not to confront each other directly in the region. The Kremlin was well aware, though, that these gains were likely short-term in nature.117 It remained to be seen how its ‘allies’ in the region, Turkey and Iran, would behave as Russia pulled back.

Europe and the EU118 It was noted earlier that the EU was Russia’s main trading partner until indignation against Russia for its actions in Crimea in 2014 spawned mutually damaging economic sanctions. Trade between them decreased substantially, but did not disappear. Within a few years, the EU began to present an asymmetrical face when dealing with Moscow, some members more supportive of sanctions than others; some suffering from loss of trade with

200  Russia in the world Russia more than others. Traditional divides between West, East and Central Europe began to re-emerge while Europeans coped with thousands of refugees from the Middle East, the rise of populism, Brexit and, in 2020, borders shutting because of COVID-19. Although Russia exploited these divisions whenever it could, it didn’t cause them.119 The problem, one author says, is that Russia views the international arena from a traditional realpolitik perspective, usually meaning zero-sum games (one country’s gain is another country’s loss), while the EU has adopted a post-modern emphasis on normative power (community building) and Europeanization.120 If this description is accurate, then Russia’s relations with the EU as a collective will likely persist in a state of disarray, if not always dangerously so.

Eastern Europe Poland and the Baltic States Poland and its Baltic neighbours are the EU’s most aggressive proponents of sanctions against Russia. Washington welcomed Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, who is supported by the anti-Semitic, populist and nationalist Law and Justice Party (PiS), in the midst of 2020’s bitter presidential election campaign in Poland. His victory in the second round of voting did not bode well for Russian–Polish relations or even for the EU, where his domestic policies are regarded with suspicion. Estonia is the only EU country with which Russia has undecided border issues. Although agreements were signed in 2005 and 2014, Tallinn authorities still make claims on territories that were in Estonia when the Treaty of Tartu was signed in 1920 and were lost in 1944. That contention did not prevent the president of Estonia, Kersti Kaljulaid, from travelling to Moscow in the spring of 2019, the first state visit in nine years. She and Putin discussed mutual problems, including trade, the border issue and the treatment of ethnic Russians in Estonia, who make up about 27 per cent of the population, as they do in Latvia (25%).121 The meeting was controversial in Estonia and, by November, some lawmakers in that country re-opened demands that Russia return the areas ‘annexed’ in 1944 and have almost entirely Russianspeaking populations.122 Members of NATO and the EU and bordering Russia, the Baltic States are the front line between Russian and NATO forces. In addition to issues posed by the large ethnic Russian populations in Latvia and Estonia, the strategic circumstance is made more volatile by controversies about pipeline access, cyber-disinformation barrages from all sides, and historic memories of Soviet occupation. Estonia has constructed a barbed-wire fence on sections of its border with Russia and both the EU and NATO are building patrol roads as part of a three-year border infrastructure project. In Lithuania’s case, a neighbour is the heavily-armed Kaliningrad, the home of

Russia in the world  201 Russia’s Baltic Fleet. In December, 2020, Russia deployed an armoured tank group to the exclave in response, the MoD claimed, to NATO build-ups on the Kaliningrad borders. The worry in Moscow is that both real and artificial fears in the Baltics that ‘we’re next’, whether accurate or not, could result in actions that lead to a self-fulfilling prophesy.123 Belarus The fate of the Union State grew contentious during Putin’s fourth term, in part because pundits opined that Putin wanted to become its president when his fourth term in the Russian post was complete. With a mutually-agreed State Secretary, an elected State Council, Council of Ministers and a bicameral Union Parliament headquartered in Minsk, the Union State is institutionalized and functional, but to date has no powers over its two founding members. That said, it was in the EEU that difficulties between Moscow and Minsk emerged in 2018. At a meeting of the Eurasia Economic Council, Lukashenka accused Russia of the ‘dishonest’ pricing of gas. Putin responded that the price of gas for Belarus was lower than the market price and about half of what it was for Germany. Lukashenka apologized soon after for the flare-up, but the potential for disruption in the EEU was real. There may have been a trade-off. At a CSTO meeting held at the same time, members decided to select a representative from Belarus, not from the presumed Armenia, as the organization’s next general secretary. These incidents signalled cracks in the unity of several Russia-dominated associations.124 Relations with Belarus were still strained when Putin, Lukashenka and their economic teams met again a few weeks later and confirmed a five-year plan approved by the Union State earlier in the year, and agreed to address gas prices and other issues without rancour. Siluanov complained that EU products were slipping past Belarusian customs. A working group was created to hash out differences and provide guidelines for further development of their countries’ relationships. 125 In February 2019, Putin and Lukashenka held a three-day bilateral conference that culminated with the Belarusian president telling reporters that a union was possible if the peoples of both countries were ready for it, prompting a flurry of second guessing in the West.126 Yet, squabbles over Russian bans on certain fruits from Belarus, because they thought they originated in the EU, a new Russian tax on exported oil and, in May, the scandal over tainted oil in the Druzhba pipeline resurrected friction between Moscow and Minsk. Putin tried to ease some of that by firing his ambassador to Minsk, Mikhail Babich, who was very unpopular there, and replacing him with Dmitry Mezentsev, former secretary general of the SCO and much more diplomatic than his predecessor. One of Russia’s advantages, unstated in public, was that Belarus was still the country most indebted to Russia, with unpaid loans of about $7.5 billion.

202  Russia in the world In the summer of 2019, Putin refused a request from Lukashenka that the loan be refinanced, keeping it for future negotiations.127 Russia buys about 40 per cent of Belarusian exports, sends it billions in bilateral loans and still subsidizes Minsk’s economy with preferred oil prices. All these issues aside, in September 2019, a plan of action for Russian and Belarusian economic integration become a matter for public discourse. Apparently, a preliminary proposal that would include a single tax code, a civil code and unified oil, gas and electricity market regulators was in the works. The two prime ministers agreed that the plan was both preliminary and serious, though in October the Belarusian foreign minister said that several of Russia’s requirements were unacceptable.128 While celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Union State, Putin and Lukashenka met twice in December 2019 (in Sochi and St. Petersburg) to discuss further integration. Original expectations of travel without border checks, customs-free trade, a joint currency, and new joint political bodies and institutions, had not been achieved. Military integration was extensive. On the other hand, hundreds of citizens demonstrated in Minsk against any further union with Russia.129 By mid-winter 2020, as Moscow and Minsk failed to agree on an oil contract, Lukashenka was talking about alternative energy supplies, from the US, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. He criticized Russia for trying to force Belarus into a union that, among other things, might cost him his job. Pompeo visited Minsk shortly after these statements were made and proclaimed that the US was willing to provide Belarus with 100 per cent of its oil and gas. Because Pompeo flew to Minsk from Kyiv, where new promises of support to the Zelenskiy government had rung pretty hollow after the US impeachment trial, it was unlikely that Lukashenka saw Washington as anything but a card to play against Moscow.130 Minsk targeted Moscow again in June as Lukashenka prepared to campaign for the Belarusian presidential election, set for 9 August 2020. Aware that his popularity was waning, Lukashenka fired off accusations that Russia was meddling in his country’s electoral process and even plotting a coloured revolution for Belarus. Although Western media made much of this apparent new rift, Lukashenka and his sons attended the military parade in Moscow a few days after his outburst.131 Less than two weeks prior to that election, the Belarusian KGB in Minsk arrested 33 Russian mercenaries. Headlines in the state-owned news agency BelTA screamed that the men were there to ‘destabilize’ the country during the campaign, and called them ‘terrorists’. The Russian press said they were members of the Wagner Group (see ahead, Africa), using Belarus as a transit point on their way to Africa, the EU being off-limits because of the pandemic. Later the line was that they were on their way to Latin America. They had not been planning to stay in Belarus. The Kremlin asked that the men be released; Belarusian officials then said the men were working for opposition critics who were recently jailed.132 Until the election in Belarus erased all ­concerns about the mercenaries, this affair had the potential of  becoming

Russia in the world  203 more than the usual ‘he said, she said’ variable in Russia’s too often confused international posture. The 9 August election itself was a mess. Official results gave Lukashenka 80 per cent of the votes cast and granted his challenger, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, whose husband had been jailed for trying to compete for the position, only 10 per cent. She claimed 60 per cent were hers. Few believed the official numbers and thousands protested in Minsk and elsewhere in the country. Military vehicles patrolled the streets. Police deployed tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets in several locations and detained over 3,000 people. At least one man was killed. The Internet was shut down. Lukashenka blamed the crisis on foreign agitators, but not Russia this time. He released the Russian mercenaries. Putin and Xi congratulated Lukashenka on the election victory; Western governments didn’t.133 From 15 August, Lukashenka and Putin held multiple telephone conversations. While not openly agreeing with the ‘external interference’ charge, Putin concurred that ‘destructive forces’ were working to divide Russia and Belarus. As larger crowds gathered and stories of torture and beatings by the authorities spread, the possibility of a coloured revolution caught Putin’s attention. He promised to send military police and even troops to assist Lukashenka, but only as a last resort.134 The Russian media printed photos of the swelling demonstrations, and made much of the fact that the anger was orchestrated mostly by women. Tsikhanouskaya fled to Lithuania, where she began to form a transitional Co-ordination Council and lobby the EU for support. Lukashenka promised a constitutional referendum and a new election, only after pressure from demonstrators ceased. Another opposition leader, Veronika Tsepkalo, fled to Poland. 135 The head of the European Council, Charles Michel, and both Merkel and Macron discussed the situation in Minsk with Putin. Lukashenka invoked both the Union Treaty and the CSTO, both of which provide for military assistance if one or the other is attacked by a third party, and opened a criminal investigation of Tsikhanouskaya’s Co-ordination Council. As the weeks passed with large, but mostly peaceful demonstrations on the streets of Minsk, Lukashenka’s patience grew thin.136 Inflaming the situation further, the Russian MoD agreed to participate in scheduled Minsk-based army drills in September, causing another huge demonstration. The exercise was preceded by warnings from the EU, the US and Canada that they might impose sanctions against the Belarusian government. On the ground the manager of Vmest’ (Together) party, Maria Kolesnikova, called for unity and the re-organization of society, but not necessarily for the immediate ouster of the president. After a month, state police became more aggressive against demonstrators and Kolesnikova was taken by police.137 Joint Russia–Belarus military drills inside Belarus and coinciding US–Ukraine exercises inside Ukraine brought an ominous international military dimension to what began as a domestic political crisis (see Chapter 7).

204  Russia in the world In contrast to the Maidan demonstrators in Ukraine, neither opposition group in Belarus is expressly hostile to Russia, nor do they express any interest in foreign policy issues. Moreover, Putin has little empathy for Lukashenka; rather, he worries mostly about foreign interference and a colour revolution.138 That said, Mishustin travelled to Minsk, and foreign ministry officials conferred regularly during the crisis. Putin and Lukashenka met in Sochi on 14 September to talk of the ‘further development of Russian– Belarusian strategic partnership’, sparking more speculation about integration. Putin agreed to a $1.5 billion loan. Tsikhanouskaya announced that any agreement reached there would not be upheld by her government. Lukashenka closed his country’s borders with Poland and Lithuania as thousands marched again in central Minsk (20 September) and on the 23rd inaugurated himself as president. From Vilnius, Tsikhanouskaya again pronounced herself the only elected president of Belarus.139 Canada, the UK, the US and the EU levelled sanctions against Belarusian officials believed to be involved in manipulating the election, and Tsikhanouskaya met with various world leaders (Macron, Merkel) who seemed to accept her as rightful president, even though there was no hard evidence that she had actually won the election. She was the keynote speaker on a virtual panel discussion titled ‘Democracy and the Future of Belarus’, hosted by the University of Toronto on 16 October and introduced by foreign ministers of Lithuania and Canada, Linas Linkevicius and Françoise-Philippe Champagne.140 The EU awarded her the Sakharov Prize for human rights in December. Although her meetings with foreign leaders and international appeals gave rise to talk of regime change and coloured revolution, the situation in Belarus remained unchanged as the year ended.141 The weekly demonstrations continued and security forces wielding batons detained dozens each week. Tsikhanouskaya used her Telegram channel to issue a ‘People’s Ultimatum’ calling for a general strike for 26 October if Lukashenko did not resign. The Belarus Investigative Committee put her on its wanted list for trying to harm national security. Although thousands marched in Minsk and other cities on Sunday, the 25th, for the 11th straight week of the ‘perpetual protest’, the nationwide strike failed to take shape. Some factory workers, journalists with state TV, students and pensioners, took to the streets across the country, and many small private companies declared a non-working day, but the turnout was patchy. Demonstrations continued every Sunday through November and December, and police continued to respond. The EU levelled its third round of sanctions against Belarus on 19 November.142 Moscow waited. Moldova Confusion elsewhere in Russia’s near-neighbourhood kept Moscow– Chisinau relations out of the headlines. Constant political uproar in Moldova, situated between Ukraine and Romania, and continued dispute over

Russia in the world  205 Transdniestria, another hot-spot left to fester by the USSR, made the country important to Russia geopolitically. Soon after Putin’s inauguration in 2018, ‘pro-Russian’ Moldovan President Igor Dodon was relieved of his duties to allow a snap election. The electorate split between his executive branch and the legislative branch headed by Pavel Filip. The court named Filip interim president, an act Dodon labelled a ‘coup’. Russia and the EU both called for calm as thousands set up camp in front of ministry buildings. From behind the Kremlin walls this resembled another Maidan in the making. By the fall of 2019, however, Dodon had recovered power by dint of a coalition made up of his Socialist Party and the pro-Europe ACUM bloc. Moldova re-opened to Russian business and journalists, both of which had been restricted by the previous coalition.143 Moldova remained polarized, with the EU and Russia vying to bring it into their spheres of influence. A candidate for EU membership, it is held back by its level of poverty and the Transdniestrian contest. The two ‘sides’, often wrongly described as either ‘pro-Russia’ or ‘pro-West’, are more easily defined by their levels of corruption and struggles for power by competing oligarchs. Another election in November 2020 brought an avowed ‘pro-European’ to the president’s office. Maia Sandu, a former prime minister whose government fell in November 2019, after a non-confidence vote, defeated Dodon handily and promised to maintain a ‘true balance’ in foreign policy, whereas Dodon referred to Russia as a ‘strategic partner’. Romania and the EU immediately congratulated her.144 Dodon rushed to get a law allowing Moldovan Russians to use their own language for interethnic communications adopted before Sandu was inaugurated. Less than 5 per cent of the population is Russia, though close to 15 per cent use Russian at home. Russian is the primary language of Transdniestria and has official status in Gaugazia, an autonomous territory within Moldova. How all this will play out is another ‘wait-and-see’ issue for Putin’s government. Populist leaders in Europe and Russia Repeated pundit and politician complaints that Putin caters to Europe’s right-wing leaders fall short when one considers Duda’s hostility towards Moscow. Doubtless, however, the Russian leader finds common ground with EU-sceptics. His conversations with Italy’s Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini and Hungary’s Viktor Orban persuaded critics that Russia was catering to Europe’s populists, such as Orban, Salvini, France’s Macron and Austria’s Sebastien Kurz. In each case, their preference for national sovereignty over collective EU activity would certainly appeal to Moscow. A late October oneday summit with Orban in Budapest, where the two leaders encouraged mutual trade and political cooperation, helped strengthen Russia’s recovering presence in parts of the EU. They signed multiple trade and corporate agreements (see Chapter 4). As a member of both NATO and the EU, Hungary represented a potential breakthrough site for Moscow, though

206  Russia in the world Orban gave no indication that he would break ranks with the EU sanctions regime against Russia. Other European politicians still found it easier to find Russia culpable for their domestic ills than face their own responsibility. Fresh accusations in 2019 that Russia was meddling in the upcoming elections to the European Parliament made the usual rounds, setting up excuses for electoral losers. One of the most egregious of such claims came from the Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, who scolded his Italian and Hungarian counterparts, Salvini and Orban, plus French right-winger Marine Le Pen, Brexit advocate Nigel Farage and former Austrian Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache for taking money from Putin. He offered no proof for his accusations. The fact that Donald Trump met with and praised Orban and Duda didn’t shake the ‘Russia did it’ narrative.145 To be sure, Russian trolls and bots intruded in the Brexit campaign, and favoured Catalonians in Spain, the Five Star Movement (M5S) and Salvini’s League in Italy, Le Pen in France and the AfD in Germany. Yet meddling in the political affairs of foreign states is a practice hardly unique to Russia, and it is not clear that Russian ‘support’ ever made the slightest difference in a foreign election, including American ones.146 A 2020 British parliamentary report on Russian trolling in the Brexit campaign, for example, found no evidence to support the clamour of voices that insisted that Russian interference may have turned the tide against the EU. This in spite of an ‘expert witness’ list limited to Putinophobes Professor Anne Applebaum, William Browder, Christopher Donnelly (special adviser on East Europe to NATO), Edward Lucas and Christopher Steele.147

Western Europe Western Europe was undergoing dramatic changes of its own in 2018. A split in Merkel’s centre-right bloc prompted her to step down as long-time leader of the Christian Democratic Union. Although she stayed on as chancellor, an already divided German political scene split further. Moscow was concerned because it needed German support for Nord Stream-2. In the meantime, France was in an uproar as protests against rising taxes led to violence on the streets. Rumours that Russia was involved in spreading falsehoods to inspire the ‘yellow vests’ were given evidence-free credence by British and American media, thereby posing a threat to Moscow’s tenuous relationships with Paris.148 In its turn, the UK was consumed by Brexit negotiations. Russia was helped indirectly by Western European countries that found it difficult to manage their relationships with Donald Trump’s Washington. Following his disruptive participation in 2018 at the G-7 summit in Québec and the subsequent NATO summit in Brussels, Trump travelled to Britain, where he antagonized almost everyone. These sessions all served as preliminaries to his face-to-face with Putin in Helsinki where, one may assume, the Russian president was pleased with the diplomatic rubble left in Trump’s European wake.

Russia in the world  207 Taking advantage of Trump’s shaky relationship with Europe, Putin regularly criticized the contemporary tendency towards economic isolationism and the use of sanctions as political levers. During his opening address to SPIEF in May 2018, he said: But arbitrariness and lack of control inevitably lead to the temptation to use the instruments of restrictions [sanctions] again and again, ever wider and wider, to the right and left, on any occasion, regardless of political loyalty, talk about solidarity, old agreements and long-term cooperative ties… The openness of markets and fair competition are gradually replaced by various kinds of exemptions, restrictions, sanctions. The terms are different, but the essence is one: they have become an official instrument of trade policy of many countries. And some states are simply compelled to adapt to this, to react, to apply mirror measures.149 It’s doubtful that any made-up mind was swayed. Even as Russophobes railed that the GRU was conducting a secret campaign to ‘destabilize Europe’ for Putin, Washington appeared to be doing that job for Russia openly.150 European signatories did not follow Trump’s lead in pulling out of the nuclear deal with Iran, Macron mused about NATO’s ‘brain death’ and Merkel suggested that Europe could no longer rely on the US to maintain international norms Western Europe’s growing indecision about Russia came to a halt in August 2020 by outrage generated first by the electoral crisis in Belarus and then by the Navalny poisoning. Germany Russia’s oddest relationship among the European powers is with Germany. Interviewed just prior to the NATO summit in July 2018, Merkel stressed the need to strengthen the Alliance against potential Russian aggression. At the same time, Germany increased its purchases of Russian gas and continued its vigorous support of Nord Stream-2.151 It seemed a contradiction to treat another state as both a real and potential enemy on the one hand and, on the other, covet it as a reliable supplier of energy. The first formal bilateral meeting of Putin and Merkel in Germany in over five years came in August 2018. The three-hour session marked a diplomatic breakthrough for Putin insofar as relations with Europe was concerned. For him, confirmation of Germany’s support for the pipeline was perhaps the most important achievement, especially after Trump chided Germany because of it. Although little of substance was agreed, in the postmeeting press conference they both hoped for peaceful solutions to civil conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, and maintained support for the nuclear agreement with Iran.152

208  Russia in the world A Merkel working visit to Moscow in January 2020 came amid the multiple crises mentioned previously, among them Washington’s sanctions against Nord Stream-2. German Foreign Minister Haiko Maas accompanied the chancellor.153 At the subsequent press conference, she and Putin again remarked on the importance of Nord Stream-2 and also the five-year agreement on pipeline transit through Ukraine. Political solutions to strife in Libya and Syria were reviewed in detail, they said, and both again insisted on sustaining the nuclear deal with Iran. While Merkel stuck to the mainstream narrative on Ukraine, she and Putin appeared to agree on most other major issues.154 This partial agreement on the status quo didn’t last out the year, as the Navalny poisoning saw intense pressure put on Germany by Washington to cancel Nord Stream-2.

The UK Theresa May’s anger at Russia showed no sign of abating a year and a half after the Skripal affair. Caught glowering in a photo of her and Putin shaking hands at the G-20 summit in Osaka, July 2019, she recovered by insisting that Russia could not be treated as a normal country until it stopped its abnormal behaviour on the international scene.155 A month after that she was out of office and replaced by Boris Johnson, whose attitudes towards Russia were slightly more flexible, if not accommodating.156 Putin dismissed Aleksandr Yakovenko, Russia’s ambassador to the UK, in August 2019 and replaced him with a senior embassy staff member. Because Yakovenko had been there since 2011, pundits suggested this was part of an attempt to improve relations between the two countries. Three months later, Andrei Kelin, former Russian representative to the OSCE, was named to the post. Yakovenko took Kelin’s previous spot as head of the Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy.157 Tensions between the UK and Russia were not eased. For example, in July 2020 the UK decided to impose its first sanctions independently of the EU, choosing to target human rights violators from Russia, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Myanmar. In the case of Russia, this meant travel bans and assets frozen for 25 persons who were alleged to have aided and abetted the death of Sergei Magnitsky in 2009. Britain’s foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, introduced the list and then met with Magnitsky’s widow and the ever-present William Browder. Since the UK’s foreign office drew their list of names from individuals already blacklisted by the US or the EU, the sanctions would not alter their lives very much. Russia promised to retaliate.158 Even with Hong Kong in an uproar, there were no Chinese names on the list. As a matter of form, Raab also accused Russia of meddling in Britain’s 2019 General Election; to what end was left unstated. Russia retaliated nearly five months later by levelling sanctions against 25 British officials, banning them from travel to the Russian Federation.

Russia in the world  209 The Italian link After welcoming France’s Macron to Moscow in May 2018, Putin travelled to Austria and Italy. He was greeted in Rome by Italy’s new prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, who spoke against sanctions and made it clear that Italy planned to do business with Russia. Conte later announced that Italy intended to join China’s Belt and Road project, making it the first G-7 country to do so.159 Although the US objected, within a short time at least 12 other EU countries had signed MOUs with China on the Belt and Road Initiative. Putin was back in Italy in July 2019, met Conte again and also President Sergio Mattarella at a Russia–Italy forum. Discussions on cooperation were wide-ranging. In a pre-visit interview for a major Italian newspaper, Putin urged Italy to help lift sanctions, called for a joint Russia–EU security agreement, as opposed to ‘the archaic, cold war concept of deterrence’, and called accusations of Russian meddling in US and European elections ‘absurd’. On the other hand, he voiced some mild praise for Salvini, whom he greeted at a dinner, and Silvio Berlusconi, because they both advocated closer ties with Russia.160 The Russian president conversed with Pope Francis, for the third time, though the Orthodox Church still made it plain that it is not yet the time for the Pope to visit Russia. He and the Pope exchanged gifts and talked about humanitarian aid to Syria and the protection of Christian shrines there.161 European institutions Stripped of its voting rights in the Council of Europe in 2014, the Russian State Duma debated full withdrawal in October 2018 while the Council voted on a rule change that would restore those rights. The Council’s parliamentary body, PACE, turned the proposal back for further study (99–79, with 16 abstentions) and demanded that Russia pay the annual contributions it had withheld since 2017. The possibility of Russia being formally excluded, or withdrawing from PACE, loomed large.162 In January 2019, the Duma rejected an invitation to send a delegation to PACE’s Winter Session in Strasbourg because their voting rights had not yet been restored. Among other things, the Duma statement said, more than half of the judges now in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) were elected without Russian participation, which, it complained, would skew any ECHR ruling related to Russia.163 As it happened, given the choice of rejecting Russian membership altogether and ending demands for payment, PACE decided in June to clear the way for the restoration of Russia’s voting rights.164 After Russia was readmitted in the summer of 2019, representatives of several member-states formed a bloc in opposition to the Kremlin. Dubbed Baltic+, it included Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia and Georgia.165 Membership rancour didn’t change much. In March 2019, the European Parliament adopted a resolution (402–163) to further tighten its restrictions

210  Russia in the world on Russia. Introduced by a Latvian member, the motion supported continued sanctions against Russia, accused Moscow of destabilizing political arenas in several European countries, opposed Nord Stream-2 and stated that Russia was not a strategic partner of the EU. The EU imposed further sanctions, naming the Azov Sea events as their reason. This raised the number of Russian individuals blacklisted by the EU to 170 and the number of entities to 44.166 Putin’s expressed hope, in his address to the Federal Assembly a few weeks later, that the EU would take ‘real steps to restore normal political and economic relations with Russia’, was a fanciful one.167 Putin returned to France in August, holding his seventh meeting with Macron a few days before the French president presided over a G-7 meeting. They discussed Ukraine and their mutual concerns over mass unrests, the yellow vests in France and the electoral protesters in Moscow.168 Although Macron insisted that Russia not be included in the G-7 while the crisis in Ukraine continued, he later told The Economist that dialogue with Russia was necessary if the EU was to survive. His opinion was driven by the US’s apparent inconsistency and isolationism in connection to both the EU and NATO (Macron: ‘we are currently experiencing … the brain-death of NATO’), and also by an assumption that Russia’s only long-term choice was re-association with Europe. Both these opinions were undermined by the likelihood that the US might recover from its isolationist stance when Trump left office, and that Moscow’s ‘pivot to the East’ may have more permanence than what was at first thought.169 A few days before the earlier G-7 summit, Donald Trump again mused that Russia should be allowed back in, suggesting that it would be good for the world, Russia and the US. Russia’s foreign ministry was unenthusiastic, saying it might consider a formal invitation, while other Russian commentators said Russia should re-join only if China and India were also invited.170 By that time, Putin was in Helsinki talking bilateral cooperation with President Sauli Niinisto. At a subsequent press conference the presidents noted that their countries had no problems with each other, and that trade, economic and environmental cooperation were satisfactory. Putin thanked Niinisto for his support on Nord Stream-2, and told journalists that Russia wanted a ‘full-scale restoration’ of relations with the EU, of which Niinisto had just been appointed president. Asked about the raucous political demonstrations in Moscow, Putin responded that popular unrest of that type were common in European capitals, and insisted that electoral rules and laws about demonstrations were heeded in Russia – that arrests were made for unlawful acts.171 He was exaggerating about law and order in Russia, to be sure, but his remarks about problems in Europe were accurate enough and when, a year later, America imploded with nation-wide protests and violent reactions to a police killing of yet another unarmed black man, the West clearly had lost its moral high ground. As it seemed to be for everything else, the year 2020 was a crucial one for the G-7. Scheduled for Camp David in June with Trump as presiding host, it was postponed because of the pandemic. Calling the membership of the G-7

Russia in the world  211 ‘outdated’, Trump then suggested that Russia and four other non-members (India, Brazil, South Korea, Australia) be invited. Suspicion in some circles that this was an attempt to build an anti-China bloc, even though three of the potential invitees were from the BRICS, further discredited a G-7 that was supposed to limit its agenda to economic issues.172 It was with France’s Macron that Putin had his most productive conversations. They coordinated mediation efforts on Nagorno-Karabakh, agreed to fight terrorism (after a series of terrorist attacks in France) and took a common stance on Libya. A telephone conversation in early November also saw mutual interest in the two countries collaborating to develop vaccines against coronavirus. While exchanging views on Ukraine, they both said that the Minsk package should be strictly implemented, along with all the agreements reached in the ‘Normandy format’ at the Paris summit.173 This approach was good news for Russia. Whatever good news there was, it was drowned out by tit-for-tat sanctions over the Navalny case. On 15 October, the EU imposed sanctions against six senior Russian officials and a research institute who, the EU said, knew of the Navalny poisoning (see Chapter 3). These individuals included Bortnikov and Kiriyenko, the presidential envoy to the Siberian Federal District and two deputy defence ministers. Russia retaliated in December, calling in ambassadors from Germany, France and Sweden, and levelling sanctions against same-level officials in Germany and France.174 Not a good start to the New Year.

Latin America A visit to Moscow by Cuba’s new president (Chairman of the State Council and Council of Ministers), Miguel Diaz-Canel in early November 2018 had the American media waxing feverishly about renewed Cold War alignments and Cuba as Russia’s spearhead in Latin America. This reaction had a very familiar ring to it. After signing a joint statement on common approaches in international affairs, Putin and Diaz-Canel stressed the importance of expanded trade, opposed ‘arbitrary sanctions’ and criticized ‘illegal’ actions of the US and NATO against Russia and other independent states. They objected to the US withdrawal from the INF, its threat to weaponize space and its continued ‘use of the Monroe Doctrine’. Their statements and the US rejoinders echoed old Cold War rhetoric.175 Two weeks after that meeting, the Russian and Cuban defence ministers, Shoigu and Leopoldo Cintra Frias, announced their ‘solidarity’ on international issues and mutual opposition to sanctions used for political ends.176 This ‘solidarity’ was tightened further by the deal signed at SPIEF 2019 committing Russia to upgrade Cuba’s inefficient railway system. Shortly thereafter, the Cuban president was again in Moscow.177 Before that, in January 2019, carefully nurtured economic and political links with Venezuela were shaken when the leader of the opposition in that country declared himself interim president and was given immediate support

212  Russia in the world by US President Trump. Rosneft’s large investments in Venezuela’s oil sector and large contracts from Caracas for weapon purchases from Russia on credit, were in jeopardy if the Maduro government collapsed. So, too, could Moscow’s strategy in Latin American generally if it became involved in a military conflict there.178 The Kremlin’s concern grew deeper when it was discovered that opposition leader Juan Guaido visited the US secretly before he declared himself president. Russia responded by offering to mediate between Maduro and Guaido.179 That went nowhere. China urged non-interference, and sent humanitarian aid. Tensions grew as Canada and the UK, which froze Maduro’s assets in British banks, openly supported Guaido, though no one knew who had actually won the election. As far as the Kremlin was concerned, happenings in Caracas represented yet another US-attempted ‘colour revolution’. The Russian government, plus Rostec and Rosneft, had loaned Venezuela at least $17 billion over the previous decade, including a payment of $100 million at the end of March 2019. In December 2018, two Russian strategic bombers arrived in Venezuela, and two planes carrying soldiers landed there the next year to show support to Maduro.180 Whereas American officials fumed about a Russian military presence and John Bolton harked ominously to the Monroe Doctrine, the 94 Russian troops involved could be no more than symbolic. Behind the scenes, according to Bolton, it was Trump who wanted to use the ‘military option’.181 Russia’s defence ‘advisers’ in Venezuela, once numbering around 1,000, had been reduced over the previous few years, leaving about 300 Russian servicemen in Venezuela by the spring of 2019. Putin told international reporters in June that the Russian specialists were there under contract to service weapons sold by Rosoboronexport and that Russia was not sending activated troops there.182 At any rate, the US settled for stiff sanctions, Maduro stayed in office and thousands of citizens fled the country. Venezuela was a theatre for the broader Russia–US diplomatic dance. Lavrov flew to Caracas to show support for Maduro, just a few days after Pompeo visited Ukraine, Belarus and Central Asia. Lavrov discussed cooperation in the energy, mining, transport, agriculture and defence sectors with officials in Caracas and denounced Washington’s sanctions against that country. He stopped in on Cuba and Mexico on the way to negotiate further economic ties. Before leaving Moscow, Lavrov met with the ambassador from Kazakhstan, presumably for clarifications of Pompeo’s visit.183 In turn, Washington embargoed Rosneft’s Geneva-based trading branch, Rosneft PJSC, for helping to sell Venezuelan oil. The Venezuela story was complicated further in May 2020, when a group of dissidents led by US mercenaries attempted a raid on the country, intending to overthrow the government, and failed. Two of the captured mercenaries were former US Special Forces soldiers. The US government and Guaido claimed that they were not involved in the attempted coup, but, true or not, America’s long history of such ventures (e.g. Bay of Pigs) made suspicion of Washington a natural product of the sordid affair. Putin called a meeting of

Russia in the world  213 his Security Council and expressed support for the government of Venezuela, another hot spot that could still draw Russia into an unwanted international conflagration.

Pivot to the East: Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Far East Valdai’s ‘Asia’ theme, 2019 The Valdai Club’s 16th meeting, held in Sochi, October 2019, had ‘Asia’ as its central theme. Putin delivered a concluding address, following Presidents Aliev of Azerbaijan, Tokaev of Kazakhstan and Duterte of the Philippines, and King Abdullah II of Jordan. Putin credited ‘Asian states’ for making the world multi-polar, and opined that Syria had been saved from ‘terrorists’ by means of ‘complicated’ efforts by Russia, Turkey, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and even the USA. He hoped that that ‘mutual cooperation’ might serve as a model for regional conflict resolution, perhaps for the Korean Peninsula, and congratulated Donald Trump for his efforts to negotiate with North Korea. New transport arteries created by the Belt and Road project linking Russia and China via Central Asia, Iran and India, and Russia’s Northern Sea Route, are there for everyone’s benefit, Putin continued, but only if peace and cooperation could be maintained. He went on to extoll the EEU’s newly minted free trade agreements with Vietnam, Singapore and Iran, talks about similar deals with Israel, India and Egypt, and cooperative agreements between it and the ASEAN, the CIS and SCO.184 Other speakers echoed these opinions, though there were no specific action plans for a more integrated Asian economy laid out. CIS and EEU leaders discussed these issues further during a December 2019 summit in Moscow. Moscow’s ‘pivot to the East’ and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Keeping Russia out of the G-7 made it more likely that Moscow’s post-2014 ‘pivot to the East’ would become enduring.185 Within a space of a few days connected with SPIEF-2018, Putin held serious meetings with leaders of France, Germany Japan, China, India and the IMF. At a SCO summit in Qingdao, China, he conducted one-on-one meetings with the presidents of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iran and Mongolia, and signed major deals with China. The expanded organization, which has included India and Pakistan as full members since 2017, issued an enthusiastic Action Plan for 2018–22 at about the same time that the G-7 meeting in Québec fell into disarray. Russia was heartened, too, by earlier remarks from Hamid Karzai, former president of Afghanistan, who said that the US and the UK could ‘never help Afghanistan fight terrorism’; rather, it was Russia that could do it. He castigated Americans for ‘lying’ about the source of terrorism in his country and charged both the US and the UK with ‘killing [Afghans] for 17 years’.186 Afghanistan is an official Observer State in the SCO.

214  Russia in the world Trying to arrange peace talks, the MID invited governments of Afghanistan, China, Iran, India, the US, Kazakhstan, the four former Soviet Central Asian countries and the Taliban to send representatives to Moscow for a peace conference on Afghanistan set for 4 September 2018. Washington and Kabul decided not to participate. In the case of Afghanistan, this was a sudden shift, because Kabul had only recently asked Moscow to broker negotiations with the Taliban, whose attacks had increased. The Afghan government now said it would prefer to negotiate directly with the Taliban without third-party oversight. The US accused Russia of trying to gain more influence over the region; Russia charged the US of supporting peace only if it could be accomplished entirely on Washington’s own terms. They were both right, and peace remained a faint hope.187 Afghan President Ashraf Ghani changed his mind and, in November 2018, sent four senior representatives to meet in Moscow with Taliban members, along with Central Asian, Iranian and Pakistani delegations. Although nothing substantial came from the session, it was a start and, among other things, put Russia back in play as potential mediator.188 Talks between the Taliban and Afghan opposition figures, including Karzai, were also held in Moscow, in February 2019. Kabul objected, to no avail. These talks took place about a week after lengthy discussions in Qatar between US representatives and the Taliban. The push to end the conflict in Afghanistan, or at least foreign involvement in it, continued and became a matter of focus after Trump announced that Washington had been conducting its own peace talks with the Taliban secretly for some time. These conversations progressed to the extent that, in February 2020, the US and the Taliban agreed to a short-term ‘reduced violence’ stage and soon afterwards a pact that enabled the US to begin a partial withdrawal of US troops.189 After 18 years of war and $1 trillion spent by Washington, nothing much was resolved and Russia and the SCO now had more worries about creeping Taliban incursions against their allies in Central Asia. In the same general sphere, Russian foreign affairs experts worried that the US’s Five Plus One project, designed in 2015 to wean Central Asian countries away from Russia and China and towards the West seemed to be bearing fruit. The presidents of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan visited Washington separately in the summer of 2018 and concluded a number of economic and other cooperative accords. When Pompeo visited Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan a half year later, he warned them and the three other Central Asia states against too much reliance on either China and Russia. It is doubtful that his cautionary tale made much of an impression on leaders who knew their region much better than he did.190 In fact, trouble was brewing in Kazakhstan, Russia’s most consistent Central Asian partner, where nationalists lobbied aggressively against a law that made Russian an official language of their country and against the common use of Russian in state meetings. This contributed to an outflow of ethnic Russian Kazakhstanis, many of whom don’t speak Kazakh. It was clear that Moscow needed to consolidate its policies in the region (Figure 5.2).191

Source: http://researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-Central-Asia-Retrieved-from-http-originsosuedu-article-69-maps_fig2_319865958; and http://origins.osu.edu/article/69/maps.

Russia in the world  215

Figure 5.2  Central Asia.

216  Russia in the world Coinciding trips to Turkmenistan by Gazprom’s Aleksei Miller and by Putin to Uzbekistan in October went a long way towards that consolidation. In Ashgabat, Miller renewed Gazprom’s right to purchase natural gas and in Astana Putin signed agreements on both short- and long-term strategic projects, including the construction of a NPP.192 A major change in the hierarchies of Central Asia came in March, 2019, when Kazakhstan’s only post-Soviet president and close friend of Putin, 78-year-old Nursultan Nazarbaev, suddenly announced his retirement. Speaker of the upper house and former prime minister, Kassym-Jomart Tokaev, replaced him temporarily. Nazarbaev retained his position as chair of the Security Council and leader of the dominant Nur Otan party – so he would still be the national leader, or ‘Yelbasy’, of the nation.193 Because oilrich Kazakhstan is Russia’s leading trade partner in Central Asia and close ally in both the SCO and CSTO, Nazarbaev’s decision was taken very seriously in the Kremlin and prompted a flurry of diplomatic activity in the region. Still, Moscow had no problem with Tokaev’s accession to the Kazakh presidency, to which he was elected in June with over 70 per cent of the popular vote. Tokaev made his links to Moscow plain in an interview with Germany’s Deutsche Welle news broadcaster in December, telling them that the Kazakh government had ‘believed in the wisdom and decency of the Russian leadership’, adding that he accepted the referendum that brought Crimea into Russia as properly representative of the wishes of the people there.194 At the SCO summit in Bishkek, Putin met individually with the presidents of Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Mongolia, India, Iran and China. Traditional subjects, how to combat extremism, terrorism and drug-trafficking, and how to improve their economies, were discussed by the group at large. They all urged cooperation in normalizing the situations in Afghanistan and Syria, and agreed to support the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran. Joint declarations confirmed cooperation on all these subjects.195 Later in 2019, Medvedev joined SCO prime ministers in Tashkent, where he conversed with individual leaders. He declared that the trade turnover between member-states and Russia had reached $150 billion, and urged them to agree on a joint environmental protection programme, transportation infrastructure development and food security. Medvedev also advocated close cooperation between the SCO and the EEU. The SCO prime ministers signed agreements or MOUs on all these matters.196 The MID was concerned, however, that the Central Asian calm was fragile. Increasing incidents of violence between Tajiks and Kyrgyz, mostly over border delineation and inter-ethnic disputes, an emerging economic crunch in Uzbekistan, expanding Chinese infiltration of the region and a resurgence of Islamic extremism as Taliban supporters moved north, all threatened to disrupt the region.197 These issues brought SCO defence ministers together in Moscow in September, 2020, with invited observers from the CSTO. Their foreign

Russia in the world  217 ministers met the following week. In addition to the issues noted above, the political uproar in Belarus, looming war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the India–China confrontation in the Himalayas and the ongoing manifestations of the pandemic provided an agenda that was clearly unmanageable, at least insofar as Moscow’s leadership was concerned. When violence reminiscent of the ‘coloured’ revolutions of 2005 and 2010 broke out in Kyrgyzstan after the 4 October parliamentary election, Moscow watched nervously. Protesters denounced the government for fraud and occupied government buildings after parties supported by President Sooronbai Jeenbekov (elected 2017) claimed victory. Dozens were injured. Demonstrators released former president Atambaev and two former prime ministers from jail. Police reacted with water cannon and stun grenades. The election results were annulled and a re-election called for within the following two weeks, though demonstrators continued to occupy several government buildings. Jeenbekov resigned on 15 October and new Prime Minister Sadyr Japarov, also a former prisoner and minister in Kumanbek Bakiev’s government, became acting president. In January 2021, Japarov was confirmed as president in a landslide election victory. A simultaneous referendum approved amendments to the Kyrgyz constitution that granted the president greater power over the country’s parliament (Supreme Council). His populist and nationalist stance may appeal to Moscow – or not. Political turmoil in Bishkek was yet another straw weighing down the MID’s back.198 India Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Sochi on 27 May 2018, just prior to the opening of SPIEF. While emphasizing India’s long-time friendship with Russia, he cautioned that economic ties were weakening as Russian– Chinese–Pakistani relations strengthened. Modi changed his tune in October when Putin travelled to New Delhi for a Russia–India Business Forum. They signed agreements in the fields of space, nuclear energy, railways and weapons sales. This time, both leaders praised their bilateral relationship. Modi gushed that it had gone ‘beyond their traditional framework’ and encouraged mutual cooperation in the SCO, ASEAN and the G-20.199 He didn’t mention the BRICS. Sudden renewed violence between India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers, in February 2019, was a major concern for Russia. The immediate cause of the crisis was a devastating suicide attack on an Indian military site by a terrorist group based in Pakistan. India retaliated with fighter plane assaults on targets inside Pakistan; Pakistan shot down two Indian planes. Longstanding competing entitlements related to Kashmir exacerbated the situation. Lavrov offered to mediate. Pakistan accepted immediately, but India was not ready yet to negotiate, let alone use an arbiter. While world leaders urged calm, the two protagonists talked tough to appease their citizenry.200 Both are members of SCO, so that organization was shaken as well.

218  Russia in the world Russia was concerned too by attempts on the part of Washington and Canberra to turn the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (India, the US, Japan and Australia) into a military association for the purpose of containing China. The QUAD, as it is called, was formed in 2007 on the suggestion of Japan’s Prime Minister Abe. It went dormant within a year or so and was then revived in 2017 to counter Chinese assertiveness in the Pacific region. India was reluctant to expand the QUAD’s involvement further than the strategic discussion group it had been to that time, though Modi worried that China’s inclusion of Pakistan as a major link in its Road and Belt project would encroach on India’s zone of interest.201 Modi’s second straight majority electoral victory in May, 2019, strengthened his position. As if renewed disputes over contested borders between CSO members India and Pakistan weren’t enough, deadly clashes between India and China over disputed territory in the Himalayas shook the Kremlin. Nepal also has land disputes with India in the same region. Although Moscow tried desperately to avoid involvements on any one ‘side’ in these disputes, and urged de-escalation, it agreed to speed up delivery of S-400 batteries to India. After a visit to Moscow by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Russia promised to deliver the first battery in January 2020, rather than at the end of that year. Delhi planned to deploy three of the S-400s units on its border with China and two on its border with Pakistan. These clashes threatened the unity of the SCO, and even the BRICS, and may also force India to align more closely to the US.202 Less than two weeks later the Russian, India and Chinese foreign ministers met prior to a scheduled BRICS session. India and China exchanged prisoners taken in the battles noted above, and all sides appeared to be content – for now. We have seen that India kept out of the RECEP, a decision that could push New Delhi towards Russia, or Washington. North Korea The North Korean minister of foreign affairs was in Moscow in April, 2018, to discuss rising apprehensions on the Korean peninsula. In light of the Inter-Korean summit on the 28th of that month, when Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un met in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), and crossed into each other’s territory for the first time since the end of the Korean War in 1953, the conversations between Moscow and Pyongyang were part of a process intended to lead to general accommodation in the region. The North Korean leader also met with China’s Xi Jinping, first in March (Beijing) and then in May (Dalian). Buoyed by the release of three American prisoners in North Korea, a meeting scheduled between the presidents of the USA and North Korea in Singapore, 12 June, capped the flurry of activity. The on–off talk of a summit between Trump and Kim, and separate meetings between the North Korean leader and China’s Xi, and another sudden meeting of the two Korean presidents, kept the Kremlin off stride in its Asian

Russia in the world  219 diplomacy. In late May, though, Lavrov was the first senior official from Moscow to meet with Kim in Pyongyang, where he handed him an official invitation to Russia. The target date and place was the 4th Eastern Economic Forum set for Vladivostok in September.203 It was also clear that Moscow wanted the Trump–Kim talks to succeed. Peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula would benefit Russia and China as much as it would the US, perhaps even more. Russia already had a railway connection with North Korea. Plans for a gas pipeline through North Korea to South Korea and a Far Eastern electricity grid could proceed only if peace were guaranteed. Both projects would be a boon to Vladivostok. The Kremlin hoped that North Korea could be persuaded to give up its nuclear weapons project and work out a regional cooperative programme in its stead.204 Kim arrived by armoured train in April, with a retinue of 250. They gathered on Russky Island, close to Vladivostok. The first face-to-face meeting between the two presidents did not end with a press conference or joint statement, but Putin said later that the talks were wide-ranging and that, for North Korea to denuclearize, it must have absolute guarantees ‘of its security [and] preservation of sovereignty’. A treaty to that effect with North and South Korea, Russia, the US, China and Japan all signing might well accomplish denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, he mused. Plainly, he thought the US was the most reluctant of the possible partners in guaranteeing peace in the region.205 Sporadic acts of violence confused the issue. In September, for example, the Russian coastguard seized two North Korean fishing boats in Russian waters after one of them attacked a Russia patrol vessel that was inspecting the other for poached fish. North Korean motorboats were present as well. There were injuries on both sides. Eventually, 161 North Korean crewmen were detained and diplomatic activity between Moscow and Pyongyang grew heated. A month later, Russian border guards fired on North Korean fishing boats, and arrested 21 crew members for poaching.206 So the MID was learning first hand that nothing could be taken for granted when dealing with North Korea. Japan A two-day official visit to Moscow by Prime Minister Abe in May 2018 assuaged some of Russian anxieties about the Far East. He and Putin discussed ownership of the Kurils, again fruitlessly, and agreed on several joint business projects. Points of departure included Russian military drills on the islands and plans for the installation of a US land-based missile defence system (Aegis Ashore) on Japanese territory.207 They consulted again in Vladivostok during the Eastern Economic Forum, where the Russian president suddenly proposed that the two countries sign a peace treaty before Christmas, with no conditions attached. Abe did not respond at the time and the Japanese government said the next day that it preferred to have the territorial issue settled first.208

220  Russia in the world

Figure 5.3  Russia’s Far Eastern Neighbourhood. Source: Asia Times, 5 April 2019. Also, https://www.freeworldmaps.net/russia/east/map.html.

When Lavrov and Japan’s foreign minister, Taro Kono, opened the first round of talks on the Kurils in Moscow in January 2019, it was plain already that Russia would not bend on ownership of the islands. One of Russia’s concerns was that, if it gave up on some of the territory, Japan would allow the US to build a base there (Figure 5.3).209 Abe’s death in August 2020 may lead to changes in the relatively accommodating pattern of Moscow–Tokyo relations, and not necessarily for the better. Abe encouraged economic ties, and tried to secure Japan’s northern frontier against China and North Korea by normalizing relations with Russia. He visited Moscow eleven times between 2013 and 2019, always hoping for an agreement on the Kurils. Whatever hopes there were for this happening were dashed in 2020 by the constitutional amendment that forbids territorial concessions and, in fact, Russia has become too close to China for Japan’s interests ever to take priority. Without Abe in office, the future of Russia-Japan relations was even less certain than it had been with him there.210 Africa Although Russia has been dealing with a cross-section of African countries for a long time, especially in arms sales, by 2018 Western analysts began to see broader approaches to the Kremlin’s activities there. More attention was driven by an assumption that Putin was trying to guarantee Russia a place as an authentic global player at a time when the US seemed to be pulling back and China’s global influence was growing.

Russia in the world  221 Military and strategic deals were front and centre at the Russia–Africa Summit, in Sochi, the economic importance of which was described in Chapter 4. Economic and military ties with Sudan, Libya, the Central African Republic (CAR), Gabon, Algeria, Mozambique, Angola, Eritrea, Tunisia, Uganda, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and others provide Russia with about 13 per cent of its arms sales market, several military bases and access to mineral and energy resources. In the case of the CAR, entrée to the country’s vast diamond supply was one of the reasons why the MID worked hard to resolve internecine wars over the lucrative diamond trade.211 Russia’s first ever delivery of weapons to Gabon, small arms in this case to combat poachers, came in November 2019.212 Russian, American and Chinese lobbying for influence in Africa and Latin America was reminiscent of the ‘Great Game’ between the European Powers in the nineteenth century, though this time the arena was more dangerous, for the Great Power protagonists had to deal with myriad sovereign countries, some of which were competing, and sometimes warring, with each other, or caught up in civil war. Already closely associated with South Africa through the BRICS, Moscow strengthened the relationship by sending two nuclear-capable bombers, a military cargo plane and a passenger jet to that country in October 2019 to acknowledge deeper military cooperation. The visit, the first to Africa with nuclear-capable planes, echoed a similar trek to Venezuela in December 2018.213 Plans to construct a permanent base in Sudan for the Russian navy were finalized in December 2020 (see Chapter 7). Russian forces were involved elsewhere in Africa more directly. Russian mercenaries operated in Mozambique in the south, where several were killed, and in Libya in the north.214 In the latter case, Putin told Merkel that Russian soldiers were provided by a private security organization called the Wagner Group, which did not represent the Russian state, nor were the mercenaries paid by the Russian state.215 They fought together with the so-called Libyan National Army (LNA), led by General Khalifa Haftar, against the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. Haftar is supported with arms from Egypt and the UAE, while Turkey provisions the GNA. The UN’s embargo on arms shipments to Libya is, obviously, very leaky, which leaves Libya poised for another Syria scenario.216 Cautious in the case of Libya, when, in April 2020, Haftar declared himself head of the country, Lavrov termed the action ‘very disturbing’ and called for mutual concessions and compromises. Moscow sought to self-isolate from Haftar.217 Soon thereafter, Haftar began losing battles to Turkish-backed forces and so offered to participate in peace talks. In late May 2020, the US said that Russia sent 14 fighter jets to back up the Wagner Group. Russia denied it.218 The prize, of course, is Libyan oil. Acting as mediators in January 2020, Russia and Turkey chaired peace talks in Moscow. The government based in Tripoli signed a ceasefire agreement, but the LNA asked for more time to consider the terms. Leaders of the two factions would not deal with each other, so Russian and Turkish

222  Russia in the world diplomats acted as liaisons between them.219 No peace, no war, is not likely to work for long.

Coronavirus: manifestations for the world order Although the coronavirus pandemic posed a threat to all states, the way each state dealt with the infectious disease disrupted the global order. The ‘every man for himself’ approach adopted by most countries, and an apparent unwillingness to share research data on vaccines, rendered the traditional notion of international ‘leaderships’ impotent. Washington, which many assumed would lead the way in combating the virus, instead frantically tried to shift all responsibility to China and the WHO while it quickly became the epicentre of the pandemic itself. The US also tried to ban exports of respirators made by 3M to Canada and Mexico under contract, but was thwarted by immediate threats of retaliation: the US needed Canadian nurses and Mexican-made components for ventilators. ‘Vaccine nationalism’, as analysts called it, could have consequences for the world order far beyond the matter of health (see Chapter 9).220 Pandemic aid Before it was overwhelmed by COVID-19 itself, Russia’s military sent 15 large plane loads of medical aid to Italy, the first epicentre of the disease in Europe. These flights included 104 army doctors, virologists, epidemiologists, vehicles and diagnostic and disinfectant equipment, some of it emblazoned with ‘From Russia with Love’.221 The propaganda value of the aid from Russia was tarnished by complaints from some circles in Italy that Moscow sent the wrong expertise, and mean-spirited accusations from Western media and politicians that it was merely a publicity stunt intended to counter Chinese influence and divide NATO and the EU.222 La Stampa called the aid ‘useless’ and accused Russia of sending GRU spies with the medical aid. The Russia MoD responded with angry denials.223 The harping notwithstanding, senior Italian officials thanked Russia profusely, and the aid was welcomed on the ground. Russia sent over test kits to Central Asian states, Iran, North Korea and Mongolia prior to the loads of medical supplies and personnel going to Italy. Altogether Russia dispatched forms of medical assistance to 30 countries before Putin placed a prohibition on exporting medical mask, respirators and other protective equipment on 2 March ‘to protect. the interests of Russian citizens’. That ban was lifted on 30 April and, almost immediately, Russia sent medical research supplies and two mobile labs to the Republic of Congo. By mid-August, Russia had provided at least some medical aid to 46 countries, mostly former Soviet republics and the Asia-Pacific area. More than a dozen African and Latin American countries were recipients as well. The aid usually consisted of test kits, protective equipment, medicines and medical personnel.224 As the pandemic spread, Russia provided, or leased out, huge

Russia in the world  223 transport planes, the Antonov AN-225, enabling other countries to deliver PPEs around the world. Altruistic or not, such acts may have been effective instruments of soft power. *** Although there were no obvious post-pandemic changes foreseen in Russia’s foreign policy, its growing reliance on China and India for trade, investment and technology, and its continued isolation from the West, may eventually prove fatal to Russia’s aspirations as a global player – especially if it settles for a junior partnership role with China. Moreover, Putin seemed uncertain in his own neighbourhood. As 2020 came to a close, the Kremlin’s favoured candidates in Kyrgyzstan (Jeenbekov) and Moldova (Dodon) failed to keep their seats. An acknowledged success in the South Caucasus could become a pyrrhic one and Russia’s putative ally in Belarus sat on a shaky throne. The aura of strength on which the Russian president relies was fraying and, if enough Russians care about foreign policy, that may prove to be his Achilles’ Heel.

Notes 1 For background, Sergey Y. Marochkin, The Operation of International Law in the Russian Legal System. A Changing Approach. Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2019. 2 Putin, ‘Otkrytoe pis’mo Vladimira Putina k rossiiskim izbirateliam’, Izvestiia, 25 February 2000. 3 ‘Interv’iu v efire programmy “Zavtrak s Frostom” na telekanale “Bi-bi-ci”’, Kremlin.ru, 5 March 2000, kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/24194. 4 For the emphasis on Russian culpability in international crises see, e.g. Masha Gessen, The Future is History. How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. New York: Random House, 2017; Michael McFaul, From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia. New York: Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt, 2018; Mitchell Orenstein, The Lands in Between: Russia vs the West and the New Politics of Hybrid War. Oxford: OUP, 2019. 5 REDA 2000, Vol. 1, pp. 162–71 (National Security Concept), pp. 201–9 (Foreign Policy Concept); for an early study, Bobo Lo, Russian Foreign Policy in the PostSoviet Era. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. 6 On Russia’s reaction to NATO’s attacks on Belgrade, see Black, Russia Faces NATO Expansion, pp. 109–15. 7 Roger E. Kanet, ‘The failed Western challenge to Russia’s revival in Eurasia’, International Politics, Vol. 52, No. 5 (2015), pp. 503–33. 8 For the ‘Kosovo precedent’, UN International Court of Justice, ‘Accordance with International Law of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Respect of Kosovo. Advisory Opinion of 22 July 2010’, and the US Department of State, ‘Written Statement … Concerning the Request of the United Nations General Assembly for an Advisory Opinion on … Kosovo’, Chapter IV, Section 1, pp. 50ff, 17 April 2009 9 ‘Russia, Putin Held in Low Regard Around the World’, Pew Research Center, 5 August 2015. 10 Mikhail A. Molchanov, ‘Media Uses in Ukraine’s War with Itself’, in S.F. Krishna-Hensel, ed. Media in Process: Transformation and Democratic Transition. London: Routledge, 2016, p. 31; and Molchanov, ‘Russia as Ukraine’s “other”:

224  Russia in the world identity and geopolitics’, in Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewski, Richard Sakwa, eds. Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives (2016), op. cit., pp. 206–21. 11 Alexander Motyl, ‘Putin, just evil enough’, CNN.com, 25 July 2014. 12 For background, see Stephen J. Cimbala, ‘Russian Threat Perceptions and Security Policies: Soviet Shadows and Contemporary Challenges’, The Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies, Issue 14/15 (2013), on-line. 13 On this in the early days of the Ukraine crisis, see Stephen G.F. Hall, ‘Reconsidering western concepts of the Ukrainian conflict: the rise to prominence of Russia’s “soft force” policy’, in Andrey Makarychev, Alexander Yatsyk, eds. Vocabularies of International Relations after the Crisis in Ukraine. London: Routledge, 2016, Chapter 5. 14 For background on all of these see J.L. Black, Putin’s Third Term …, Chapter 6 and passim; for different perspectives on Russia’s place in the world in 2018, see Georgi Asatryan, ‘How the West still continues to misunderstand Putin’s Russia and Putinism’, Euronews.com, 14 May 2019; Michael Mandelbaum, ‘The New Containment’, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2019. 15 OPCW NEWS, ‘OPCW Issues Report on Technical Assistance Requested by the United Kingdom’, www.opcw.org/media-centre/news/2018/04/opcw-issues …, 12 April 2018. 16 ‘Report: Germany obtained sample of Novichok in the 1990s’, AP, Berlin, Deutsche Welle, 17 May 2018, and multiple others. 17 For a litany of sceptical analyses of the Skripal affair, see Rob Slane, the Blogmire series, http://www.theblogmire.com/the-10-main-holes-in-the-official-narrativeon-the-salisbury-poisonings-3-the-capability/, 23 August 2018. There are seven others in the series. See also John Helmer’s publications and blog. 18 ‘Novichok strikes (but doesn’t kill) again, and all the old questions re-emerge’, The Moscow Times, 5 July 2018. 19 See, e.g. Simon Jenkins, ‘If the Novichok was planted by Russia, where’s the evidence?’, The Guardian, 5 July 2018; ‘Russia’s 70 requests on Skripal poisoning case left unanswered’, TASS, 20 November 2018. 20 For background, see Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine. Crisis in the Borderlands. London: I.B. Tauris, 2015, and J.L. Black, ‘Crisis in Ukraine 2013–2015: A Paradigm for the New World Disorder’, in J.L. Black, Michael Johns & Alanda Theriault, eds. The New World Disorder. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2019, pp. 11–38. 21 Broadcasting Board of Governors & Gallup, ‘Post-Maidan Ukraine Opinion Polls’, 1 April 2014, https://archive.org/details/BBGUkraineOpinion/page/n3/ mode/2up; Gerard Toal, John O’Laughlin, Kristan M. Bakke, ‘Six Years and $20 billion in Russian investment later, Crimeans are happy with Russian annexation. Our survey shows high level of trust in Putin – though lower than in 2014’, The Washington Post, 18 March 2020. 22 For an interesting discussion, see Erika Harris, ‘What is the Role of Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Russia–Ukraine Crisis?’, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 72, No. 4, pp. 593–613. For a Russian perspective, Serhiy Kudelia, ‘The Donbass Rift’, Russian Politics and Law, Vol. 54, No. 1 (2016), pp. 5–27, here p. 5, and Kudelia, ‘Domestic Sources of the Donbas Insurgency’, PONARS Eurasia, Policy Memo 351 (September 2014). 23 Elise Giuliano, ‘The Origins of Separatism. Popular Grievances in Donetsk and Luhansk’, PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 396, October 2015. 24 For the full 9 December 2015 12th UN report from the Human Rights Monitoring Mission, http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/UA/12thOHCH​Rreport Ukraine.pdf. 25 For an update to 2019, see ‘Russia–Ukraine’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 242, 3 December 2019. For an argument that ‘civil war’ is the right terminology, see

Russia in the world  225 Jesse Driscoll, ‘Ukraine’s Civil War: Would Accepting This Terminology Help Resolve the Conflict?’ PONARS Eurasia, Policy Memo 572 (February 2019). 26 ‘Poroshenko predlozhil lishit’ Rossiiu prava veto v OON’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 13 April, 2018; ‘Ukraina rvet poslednie sviazi s SNG’, ibid., 12 April 2018; ‘Poroshenko intends to deprive Russia of veto rights in UN’, Kyiv Post, 13 April 2018. 27 For perspectives that challenge the official narrative, Volodymyr Ishchenko, ‘Far right participation in the Ukrainian Maidan protests: an attempt of systematic estimation’, European Politics and Society, Vol. 17, Issue 4 (2016), pp. 453–72; Gerard Toal, Near Abroad: Putin, the West and the Contest for Ukraine and the Caucasus. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. See also Josh Cohen, ‘Ukraine’s Got a Real problem with Far-Right Violence (And No, RT Didn’t Write This Headline)’, Atlantic Council, 20 June 2018; Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine, pp. 91–2, 97–9. 28 Ivan Katchanovski, ‘The Buried Maidan Massacre and its Misrepresentation by the West’, Consortium News, Vol. 25, No. 112, 22 April 2019. See also Volodymyr Ishchenko, ‘The limits of change and wishful thinking: lessons from Ukraine’s Euromaidan uprising’, The Broker Online, 26 July 2017, who says that the ‘least progressive’ elements of Ukraine shaped the Maidan protests. 29 Kait Bolongaro, ‘Russian Orthodox Church “a national security threat” to Ukraine, says president’, Politico, 28 July 2018; for background, see Maksym Bugriy, ‘The War and the Orthodox Churches in Ukraine’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 18 February 2015. 30 Gwendolyn Sasse, ‘Ukraine’s Poorly Timed Education Law’, Carnegie Europe, 2 October 2017; Elise Giuliano, ‘Is the Risk of Ethnic Conflict Growing in Ukraine?’, Foreign Affairs. Snapshot, 18 March 2019. 31 ‘Ukraina vvela sanktsii protiv Ermitazha, MGU i Muzeia imeni Pushkina’, Vedomosti, 15 May 2020. For a full list, see Ukrainian presidential website, https:// www.president.gov.ua/storage/j-files-storage/00/92/29/6c8cd10deca202dd91ee033 8e74da7d6_1589550379.pdf. 32 ‘Death Toll Up to 13,000 In Ukraine Conflict, Says UN Rights Office’, RFE/ REL, 26 February 2019. For a general account, see Nikolaus von Twickel, The State of the Donbass. A Study of eastern Ukraine’s separatist-held areas. Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting, Sweden, 1 March 2019. 33 ‘Update in criminal investigation MH17 disaster’, 19 June 2019, www.youtube. com/watch?v=Kq-L72slP18; Kirill Bulanov, Anina Didkovskaia, ‘Mezhdunarodnye rassledovateli obvinili v krushenii MH17 chetyrekh chelovek’, Vedomosti, 19 June 2019; Rahul Kalvapelle, ‘Malaysian transport minister refuses to blame Russia for downing of flight MH17’, Global News, 31 May 2018. 34 Dutch Safety Board, ‘Crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17. Hrabove, Ukraine, 17 July 2014’, The Hague, October 2015, pp. 7–8. This was a 279-page report. debcd724fe7breport_mh17_ceash.pdf. 35 For Kerry’s remarks on TV, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78r1qAHUVwY &feature=youtu.be&t=76. For a full revisionist study, Kees van der Pijl, Flight MH17, Ukraine and the New Cold War. Manchester, UK: Manchester UP, 2018. In a videoed testimony, one defendant said that he had left the Russian armed forces in 2008 and that no one in his volunteer unit had any access whatsoever to a BUK missile. It would have been impossible for them to get one. Mike Corder, ‘Suspect charged in downing of MH17 denies involvement’, Globe and Mail, 4 November 2020. 36 Ilya Arkhipov, ‘Putin tells Diplomats He Made Trump a New Offer on Ukraine at their Summit’, Bloomberg.com, 19 July 2018; reprinted in The Moscow Times, 20 July 2018; Mairead McArdle, ‘White House “Not Considering Supporting” Putin’s Ukraine-Referendum Proposal’, National Review, 20 July 2018; ‘Russia Blasts U.S. Rejection of Crimean Annexation’, The Moscow Times, 26 July 2018.

226  Russia in the world 37 ‘Ukraine preparing “powerful package” of sanctions over sham elections in Donbas – Turchynov’, UNIAN, 15 November 2018; ‘On the Illegal “Elections” in Donbas’, as delivered by Chargé d’Affaires Harry Kamian to the OSCE Special Permanent Council, Vienna, November 12, 2018; Kirill Krivosheev, ‘The Lessons of the Donbas Election Campaigns’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 29 October 2018. Problems with the Minsk II agreement are outlined in Kristian Atland, ‘Destined for deadlock? Russia, Ukraine, and the unfulfilled Minsk agreements’, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2020), pp. 122–39. 38 See, e.g. Alexander J. Motyl, ‘Ukraine’s TV President Is Dangerously ProRussian’, FP (Foreign Policy), 1 April 2019; Konstantin Skorkin, ‘Ukrainian Candidates Set to Haggle Ahead of Presidential Runoff’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 2 April 2019. 39 ‘Russia’s Passport Offer to East Ukrainians Slammed in Kiev, Washington’, The Moscow Times, 24 April 2019; ‘Reuters: Ukraine passes language law, irritating president-elect and Russia’, Kyiv Post, 25 April 2019; Brian Milakovsky, ‘How Ukraine’s new language law will affect Donbas’, Kyiv Post, 30 April 2019; Vladimir Socor, ‘Ukraine’s State Language Law Enshrines the Lingua Franca’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 16 May 2019. 40 ‘Zelensky: Border only “common” thing between Ukraine, Russia’, UNIAN, 2 May 2019; ‘Putin says Russians and Ukrainians Would Benefit from Shared Citizenship’, The Moscow Times, 29 April 2019. 41 ‘President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky discussed the reforms and counteraction to Russian aggression with the representatives of the United States’, 20 May 2019, www.president.gov.ua/en/news/prezident-ukrayini-volodimir-zelenskijobgovoriv-iz-predstav-55517. 42 ‘Zelensky’s idea of multilateral Donbass summit has right to exist – Lavrov’, Interfax, 9 July 2019; ‘Putin gotov obsuzhdat’ rasshirennuiu vstrechu po Donbassu’, Kommersant, 11 July 2019; Myroslava Gingadze, ‘Ukraine’s Zelenskiy Calls for Putin, Trump to Join Peace Talks’, VOA, 8 July 2019. 43 The OSCE Monitoring Mission blamed both sides OSCE, see ‘Statement of the Trilateral Contact Group’, 18 July 2019, https://www.osce.org/whoweare/425921;. 44 Illia Ponomarenko, ‘Zelensky calls Putin after 4 Ukrainian soldiers killed in Donbas’, Kyiv Post, 7 August 2019; Putin, ‘Telefonnym razgovor s Prezidentom Ukrainy Vladimirom Zelenskim’, Kremlin.ru, 7 August 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/ president/news/61279; Dar’ia Korzhakova, ‘Kreml’ raskryl detali telefonnogo razgovora Putina s Zelenskim’, Vedomosti, 7 August 2019. 45 Evan Gershkovich, ‘Signaling Readiness for Thaw, Russia and Ukraine Swap prisoners’, The Moscow Times, 7 September 2019; Angelina Krechetova, ‘Rossiia i Ukraina obmenialis’ zakliuchennym’, Vedomosti, 7 September 2019. 46 ‘Ukraine Agrees to Elections in Occupied East’, RFE/RL, 1 October 2019; ‘Ukraine Peace Talks Get Breakthrough as Kiev Accepts Compromise’, The Moscow Times, 2 October 2019; ‘Kreml’ povyshaet stavki v peregovorakh o pervoi vstreche Putina i Zelenskogo’, Vedomosti, 1 October 2019; Volodymyr Petrov, ‘Kyiv protesters rally against approval of “Steinmeir Formula” (Photos)’, Kyiv Post, 2 October 2019. 47 See ‘The Ukraine conundrum’, Chapter 4, Putin’s Third Term, pp. 91–124. 48 On the problem of volunteer battalions, see Tetyana Malyarenko, David J. Galbraith, ‘Paramilitary motivation in Ukraine: beyond integration and abolition’, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Vol. 16, Issue 1 (2016), pp. 113–38. 49 For Poroshenko’s nonsensical claim to the UN that all the deaths and all refugees were ‘at the hands of Russian backed terrorists and occupiers in Donbas’, www. president.gov.ua.en/nebws/vistup-prezidenta-ukrayini-na-samit-z-pitan-mirotvorchosti-143, 29 September 2015.

Russia in the world  227 50 For examples, see Steven Pifer, ‘How to End the War in Ukraine’, Foreign Affairs, 21 November 2019; Serhii Plokhy, M.E. Sarotte, ‘The Shoals of Ukraine’, Foreign Affairs, 22 November 2019. Typical is, ‘Death Toll Up To 13,000 in Ukraine Conflict, Says UN Human Rights Office’, RFE/RL, 26 February 2019, which fails to mention the ATO and ignores casualties caused by indiscriminate Ukrainian shelling of Donbas civilian sites. For a counterview, see Elise Giuliano, ‘The Origins of Separatism: Popular Grievances in Donetsk and Luhansk’, PONARS Eurasia. Policy Memo 396 (October 2015). 51 See Kristian Atland, ‘Destined for deadlock? Russia, Ukraine, and the unfulfilled Minsk agreements’, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2020), pp. 122–39. 52 Anna Vedernikova, Vladimir Kravchenko, Iuliia Mostovaia, Tat’iana Silina, ‘Test na sovmestimost’, ZN, UA, 9 November 2019; ‘Survey: Population of occupied Donbas believes Russia not involved in war;’, Kyiv Post and Ukrainetoday.org., 9 November 2019. The survey was conducted between 7 and 31 October 2019. 53 ‘Sovmestnaia press-konferentsiia po itogam vstrechi n “Normandskom format”’, Kremlin.ru, 10 December 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/6227. 54 Gordon M. Hahn, ‘Hope Against Hope in Paris: VVP, Ze, and Some from the West’, Russian and Eurasian Politics, 19 December 2019. For the Minsk Protocol in English, see https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/ UA_140905_MinskCeasfire_en.pdf. 55 ‘Zelenskii: obostrenie v Donbasse ne izmenit kurs na prekrashchenie voiny’, Kommersant, 18 February 2020; ‘Fighting Flares in Eastern Ukraine, Kiev and Rebels Blame Each Other’, The Moscow Times, 18 February 2020; Illia Ponomarenko, ‘Fierce fighting flares in Donbas, Ukraine reportedly loses positions’, Kyiv Post, 18 February 2020. 56 ‘Kreml’ otsenil perspektivu vkliucheniia DNR i LNR v sostav Rossii’, Vedomosti, 6 July 2020. 57 Natalia Datskevych, ‘Russia demands constitutional changes from Ukraine in Normandy peace negotiations’, Kyiv Post, 4 July 2020. 58 Ksenia Mironoiva, Ivan Sinergiev, ‘Voennym zavodam zakazali “Iunarmiiu”’, Kommersant, 12 March 2019. 59 Petro Poroshenko, ‘Putin Must be Punished’, New York Times, 5 December 2018; Andrew Higgins, ‘Russia is Squeezing A Key Port in Ukraine’, New York Times International, 22–23 December 2018; ‘President counts on the support of the Naval Forces of the NATO countries for the security of navigation in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov’, www.president.gov.ua/news/prezident-rozrahobvuyene-pidtrimku-vms-krayin-nato-dlya-bezr-51506, 29 November 2018. 60 ‘Ukraine opens high treason case against Poroshenko over Kerch Strait incident’, TASS, 21 May 2019. 61 On his Twitter feed, Petro Poroshenko@poroshenko, ‘Ne treba bigti do kramnits’ i skupati …, 29 November 2018; ‘Ukrainian President Calls to Impose Restrictions on Russian Citizens’, The Moscow Times, 29 November 2018; ‘Ukraina ogranichila v’ezd rossiiskim muzhchinam’, Vedomosti, 30 November 2018; Oleksiy Sorokin, ‘Ukraine bans Russian men between 16 and 60 from entering the country’, Kyiv Post, 30 November 2018. 62 ‘EU to extend sanctions against Russians amid holding elections in occupied Crimea’, 112 UA, 28 January 2020. 63 Peter Dickenson, ‘Is Saakashvili the right choice for Ukraine?’, Atlantic Council, 27 April 2020; ‘Ukrainian President Names Saakashvili to Head Reform Council’, RFE/RL, 7 May 2020. 64 On this, see Steven Blockmans, ‘Crimea and the quest for energy and military hegemony in the Black Sea region: governance gap in a contested geostrategic zone’, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Vol. 15, Issue 2 (2015), pp. 179–89.

228  Russia in the world 65 For general background, see; ‘Russia’s Relations with the South Caucasus’, Caucasus Analytical Digest, No. 109, 22 March 2019. 66 A year after the fact, an independent review commissioned by the EU and headed by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini blamed Georgia for starting the war. 67 ‘“Russia is Our Enemy’: The Reaction to Anti-Russian Protests in Georgia’, The Moscow Times, 20 June 2019. 68 ‘Podpisan Ukaz ob otdel’nykh merakh po obespecheniiu natsbezopasnosti Rossii i ee grazhdan’, Kremlin.ru, 21 June 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60805. 69 On this, see Emil Aslan Souleimanov, Eduard Abrahamyan, Huseyn Aliyev, ‘Unrecognized states as a means of coercive diplomacy? Assessing the role of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Russia’s foreign policy in the South Caucasus’, Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Vol. 18, Issue I (2018), pp. 73–86. 70 Putin by telephone, Kremlin.ru, 8 May 2018, en.Kremlin.ru/events/president/ news/57435. 71 ‘Meeting with the Prime Minister of Armenia’, Kremlin.ru, 14 May 2018, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/57459. 72 See Alexander Iskandaryan, ‘Armenia–Russia Relations: The Revolution and the Map’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 232, 22 February 2019, pp. 20–4. See also ‘Protests in Armenia. The Domestic Dimension’, Caucasus Analytical Digest, No. 108, 31 January 2019. 73 Fuad Shahbazov, ‘Could Vladimir Putin’s Visit to Azerbaijan Shift the Regional Balance of Power?’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 12 October 2018; Murad Ismayilov, ‘Azerbaijan and Russia: Towards a Renewed Alliance, for a New Era’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 232, 22 February 2019, pp. 2–11. 74 For documentation, see USSR Documents Annual, 1988 (1989), pp. 369–74; USSR Documents Annual 1989 (1990), pp. 73–7. 75 ‘Zasedanie diskussionnogo kluba “Valdai”’, Kremlin.ru, 3 October 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/61719. Igor Kurbanov ‘Karabakh Peace Talks Break Down as Azerbaijan and Armenia Operate at Cross-Purposes’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 4 March 2019; Ali Askanov, ‘Shadows of the April 2016 War: Armenia and Azerbaijan Back in a Deadlock?’ Eurasia Daily Monitor, 1 April 2019. 76 ‘Child, Woman Among Casualties in Nagorny Karabakh Heavy Fighting’, The Moscow Times (AFP), 27 September 2020; ‘Press Statement of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs’, 29 June 2019, https://www.osce.org/minsk-group/424346; Vasif Huseynov, ‘Azerbaijan, Armenia Respond to Growing US Engagement in South Caucasus’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 27 June 2019; ‘Na granitse Armenii i Azerbaidzhana proizoshlo vooruzhennoe stolkno’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 12 July 2020. 77 ‘Erdogan zaiavil o podderzhie Azerbaidzhana v konflikte vokrug Nagornogo Karabakha’, Vedomosti, 27 September 2020; ‘V Armenii ob’iavili voennoe polozhenie i vseobshchuiu mobilizatsiiu’, ibid.; ‘Peskov vpervye prokommentiroval konflikt v Nagornom Karabakhe’, Vedomosti, 28 September 2020. 78 Mariam Harutyunyan, Emil Guliyev, ‘Armenia, Azerbaijan Reject RussiaMediated Talks as Fighting Rages Over Karabakh’, The Moscow Times, 30 September 2020. For background, Vicken Cheterian, ‘The Uses and Abuses of History: Genocide and the Making of the Karabakh Conflict’, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 70, Issue 6 (2018), pp. 884–903; Eduard Abrahamyan, ‘NATO and CSTO in the Caucasus: Evolving Collision and Potential Engagement’, in Frederic Labarre, George Niculescu, eds. What a ‘New European Security Deal’ Could Mean for the South Caucasus. Study Group Information. Band 14 (2018), Vienna. 79 ‘Statement of the President of Russia, USA and France on Nagorno-Karabakh’, Kremlin.ru, 1 October 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/6413. 80 ‘Russian Colonel Zhilin: “This is Erdogan’s war against Russia for the Caucasus”’, The Armenian Weekly, 8 October 2020; Robert M. Cutler, ‘Without Russian Aid

Russia in the world  229 to Armenia, Azerbaijan Has the Upper Hand in Nagorno-Karabakh’, FP (Foreign Policy), 9 October 2020; Aleksandr Baunov, ‘Why Russia Is Biding Its Time on Nagorno-Karabakh’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 9 October 2020; Denis Kurenev, ‘Armeniia i Azerbaidzhan vnov’ obvinili dryg druga v narushenii peremiriia’, Vedomosti, 18 October 2020. 81 US Department of State, ‘U.S.–Armenia–Azerbaijan Joint Statement’, Media Note. Office of the Spokesperson, 25 October 2020, https://www.state. gov/u-s-armenia-azerbaijan-joint-statement/. 82 Putin, ‘Zasedanie diskussionnogo kluba “Valdai”’, Kremlin.ru, 22 October 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64261 83 ‘Karabakhskaia voina vse blizhe k Rossii’, Kommersant, 2 November 2020; ‘Putin, Erdogan discuss Syria, Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh – Kremlin’, TASS, 27 October 2020; Tom O’Connor, ‘Iran Boosts Border Defense Against Armenia–Azerbaijan Conflict, Israel and ISIS’, Newsweek, 27 October 2020; ‘Third Attempt at Nagorno-Karabakh Ceasefire Collapses Within Minutes’, The Moscow Times, 27 October 2020; ‘Nagorno-Karabakh Briefing, Oct 28’, The Moscow Times, 28 October 2020. 84 Mariam Harutyunyan, ‘Russia Pledges Help to Yerevan if Fighting Reaches Armenia’, The Moscow Times, 31 October 2020. 85 Putin, ‘Investitsionnyi forum “Rossiia zovet!”’, Kremlin.ru, 29 October 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64296. 86 United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, ‘NagornoKarabakh conflict: Bachelet warns of possible war crimes as attacks continue in populated areas’, Geneva, 2 November 2020, www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/ Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=26464&LangID=E. 87 ‘Zaiavlenie Prezidenta Azerbaidzhanskoi Respubliki, Prem’er-ministra Respubliki Armeniia i Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, Kremlin.ru, 10 November 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64384; Mark Galeotti, ‘Russia’s Influence in the South Caucasus is waning’, VTimes, 11 November 2020. 88 ‘Sessiia Soveta kollektivnoi bezopastnosti ODKB’, Kremlin.ru, 2 December 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64534; Pavel Felgenhauer, ‘Russia watches as Karabakh War Reaches Decisive Turning Point’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 29 October 2020; Mariam Harutyunyan, Emil Guliyev, ‘Armenia PM Urges Stronger Military Links With Russia’, The Moscow Times, 21 November 2020. 89 For wide-ranging essays on these matters, see Marlene Laruelle, ed. Russia’s Policy in Syria and the Middle East. CAP Paper, No. 212, Georgia Washington University, January, 2019. 90 ‘Pompeo says God may have sent Trump to save Israel from Iran’, BBC.com, 23 March 2019; Marco Carnelos, ‘Russia’s Next Move in the Middle East: Improving Relations with GCC’, Valda Discussion Club, 21 March 2019. 91 See the two overlapping essays by Eugene B. Rumer, ‘Russia, the Indispensable Nation in the Middle East’, Foreign Affairs, 31 October 2019, and ‘Russia in the Middle East: Jack of all Trades, Master of None’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 31 October 2019. 92 ‘Kosachev prokommentiroval ubiistvo iranskogo generala Suleimani’, RIA Novosti, 3 January 2020. 93 Erin Banco, Christopher Dickey, Asawin Suebsaena, ‘Iraq Tells Trump GTFO After Soleimani Strike’, The Daily Beast, 5 January 2020; ‘Putin, ‘Telephone conversation with French President Macron’, Kremlin.ru, 3 January 2020, Kremlin. ru/events/president/news/62539; ‘Kremlin Says Merkel, Putin to Discuss Middle East Crisis in Moscow’, The Moscow Times, 6 January 2010. 94 Leonid Bershidsky, ‘Putin Now Needs a Plan B on Iran’, Bloomberg Opinion, 7 January 2020; ‘Turkey, Russia Call for Libya Ceasefire as Rivals Clash’, The Moscow Times (from Reuters), 8 January 2020; ‘Turkey’s Latest Power Grab Has Europe on Edge’, Oilprice.com, 1 February 2020.

230  Russia in the world 95 Henry Meyer, Firat Kozok, ‘Putin Swallows Irritation at Erdogan as Syria Strains Ties’, Bloomberg, 5 February 2020; Bobby Ghosh, ‘Putin Discovers the Pain of being Erdogan’s Pal’, The Moscow Times, 7 February 2020; Ivan Safronov, Aleksei Nikol’skii, Svetlana Bocharova, ‘Rossiia vpervye ofitsial’no ob’vinila Turtsiiu v podderzhke voevikov’, Vedomosti, 20 February 2020; ‘Russia– Turkey Tensions in Syria, Explained’, The Moscow Times, 21 February 2020. 96 Michael Mainville, Maria Panina, ‘Turkey, Russia Agree Ceasefire in Syria’s Idlib’, The Moscow Times, 5 March 2020; ‘Rossiisko–turetskie peregovory’, Kremlin.ru, 5 March 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62936. 97 Robin Emmott, ‘EU regrets U.S. refusal to allow economic aid for Iran to fight coronavirus’, Reuters, 22 April 2020. 98 Igor Subbotin, ‘Rossii, Turtsii i Iranu pridetsia potesnit’sia v Sirii’, Nezavismaia gazeta, 5 April 2018. 99 Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, ‘OPCW Issues FactFinding Mission Reports on Chemical Weapons Use Allegation in Douma, Syria in 2018 and in Al-Kamadaniya and Karm Al-Tarrab in 2016’, 6 July 2018, www. opcw.org/news/article/opcw-issues-fact- …; OPCW, ‘Note by the Technical Secretariat. Report of the Fact-Finding Mission Regarding the Incident of Alleged Use of Toxic Chemicals as a Weapon in Douma, Syrian Arab Republic, on 7 April 2018’, S/1731/2019, 1 March 2019, www.opcw.org/sites/default/files/ documents/2019/03/s-1731-2019(e).pdf. On the whistleblowers see Aaron Maté, ‘OPCW executives praised whistleblower and criticized Syria cover-up, leaks reveal’, Gray Zone, 7 December 2020, https://thegrayzone.com/2020/12/07/ opcw-executives-whistleblower-syria-leaks/. 100 ‘US fails to provide visa to Russian expert set to speak at UNSC session, says source’, TASS, 26 April 2019. 101 ‘Vystuplenie i otvety na voprosy CMI Ministra … S.V. Lavrova …, Moskva, 20 avgusta 2019 goda’, www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/ cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/3757837; ‘Tens of Thousands Flee Russian-Led Onslaught on Syrian Opposition Enclave’, The Moscow Times, 21 August 2019. 102 ‘What Does Turkey’s Syria Offensive Mean For Russia?’ The Moscow Times, 10 October 2019; Mathew Petti, ‘Will the Syrian Kurds Ally With Iran and Russia Against Turkey?’, The National Interest, 9 October 2019; Jamie Dettmer, ‘Analysts: Russia Goes Along with Turkey, But Has Red Lines’, VOA, 10 October 2019; Olesya Asrakhova, Andrew Osborn, ‘Russia says “unacceptable” Turkish incursion into Syria Must be temporary’, The Moscow Times, 15 October 2019. 103 Ron Blitzer ‘Trump celebrates “great day for civilization” …’, Foxnews.com, 18 October 2019; ‘Erdogan otkazalsia obsuzhdat’ Siriiu s vitse-prezidentom SShA’, Vedomosti, 16 October 2019; ‘Clashes and Confusion Mar Attempt at Cease-Fire in Syria’, New York Times, 18 October 2019. 104 Henry Meyer, ‘Putin Faces Syria Money Crunch After U.S. Keeps Control of Oil’, Bloomberg, 30 October 2019; ‘Zaiavleniia dlia pressy po itogam rossiiskoturetskikh peregovorov’, Kremlin.ru, 22 October 2019, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/61876; Pavel Felgenhauer, ‘Putin’s Intricate Syrian Balancing Act’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 24 October 2019. 105 US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, ‘After the Deal: A New Iran Strategy’, Remarks at The Heritage Foundation, 21 May 2018, www.state.gov/secretary/ remarks/2018/05/282301.htm. 106 See ‘The Geopolitics of the Black Sea’, Geopolitical Monitor, 7 September 2018. 107 Putin, ‘Meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’, Kremlin.ru, 11 July 2018, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/57983. 108 Putin, ‘Meeting with the adviser of the Supreme Leader of Iran on international issues Ali Akbat Verayati’, Kremlin.ru, 12 July 2018, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/57984; ‘Iranian Supreme Leader’s Adviser Hails “Very Constructive” Meeting with Putin’, RFE/RL, 12 July 2018.

Russia in the world  231 109 Zev Chafets, ‘Netanyahu gets a Timely Campaign Gift from Putin’, The Moscow Times, 13 April 2019. 110 Putin, ‘Vstrecha s Prem’er-ministrom Izraila Bin’iaminom Netan’iakhu’, Kremlin.ru, 30 January 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62698. 111 ‘Peregovoru s Prezidentom Egipta Abdel’fattakhom Sisi’, Kremlin.ru, 17 October 2018, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/58839. 112 ‘Vstrechi Ministra’, www.mid.ru/ru/vizity-ministra, 21–29 December 2018; ‘Putin Sends Congratulations’, Kremlin.ru, 30 December 2018, Kremlin.ru/ events/president/news/59625. 113 ‘“We Don’t Want to Entertain Possibility of Clash With Turkey in Syria”, Kremlin Says’, The Moscow Times, 15 October 2019; Ruslan Mamedov, ‘What To Expect From Putin’s Visit to Saudi Arabia?’, The Moscow Times, 15 October 2019. 114 ‘Gosudarstvennyi visit v Saudovskuiu Araviiu’, Kremlin.ru, 14 October 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/61799. 115 See a discussion of this by Henry Meyer and Ilya Arkhipov, ‘Putin Has Syria “Headache” and the Kremlin’s Blaming Assad’, Bloomberg, 28 April 2020. 116 ‘Report: Russia, Turkey, Iran agree to remove Syria’s Assad’, MEMO. Middle East Monitoring, 4 May 2020; ‘Putin may be rethinking why Russia is in Syria’, Arab News, 9 May 2020. 117 For a detailed assessment from the American viewpoint, see Seth G. Jones, ed. Moscow’s War in Syria, Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) Report, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, May 2020. 118 See Kristi Raik, Andras Racz, eds. Post-Crimea Shift in EU–Russia Relations: From Fostering Interdependence to Managing Vulnerabilities. Talinn: International Centre for Defence and Security, 2019. For a summary of Russia– EU relations, see Viktoria Akchurina, Vincent Della Sala, ‘The European Union, Russia and the Post-Soviet Space: Shared Neighbourhood, Battleground or Transit Zone on the New Silk Road?’, Europe–Asia Studies, Vol. 70, Issue 10 (2018), pp. 1543–51. For a study of continuing relationships, Thomas Hoffmann, Andrey Makarychev, Russia and the EU: Spaces of Interaction. London: Routledge, 2019. 119 For an early recognition of long-term interdependence of the EU and Russia, and the damaging mistakes made by both sides during the Ukraine crisis, see essays in Avoiding a New ‘Cold War’: The Future of EU–Russia Relations in the Context of the Ukraine Crisis, LSE Ideas. Dahrendorf Forum. Special Report, March 2016. 120 Vasile Rotaru, Russia, The EU and the Eastern Partnership. Building Bridges or Digging Trenches? Stüttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2018. 121 For a discussion, see Anno Tiido, ‘Russian-Speakers in the European Union: Positive Interdependence or a Source of Vulnerability?’, in Kristi Raik, Andras Racz, eds. Post-Crimea Shift in EU–Russia Relations, op. cit., pp. 250–68. 122 ‘Estonian President Meets With Putin On Rare Visit To Russia’, RFE/RL, 19 April 2019; Kristi Rajk, ‘Same, but Different: Estonia and Russia Presidents held a Historic meeting’, RKK/ICDS (International Centre for Defence and Security’, Estonia), 23 April 2019; ‘Estonia Demands “Annexed” Territory Back From Russia’, The Moscow Times, 20 November 2019. 123 For cultural and political background, Aliide Naylor, The Shadow in the East. Vladimir Putin and the New Baltic Front. London: I.B. Tauris, 2020. See also Michael Kofman, ‘Assessing a Russian Fait Accompli Strategy’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 259, 30 November 2020, pp. 9–12. 124 ‘Lukashenka potreboval ot Putina edinykh s Rossiei tsen na gaz’, Vedomosti, 6 December 2018; see also Kommersant, 7 December 2018. 125 ‘Russia, Belarus Decry Loss of “Brotherly Trust” Ahead of Summit’, The Moscow Times, 25 December 2018; ‘I do not call Russia “brotherly state”

232  Russia in the world anymore – Lukashenka’, Belsat, 25 December 2018. Putin, ‘Meeting with President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenka’, Kremlin.ru, 29 December 2018, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59618. 126 See, e.g., Andrew Higgins, ‘As Putin Pushes a Merger, Belarus Resists’, New York Times International, 6–7 July 2019; Grigory Ioffe, ‘Belarus–Russia Integration: No Decision Yet’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 26 June 2019; ‘Lukashenka rasskazal, kak daleko Belorusiia i Rossiia gotovy zaiti v voprose ob’edineniia’, Interfax, 15 February 2019; ‘We’re Ready to Unite With Russia, Belarus Leader Lukashenka Says’, The Moscow Times, 15 February 2019. 127 ‘Minfin ob’iasnil uvelichenie platezhei inostrannykh zaemshchikov v adres Rossii’, RBC.ru, 3 July 2019 128 ‘Plan dlia Siouza’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 6 September 2019; ‘Druzhba nalogov’, Kommersant, 16 September 2019; ‘Belarus Rejects Russia’s “Unacceptable” Terms of Integration’, The Moscow Times, 2 October 2019. 129 ‘Hundreds Protest in Minsk Against Union with Russia’, RFE/RL, 7 December 2019; ‘Hundreds Protest Russia–Belarus Integration Pact in Minsk’, The Moscow Times, 9 December 2019. 130 US Department of State, ‘Travel to the U.K., Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, January 29–February 4, 2020’. 131 Andrew Higgins, ‘Belarus Leader’s Enemy: Russia’, New York Time International, 27–28 June 2020; ‘Belarus Accuses West, Russia of Destabilization Ahead of Polls’, The Moscow Times, 19 June 2020. 132 ‘Mercenaries in Minsk’, The Bell, 1 August 2020; ‘Russian Mercenaries in Belarus: All You Need to Know’, The Moscow Times, 30 July 2020; ‘Posol Rossii rasskazal o planakh zaderzhannykh v Belorussii rossiian’, Vedomosti, 30 July 2020; ‘Putin ne obshchalsia s Lukashenka po povodu zaderzhannykh rossiian’, Kommersant, 31 July 2020; ‘Zaderzhannye v Belorussii rossiiane utverzhdaiut, chto napravlialis’ v Latinskuiu Ameriku’, Vedomosti, 3 August 2020. 133 ‘Lukashenka on street actions’, BELTA, 10 August 2020; Morozova, ‘Lukashenka zaiavil o kooordinatsii protestov iz-za rubezha’, Vedomosti, 10 August 2020; Tatiana Kalinovskaya, ‘Challenger Demands Lukashenka “Hand Over Power” After Election Crackdown’, The Moscow Times, 10 August 2020; for background, see Alex Foster, ‘Belarus Presidential Election: Lukashenka’s Gamble and its Geopolitical Implications’, Geopolitical Monitor, 4 August 2020. 134 Svetlana Bocharova, Aleksei Nikol’ski, ‘Rossiia gotov okazat’ vlastiam Belorussii silovuiu pomoshch. No tol’ko v krainem sluchaev – i nadeetsia na dialog’, Vedomosti, 28 August 2020. 135 See, e.g. ‘V Kremle raskryli detali telefonnogo razgovora mezhdu Putinym i Lukashenka’, Vedomosti, 15 August 2020; Mark Galeotti, ‘Lukashenka’s Gamble on Thuggishness’, The Moscow Times, 13 August 2020; ‘Spasenie dlia Lukashenka – novye vybory. Inache-tut vse tol’ko nachinaetsia’, Komsomnol’skaya Pravda, 14 August 2020; ‘V tzsentre Minska vnov’ sobralis’ tysiachi protivnikov Lukashenka’, Kommersant, 17 July 2020. 136 ‘Lukashenko poprosil Putina peredat’ Merkel’ pros’bu ne vmeshivat’sia’ v dela Belorussem’, Kommersant, 19 August 2020; for potential impact on Russia, Paul Goble, ‘Belarus Now Dividing Russians More Deeply and Permanently Than Ukraine Did in 2014’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 13 August 2020; Ben Aris, ‘Tikhanovskaya to hold first transition council meeting, EU opens talks with opposition’, Intellinews, 18 August 2020. 137 ‘Maria Kolesnikova was detained and taken away by unknown persons in the center of Minsk’, tut.by (Minsk), 7 September 2020, https://news.tut.by/economics/699502; Tatiana Kalinovskaya, ‘Belarus Opposition Figure Detained at Ukraine Border’, The Moscow Times, 8 September 2020; ‘Na Ukraine zaderzhali dvukh chlenov Koordinatsionnogo soveta oppozitsii Belorussii’, Vedomosti, 8 September 2020.

Russia in the world  233 138 ‘Belorusskaia oppozitsiia ob’iavila o sozdanii partii “Vmeste”’, Kommersant, 1 September 2020; Dmitri Trenin, ‘Game Over for Lukashenko: The Kremlin’s Next Move’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 17 August 2020; Nigel Gould-Davies, ‘Putin and the Belarusian Question’, The Moscow Times, 2 September 2020 139 Putin, ‘Vstrecha s Prezidentom Belorussii Aleksandrom Lukashenko’, Kremlin. ru, 14 September 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64031; David Walsh, ‘Lukashenko goes to Russia: What the meeting of “brothers” could mean for Belarus’, Euronews, 14 September 2020; ‘Belarus Opposition Leader Criticizes Putin’s Talks With “Usurper” Lukashenko’, The Moscow Times, 14 September 2020. 140 Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto, ‘Democracy and the Future of Belarus’, 16 October, https://uoft.me/ belarus2020. 141 See, e.g. Vladimir Socor, ‘Russia’s Regime-Change Experiment in Belarus Runs Into Difficulties’ (Parts One & Two), Eurasia Daily Monitor, 7 & 8 October 2020. For other aspects, ‘40 people were included in the EU sanctions list due to the situation in Belarus’, RAPSI, 2 October 2020; Dario Thuburn, ‘Belarus Opposition Leader Takes Risky Diplomatic Path’, The Moscow Times (from AFP), 1 October 2020. 142 Gleb Mishutin, ‘V Tretii paket sanktsii ES protiv Belorussii popadet blizkii k Aleksandru Lukashenko biznes’, Vedomosti, 22 November 2020; ‘Thousands March in Belarus Opposition Rally in Minsk’, The Moscow Times, 22 November 2020. 143 ‘Russia Says It Welcomes Formation of Government in Moldova’, The Moscow Times, 10 June 2019; ‘Moldova v stupila v dosrochnoe dvoevlastie’, RBC.ru, 9 June 2029. 144 Ania Tsoukanova, ‘Moldova Vote Winner Promises “Balanced” Ties With the West, Russia’, The Moscow Times, 16 November 2020. 145 Richard Gonzales, ‘Trump Greets Hungary’s Hard-Right Leader in Oval Office’, NPR, 14 May 2019; Guy Verhofstadt @guyverhofstadt, 20 May 2019; ‘Russia Is Targeting Europe’s Elections. So Are Far-Right Copycats’, New York Times, 12 May 2019; Matt Apuzzo, Adfam Sarariano, ‘Russia and far right spreading disinformation ahead of EU election, investigators say’, Independent, 12 May 2019; ‘The Russians are coming for European elections! Just don’t ask for proof’, RT, 12 May 2019. 146 For some examples, see, Jacob Iacoboni, ‘The Russian propaganda against Renzi: and Grillo’s web backs it up’, La Stampa, 11 November 2016 (translated by Anna Martinelli); Caroline Wheeler, ‘Revealed: the Russia Report’, The Times, 17 November 2019; Gabriel Gatehouse, ‘German far-right MP “could be absolutely controlled by Russia”’, BBC News, 5 April 2019; Gennady Rudkevich, ‘In the West, Russia Backs Chaos, not Candidates’, The Moscow Times, 25 February 2020. See also Aleksandr Fisher, ‘Demonizing the enemy: the influence of Russian state-sponsored media on American audiences’, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 36, Issue 2 (2020), pp. 281–96. 147 Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, ‘Russia’, HC 632, printed on 21 July 2020, available at the Committee’s website, isc.independent.gov.uk. 148 ‘Frantsiia proverit informatsiiu o prichastnosti Rossii k protestam “zheltykh zhiletov”’, Vedomosti, 9 December 2018; Carol Matlack, Robert Williams, ‘France to Probe Possible Russian Influence on Yellow Vest Riots’, Bloomberg News, 9 December 2018; Leonid Bershidsky, ‘France’s Yellow Vests Aren’t Imported from Russia’, Bloomberg. Opinion, 11 December 2018. 149 ‘Plenarnoe zasedanie Peterburgskogo mezhdunarodnogo ekonomicheskogo foruma’, Kremlin.ru, 25 May 2018, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/57556. 150 For discussion, see, Michael Schwartz, ‘Top Secret Russian Unit Seeks to Destabilize Europe, Security Officials Say’, New York Times, 8 October 2019;

234  Russia in the world ‘Secret Russian Military Intelligence Unit Linked to “Campaign to Destabilize Europe”’, The Moscow Times, 9 October 2019; Mark Galeotti, ‘Quick thoughts about the GRU’s Unit 29155’, In Moscow’s Shadows, 9 October 2019. 151 ‘Merkel: NATO Must Refocus on Russia Threat’, Atlantic Council, 8 July 2018. 152 ‘Russiisko-germanskie peregovory’, Kremlin.ru, 18 August 2018, Kremlin.ru/ events/president/news/58328; ‘Merkel Hosts Putin in Meeting of Convenience Forged by Trump’, The Moscow Times, 17 August 2018. 153 Dmitrii Azarov, ‘Putin i Merkel, provodiat vstrechu v Kremle’, Kommersant, 11 January, 2020. 154 ‘Press-konferentsiia po itogam rossiisko-germanskikh peregovorov’, Kremlin.ru, 11 January 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62565. 155 Mark Galeotti, ‘The Geopolitics of Theresa May’s Dutiful Handshake’, The Moscow Times, 1 July 2019. 156 ‘7 Things British PM Boris Johnson Has Said About Russia’, The Moscow Times, 13 December 2019; ‘British PM Johnson Says Not Possible to Reset Russia Relations’, RFE/RL, 24 December 2019. 157 ‘Andrei Kelin naznachen poslom Rossii v Velikobritanii’, Kommersant, 5 November 2019. 158 ‘UK imposes sanctions against human rights abusers’, BBC News, 6 July 2020; ‘Russia Will Impose Counter-Sanctions on U.K.–Kremlin’, The Moscow Times, 6 July 2020; Mark Landler, ‘Britain, Charting Its Own Course On Human Rights, Imposes New Sanctions’, New York Times, 6 July 2020. 159 ‘Italy’s PM Slams Economic Sanctions Against Russia’, The Moscow Times, 16 October 2018; ‘Conte to push for EU–Russia de-escalation at Summit’, Euractiv, 28 June 2018. 160 Putin, ‘Interv’iu gazete “Korrr’ere della Sera”’, Kremlin.ru, 4 July 2019, Kremlin. ru/events/president/news/60912. 161 Ekaterina Eremenko, ‘Putin tretii raz vstretilsia s papoi Rimskoi Frantsiskom’, Vedomosti, 4 July 2019. 162 Parliamentary Assembly, ‘Citing Crimea, PACE suspends voting rights of Russian delegation and excludes it from leading bodies’, 4 April 2014, www. assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/AssemblyList/MP-Alpha-EN.asp; ‘Rossiiu mogut iskliuchit’ iz Soveta Evropy v 2019 godu’, Vedomosti, 10 October 2018. 163 ‘Gosduma vystupila protiv vozvrashcheniia k rabote v PASE’, Interfax, 17 January 2019. 164 Parliamentary Assembly/Assemblée parlementaire, Resolution 2287 (2019) Provisional version, 25 June 2019, http://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/XrefXML2HTML-en.asp?fileid=27980&lang=en. For a discussion, Tom Luongo, ‘Russia Grinds Out Win in Europe’, The Duran, 20 May 2019. 165 Jack Laurence, ‘Ukraine, Georgia, Baltic States form PACE alliance against Russia’, Kyiv Post, 2 October 2019. 166 ‘Russia Will Respond to New EU Sanctions – Reports’, The Moscow Times, 16 March 2019. 167 Putin, ‘Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu Sobraniiu’, Kremlin.ru, 20 February 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59863; Evgeny Pudovkin, ‘Evroparlament progolosoval za uzhestochenie podlhoda k Rossii’, RBC.ru, 12 March 2019; ‘Statement by the Vice-President of the Commission/High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy – A European human rights violations sanctions regime’, 12 March 2019, europarl. europe.eu/plenary/en/home/html. 168 ‘Ukraine High On the Agenda As Macron Hosts Putin in Southern France’, RFE/RL, 189 August 2019; ‘Prezidenty Rossii i Frantsii sdelali zaiavleniia dlia pressy i otvetili na voprosy zhurnalistov’, Kremlin.ru, 19 August 2019, Kremlin. ru/events/president/news/61336.

Russia in the world  235 169 ‘The future of the EU. Emmanuel Macron warns Europe: NATO is brain-dead’, The Economist, 7 November 2019. The interview was conducted in Paris on 21 October. 170 Rym Montaz, ‘Macron, Putin seek solution on Ukraine, clash over Syria and protests’, Politico, 19 August 2019; ‘Trump Calls to Allow Russia to Join G7, Moscow Responds with Skepticism’, The Moscow Times, 21 August 2019; Michael Crowley, ‘Trump Says Russia Should be Readmitted to G7’, New York Times, 20 August 2019. 171 ‘Sovmestnaia press-konferentsiia s Prezidentom Finliandii Sauli Niiniste’, Kremlin.ru, 21 August 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/61349. 172 Caroline Linton, ‘Trump delays G7 until fall and calls it an “outdated group of countries”’, CBSnews.com, 30 May 2020; Patrick Wintour, ‘Trump cancels summit but says he will invite Putin to later G7 event’, The Guardian, 31 May 2020. 173 ‘Telefonnyi razgovor s Prezidentom Frantsii Emmanuelem Makronom’, Kremlin. ru, 16 November 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64426; Kira Latukhin, ‘Putin i Makron obsudili Karabakh, Donbass, Liviiu i koronavirus’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 7 November 2020. 174 Peter Nikolaev, ‘Delo Naval’nogo: Rossiia rasshirit sanktsii protiv ES’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 22 December 2020. 175 ‘Joint Statement by … Putin and … Bermudez on common approaches in international affairs’, Kremlin.ru, 2 November 2018, Kremlin.ru/supplement/5354. For typical uproar in the US, see CNN ‘The Situation Room’ with Wolf Blitzer, 2 November 2018. 176 Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, ‘Rossiia vysoko otsenivaet soiuznicheskoe vzaimodeistvie s Kuboi na mezhdunarodnoi arene’, Minoborony Rossii, 14 November 2018. 177 ‘Putin, ‘Peregovory s Prezidentom Kuby Migel Diaz-Kanelem Bermudesom’, Kremlin.ru, 29 October 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/61930. 178 For a regional analysis, see Vladimir Rouvinski (Columbia), ‘Venezuela: A Dead End for Russia? (Op-ed)’, The Moscow Times, 25 January 2019; Kirk Semple, ‘Echoes of the Past in Venezuela Crisis, but Heard More Lightly’, The New York Times, 24 January 2019. 179 Ernesto Londono, Nicholas Casey, ‘Trump Administration Discusses Coup Plans with Rebel Venezuelan Officers’, New York Times, 8 September 2019. 180 ‘Russian Mercenaries Arrive in Venezuela to Shore Up Maduro’s Rule’, The Moscow Times, 26 January 2019; Russian Finance Ministry Says Venezuela Must Repay Its Debt to Moscow on Time’, The Moscow Times, 29 January 2019; Ellen R. Reid, ‘Amid the Venezuelan Crisis, A Look At Oil, Russia and Trump’, Forbes, 23 January 2019; Lesley Wroughton, Brian Ellsworth, ‘U.S. calls Russian deployment of planes to Venezuela “reckless escalation”’, Reuters, 25 March 2019. 181 Bolton, The Room Where It Happened, op. cit., p. 255. 182 Putin, ‘Meeting with Heads of international news agencies’, Kremlin.ru, 6 June 2019, en.Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60675. 183 ‘Russia Sends Lavrov To Venezuela to “Counteract” U.S. Sanctions’, The Moscow Times, 4 February 2020; ‘O vstreche Ministra … Lavrova s Poslom Respubliki Kazakhstan …’, 3 February 2020, www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/ news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/4018579. 184 ‘Vladimir Putin vystupil na itogovoi plenarnoi sessii XVI zasedaniia narodnogo diskussionnogo kluba “Valdai”’, Kremlin.ru, 3 October 2019, Kremlin.ru/ events/president/news/61719. 185 For a discussion, see Stephen F. Cohen, ‘Will Russia Be Driven From the West?’, The Nation, 18 September 2019. 186 ‘US, Britain Expand Terrorism – says Karzai’, 9 April 2018, afghancentral. blogspot.com/2018/04/us-britain-expand-terrorism-says-karzai.html.

236  Russia in the world 187 ‘U.S. Afghanistan Reject Russian-Sponsored Peace Talks’, RFE/RL, 22 August 2018; ‘Afghanistan “will not attend” Russia-led peace talks’, Al-Jazeera, 22 August 2018; ‘Taliban Accepts Russian Invitation to Talks, Afghan Govt Declines’, The Moscow Times, 23 August 2018; see also Tanisha M. Fazal, Sarah Kreps, ‘The United States’ Perpetual War in Afghanistan’, Foreign Affairs. Snapshot, 20 August 2018. 188 ‘Russia Challenges U.S., in Hosting Taliban at Afghan Talks’, The Moscow Times, 9 November 2018. 189 Carter Malkasian, ‘How the Good War Went Bad’, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2020; C. Todd Lopez, ‘U.S., Taliban Negotiate 7-Day Proposal for Reduction in Violence’, U.S. Dept. Of Defense, 13 February 2020. 190 Shukhrat Khurramov, ‘Pompeo in the “Stans”’, Asia Times, 2 February 2020. 191 For mixed opinions, see, e.g. Farkhad Sharip, ‘Language-Motivated Emigration of Russian Causes Shortage of Qualified Workers in Kazakhstan’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 1 November 2018; ‘Sredniaia Asiia prevrashchaetsia v uspeshnyi amerikanskii platsdarm’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 30 August 2018; Paul Goble, ‘Russia Losing Out to U.S. in Central Asia, “Nezavisimaia gazeta” Says’, Window on Eurasia, 31 August 2018. 192 Umida Hashimova, ‘After Putin’s Visit, Russia’s Footprints in Uzbekistan is Set to Grow’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 22 October 2018. 193 ‘President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, Resigns After Three Decades’, The Moscow Times, 19 March 2019; Elena Mukhametshina, Svetlana Bocharova, ‘Pochemu Nursultan Nazarbaev ushel v otstavku’, Vedomosti, 19 March 2019. 194 ‘“We Don’t Call It Annexation” Kazakh Leader Says of Crimea’, The Moscow Times, 4 December 2019; Z. Nemtsova, ‘My ne nazyvaem to, chto proizoshlo v krymy annekasiei’, Deutsche Welle, 34 December 2019; ‘Kassyn-Jomart Tokayev gives interview to Deutsche Welle’, Kazinform, 4 December 2019; Rico Isaacs, ‘Russia–Kazakhstan Relations and the Tokayev–Nazarbayev Tandem’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 248, 6 March 2020, pp. 2–5. 195 ‘Vstrecha liderov stran ShOS’, Kremlin.ru, 14 June 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/ news/president/60749. 196 Government of the Russian Federation, ‘Meeting of the Council of Heads of Government of the SCO Member States, Tashkent, 2 November 2019’, government.ru/news/38252/. 197 See, e.g. Paul Goble, ‘Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan Frontier Descending Into Deadly Violence’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 1 August 2019; ‘Raikhan Tashtemkhanova, Zhanar Medeubayeva, Aizhan Serikbayeva and Madina Igimbayeva, ‘Territorial and Border Issues in Central Asia: Analysis of the Reasons, Current State and Perspectives’, The Anthropologist, Vol. 22, Issue 3 (2015), pp. 518–25; Edward Lemon, Bradley Jardine, ‘How is Russia Responding to China’s Creeping Security Presence in Tajikistan?’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 248, 6 March 2020, pp. 6–8. 198 ‘TsIK Kirgizii naznachit povtornye parlamentskie vybory v techenie dvukh nedel’, Vedomosti, 6 October 2020; Tolkun Namatbayeva, ‘Kyrgyz Leader Missing as Power Vacuum Persists’, The Moscow Times, 8 October 2020; Andrew Higgins, ‘A Convicted Kidnapper is Chosen to Lead Government of Kyrgyzstan’, New York Times, 10 October 2020; Temur Umarov, ‘Who’s in Charge Following Revolution in Kyrgyzstan?’, The Moscow Times, 26 October 2020; George Voloshin, ‘Third Regime Change in Fifteen Years Upends Kyrgyzstan Politics (Part Two)’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 27 October 2020. 199 ‘Press statements following Russian–Indian talks’, Kremlin.ru, 5 October 2018, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/58732. 200 ‘Russia Offers to Help Mediate Between India and Pakistan’, The Moscow Times, 28 February 2019; ‘Putin obsudil s indiiskim prem’erom konflikt mezhdu Indiei i Pakistanom’, Vedomosti, 28 February 2019.

Russia in the world  237 201 Andrew Tillett, ‘India dashes hopes for military role for Quadrilateral Security Dialogue’, Australian Financial Review, 11 March 2019; Jesse Parker Gale, Andrew Shearer, ‘The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and the Maritime Silk Road Initiative’, CSIS Brief, 2 April 2018. 202 ‘Rossiiskoe oruzhie speshit v Indiiu’, Kommersant, 26 June 2020; ‘Russia to Speed Up S-400 Delivery to India Amid China Standoff’, The Moscow Times, 26 June 2020; ‘India or China: Who Will Russia Support In A Possible Clash Between India & China’, The Eurasian Times, 26 June 2020. 203 ‘SMI nazvali vozmozhnye sroki vstrechi Putina i Kim Chen Yna v Rossii’, Vedomosti, 4 June 2018. 204 ‘Kim Chen Yn otpravilsia na vstrechu s Vladimirom Putinym na bronepoezde’, Kommersant, 24 April 2019. 205 ‘Rossiisko-severokoreiskie peregovory’, Kremlin.ru, 25 April 2019, Kremlin.ru/ events/president/news/60363. 206 ‘Rossiiskie pogranichniki zaderzhali bolee 160 brakon’erov iz KNDR posle ataki v Yaponskom more’, Vedomosti, 18 September 2019; ‘Russia Detains 2 North Korean Vessels After Attack’, The Moscow Times, 17 September 2019; ‘Russia Opens Fire on North Korean Fishing Boat, Detains 21 for Alleged Poaching’, The Moscow Times, 2 October 2019. 207 On this, see Satoshi Iizuka, ‘Abe continues balancing act with Putin as he chases peace treaty, disputed isles at Moscow summit’, The Japan Times, 27 May 2018. 208 ‘Putin predlozhil Yaponii mir bez predvaritel’nykh uslovii’, Vedomosti, 12 September 2018; ‘Putin Proposes to Sign a Peace Deal This Year with Japan’s Abe’, The Moscow Times, 12 September 2018. 209 Putin, ‘Negotiations with Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe’, Kremlin.ru, 22 January 2019, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59713; Erik Khzmalyan, ‘Abe’s Kuril Gamble: Why Russia Will Never Return the Islands’, Geopolitical Monitor, 30 January 2019; Julia Vvroda, Lyubov Poryvaeva, ‘Kyoda soobshchilo ob otkaze Rossii obsuzhdat’ peredachu Yuzhnykh Kuril Yaponii’, RBC.ru, 14 July 2019. 210 On this, see James D.J. Brown, ‘The Coming Chill: Russia–Japan Relations After Abe’, The Moscow Times, 31 August 2020. For general background, Dmitry Streltsov, Nobuo Shimotyomai, eds. A History of Russo-Japanese Relations. Leiden: Brill, 2019, esp. Hidetake Kawaraji, ‘Japanese–Russian Relations in the 21st Century, 2001–2015’, pp. 521–34. 211 Dionne Searcey, ‘Russia’s Grab for Diamonds, and Influence’, The New York Times International, 5–6 October 2019. 212 RF Ministry of Defence, ‘Minoborony Rossii bezvozmezdno postavilo Gabonu strelkovoe vooruzhenie dlia bor’by s brakon’erstvom’, 28 November 2019, https://function.mil.ru/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12264134@egNews; ‘Russia Delivers First Weapons to Central Africa’s Gabon’, The Moscow Times, 29 November 2019; Mac Bennetts, ‘Russia delivers weapons to Gabon to fight elephant poachers as it builds role in Arica’, The Times, 30 November 2019. 213 ‘Russia Sends Nuclear-Bombers to South Africa in “Friendly” Visit’, The Moscow Times, 22 October 2019. 214 David D. Kirkpatrick, ‘Russian Snipers, Missiles and Warplanes Try to Tilt Libyan War’, New York Times, 5 November 2019; Pjotr Sauer, ‘7 Kremlin-linked Mercenaries Killed in Mozambique in October – Military Sources’, The Moscow Times, 31 October 2019. 215 ‘Press-konferentsiia po itogam rossiisko-germanskikh peregovorov’, Kremlin.ru, 11 January 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62565. 216 For background, see Tarek Megerisi, ‘Libya’s Global Civil war’, European Council on Foreign Relations, Policy Brief, June 2019. 217 Barbara Podrugina, ‘Liviiskii fel’dmarshal Khaftar ob’iavil sebia glavoi Livii’, Vedomosti, 28 April 2020.

238  Russia in the world 218 ‘Russian envoy blasts “fabricated” allegations of Wagner’s Group’s presence in Libya’, TASS, 9 June 2020; Dmitri Simes, ‘Russia, Seeking to Bolster its Influence Steps Up Intervention in Libyan Conflict’, CSNnews.com, 10 June 2020. 219 Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘Speech by … Lavrov during a joint press conference with … M. Chavushoglu, …’, 13 January 2020, www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/3993236. Thomas J. Bollyky, Chad P. Brown, ‘The Tragedy of Vaccine Nationalism. Only Cooperation Can End the Pandemic’, Foreign Affairs, 27 July 2020. Bollyky is director of the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Brown is Reginald Jones Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. 220 See Thomas J. Bollyky, Chad P. Bown, ‘Vaccine Nationalism Will Prolong the Pandemic’, Foreign Affairs, 29 December 2020. 221 Andrew Osborn, ‘“From Russia With Love”: Putin Sends Aid to Italy to Fight Virus’, Euractiv, 22 March 2010, and Financial Times same date; John Follain, Stepan Kravchenko, ‘Putin Flies Help to Virus-Stricken Italy, Exploiting EU Fumble’, Bloomberg Politics, 22 March 2020. 222 Gunnar Ulson, ‘As Russia sends Aid, US and NATO Sneer and Smear’, NEO. New Eastern Outlook, 8 April 2020; Dario Cristiani, ‘Russian Motives behind Helping Italy’s Coronavirus Response: A Multifaceted Approach’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 8 April 2020. 223 ‘Coronavirus, la telefonata Conte-Putin agita il governo: “Più che aiuti arrivano militari russi in Italia”’, La Stampa, 25 March 2020; ‘80% of Russia’s Coronavirus Aid to Italy “Useless” – La Stampa’, The Moscow Times, 26 March 2020; ‘Gli aiuti russi in Italia sul Coronavirus, il generale Kikot e i timori sull’intelligence militare in azione’, La Stampa, 1 April 2020; ‘Italy and Russia Spar Over Alleged Coronavirus Spies’, The Moscow Times, 3 April 2020. 224 ‘Russia Supplies Ex-Soviet States, Iran, North Korea with Coronavirus Test Kits’, The Moscow Times, 12 March 2020; ibid., 23 March 2020; Alena Iakushova, ‘Pravitel’stvo snialo zapret na vyvoz iz Rossii meditsinskikh masok’, Vedomosti, 3 May 2020; ‘Russia will send two mobile laboratories to DR Congo to combat COVID-19’, Interfax, 5 May 2020; ‘Russia Sends Coronavirus Aid to 46 Countries – Analysis’, The Moscow Times, 19 August 2020. For a list of aid recipients, see report by Russia’s Centre for Advanced Governance (CAG) published in Moscow in August 2020, https://cpur.ru/research_pdf/russian-anticovid-aid-2020.pdf.

6 New Cold War The Russian Federation, the United States – and China

Introduction When Gorbachev pronounced the post-World War II Cold War over in the late 1980s, and the West declared ‘victory’, the general mood on both sides was one of relief and, for many in the East, uncertainty. In the West, where certainty reigned, politicians and media waxed euphoric and agreed with the notions encapsulated in a Frances Fukuyama essay titled ‘The End of History’. His message was that communism had imploded, leaving no alternatives to liberal democracy. Representative government, free markets and consumer cultures had won the day and the history of human governance had reached its ultimate goal. The essay was rendered in book form a few years later.1 Fukuyama became a celebrity guru of political philosophy until his theory, or at least the popular understanding of it, was overtaken by events. By 2018, even he had changed his tune, writing then that ‘democracy has retreated in virtually all regions of the world’.2 Looking back in 2020, a writer for Global Research accurately defined the post-Cold War era as one of ‘rampant intellectual triumphalism’ driven by a ‘misguided optimism’.3 Seeking explanations for the apparent reversal of fortunes, Stephen Holmes and Ivan Krastev argued, in The Light that Failed (2020), that the current wave of populism and xenophobia in Eastern Europe was a direct consequence of the too-soon and too-urgent compulsion of many countries to become liberal democracies after 1989.4 In a more cold warrior-like piece, former US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland (of ‘fuck the EU’ fame as she meddled in Ukraine’s Maidan uprising in 2014), blamed it all on Putin’s ‘increasingly Soviet’ methods.5 Soon after Fukuyama’s foray into political philosophy fame, the Soviet Union disappeared and citizens in former Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe and the peoples of 14 of the USSR’s 15 Union Republics rejoiced over new found or newly restored independence. Many, perhaps most, citizens of the Russian Federation also were pleased that they were about to build a new society as friend and partner of the Western states, or so they assumed. Circumstances quickly made that dream unattainable. Deep-rooted internal problems and habits formed over 70 years of communist rule, coupled with Western indifference to, or ignorance of, Russia’s needs and expectations, DOI: 10.4324/9781003158646-7

240  New Cold War soon persuaded Russian leaders that they were alone in the world and would have no help in restoring an element of dignity to the Russian state. This perception was confirmed, as far as the Kremlin was concerned, when NATO and the EU began gobbling up former Warsaw Pact states and Soviet republics, and by a tendency of American politicians to make their country’s ‘exceptionalism’ an actual creed. Unabashed Western triumphalism humiliated Russians and turned them resentful. In the meantime, millions of ethnic Russians in newly sovereign states fretted that they might now be treated as second-class citizens, and looked to the Kremlin for relief. As we have seen, after the 1990s Russia’s answer was to gird up to fend off both real and imagined enemies at home and abroad, and to counter Western intrusions into what Moscow still believed was its own sphere of influence. Although Putin’s criticisms of the West tended at first to be reactive, a speech he delivered at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 was aggressively proactive and set Moscow’s tone for the Russian–American relationship. He reminded the audience that the ‘Cold War left us with live ammunition’, referring to ‘ideological stereotypes [and] double standards’. A unipolar world poses a danger for everyone, he went on, because it leads to a lack of restraint on the part of the powerful. He condemned the US for ‘uncontained’ reliance on military force, overstepping boundaries to force its policies on other countries, weaponizing space, and much more. Lavrov repeated many of these charges a few days later.6 Just prior to Putin’s speech, the US secretary of defense had implied that Russia was a potential enemy and US politicians accused Russia of re-opening the Cold War – a presidential election campaign was underway in the US and Russia was again a useful target for vote-getting rhetoric. A new Cold War was already in motion. There have been moments in Putin’s tenure when Russian–US relations verged on improvement. In 2001, Putin immediately offered sympathy for the 9/11 attack and help in the American fight against international terrorism and, in 2015, he again tried to persuade Washington to join Moscow in a campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. As Dmitri Trenin pointed out, whether or not they were serious these initiatives were stymied by Western assessments of Russia’s actions in Chechnya and Ukraine. A greater opportunity for change came with the election in 2008 of Barack Obama who, with Vice President Joe Biden, desired to normalize bilateral relations with Russia. Compromises on START, Afghanistan and, temporarily, a slowdown of US plans to deploy air-defence missiles in Eastern Europe soon followed. Nevertheless, the ‘reset’ in Russian–US relations agreed by Hillary Clinton and Lavrov in March 2009, didn’t last long. Washington’s European missile defence system project revived, while the Magnitsky case and rhetorical bombast in election campaigns on both sides pushed it aside. Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014 sealed its fate.7 The coronavirus pandemic might have presented another opportunity for Russian–American cooperation, if decades of public attitude shaping on both sides hadn’t mitigated against it. ***

New Cold War  241 The notion that they are in a new Cold War has gripped writers on Russian foreign policy in recent years. Whereas most Western authors blame the Kremlin for the new confrontation almost unconditionally, Stephen F. Cohen reasoned that the deterioration of Russian–American relations was largely a result of Washington’s indifference to Russia’s legitimate security concerns. Others, like Andrei Tsygankov, wrote that the West failed to recognize that Russia would always fight back to protect its national interests even when it is clearly the weaker of the competitors, and John J. Mearsheimer pointed to the expansion of NATO as the villain in the piece. 8 These were lonely voices. Mark Kramer treated the confrontation as a replay of traditional Great Power rivalries, with China a stronger protagonist than Russia. Many analysts, in fact, believe that the real post-Soviet Cold War is between the US and China, not the US and Russia.9 The hyperbole of the new dichotomy was perhaps best represented in July 2020 by comments made to Lavrov by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who said that America has ‘lost its mind, morals and credibility’ and was ‘pushing egoism, unilateralism and bullying to the limit’. At almost the same time, Pompeo told an audience in Philadelphia that America was unique among nations, able to champion the ‘dignity of every human being made in the image of God’ and represents to the world ‘the star that shines brightest when the night is the darkest’. In this extraordinarily myopic speech, he went on to fault China for harsh abuses of human rights and did not mention Russia.10 Be that as it may, this chapter deals for the most part with the Kremlin’s relationship with the American White House.

Moscow and Washington face off in 2018 In the midst of all the ‘collusion’ accusations raised against his team, Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy of 2017 named Russia as a major threat to ‘American power, influence, and interests’, and his former envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, informed students at Duke University that ‘Russia’s never gonna be our friend’.11 On his part, Trump congratulated Putin after his inauguration in May, 2018, and, according to the Russian media, said that he hoped to establish better relations with Russia.12 In a September 2018 interview for the independent Novaia Gazeta, Trenin assumed that Moscow and Washington would face each other in ‘hybrid wars’ for some time and predicted that the forthcoming US mid-term elections would have a strong Russophobic theme to them.13 Although he was right in that last regard, regularized links between upper-level officials from both countries remained constant. These included senior military personnel. Distrust of each other’s motives remained equally constant. Diplomatic squabbles erupted on a regular basis, few of them major, many of them petty.14 For instance, much ado about Trump’s controversial invitation to Putin to visit the US was overtaken by Washington’s expulsion of 60 Russian embassy officials because of the Skripal affair, and Moscow’s

242  New Cold War tit-for-tat retaliation. Reciprocal closures of consulates in Seattle and St. Petersburg saw chances for a summit, if the proposal was ever serious, dim.15 A few days after the diplomatic wrestling match began, the US Treasury Department added 24 more Russian individuals and 24 entities to its list of sanctioned people and companies compiled under the ‘Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act’ (CAATSA) enacted in January 2017. The new wave of sanctions represented a response to Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election, whereas earlier ones referred to its activities in Ukraine and Syria.16 By that time, the American list of sanctioned Russians had grown to 569 people and entities.17 The silliness reached a peak when two dancers from the Bolshoi ballet were refused entry to the US even though they were invited to perform at the Lincoln Center, and pilots and crews with Aeroflot, the only Russian airline with regular flights to the US, had difficulty obtaining visas.18 Early in 2019, the US space agency, NASA, rescinded an invitation to Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Russian space agency, even though NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine was in Russia a few months before that to observe a two-man crew space launch. In place since 2014, the entry embargo had been lifted temporarily for the 2019 visit, and then revoked at the last minute. The suddenly renewed ban put future space cooperation in jeopardy.19 A few Western political analysts saw the quickness of American willingness to penalize Russia for any perceived threat and its increasingly inflamed rhetoric as counterproductive; still more believed it necessary and even pushed Washington towards direct confrontation.20 Russia (and China) made it clear that they were preparing to defend themselves.21 The horrors of 9/11 seemed to have been forgotten as American politicians and editorialists began insisting that Russia was a greater threat than ISIL.22 The American unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear accord and subsequent imposition of new sanctions on Teheran was a turning point in the new Cold War. Calling the US renunciation a ‘gross’ violation of the norms of international law, and pledging to maintain a close working association with Iran, Lavrov set new lines in the sand.23 In this case, most Western European countries agreed with Moscow. Speaking at Russia’s annual Victory Day Parade in 2018, Putin again took a swipe at Washington by remarking that ‘behind new threats, the same old ugly features are emerging: selfishness and intolerance, aggressive nationalism and claims to exceptionalism’.24 Not surprisingly, a Levada survey conducted in June found that Russians saw the US as the country most hostile to them (78%), distantly followed by Ukraine (49%) and the UK (38%). Belarus (49%), China (40%) and Kazakhstan (32%) were considered the friendliest.25 All the hostility in the air notwithstanding, negotiations for a Trump visit to Russia intensified. Bolton was in Moscow in late June to discuss the ­potential meeting and Trump himself regularly advocated such talks.26 The meet was scheduled for 16 July, in Finland, just four days after a NATO ­summit in Brussels. No preconditions were required for this first  official

New Cold War  243 encounter between the two presidents.27 In the meantime, an American congressional delegation of Republicans led by Alabama Senator Richard Shelby spent a week in Russia, 30 June to 5 July, sat down with Lavrov, Volodin and members of the Federation Council and claimed to have discussed many serious issues frankly and, Shelby said, laid the groundwork for ‘better relations’ – perhaps.28 All this became moot in August 2018, when Washington announced another series of sanctions. Concluding that Russia violated the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical and Biological Weapons in the Skripal case, the US government restricted American exports to, and financial transactions with, Russia as a first step. A second stage, scheduled for a few months later called for lesser diplomatic relations and a near cessation of trade. The latter stage depended on Russia’s willingness to renounce all use of chemical weapons and allow field inspections by UN experts.29 Moscow ignored these demands and the new round went into effect in due course. In addition to the economic restrictions outlined in Chapter 4, the sweeping bill called for a commission to evaluate Putin’s personal wealth, and affirmed that the US would never recognize the Crimean Peninsula as Russian. Worried about actions that their own president might take, sponsors of the Bill also set a two-thirds minimum Senate vote needed if he called for withdrawal from NATO.30 Russia reacted typically, calling the proposed sanctions illegal and ‘unfriendly’. Considering that the demands made by legislators in Washington were extraordinarily interventionist and unlikely to be heeded by any country capable of withstanding them, the response was mild.31 Assistant Secretary of State A. Wess Mitchell laid the US position out to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in late August, 2018. Opening with the statement that US diplomacy must be backed by ‘military power that is second to none’, he then provided the Committee with a long list of sanctions that, he declared, had seriously damaged Russian firms and at the same time created the means for ‘Russia [to] live up to its commitments under the Minsk Agreements. But in all of these areas, it is up to Russia, not America, to take the next step.’ This had been the unaltered American stance since 2014. Apparently, he wasn’t aware, or didn’t care, that Russia has no specific obligations under the Minsk Agreement and that Ukraine does. Moreover, while accusing Russia of meddling in US elections, quite correctly, his own boast that ‘from the Caucasus to Central Europe we are promoting energy diversification, fighting corruption, and competing for hearts and minds’ unwittingly acknowledged that the US was itself meddling everywhere on a grand scale.32 The 2018 summit Shortly before the Putin–Trump summit, special counsel Robert Mueller issued indictments against 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking the Democratic Party’s computers during the 2016 presidential election

244  New Cold War campaign. Twelve other Russians had been charged in February, though the July batch of indictments was the first against Russian government agents. As a result of this announcement, American media gurus flooded the airwaves and print media with demands that Trump confront Putin aggressively; many also expressing concern that Trump might give away something unwittingly.33 Neither side had high expectations: the US would have liked Russia to give them a free hand with Iran and Russia hoped for a settlement on Ukraine and perhaps even some sanctions relief. No such agreements were reached. There was no transcript of their conversation and no major policy decisions announced. A post-summit press conference provided viewers with an extraordinary scene of Trump accepting Putin’s denial of any interference in the US election campaign as true. The American political and media arenas rang with outrage, while the Russian media, and Lavrov, revelled in Putin’s apparent media victory.34 The gist of their conversation trickled out a few days after the summit when Trump invited Putin to Washington, ‘so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed, including stopping terrorism, security for Israel, nuclear proliferation, cyberattacks, trade, Ukraine, Middle East Peace and North Korea’.35 The invitation sparked still more indignation in the US, mostly from Democrats. Talk shows took on an almost frenzied tone and congressmen launched discussions about further sanctions against Russia. The outcry prompted Trump’s office to postpone the second meeting. Putin then turned the issue around and said that, if conditions were right, he would invite Trump to Moscow after his own visit to Washington.36 Mid-term elections in USA Russiagate and the widespread conspiracy theory that Putin had put Trump in office, were constant underlying themes in the rancorous mid-term US political campaign.37 The clear Democrat Party victory in America’s House of Representatives meant that Russia was going to be an even larger target when the House changed hands in January 2019. There were signs of what was coming already in November 2018: the US Treasury imposed a new round of financial sanctions against Russian business interests in Crimea, plans for a Trump–Putin side-line meeting in Paris were cancelled, and, as we have seen, there was confusion over invitations to senior Russian business people to attend the annual Davos Forum.38 The release in December 2018 of two detailed reports on Russian attempts to influence the US 2016 election via social media sealed the fate of the Russiagate saga. These studies, prepared by private cybersecurity companies and university-based researchers for the US Senate intelligence committee, described how Russian trolls used Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other social media to persuade voters to the detriment of Hillary Clinton and to the advantage of Donald Trump. The investigations charged that the i­ nfluence campaign was conducted by a company in St. Petersburg, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, one of the Russians

New Cold War  245 indicted in February.39 A spokesperson for the Kremlin belittled the reports for failing to demonstrate how the Russian government might be responsible.40 As it happened, Putin and Trump met during a solemn ceremony in November at the Arc de Triomphe and later at a working lunch with other world leaders. Both said they would have a more substantial meeting later in the month on the margins of the G-20 in Buenos Aires.41 That didn’t happen: on 29 November, Trump abruptly cancelled the meeting with Putin because, he said, Russia did not return ships seized from Ukraine during the Kerch Strait crisis. They did speak briefly in Argentina and, according to Putin, expressed opposing positions on the Sea of Azov affairs: ‘he has his own position on these issues … I have mine’.42 A few days later, a senior US State Department official told a meeting of the North Atlantic Council that ‘we want the Russians to absorb the message that they need to release the [Ukrainian] crews or there will be consequences and the pain will grow over time’.43 As we have seen, the crews were released – a year later, as part of a prisoner exchange with Ukraine. The Mueller report In a year-end grasp at some sort of accommodation, Putin sent a New Year’s greetings letter to Trump saying that the Kremlin was open to a ‘wide-ranging’ dialogue. There was no immediate reply.44 Nevertheless, the two presidents were clearly relieved when, in April, the now-public Mueller report proclaimed that there was no hard evidence of collusion between Trump’s campaign team and Russia, though there were lots of contacts, and considerable evidence of Trump obstructing justice at home.45 Most Russian analysts recognized that there would be no relief in the Russophobia of America’s Democrats, who vowed to keep an investigation going. As Dmitri Trenin put it in a tweet: That the #Mueller investigation does not support allegations of TrumpKremlin collusion won’t lead to Russia becoming less toxic in US. Critics won’t take no for an answer, &will double down, w/more sanctions. Also, the election meddling charge stands.46 Indeed, Congress went on the attack again, making any idea that Russian– US relations might improve a fantasy. Nina L. Khrushcheva, a prominent Russian-American professor who acknowledged that ‘normally [she] would not side with the Kremlin’, called the American tendency to blame Russia for everything an American ‘Russian derangement syndrome’ and predicted it would get worse if the Democrats won the presidency. She wondered if the ‘Russophobia found in some segments of America’s political class and media has become pathological’.47 Whether her analysis is accurate or not, the name-calling on both sides make the 2021 deadline for extending the New START the most important date in Cold War history.

246  New Cold War

International interaction As the post-Mueller dust settled, Trump and Putin held a one-hour telephone conversation, in which they discussed Venezuela, North Korea, Ukraine, trade and the potential for a new nuclear accord. Trump did not raise the issue of Russian interference in the 2020 election, thereby angering Democrats and giving the media something to expound upon. The Mueller report was mentioned only in passing. The important thing, of course, was that the two presidents were talking. Asked about Venezuela, Trump told reporters in Washington that the Kremlin was not seeking to ‘get involved’ there, or so Putin told him. They both called the conversation constructive.48 Constructive or not, it was already clear that Russia and Putin were back in play as the bête noire of the next US election, more than a year away. When Trump suddenly pulled US troops out of Syria, leaving their allies, the Kurds, to face Turkish forces, ex-ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul called the decision a GOP ‘gift to Putin’.49 Not to be left out of the ‘Russia did it’ game, Hillary Clinton startled the Democratic slate by tagging Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Democratic nominee hopeful Tulsi Gabbard ‘assets’ being groomed by Russia. If, in fact, Russians were trying to ‘undermine American democracy’, as they are so often accused of doing, their efforts looked pretty meagre beside the mud-slinging and conspiracy theory harangues the Democrat and Republican parties and their third-party funders fired at each other. There were more important issues separating the two countries. In addition to their positions on Ukraine, Syria and Venezuela, Moscow and Washington remained on opposite sides when it came to further NATO enlargement (Montenegro [2017], North Macedonia, [2020], Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia and Ukraine) and the independence of Kosovo, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. They were competitors for influence in large regions, such as Central Asia, the Middle East and parts of Latin America, and found it all too easy to scapegoat each other whenever a major international crisis broke out. Russophobia in action Interpol was dragged into the new Russia–US confrontation when last-minute American pressure helped prevent Russian Aleksandr Prokopchuk from becoming its president. Frontrunner for the post and one of four vice presidents of Interpol, Prokopchuk faced intense lobbying from Washington, London, the Baltic States and Ukraine, who successfully supported a South Korean for the position. Hyperbole aimed at Prokopchuk implied that he would govern Interpol in the interests of the Kremlin. An angry Moscow called the action ‘unprecedented interference’ and pointed out that Prokopchuk could not govern in Russia’s interest, even if he wanted to. Interpol has 192 member countries, each with one vote for president; it has no power to arrest, rather it gathers and distributes intelligence on crimes and

New Cold War  247 individuals. Its 13-person executive committee, chaired by the president, operates by consensus. A German secretary general runs its daily affairs. Achieving the presidency of Interpol could have propaganda value for Moscow, but not much else. Nevertheless, soon after the election, zealous Putin critics abroad, such as William Browder and Garri Kasparov, began lobbying Western governments to have Russia expelled from Interpol.50 In fact, few writers played a greater role than Browder when it came to demonizing Russia and Putin in the North American court of public opinion. In addition to his widely-read book on the Magnitsky Case, his addresses to the US Congress and the Canadian Parliament, and multiple appearances on television as an ‘expert’ on Russia, shaped thinking everywhere, especially since there was rarely, if ever, anyone invited to speak with a contrary perspective. Kasparov, self-exiled Russian citizen, former chess champion and politician, who chairs the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, rails everywhere against Putin. Another Putinophobe lionized in the West in spite of his shady background and openly-expressed desire to foster revolution in Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was invited to share his opinions on Russia’s prospects with the American Council on Foreign Relations in April 2019.51 The former Russian prime minister and prominent oppositionist, Kasyanov, has toured Canada and the US underscoring Putin’s villainy. In 2014, he was invited before the House of Lords EU External Affairs SubCommittee in London’s Houses of Parliament to be questioned on how the EU should respond to Russian military intervention in Ukraine. None of the Russian ‘liberals’ have had any trouble finding publishers in the West for their anti-Putin scenarios. Whatever their credentials, the guiding factor in seeking their opinions seems to be that they are Russian, or lived in Russia, and are known to oppose Putin.52 Although what they have to say bear many truths, these efforts are uniquely one-sided. Knowing beforehand almost exactly what their stance will be, institutions that invite them to speak about Russia to legislative bodies, influential think-tanks and academic forums, contribute to a witness-leading manipulation of public opinion and perhaps even help shape foreign policy in Western countries. A reviewer for the prestigious American journal, Foreign Affairs, recently encapsulated this phenomenon by complaining that Russia has not been studied in the US to the extent that the USSR was. Instruction in the history and language of Russia has almost disappeared, and ‘a great deal of U.S. journalism on Russia suffers from hyperbole, paranoia, and clichés’.53 A prominent Russian-American scholar of international affairs wrote in 2019 that the ‘high-intensity of Russophobia within the American media, overblown even by the standards of previous threat narratives, could no longer be explained by differences in national values or by bilateral tensions. The new fear of Russia is reflected by domestic political polarization and growing national unease over America’s identity and future direction’.54 Of course, Russian media and politicians can be described in the same way, and

248  New Cold War the Russian official line is presented more purposely and consistently than the American one.55 Flaws in both the Browder and Khodorkovsky narratives noted by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), in 2013 and 2019, failed to interest Western pundits and media. In the latter case, the ECHR found that the ‘complaint about Mr. Magnitskiy’s arrest and subsequent detention [was] manifestly ill-founded’, and threw it out. The Magnitsky family, the complainants, based their claim on Browder’s tale that Magnitsky’s arrest on tax evasion charges was illegal and corrupt – it wasn’t. According to researchers for Der Spiegel, Browder’s tale was riddled with contradictions and even lies. A documentary film shot in 2016 by Russian Andrei Nekrasov and titled The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes sparked controversy. It was produced as a joint project by Norwegian, German and Finnish film companies and premiered in Oslo. Nekrasov, who was perceived as anti-Putin, at first accepted the Browder narrative as the truth, then changed his mind after long interviews with Browder and presented Magnitsky as ‘an accomplice rather than a victim’. Browder sued; scheduled screenings in the West were cancelled.56 It remains almost unseen. In Khodorkovsky’s case, the ECHR determined in 2011 that his arrest in 2003 was not politically motivated and that he was therefore not a ‘prisoner of conscience’.57 In 2019, a British judge reproached the Khodorkovsky team for lying.58 In both earlier instances, the court noted Russian violations of European Convention protocols during incarceration, while deeming legitimate the reasons for the initial arrests. The ECHR confirmed these findings in January 2020.59 Whether the challenges to Browder’s accusations are accurate, or not, or if the decisions by European courts questioning his and Khodorkovsky’s veracity are reality-based, the important thing here is that, by ignoring accounts that don’t fit the conventional storyline, Western politicians and mainstream media may lend them greater credence than they deserve. Oppositionists living abroad upped their game in 2019. The VIIth Forum of Free Russia, which meets in Vilnius, saw Russian civic activists from both abroad and Russia gather and rail against Putin, calling his regime a ‘dictatorship’ and warning against the ‘fascistization’ of Russia. Kasparov was there again, as was Ilya Ponomarev.60 Because the Forums are sponsored in part by Lithuania’s foreign ministry, Russia regards them as integral to that country’s anti-Russia agenda. The willingness, even eagerness, on the part of some European and American politicians to fault Russia for their own internal crises was exposed when former National Security Adviser to Obama and ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, hinted that Russia might be partially behind the mass demonstration that swept the US in May/June 2020 after police killed yet another unarmed black man. The violent and divisive parts of the huge rallies were ‘right out of the Russian playbook’, she told CNN in interview on 31 May. She will be a member of Biden’s cabinet in 2021. Other prominent political figures, such as Marco Rubio, took up the theme and blamed

New Cold War  249 foreigners for the violence, while Trump designated the leftist anti-fascist American movement, Antifa, a terrorist group, responsible for the violence and looting. The lack of proportion and ‘out of touch’ extremes that such assumptions exposed were discussed widely in Russia, and presumably elsewhere.61 The tendency to blame foreigners for domestic ills is precisely the practice for which the West condemn Russia. The Russian MID took advantage of the American malaise by publishing a list of police shootings of unarmed black citizens, and releasing a statement that included the charge that, ‘the United States has certainly accumulated systemic human rights problems: race, ethnic and religious discrimination, police brutality, bias of justice, crowded prisons, and uncontrolled use of fire arms and self-defence weapons by individuals, to name a few’.62 This could have been written by Soviet agitatory in the 1960s, yet this time the Russian propaganda agencies echoed judgements heard around the world and would be hard to challenge as untrue. The same could be said for a New York Times advertisement for a new correspondent in Russia to cover ‘Vladimir Putin’s Russia’ that was described in the ad as a country that sends out hit squads armed with nerve agents against its enemies, most recently the opposition leader Aleksei Navalny. It has its cyber agents sow chaos and disharmony in the West to tarnish its democratic systems, while promoting its faux version of democracy. It has deployed private military contractors around the globe to secretly spread its influence. At home, its hospitals are filling up fast with Covid patients as its president hides out in his villa. Hardly a description to inspire confidence that the subsequent news items will be balanced. The MID called the advertisement ‘Russophobic’ and said that it might not issue visas or accreditations to the paper’s Russia-based staff because they were said in the ad to be living in ‘such inhumane conditions’: ‘American journalists’ lives also matter, even if they work for the New York Times’, spokeswoman Maria Zakharova intoned. 63 Russia, of course, had its own home-grown crises, epitomized by the demonstrations in Khabarovsk and the Navalny poisoning. In the latter case, the usual attempts to impugn foreigners gained no traction even in Russia, and Western governments pounced. Merkel demanded explanations, and the Kremlin said it would cooperate fully once it had copies of findings the MID and PGO had requested from German doctors.64 Even as German doctors insisted that Novichok had been administered to Navalny, the chief toxicologist of the Omsk region, Aleksandr Sabaev, insisted that it could not have been. By that time Navalny had emerged from the induced coma, was disconnected from a ventilator and shortly thereafter was sending videos and photos to followers in Russia. 65 It was left for observers to believe what they wished. That, of course, is what the Cold War is all about.

250  New Cold War NGOs as ‘foreign agents’ A signpost for Russia’s version of the new Cold War can be found in its scattered application of the designation ‘foreign agent’. Civil society organizations in Russia, NGOs, are subject to a Foreign Agents Law adopted in 2012 by a government made wary by the eruption of domestic unrest over electoral fraud in 2011. Large protests and demonstrations triggered fears in the Kremlin that a Western-supported coloured revolution, or even a regime change mission, was being prepared for Russia. Of the thousands of NGOs in Russia, slightly more than half of which are involved in delivering social services, 79 were registered as ‘foreign agents’ by 2018 because they received financing from abroad. A few years earlier, over 300 were under investigation. Even the Levada Centre, the country’s most respected and independent polling agency, was ordered to register as a foreign agent because a small part of its funding came from foreign entities, some of it indirectly.66 After three years of appeals, a Moscow court concluded that the Centre was breaking the law by refusing to register as a foreign agent and fined it the equivalent of about $5,000. Amendments to the law in 2017 and 2019 made it difficult for Russian journalists to accept payments, or editors to print articles, from foreign agencies. More tightening up came in 2020 when bills introduced changes to NGO operations, restricting their rights to ‘freedom of expression, and freedom to distribute and receive information’. Russian citizens designated as foreign agents will be barred from holding state or municipal offices. In fact, a law adopted on 25 December and signed by Putin the same week made it possible to label any politically active, foreign-funded individual or organization a ‘foreign agent’. For the first time, the Ministry of Justice added individuals to the list, among them Lev Ponomarev. Some 20 NGOs appealed these bills to both the Russian and European human rights commissioners.67 International foundations that provide aid to NGOs involved in Russian politics, or are directly involved themselves, are officially labelled ‘undesirable’. There are 13 of these.68 When the Russian Ministry of Justice placed the Washington-based Free Russia Foundation on its ‘undesirable’ list in June 2019, the Prosecutor General’s Office claimed it ‘threatened the constitutional system and security of Russia’.69 A month later, the PGO added the Atlantic Council to the ‘undesirable’ group for the same expressed reason, and Russia’s media labelled it a ‘rabidly anti-Russia think tank’ funded by US and UK arms manufacturers.70 The presence of such anti-Putin persons as Anders Åslund and former Ukrainian finance minister Natalie Jaresko on the Council’s board may have been instrumental in this decision as, of course, was the Council’s long record of publications and statements antithetical to Russia. The Russian Ministry of Justice placed America’s leading overseas propaganda dispenser, RFE/RL, on its ‘foreign agent’ list in February 2020, where

New Cold War  251 Table 6.1  Register of foreign mass media functioning as a foreign agent, December 2020 Number

Name of foreign media

Date of designation

1 2 3 4 5

Voice of America [VOA] Idel.Realities [Idel.Realii; Volga regions] Caucasus.Realities Crimea.Realities [Krym.Realii] TV Channel Present Time [Nastoiashchee Vremia] Tatar-Bashkir Service of RL [Azatliq Radiosi] Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Siberia.Realities Factograph [VOA] North.Realities Limited Liability Company, RFE/RL Czech news company, Medium-Orient Ponomarev, Lev Aleksandrovich Savitskaia, Liudmila [RFE/RL journalist] Markelov, Sergei Yevgenievich [RFE/RL journalist] Kamaliagin, Denis Nikolaevich [Pskov editor] Apakhonchich, Daria Aleksandrovna [artist, activist]

12/05/2017 12/05/2017 12/05/2017 12/05/2017 12/05/2017

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

12/05/2017 12/05/2017 12/05/2017 12/05/2017 15/11/2019 11/01/2020 21/12/2020 28/12/2020 28/12/2020 28/12/2020 28/12/2020 28/12/2020

Source: Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, 28 December 2020, https://minjust.gov. ru/ru/documents/7755/

it joined Voice of America (VOA), their joint TV operation Current Time (Nastoiashchee Vremia) and eight other foreign-funded entities categorized earlier. These latter include sites in the Russian Caucasus, Crimea and Siberia. RFE/RL’s Radio Svoboda (Radio Liberty) filed documentation as a foreign agent in January. RFE/RL and VOA are supervised by the US Agency for Global Media which has an operating budget of well over $700 million provided annually by the US Congress. Its mission ‘is to inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy’.71 Like RT, which must register as a ‘foreign agent’ in the US, the RFE/RL and VOA cannot claim to function independently of their home country’s foreign policy (Table 6.1). Spy capers Speaking to the FSB Board in March 2019, Putin noted that attempts by foreign intelligence agencies to operate in Russia had increased. He claimed that 129 personnel officers and 465 agents were caught spying in 2018.72 In fact, both ‘sides’ had become almost desperate to find spies, whether they were real or not. The end of the first Cold War seems to have gone unnoticed by American and Russian security agencies. The FBI arrested 11 Russian ‘sleepers’ in June

252  New Cold War 2010. Within a month, they were exchanged for Russian citizens jailed in Russia for spying on behalf of Western agencies. One of the exchangees was Anna Chapman, a beautiful model serving as a Russian mole in the US; another was Sergei Skripal. A mere two months after Putin’s inauguration in 2018, US authorities arrested Maria Butina, accusing her of infiltrating and trying to influence the National Rifle Association (NRA), the most important unofficial national lobby for Republicans. According to US reports she was a plant handled by Aleksandr Torshin, a deputy governor of the Bank of Russia. Bail refused, Butina was placed in a federal prison in Washington and charged with failing to register as a Russian agent. How she was expected to influence the five million-member NRA remained a mystery.73 After federal prosecutors admitted that they falsely accused her of offering sex in exchange for a position within the Republican Party, they insisted that the fact that representatives of the Russian government visited her in prison six times and that Lavrov had complained about her case to Mike Pompeo were evidence enough that she was an agent of the Russian government.74 Yet, surely, that was the job of Russian embassy officials and Lavrov. In December, Butina made a deal with prosecutors: she pleaded guilty to one conspiracy charge and of infiltrating the NRA as an agent of Russia. No espionage charges were ever levelled against her, though the US media kept calling her a ‘spy’, without ever clarifying what it was she was presumed to be spying on. When, in April 2019, she was finally sentenced to 18 months in prison (less 9 months already served), for being an unregistered lobbyist, the judge said Butina’s actions endangered US national security, without defining how she did so.75 Released in late October 2019, she returned home and, after several offers of positions, chose to work for human rights commissioner, Tatyana Moskalkova, defending the rights of Russians living abroad. Butina was also named to the Public Chamber where, in November, she recommended that Russia tighten up its laws on registering foreign agents to include individuals who work in Russia ‘for foreign money’, performing ‘tasks set by other states’. Don’t make the laws as rigid as those in the US, where she was jailed for ‘no political activity, no money, and no harmful activity for the American state’, she added.76 Meanwhile, the FSB announced that, ‘during an espionage operation’, it had arrested a US citizen named Paul N. Whelan for spying in Moscow.77 Details trickled out slowly. The Western media treated the incident as retaliation for the Butina case, coming as it did so soon after she pleaded guilty, and they were probably right. Whelan’s family said he was there for a friend’s wedding; the US State Department demanded his return. The Russia media described him as an operative who used social media to recruit Russians with access to classified data.78 A large portion of his VKontakte social network contacts were Russians with military and/or IT backgrounds, over 20 of them. Asked about Whelan during his annual press conference, Lavrov said ‘he was caught red-handed’. Whelan’s lawyers claimed he was set

New Cold War  253 up, and he denied all charges.79 In June 2020, he was sentenced to 16 years for espionage, amid rumours that he would be exchanged for one or more Russians in American prisons.80 Doubtless, there were real spies at work. The Dutch expelled four Russian diplomats in October 2018 for alleged cyberattacks against the OPCW in The Hague, and two more in December 2020 for espionage.81 The first expulsion coincided with accusations from British military intelligence that the GRU had set an entire network of hackers loose to disrupt and spy on a wide range of international targets, ranging from the US’s Democratic National Committee in 2016 to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in 2017. The GRU was also censured for employing Bad Rabbit ransomware to infect organizations and consumers. The US indicted seven Russian intelligence officers for conspiring to hack into computers used by WADA and the OPCW, and also for conspiracies to commit wire fraud and money laundering. Canada chimed in with similar finger pointing. Russian embassies rejected the charges, calling them ‘orchestrated propaganda’ and a ‘witch hunt’ by the US, the UK and their allies designed to scare domestic audiences with a new ‘Russian threat’.82 In 2019, Russian authorities convicted former head of the FSB 2nd Department, Cybercrime, Col. Sergei Mikhailov, of high treason. Charged with providing secret information to his American counterparts, he was handed a sentence of 22 years. Three other men working for the Kaspersky Lab cybersecurity firm received shorter sentences. One consequence of these arrests was the end of the RF–US cooperation on cybercrime.83 In February 2020, a Mexican citizen was arrested in Florida and charged with conducting surveillance on behalf of Russia. His target was a US government informant who had provided the US with data on Russia’s intelligence services. Later in the year, the FSB in Tomsk took a retired Russian scientist into custody on suspicion of passing technical secrets to China.84 A more mysterious spy antic emerged in September 2019, when CNN reported that Washington had ‘evacuated’ a ‘mole’ from Russia in 2017, hinting that he had been well placed in the Putin Administration. Unverified reports claimed that Oleg Smolenkov, an official with the Presidential Administration’s Foreign Policy Directorate, and assistant to Yury Ushakov when he was ambassador to the US, was the man in question. He is now living in the US. Typically underplaying the incident, Peskov called the American version of the tale ‘pulp fiction’.85 Just as Butina was arriving back in Russia, the Bulgarian foreign ministry denounced a Russian diplomat for spying and asked Moscow to recall him. Two more Russian diplomats were declared persona non grata (PNG) in Sofia during the winter of 2020, and two from the Russian trade commission were sent home in September. Polish authorities detained a Polish citizen in Warsaw and charged him with spying for Russia. This latter event was the latest in a tit-for-tat series that saw a Russian court sentence a Polish citizen to 14 years for espionage and a Polish court giving a former government employee three years for a similar offence.86 Not to be left out, Latvia arrested

254  New Cold War one of its citizens in March 2020 and charged him with trying to recruit a Latvian secret service officer to gather intelligence for Russia. This was the fourth such case in Riga since 2018.87 Authorities in Ukraine arrested a man in March 2020 and accused him of spying for Russia in the Mykolaiv shipyards. This arrest came one day after Putin delivered a speech in Sevastopol in which he said, ‘unfortunately, we are seeing a spy mania in certain partner countries, which start expelling entire teams of our diplomats … without explanation’.88 A few weeks later, Czech authorities declared two Russian diplomats PNG, accusing them of purposely spreading false stories about plans to poison, with ricin, three Czech mayors who had angered the Kremlin in various ways. The Russian MID called the tale a ‘fantasy’ and the official suspected of carrying the ricin said he had a suitcase filled only with ‘disinfectants and sweets’. It seemed that the tale was spread as a result of a dispute between members of the embassy staff, but the expulsions stood.89 The spy train did not slow down. In 2020, Norway declared a Russian trade representative PNG in August, Austria expelled a Russian diplomat for alleged industrial espionage a few weeks later and Slovakia sent three Russian foreign service staff members home for ‘crimes’. Columbia declared two Russian diplomats PNG in December. Russia retaliated in kind.90 There was a flurry of conjecture in the summer of 2020 when the FSB arrested Ivan Safronov, a journalist who for ten years covered military and military-industrial issues for Kommersant and spent a year doing the same for Vedomosti. He had been working since May 2020 as a media adviser to the head of Roscosmos, Rogozin. Police charged that he had gathered confidential information on weapons sales to the Middle East and Africa and passed them on to an unnamed contact (assumed to be a Czech) from a NATO country. Few other details were available.91 Safronov, who had been in Rogozin’s employ for only two months, pleaded not guilty to a charge of high treason. Critics noted that anyone who worked for Rogozin would have been very carefully vetted before he was hired, and even Rogozin said that Safronov had no access to classified materials.92 The list kept growing. In October 2020, the FSB arrested two brothers who were suspected of passing documents on to NATO agents in Estonia. Detained in separate Russian cities, one of them was in the Russian armed forces, the other lived in Estonia. They were charged with high treason. In June, the FSB accused a Russian nuclear physicist of giving secret papers to China, and then in October it denounced a Siberia-based retired scientist for passing on technical information to the same source. In December, the Moscow city court sentenced Moldovan citizen, Karina Turcan (Tsurkan), to 15 years for passing documents related to Russian energy supplies to Ukrainian agents. Arrested in 2018, she had been a board member of Moscow-based joint stock company Inter RAO energy group. The human rights organization, Memorial, called her a political prisoner and supported an appeal.93 Washington and Beijing were picking up foreign and domestic spies too. As Sherlock Holmes would say, the game was afoot.

New Cold War  255 Early in 2019, police arrested a prominent American businessman in Russia. Michael Calvey was not considered a spy; rather, he was charged with defrauding Vostochny Bank shareholders. In addition to the expected outcry from Western business people and American threats to boycott the SPIEF, members of the Russian economic elite, such as Kudrin and Gref, supported Calvey. After two months in pre-trial detention, he was moved to house arrest, and his assets in Russia were frozen.94 Asked about Calvey during the 2019 sessions of SPIEF, Putin insisted that the matter was out of his hands, that the ‘law is the law’. He proclaimed that the case was the result of America’s ‘unrestricted economic egoism’, which, in turn, was the source of ‘endless conflicts’ and trade wars.95 If there was wrongdoing it was more likely the swampy nature of the Russian financial world that facilitated it. The financial side of the case was settled in October 2020 with a payment of some $32 million to Vostochny Bank from Baring Vostok. He was released in November. The criminal case remained pending. Space capers Space matters were caught up in the new Cold War competition as well. Earlier words of caution about decreasing levels of cooperation in space came home to roost in the spring of 2020 when President Trump signed an executive order allowing ‘commercial exploration, recovery and use of resources in outer space’, with specific reference to the Moon. It called on ‘commercial entities’ to participate in the undertaking as partners of the American government. The order claimed that outer space was not a ‘global commons’ and that, therefore, the US could recover and use its resources in any way it wished. This was a classic ‘first come, first served’ policy that the Kremlin immediately referred to as ‘colonialism’, failing to mention that it too had long-range plans to place a permanent base on the moon. Roscosmos complained that ‘attempts to expropriate outer space and aggressive plans to actually seize territories of other planets hardly set countries [on course for] fruitful cooperation’ and that ‘everyone remembers the outcome’ of countries seizing territories for their own benefit. Whatever the right or wrong of Trump’s project, given that he had already supported the weaponization of space, still more frontiers for dangerous competition opened up.96 In the meantime, a joint Russian–US space crew lifted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome on 9 April 2020, after a period of isolation to avoid the coronavirus. This launch was expected to be the final time that the US used Russian rockets for space flight, as US private firms SpaceX (Elon Musk) and Boeing were preparing their own launch sites and space craft.97 SpaceX launched from Cape Canaveral successfully on 31 May with two US astronauts aboard, thereby breaking Roscosmos’ monopoly on transporting astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), and also compelling it to modernize the Russian space programme or fall behind. Recognizing the need to compete, in October Roscosmos ferried one American and two Russian cosmonauts to the ISS in half the time it usually takes, setting a new record.98

256  New Cold War Space X launched again in November as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Programme with three American and one Japanese astronauts who plan to stay in the ISS for six months.

Manipulating public opinion As 2018 came to a close, a few new studies challenged the widely accepted Western narrative on ‘Russian aggression’, ‘Russian meddling’ and specific incidents such as the arrest of, and charges against, Butina. 99 That does not mean the official narrative was shoved aside, for the minds of mainstream pundits and politicians were long since made up. Nor did revisionists make headway insofar as the public was concerned. A Gallup poll conducted in February 2019 showed that 73 per cent of American respondents viewed Russia unfavourably, the most negative since the fall of the USSR (Table 6.2).100 These opinions were matched in November in an annual survey conducted by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation which found 71 per cent of respondents believing Russia was an enemy. Interestingly, while 60 per cent also saw China as an enemy, the majority viewed China as a greater threat to the US than Russia, especially in matters related to the economy. The threat from Russia lay in its potential for cyberattacks, not in military aggression or interfering in elections.101 Events of December 2020 may have proven this judgement a correct one (see ahead). While the Reagan Foundation poll was being conducted, US agencies advised the Congressional Intelligence Committee that Russia was already interfering in the next US presidential election by hacking election infrastructure and weaponizing social media. The story energized Democrat Party politicians and the US media, where talking heads repeated all the earlier memes at length. Russia denied the allegations, again, calling it paranoia and accusing Democrats of deploying Russophobia to strengthen their Table 6.2  Gallup Poll on American attitudes towards Russia February 2019. Americans’ Overall View of Russia

1989 1991 1997 1999 2003 2009 2011 2015 2020

%Favourable

%Unfavourable

62 66 56 60 61 40 50 32 24

29 25 36 38 26 53 40 70 73

Source: Lydia Saad, ‘Majority of Americans Now Consider Russia a Critical Threat’, Gallup, 27 February 2019, https://news.gallup.com/poll/247100/majority-americans-consider-russia-critical-threat.aspx

New Cold War  257 campaign. Trump denied it as well, once again rejecting advice from his own intelligence agencies.102 Pompeo offered a $10 million reward ‘for information leading to the identification or location of any person who, acting at the direction or under the control of a foreign government, interferes with U.S. elections by engaging in certain criminal cyber activities’, and named ‘Russia and other malign actors’. Whether this pronouncement represented a real fear that Russia was planning, or was even capable of, a massive disruption of the US presidential election, or if it was yet another wild conspiracy theory aimed at American voters, it was nonetheless odd and demonstrated how deeply the ‘Russia threat’ paradigm had penetrated the American psyche.103 In the long run, in fact, it was Trump and segments of the GOP leadership that diminished American democracy with their repeated accusations of fraud, dozens of evidence-free lawsuits and attempts to overthrow ‘the will of the people’. The notion of Russian ‘meddling’ almost disappeared. At least one prominent analyst of Russia affairs cautioned against crediting Russia with far more influence than it was capable of wielding: If 2020 turns out to be a repeat of 2016, it will be so not because Putin has devised a grandiose plot to bring down the United States or undermine democracy writ large but rather because Moscow is using whatever limited means are at its disposal to bare its teeth at what it sees as a far more powerful bully. And it doesn’t care a great deal about the specific consequences, so long as the result is to make itself look stronger than it really is.104 If Anna Arutuyan’s analysis was correct, then the Kremlin’s bluff was working. The Russian public opinion of the US, on the other hand, seemed to be going through a transition of some sort. Although it was noted above that the opinion of over two-thirds of Russians about the US had been a mirror image of American view of Russia, a November 2019 Levada Centre poll said that opinions of the US improved since May 2018, rising from 20 to 47 per cent favourable (it dropped somewhat in January 2020). The ‘Generation Z’ study of 2019 also revealed that 52 per cent of young Russians believed that relations between Russia and the West might one day be friendly, and at the same time blamed the US’s ‘anti-Russian policy’ and ‘NATO’s aggressiveness’ for the current confrontation (Table 6.3).105 These results turned out to not be a fluke. In February 2020, another Levada poll revealed that nearly 80 per cent of Russian respondents wanted Russia and the ‘West ‘to be friends (11%) and partners (67%), and only 3 per cent saw the West as an enemy; 16 per cent saw the West as a rival. Nearly half (49%) had positive feelings towards the EU and 42 per cent felt the same way towards the US. Russian analysts attributed this turnabout to ‘mass fatigue with foreign policy confrontation and an unwillingness to fight with anyone’.106

258  New Cold War Table 6.3  Levada Poll results on Russian attitudes towards the US January 2020

Very well Mostly good Mostly bad Very bad Difficult to answer

Jan 2018

Feb 2019

Aug 2019

Nov 2019

Jan 2020

2 23 32 20 22

4 30 29 27 11

4 38 25 19 14

7 40 26 15 13

4 38 28 18 12

Q. What is your entire feeling in regards to the United states of Americas? (one answer) Source: ‘Relations to Countries’, Levada Centre, 18 February 2020. https://www.levada.ru/ en/2020/09/30/attitudes-toward-countries-4/

Inexplicable rumours circulating in the US to the effect that Donald Trump was an agent for Russia were given a boost in 2019 by media headlining the fact that the American president seized all notes taken during his one-on-one talks with Putin.107 These over-the-top denunciations were treated with amusement in Russia. Strategic planners in Moscow must have been delighted over the apparent chaos in American thinking about Trump and Russia, and at the same time worried about the uncertainty such chaos spawned. Lavrov, perhaps rightly, said the stories reflected ‘the lowering of standards of journalism for the American press’.108 Ides of March, 2019 Even if the annexation of Crimea in 2014 was the key starting point for the current geopolitical rift between Russia and the West, the sea change in Washington towards demonizing Russia and Putin was more directly related to charges that Moscow dared to intervene in an American election in 2016. The lingering suspicion on the part of Democrats that Trump could not have won without Russian help was lent credence by then FBI Director James Comey’s testimony to a US Senate hearing in 2017 to the effect that Russia is the ‘greatest threat of any nation on earth, given their intent and capability’.109 He predicted that Moscow would meddle again in American elections, because ‘they know it worked’, and that became the order of the day. In early January 2018, Ambassador Huntsman openly accused the Kremlin of planning to disrupt US democracy, US Senator Ben Cardin charged Putin with a ‘relentless assault against democratic values abroad’ and Democrats in the US Senate released a 200-page report describing, to their satisfaction, a Kremlin campaign against democratic institutions in Europe. Putin’s goal there, it said, was to undermine NATO. Russian media fired back with multiple allegations about American interference in Russia’s elections, including a possibly decisive involvement in Yeltsin’s second round victory over Zyuganov in 1996.110 When Stephen F. Cohen wrote in March 2019 that the West’s inclination to demonize Russia was reaching a feverish pitch, he cited opinion pieces from

New Cold War  259 the Washington Post and The Economist, written by people without any ‘substantive knowledge of Russia’ and retired US generals who harped on the ‘Russian threat’ and called for more armaments everywhere.111 ‘Russian aggression’, or Russia’s ‘malign’ influence, had become the preferred and immediate explanation in the West for political crises in Europe. Cohen credited ‘Russiagate’ and the Democratic Party’s obsessive urge to find Trump guilty of ‘collusion’ with Putin as a major factor in the Russophobic mood in America, which he assumed would only worsen as the country prepared for its next presidential election. An essay written by Joe Biden for the prestigious Foreign Affairs in 2018, titled ‘How to Stand Up to the Kremlin’, added fuel to Cohen’s concerns.112 If Cohen’s perspective was the right one, then the transfer of American B-52 bombers to the UK in March 2019 and frequent Cassandra-like warnings from generals in NATO, Sweden, Ukraine, the Baltics and elsewhere that Moscow was planning an invasion of – somewhere, anywhere – threatened to become self-fulfilling.113 Trump’s overt attempt in 2019 to get Ukrainian President Zelenskiy to dig up dirt on a potential rival for the US presidency in exchange for military funding and a visit to the White House pleased the Kremlin, because Republican defence of Trump’s behaviour included the conspiracy theory that foreign meddling in the US presidential campaign on 2016 was launched from Ukraine, by Ukrainian operatives, and not by Russians.114 Putin’s reaction to the Republican claim was gleeful: ‘Thank God no one blames us for interfering in the US election anymore, now the blame is on Ukraine. Let them figure it out between themselves.’115 The rhetorical clamour from Moscow and Washington seemed caught in a time warp. In the midst of all this noise, in May 2019 Pompeo and Lavrov met in Sochi to discuss a wide range of bilateral and multilateral subjects. No breakthroughs were apparent, though they agreed that relations should improve. At least the issues were set out in the open. Pompeo called Russian interference in US elections ‘unacceptable’, questioned Lavrov on the Whelan and Calvey cases, and repeated that the US would not recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea. They disagreed on Venezuela. Lavrov noted their differences in the Middle East and Ukraine, and welcomed cooperation on North Korea and Afghanistan.116 Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Modernizing Cold War. Digital wars In June 2019, the New York Times revealed that the US was stepping up its digital attacks on Russia’s power grid. This led to the first public discussion of a digital competition that been underway since 2012. In 2015, US officials accused Russia of cyberattacks against American and EU NPPs, water and electrical systems, and the sanctions imposed on Russia in February 2018 were retaliation in part for ‘malicious’ cyberattacks. According to John Bolton, the US efforts in 2019 were purposely aggressive and designed to insert crippling malware in the Russia system both as a warning and also to put the US in a position to conduct cyber strikes against Russia’s grid in the

260  New Cold War case of a major conflict. Bolton, of course, described American cyberattacks as self-defence; and similar Russian attacks as ‘acts of war’.117 Russia’s response to these reports was to proclaim that strategic parts of the Russian economy had been the target of foreign cyberattacks many times and, to date, they had been thwarted.118 Unfazed by Russia’s apparent deflection of cyberattacks, in June USAID launched what it called the ‘Countering Malign Kremlin Influence Development Framework’ project, allocating millions of dollars to neutralize Russian disinformation. Accusing Russia of ‘weaponizing’ information, USAID administrator Mark Green called Russia a ‘cunning predator’ while touting extensive programmes to weaponize information himself. The Russian foreign ministry called this venture by the USAID a ‘tool of ideological warfare and brainwashing’.119 Pots calling each other’s kettles black. Doing its bit, in May 2019 the US Department of Defense and Chiefs of Staff released a 167-page paper titled ‘Russian Strategic Intentions’. Except for its updated material on cyber and other technologies the overall theme of the paper mirrored the old containment doctrine.120 Not to be outdone, Russia’s International Affairs Council published a position paper expressing similar viewpoints, with the US as the cyberattacking risk to peace.121 This all sounded very familiar to those of us old enough to remember the Cold War days of the 1960s. Outward tensions did not prevent Moscow and Washington from resuming cooperation on cybersecurity in January 2020, and conducting new rounds of talks on arms control issues in Vienna. In the latter case, the two sides hoped to reduce misunderstandings that could lead to conflict.122 This was the second such meeting; the first was held in 2019, when the American delegation was led by John J. Sullivan before he was named ambassador to Russia. All notions about expanding, or even continuing, cooperation on cyber security were shattered after the US found that hackers had infiltrated key federal agencies, nuclear laboratories and Fortune 500 companies in a sweeping assault that began in the spring of 2020 and was discovered only in December. According to American authorities, this was the most serious hacking case in US history. Microsoft Corp. named Canada, Mexico, the UK and several EU states as additional victims, because they often use the Texasbased SolarWinds Inc.’s network management software.123 Although the US media and Pompeo immediately accused the Russia state, and the US media took that for granted, federal officials were less certain of the attack’s origins. Trump hedged, presumably leaving yet another mess for Joe Biden to clean up. Perhaps it was time for both sides to heed the rare wisdom expressed by Paul R. Kolbe, who served with the CIA’s director of overseas operations for a quarter-century. In a New York Times opinion piece, he pointed out both sides had been doing this sort of thing for decades and ‘the United States is, of course, engaged in the same type of operation at an even grander scale’ than the Russians. Kolbe called for serious negotiations instead of posturing and blustering from both sides.124 Meanwhile, the State Department

New Cold War  261 announced that it was closing its last two consulates in Russia, in Vladivostok and Yekaterinburg. Russia responded with a rash of accusations of its own. Rostelecom, the largest digital server in Russia, reported in December that there had been more than 200 ‘professionally executed’ cyberattacks on its strategically important companies during 2020, double that of last year, and that more than a third of them originated in the US.125 Whatever the accuracy or immediate consequences of these pronouncements, it was plain that yet another new Cold War theatre was opening wide. In fact, the day after news of the huge hack on American sites hit the global media, the Russian Security Council met to discuss, specifically, ‘neutralizing the threats to our country’s national security associated with the development of military artificial intelligence technologies in the leading armies of the world’. Although this was a scheduled meeting, the agenda was clearly re-focused to fit the new circumstances, which some commentators described as one step removed from war.126 Putin and Trump meet again Plans for an hour-long session between the two presidents during the 2019 G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, saw pundits on both sides of the Atlantic trying to set the informal agenda. American politicians pressed Trump to bring up the matter of Russian interference in US elections. Trump demurred, and then made a joke of it when they actually met, while Putin continued to deny the obvious. By that time, the spectre of war between the US and Iran, semi-frozen civil wars in Syria and Ukraine, expanding sanction regimes against Russia and threats over the INF treaty were among the points of departure. Moscow warned the US to keep out of Iran, Washington warned Russia to keep out of Venezuela. Neither of these admonitions were idle ones. On the eve of the G-20 summit, headlines trumpeted Putin’s remark during an interview with the Financial Times to the effect that ‘the liberal idea has become obsolete’. Few commentators in the West bothered to reference the context; that is, a question asked of him about how to deal with waves of immigrants and refugees sweeping over the USA and Europe, and how to explain the growing gap between the ‘interests of the elites and the … majority of the people’. Putin asserted that the ‘liberal’ response was to do nothing, when it was clear that something needed to be done, and intimated that at least Trump was trying to resolve the issue of border security, while not supporting Trump’s idea of a wall or tariffs.127 Commentators who seized upon Putin’s words about the ‘liberal idea’ as proof of his dictatorial inclination, tended to ignore the fact that French President Macron said much the same thing. Macron pointed out as well that Europe needed to engage with Russia, because Europe would be the theatre of any military conflict between Russia and the US. ‘Pushing Russia away from Europe’, he said, ‘is a major strategic error’.128

262  New Cold War When, in August 2019, Trump mused that Russia should be readmitted to the G-7, unstated Kremlin reservations were summed up best by Trenin, who tweeted: More Reasons: (1) Price is too high: RUS is most unlikely to join US in its rivalry with China. (2) G8 format was always awkward for RUS. It could not be leader, and would not want to be follower. (3) It makes more sense for RUS to deal w/US, EU, JP separately than as group.129 Trenin, who did not speak officially for Putin or the government, had tweeted the day before that ‘the G8 is history, will not be revived’. So, while the Russian foreign ministry was open to discussing the matter, it was very unlikely that they would join without China; and it was possible that Trump’s ‘suggestion’ was an attempt to get Russian backing in his tariff war with China. Hearings in the US Senate in December 2019 showed some division over whether or not to impose still more sanctions against Russia. When it was first introduced, the bill in question was for Russian meddling in the 2016 election and its ‘aggression’ in Ukraine. This time, it wasn’t even clear why advocates of further sanctions wanted them, other than a vague reference to prevention of Russian interference in the 2020 presidential campaign. By that time, Washington had already imposed sanctions on hundreds of Russiaconnected industries and individuals outside of Russia. As we have seen, one of their targets was Nord Stream-2. Trump’s hostility to the Russia-toGermany pipeline was linked to his anger at NATO for, in his words to John Bolton in 2017, ‘NATO countries are paying billions to Russia. We’re out if they make the pipeline deal’.130 The new sanctions, when they came in late December 2019, were attached to the 2020 National Defense Appropriations Act. Its inclusion of people and firms associated with Nord Stream-2 and TurkStream brought angry responses from Germany and divided the EU more than Russia was alleged to have done.131 The Act was not signed finally until the first week of January 2021, after the US Congress overrode Trump’s veto. The new sanctions forced Norway’s DNV GL to withdraw from the project. Its role had been to provide testing and verification services for equipment used on the pipelaying vessels. Representatives of all but three of the EU’s 27 members objected to the American decision to broaden sanctions against the Nord Stream-2, saying that the ‘extraterritorial use of sanctions [is] a breach of international law’. Peskov termed the attack the pipeline a ‘variant of hybrid warfare’. 132 A new American ambassador Huntsman resigned as US ambassador to Russia in October 2019 and was replaced within a month by Sullivan, an experienced Russia hand and deputy secretary of state since 2017. The Russian media reacted cautiously and with

New Cold War  263 little hope for any change in the relationships between their two countries.133 Perhaps they noticed Sullivan’s statement to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, in which he admitted that the post would be difficult because of the ‘litany of Russia’s malign actions that have severely strained our ­relationship’.134 Neither Huntsman nor his predecessor, Michael McFaul, completed their three-year terms in Moscow. Sullivan was a senior member of the Republican Party and briefly served as acting Secretary of State in 2018. As he moved to Moscow, his outlook would have mirrored that of his party, which were stated clearly in a foreign policy document released by the Republican Study Committee in Washington in June 2020. Hoping to get out ahead of the Democrats for the November presidential election, the Committee endorsed classic Cold War fears and assumptions. The document, titled ‘The RSC National Security Strategy: Strengthening America & Countering Global Threats’, offered more than 130 ways and means to protect ‘American leadership’ around the world and listed the US’s most dangerous adversaries. China led the list with Russia and the ‘Putin regime’ following close behind. According to its self-avowed conservative authors, ‘It’s time for America to fully reclaim its role as the greatest force for good the world has ever known’, even if that means imposing the ‘toughest sanctions ever proposed’ on the ‘Chinese Communist Party, Russia and Iran’. Interpretations of what the RSC meant by ‘good’ aside, if these proposals ever became government policy, then they would entail acts of economic and maybe even military wars.135 Coronavirus blame-casting The coronavirus crisis of 2020 provided more echoes of Cold War, as Beijing, Moscow and Washington sought scapegoats. Repeatedly calling it the ‘China virus’ or ‘Wuhan virus’, Donald Trump adopted his usual blame-attribution trick to deflect criticism of his incompetent handling of the catastrophe at home. Indeed, G-7 foreign ministers were unable to issue a joint statement after a meeting on 25 March because the US State Department wanted it to include a reference to the ‘Wuhan Virus’. In their turn, media outlets in China and Russian trolls launched ineffective disinformation campaigns about where and how it started (e.g. in US military labs). Social-media accounts and state-owned television in Russia and China also gave the impression that their countries were leading the world in curtailing the crisis and providing aid to countries in need.136 Suspicion of China as originator and of Russia for misinforming about deaths from the virus at home also grew. Indeed, as the infection came under control in China, Russia was the victim of a massive second wave of the disease (see Chapter 9). US acting Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, Philip Reeker, charged that ‘Russian malign actors’ were spreading disinformation about the disease and Putin responding by saying that fake stories circulating in Russia were ‘organized from abroad’, presumably meaning the US.137 The

264  New Cold War New York Times took the opportunity to discredit Russia, pronouncing in April 2020 that ‘analysts say that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has played a principal role in the spread of false information as part of his wider effort to discredit the West and destroy his enemies from within’. It is true that conspiracy theories about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic raged everywhere, and from everywhere, but this evidence-free attempt to link some of them directly to Putin was cited at length in the US’s Homeland Security News Wire and so spread widely as if it were official intel.138 Moreover, it strains the credibility of American agencies that chastise Russia for spreading disinformation about COVID-19 while the US president, Breitbart News, FOX News, GOP fund-raising agencies and other groups were downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic, touting hydroxychloroquine as a cure, praising the efforts of the Administration to combat the disease as tens of thousands of US citizens died from it, holding mask wearers in contempt and ignoring the recommendations of their own health experts.139 Even as late as September, as the number of American deaths due to COVID19 passed 200,000, Trump awarded himself an A+ for his work in combatting the disease.140 When an EU disinformation monitoring group, EUvsDisinfo, accused Russia of spreading false information about COVID-19, Peskov called such charges ‘Russophobic’ and ‘groundless’. In the age of social media, blame attribution via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, VKontakte (VK) and others reached a wider audience than the competing messages of the first Cold War.141 The pandemic had become another weapon to deploy in the new Cold War. A telephone conversation between Putin and Trump on 30 March resulted in Russia sending a plane load with 60 tons of medical supplies to New York, along with promises to maintain ‘personal contact’.142 Trump called it a ‘very nice’ gesture, and the two countries apparently split the cost. While the Administrations in Moscow and Washington congratulated themselves on their willingness to cooperate in times of emergency, Navalny’s team complained that Russia should not have sold supplies that Russia needed for itself and Washington’s Democrats grumbled that Trump was too close to Putin.143 The two presidents spoke by telephone twice more over the next ten days, discussing the pandemic, cooperation in space and global energy markets. On 7 May, they spoke of the 75th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. They talked then about improving bilateral cooperation in settling regional conflicts, combatting terrorism and epidemics.144 As it turned out, this was all talk. The global pandemic gave major powers an opportunity to compete as medical benefactors to needy countries during the pandemic. We have seen that the G-20, including Russia, China and the US, allocated large sums of money to combat the disease, helping Africa especially. China led the way with huge amounts of medical supplies and teams to Italy, Iran, Serbia and elsewhere. Given that the EU failed to respond adequately to appeals from suffering members for medical materials, and was already torn by national

New Cold War  265 isolationism in regard to refugees, and the US seemed to be playing follow the leader, China avoided sustained blame as the derided source of the pandemic – except in the US. Russia’s disbursement of medical equipment abroad (see Chapter 5) and apparent, if illusory, control of the disease at home, left it relatively untouched by international scorn while the world looked on in bewilderment as the disease spread over the US. Some analysts predicted that the handling of the pandemic could be seen as a game-changer, moving China to the forefront in the new world order.145 Others disagreed, insisting that China’s aggressive and irritating international propaganda was too obvious and its mishandling of the virus in its earliest stages would come back to haunt them.146 Putin and Trump conversed again several times in April, and Trump offered Russia ventilators if they were needed. The Kremlin’s press office called the offer ‘very positive’ and urged further cooperation. Just a few days before that, the same Russian spokespeople called Trump’s decision to suspend US dues to the World Health Organization (WTO) very ‘selfish’ and harmful to the global effort to combat the pandemic.147 We have seen that Russia sent medical gear to many countries, including the US. In that latter case, the always-ready-to-pounce New York Times complained that the plane load of masks and ventilators acquired from Russia was a ‘propaganda coup’ for the Kremlin. Not a very good one, it turned out, for the ventilators were not used after reports surfaced that they caused several fires in Russia.148 After another telephone call, in May, the US donated 200 medical ventilators to Russia. The flights were met at Vnukovo Airport by US Ambassador Sullivan, and both sides praised the gift. The Russian ambassador to Washington told Russian TV that ‘we value the American aid very highly’.149

Russia and the US presidential election, 2020 State and independent Russian media kept a close watch on the November 2020 election in the US, sometime ridiculing the process though also explaining it accurately enough. Vedomosti carried a ‘photo gallery’ of protests in American cities, showing the extremes on both sides of the ballot. Several mainstream papers, such as state-owned Rossiiskaia gazeta and independent Kommersant, reported Trump’s criticisms of Biden and the Democrats on election day, without passing judgement. TV broadcasters tended to emphasize the bitter accusations from both sides and predict postelection anarchy. Trump’s shrill post-election charges that he won and the election was rigged were highlighted, and Russian politicians claimed that the US had lost the right to criticize political systems in other countries. Above all, they pointed out that the sharp divisions in American society were homegrown, not caused by Russia. Some Russians even took to accessing and believing the bizarre anti-Trump conspiracy theories spread by QAnon via VKontakte and Telegram, often in posts started by Russian émigrés in the U.S. and elsewhere.150

266  New Cold War When manic Trump supporters invaded the US Capitol building in January 2021, the Russian media carried photos of the chaos and commentary that emphasized that the US was no longer in a position to deride the lack of democracy in other countries. There were no attempts to condemn Trump for his role inciting violence; rather, the breakdown of America’s electoral system was highlighted. The government’s mainstream paper expressed concern for what the ‘gloomy prologue to the inauguration’ and an angry Biden could mean for Russia going forward. ‘At least they can’t blame us’ for this debacle, some said, though they may have been speaking too soon.151 Prior to the crisis in Washington, commentary abounded on what would be the fate of international agreements that Trump renounced and what Biden’s victory would mean for Ukraine and Belarus.152 Even in November, coverage implied that Washington had lost any moral high ground it might have held when commenting on street demonstrations elsewhere in the world. Lukashenka called the political situation a ‘mockery of democracy’ and wondered if the EU and the OSCE would call for a re-election in the US as they did for Belarus.153 Hypocritical as those comments were, they represented a common theme in many areas outside the US and Russia. Donald Trump had already accomplished what Western pundits assumed Putin was striving to do, that is, he shattered Western unity. He belittled his NATO allies, scaled back America’s role in international conflicts, dropped out of international agreements on global warming and nuclear proliferation, mocked the UN, and deployed tariffs against his country’s best friends. The Russian leadership did not expect better relations with a Biden presidency; rather, they assumed that Biden would be hostile, but open, and the Kremlin preferred predictability.154 Shortly before the election, Biden wrote another essay for Foreign Affairs, titled ‘Why America Must Lead Again’, in which he referred to Russia twice as ‘a ‘kleptocracy’ and ‘aggressive’ in its foreign policy: ‘We must impose real costs on Russia for its violations of international norms and stand with Russian civil society.’ The Russian government, he said, ‘is brazenly assaulting the foundations of Western democracy around the world’.155 Unless these words were primarily election campaign gambits, the Biden victory did not bode well for Moscow, where the MID worried that he would focus Washington’s anger against Russia rather than China. Among the few encouraging words were Biden’s expressed preference for an extension of New START and renewal of the Iran nuclear deal. Russia was tardy in congratulating Biden for his victory, waiting, Peskov said, for the official results. These came with the Electoral College vote on 14 December and Putin sent congratulations the next day with a message that he was ‘ready for interaction and contacts with you’.156 Trump refused to concede and both he his supporters raged that the election was ‘stolen’. Explaining why he was late, Putin said that he had to wait for the ‘end of this internal political confrontation’.157 Answering the question of who was best for Russia, Trump or Biden, Argumenty i fakty headlined: ‘Both are Worse’.158

New Cold War  267

China matters While the Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy warned in 2017 that Russia and China were together threatening ‘American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity’, traditional concerns in the West about the dangers of a Russia– China alliance seemed to have lost pride of place in Washington to separate bilateral spats with each country.159 China and Russia’s common approach to international affairs raises few red flags, even though they share views on the crisis in Venezuela, where they both are protecting huge investments, advocate a multi-polar world and speak as one in the UN. They are partners in the BRICS and the SCO, and have close military ties. It is also true that Russia and China compete for influence in the same sectors, especially Central Asia, but also in Africa and Latin America. In the case of Central Asia, China pours money into the region in the form of large loans (Tajikistan) and infrastructure projects, seeming to infringe on Moscow’s self-proclaimed sphere of influence. Even so, the competition has not prevented the Russia–China relationship from growing tighter. A longheld assumption by Western and some Russian analysts that the association is mainly one of convenience has been made too casually.160 Trenin’s conclusion in June 2019 that the relationship had become an ‘entente’ rooted in a ‘basic compatibility of world views’ was more realistic and had a ring of permanence to it.161 Russia is, of course, acutely aware of China’s growing presence in Central Asia. Fully supportive of China’s Belt and Road project, and grateful that China surpassed Germany as Russia’s leading individual trade partner, the Kremlin was still not pleased by Beijing’s proposal to construct a rail line through south Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, a corridor that would open Central Asia up to Europe and bypass Russia. Above all the railroad would raise China’s influence in the region at the expense of Russian.162 The closer Russia–China rapport should not have come as a surprise. Substantial upgrades to the Moscow–Beijing relationship were confirmed at the 23rd inter-governmental meeting in November 2018.163 At that time, Washington had levelled further sanctions on Russia and imposed a series of tariff on Chinese goods. China retaliated, and an expensive trade war was underway. Moscow and Beijing found relief in deals with each other. We have seen that China opened its market to Russian poultry and dairy products, and teams were organized for joint agricultural development in parts of Northeast China and the Far East of Russia. A series of inter-governmental meetings in Beijing resulted in further customs coordination and broadened student exchanges. Negotiations that included Deputy Prime Ministers Siluanov, Akimov and Golikova, Economics Minister Oreshkin and Industry Minister Manturov preceded the meetings. Most of the Russian ministers joined Medvedev in Beijing where he and President Xi oversaw final touches. Russian commentators saw these negotiations as sanctions breakers.164

268  New Cold War Whatever reservations Moscow had about Beijing’s intentions in Central Asia, they were kept well-disguised during a three-day state visit by Xi to Moscow in June 2019. He and Putin gushed over their partnership, boasted of huge increases in bilateral trade, took a common approach to Iran and Venezuela, cheered the success of energy pipelines and the agricultural projects linking them, and lauded their joint military exercises.165 In a televised interview in November 2019, Lavrov said relations between Russia and China were at the highest level ever, and that they were ‘unconditional allies’ on international principles, such as the rules of the WTO. On the latter file, he made clear reference to ‘dirty competition’, meaning sanctions. Lavrov added that there were no plans in either country for a military alliance.166 The lovefest was interrupted during the pandemic. Trade faltered, train and plane traffic across the border stopped, tourism trickled down to nothing and there was talk of delays in the delivery of S-400s to China. But the interlude was brief. Putin’s administration defended China while Trump tried to shift all blame for COVID-19 on to Beijing, especially when the US cut off funding to the WHO, chastising it for being too cosy with China at the onset of the pandemic. In this instance, the EU’s foreign ministers took the same position as Russia and China, saying that global cooperation was needed to fight the infectious disease.167 As Russia and China moved cautiously out of first-wave pandemic mode in the spring–summer of 2020, their close relationship emerged intact, while the third party in the new Cold War grew more and more self-isolated. Indeed, responding to calls by President-elect Biden for a stronger coalition against China on trade and economic fronts, Xi Jinping and Putin confirmed that their strategic cooperation would resist any attempt to divide them.168 The situation had shifted already in October. Asked at Valdai if a military alliance between China and Russia was possible, Putin answered that, while the two countries had reached ‘a high level of interaction in the field of military technical cooperation’, an alliance was not yet planned: ‘But in principle, we are not going to exclude this. So, let us see.’169

Final straws? As the second half of 2020 opened, conspiracy theories were the order of the day. The New York Times (26 June) turned to ‘anonymous sources’ to claim that Russian intelligence officers secretly offered bounties to Taliban fighters for dead coalition troops. The story ran rampant on Western print and TV media, and Peskov told an NBC interviewer that the story was ‘100% bullshit’. The Taliban also denied it. According to Trump, ‘nobody briefed or told me, Pence, or Chief of Staff’ about the ‘so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians’ and called the story fake news.170 The fact that both the CIA and US Central Command later admitted that they had ‘no evidence’ that any payments by the GRU to fighters in Afghanistan were bounties for

New Cold War  269 killing US troops didn’t stop American politicians from using the tale as part of their ‘get tough on Russia’ agendas.171 The Americans had already come to terms with the Taliban, and had partially withdrawn from Afghanistan. Taliban spokesmen pointed out that they had been killing foreign troops for 20 years and needed no monetary incentives for continuing to do so. Although the truth of the matter remained unclear, employees at Russian embassies in London and Washington received death threats and everyone continued to believe what they wanted to believe.172 Just as the bounty accusation faded into the background, intelligence services in the US, UK and Canada accused Russian hackers (Cozy Bear, APT29) of trying to hack into their coronavirus research. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre called it a ‘campaign of malicious activity’ conducted ‘almost certainly’ by units of Russia’s intelligence services. Russian rejected the allegations. The CEO of Russia’s Direct Investment Fund, which provides funds for Russia’s vaccine research programme, pointed out that the Oxford project (one of the alleged targets) already shared information with its Russian counterparts. 173 Russia had long since been testing its own coronavirus vaccine and submitting data to the UK. These tests achieved some success by the end of August (see Chapter 9). The accusations may well have been true, however. We have seen that cyber-espionage has become a major component of modern statecraft, and therefore of the new Cold War. In any case, medical spying would be rendered needless if such data were shared by international agreement. Unfortunately, that would involve diplomacy, the lost art.174 All that aside, by mid-fall 2020, Moscow had become embroiled in several serious affairs that neither of their two protagonists in the new Cold War caused or were even featured in, though they certainly would take political advantage of them. These situations were either self-induced, such as the Navalny poisoning, or the culmination of long-festering conditions that should have been avoided, such as the Belarusian mutiny against the Lukashenka regime. Both had wide-ranging political and strategic implications for Russia. The Navalny case served as a last straw to Western governments and Russian liberals who were already angry about political acts they blamed on Putin. The potential for a coloured revolution in Belarus placed Moscow’s sphere of influence in jeopardy. The Navalny case brought calls for more sanctions and talk of a ‘Navalny Act’ in the US.175 Among Western leaders, only Donald Trump hesitated, saying, on 5 September, that he had not yet seen any proof that the German version was true. The Kremlin continued to deny the accusations vehemently, and Zakharova continued to ask for evidence. Both cases forced the Kremlin to choose between the lesser of two evils. Among the foreign responses to Navalny were calls for Germany to give up its support for the Nord Stream-2 project, European leaders threatened new sanctions and NATO convened a special meeting to discuss the matter. Among other things, NATO demanded that Russia open up its Novichok programme to the OPCW. The Kremlin refused.176 The Russian National

270  New Cold War Medical Chamber proposed a joint Russian–German medical investigation of Navalny’s illness, and that went nowhere.177 It may be that, by the end of 2020, retirement in 2024 looked far more attractive to Putin than it had at the first of the year. It would seem, anyway, that he thought he had done his job on the world scene by 2020, telling the Valdai Club in October: I assure you, dear friends, we objectively assess our capabilities: intellectual, territorial, economic and military – both today’s capabilities and our potential. And while strengthening our country, looking at what is happening in the world, in other countries, I want to say to those who are still waiting for the gradual fading of Russia: in this case, we are worried about only one thing - how not to catch a cold at your funeral.178 An echo, perhaps, of Nikita Khrushchev’s famous remark to a gathering of Western ambassadors in 1956: ‘whether you like it or not history is on our side. We will bury you!’179 In Khrushchev’s case, it turned out that history was not on his side; Putin’s side in history has not yet been determined.

Notes 1 Frances Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’, The National Interest, Vol. 16 (1989), pp. 3–18; Frances Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press, 1992. 2 Francis Fukuyama, ‘Against Identity Politics. The New Tribalism and the Crisis of Democracy’, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2018, pp. 90–115. 3 Jose Miguel Alonso-Trabanco, ‘The New “Twenty Years Crisis”: 2000–2020’, Geopolitical Monitor. Backgrounder, 2 April 2020. See also Walter Russell Mead, ‘The End of the Wilsonian Era. Why Liberal Internationalism Failed’, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2021. 4 Stephen Holmes, Ivan Krastev, The Light that Failed. Why the West is Losing the Fight for Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Pegasus Books, 2020. 5 Victoria Nuland, ‘Pinning Down Putin’, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2020; on her ‘fuck the EU’ comment, see J.L. Black, Putin’s Third Term (2019), p. 95. 6 Putin, ‘Speech and the Following Discussion at the Munich Conference on Security Policy’, Kremlin.ru, 10 February 2007, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/ transcripts/24034; ‘Sergei Lavrov: otvetim bez isterik’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 21 February 2007, translation in REDA 2007, Vol. 1, pp. 135–142. 7 Dmitri Trenin, ‘What Does Russia Want from the United States?’ Carnegie Moscow Center, 15 April 2020. 8 Andrei P. Tsygankov, Russia and America: The Asymmetric Rivalry. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2019; Stephen F. Cohen, War with Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019; John J. Mearsheimer, ‘Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault. The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin’, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2014. 9 See, e.g. Cheng Li, ‘A New Cold War? The Future of US–China Relations’, Wilson Center. Context Series, 13 December 2012; Robert D. Kaplan, ‘A New Cold War Has Begun’, FP (Foreign Policy), 7 January 2019; ‘Kissinger Says U.S. and China in “Foothills of a Cold War”’, Bloomberg News, 21 November 2019. Mark Kramer, ‘U.S.–Russian Relations and the “New Cold War” Metaphor’, PONARS Eurasia, Policy Memo No. 547, November 2018. For a Russian view of

New Cold War  271 this phenomenon, ‘Novaia kholodnaia voina’, Aktual’nye Komentarii, 12 June 2020. 10 ‘US has “lost its mind, morals and credibility”, China’s foreign minister tells Russian counterpart’, South China Morning Post, 18 July 2020; Pompeo, ‘Unalienable Rights and the Securing of Freedom’, US Department of State, 16  July 2020, https://www.state.gov/unalienable-rights-and-the-securing-offreedom/. 11 See Haley speech live www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JnBhxM-a-M&feature=youtube&t=2802, 5 April 2018; National Security Strategy of the United States of America, December 2017, www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/ NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf. 12 ‘Belyi dom: Tramp pozdravliaet Putina so vstupleniem v dolzhnost’ prezidenta Rossii’, Kommersant, 7 May 2018. 13 Trenin, ‘Rossiia i SShA nakhodiatsia v sostoianii gibridnoi voiny. Eto vser’ez i nadolgo’, Novaia Gazeta, 1 October 2018; on russophobia in the US, see Guy Mettan, Creating Russophobia. From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria. Atlanta, GA: Clarity, 2017. 14 See chapters in the special double issue, ‘The Foreign Policy Attitudes of Russian Elites, 1993-2016’, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 35, Issue 5–6 (2019). 15 ‘Belyi dom podverdil dannye o podgotovke vstrechi Trampa i Putina’, RBC.ru, 2 April 2018; ‘Trump Invited Putin For Meeting at White House, Kremlin Says’, The Moscow Times, 2 April 2018. 16 U.S. Treasury Department, Resource Center, 6 April 2018, www.treasury.gov/ resource-center/sanctions/OFAC-Enforcement/Pages/20180406.aspx. 17 U.S. Department of State, ‘Ukraine and Russia Sanctions’, www.state/gov/e/eb/ tfs/spi/ukrainerussia/, accessed 14 October 2018 18 ‘Aeroflot obratilsia v MID i Mintrans iz-za problem s vydachei viz SShA politom’, Vedomosti, 20 April 2018; ‘Russia Accuses U.S. of Building “Visa Wall” After Bolshoi Dancers Denied Entry’, The Moscow Times, 21 April 2018. 19 ‘Russia Angered by NASA’s Revoked Invitation to U.S.’, The Moscow Times, 7 January 2019; ‘White House Temporarily Lifts Sanctions on Russia’s Space Chief for U.S. Visit’, The Moscow Times, 19 October 2018. 20 For two very different perspectives, Emma Ashford, ‘How Reflexive Hostility to Russia Harms U.S. Interests’, Foreign Affairs. Snapshot, 20 April 2018; Robert D. Blackwell, Philip H. Gordon, ‘Containing Russia, Again. An Adversary Attacked the United States – It’s Time to Respond’, Foreign Affairs. Snapshot, 18 November 2018. 21 For general discussion, see Edward Lozansky, ‘U.S.–Russia-China Big Three – or WW III? Trump in Paris, “Russia is preparing for war,” China is in “preparation for war”’, The Washington Times, 9 November 2018; ‘“Prepare for war’” XI Jinping tells military region that monitors South China Sea, Taiwan’, South China Morning Post, 27 October 2018. 22 On this, see Sakwa, Russia’s Futures, p. 200. 23 ‘Statement by Russian Foreign Ministry on …’, 8 May 2018, www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news//asset_publisher/cKNonkJEO2Bw/content/id/32122053, 24 ‘Voennyi parad na Krasnoi ploshchadi’, Kremlin.ru, 9 May 2018, Kremlin.ru/ events/president/news/57436. 25 ‘Rossiia-zapad’, Levada-tsentr, 14 May 2018, www.levada.ru/2018/05/14/rossitazapad-2/; ‘Vrag i Rossii’, Levada-tsentr, 10 January 2018, www.levadaru/2018/01/10/vragi—rossii/; ‘“Druz’ia” i “vragi” Rossii’, Levada-tsentr, 14 June 2018, www.levada.ru/2018/06/14/druzia-i-vragi/. 26 Kathrin Hille, Katrina Mansion, ‘US prepares for Trump–Putin summit as Bolton visits Moscow’, Financial Times, 21 June 2018; ‘President Trump Is Planning a July Meeting With Vladimir Putin’, Fortune/Bloomberg, 21 June 2018; ‘Bolton to

272  New Cold War Discuss Putin–Trump Summit in Moscow Talks’, The Moscow Times, 27 June 2018. 27 Andrew E. Kramer, Eileen Sullivan, ‘Helsinki Summit Meeting Is Set for Trump and Putin’, New York Times, 28 July 2018; Bolton, The Room Where It Happened, op. cit., pp. 128–31. 28 ‘Glava MID Rossii vstretilsia s delegatsiei amerikanskikh kongressmenov’, Kommersant, 7 July 2018; Anton Troianovski, ‘Republican law makers come to Moscow, raising hopes there of U.S.–Russia thaw’, The Washington Post, 3 July 2018. 29 ‘Imposition of Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act Sanctions on Russia’, US State Department, 8 August 2018, www.state.gov/r/pa/ps/2018/08/285043.htm; ‘SShA vvedut sanktsii protiv Rossii iz-za “dela” Skripalei’, Vedomosti, 8 August 2018. 30 ‘A Bill to strengthen the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to combat international cybercrime, and to impose further sanctions with respect to the Russian Federation …’, S.3336, 115th Congress, 2nd Session, op. cit.; ‘86% of Large Russian Companies Fear New U.S. Sanctions’, The Moscow Times, 6 November 2018. 31 ‘Kreml’ otreagiroval na reshenie SShA vvesti novye sanktsii’, Vedomosti, 9 August 2018. 32 ‘U.S. Strategy Toward the Russian Federation’, Senate Testimony by Assistant Secretary of State A. Wess Mitchell, 21 Aug 2018, https://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/ rm/2018/285247.htm. On US meddling, see Benjamin Denison, ‘Where U.S. Sees Democracy Promotion, Russia Sees Regime Change’, Russia Matters, 29 July 2020. 33 See, e.g. Michael Kimmage, ‘The Surprising Promise of the Trump–Putin Summit’, Foreign Affairs. Snapshot, 11 July 2018; Jonathan Chait, ‘Will Trump Be Meeting with his Counterpart – Or His Handler?’, New York Magazine, 6 July 2018; Mike Eckel, ‘Big Weapons, Big Meeting: Could Trump, Putin Agree on New Arms Control Deal?’, RFE/RL, 14 July 2018; ‘What To Expect From the Helsinki Summit (Op-ed)’, The Moscow Times, 13 July 2018; ‘V khel’sinki zaverzhilas’ vstrecha prezidentov Rossii i SShA’, Vedomosti, 16 July 2018. For differing perspectives, Bob Woodward, Fear. Trump in the White House. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018, pp. 354–67, and Bolton, The Room Where It Happened, pp. 152–8. 34 See, e.g. The Editorial Board, ‘Why Won’t Donald Trump Speak for America?’ New York Times, 16 July 2018; Editorial, ‘Trump just colluded with Russia, openly’, Washington Post, 16 July 2016; Joe Lauria, ‘US Media is Losing Its Mind over Trump–Putin Summit’, Consortium News, 16 July 2018; ‘Russian Officials Hail Putin’s Success at Trump Helsinki Summit’, The Moscow Times, 17 July 2020 35 Tweeter: Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump, 9:24 AM-Jul 19, 2018. 36 ‘Putin priglasil Trampa v Moskvu’, Vedomosti, 27 July 2018; ‘Putin Invites Trump to Moscow’, The Moscow Times, 28 July 2018. 37 For a detailed discussion of this, see Stephen F. Cohen, War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine To Trump and Watergate. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019. 38 Henry Meyer, Ilkya Arkhipov, ‘Russia Puts Brave Face on Canceled Putin–Trump Talks in Paris’, Bloomberg, 6 November 2018; ‘U.S. Sanctions Persons, Entities Over Activities in Russian-Occupied Crimea’, RFE/RL, 8 November 2018; ‘SShA ob’iavili o novykh sanktsiiakh protiv Rossii za Krym i Donbass’, Vedomosti, 8 November 2018; ‘Kreml’ nazval prichinu otmeny peregovorov Putina i Trampa vo Frantsii’, Vedomosti, 7 November 2018. 39 Craig Timberg, Tony Romm, ‘New report on Russian disinformation, prepared for the Senate, shows the operation’s scale and sweep’, The Washington Post, 17 December 2018. For the reports, see www.intelligence.senate.gov/publicatiuons/ reports.

New Cold War  273 40 ‘Kremlin Rejects New U.S. Reports Alleging Russian Election Meddling’, The Moscow Times, 18 December 2018. 41 ‘Putin nazval khoroshei besedu s Trampom v Parizhe’, Vedomosti, 11 November 2018; ‘Trump, Putin to meet at a working lunch in Paris on Nov 11’, Reuters. World News, 7 November 2018. 42 Kirill Bulanov, ‘Putin rasskazal o provedennoi “na nogakh” besede s Trampom o konflikte s Ukrainoi’, Vedomosti, 1 December 2018. 43 US Department of State, ‘On the Meeting of the North Atlantic Council’, 4 December 2018, www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2018/12/287872.htm. 44 ‘Putin, in New Year Letter to Trump, Says Moscow Is Open for Dialogue’, The Moscow Times, 30 December 2018; Vladimir Soldatkin, ‘Putin tells Trump that Moscow is open for dialogue’, Reuters, 30 December 2018. 45 See, e.g. ‘We Told You So: Russian officials React to Mueller report on Collusion’, The Moscow Times, 25 March 2019; US Department of Justice, Report On the Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, Volume I, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III, Washington, DC, March 2019, redacted. 46 DmitriTrenin @DmitriTrenin, 1:55 AM – 25 Mar 2019 from Sergiyev Posad, Russia. See also Mark Galeotti, ‘Mueller Provides Scant Real Relief for Russia’, The Moscow Times, 25 March 2019. 47 Nina L. Khrushchev, ‘Russian Derangement Syndrome’, Project Syndicate, 28 May 2020. 48 ‘Telefonnyi razgovor s Prezidentom SShA Donal’dom Trampom’, Kremlin.ru, 3 May 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60469,; ‘Trump, Putin Discuss Possible New Nuclear Accord – White House’, The Moscow Times, 3 May 2019; Mark Landler, ‘Trump Says He Discussed the “Russian Hoax” in Phone Call With Putin’, New York Times, 3 May 2019; ‘Trump Says Putin Not “Involved” in Venezuela, Despite U.S. Claim’, The Moscow Times, 4 May 2019. 49 Michael McFaul, ‘Trump’s Gift to Putin. The President’s Privatized Foreign Policy Is a Boon for Russia’, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2019, online 23 October 2019; on the Clinton–Gabbard farce, Mark Galeotti, ‘Putin’s “Useful Idiots” Are Those Who call Others “Useful idiots”’, The Moscow Times, 22 October 2019; 50 See, e.g. Robert Fife, ‘Canada urged to help suspend Russia from Interpol’, Globe and Mail, 23 November 2018; for a very different opinion, Mary Dejevsky, ‘The West’s treatment of Russia over the Interpol presidency is dangerous and disingenuous’, The Independent (UK), 22 November 2018. 51 Council on Foreign Relations, ‘Russia’s Democracy: What Happens After Putin? Mikhail Khodorkovsky provides his perspective on the domestic political climate in Russia, prospects for democratic change, and the future of U.S.–Russia relations,’ 29 April 2019, https://www.cfr.org/event/russias-democracy-whathappens-after-putin. 52 See, for example, the ever-angry Kasparov’s Winter is Coming. Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must be Stopped. New York: Public Affairs, 2015; Bill Browder, Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015; and Navalny, ‘How to Punish Putin’, New York Times, 20 March 2014. The Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (CERES), University of Toronto, sponsored Kasyanov’s tour. 53 Michael Kimmage, ‘The Wily Country. Understanding Putin’s Russia’, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2020, a review essay. 54 Andrei P. Tsygankov, The Dark Double: US Media, Russia, and the Politics of Values. New York: Oxford UP, 2019, pp. 889-90, and Tsygankov, ‘American Russophobia in the Age of Liberal Decline’, Critique and Humanism, Vol. 49, Issue 1 (2018), pp. 29–40.

274  New Cold War 55 For challenges to Browder, Alex Krainer, Grand Deception: The Truth About Bill Browder, the Magnitsky Act and Anti-Russian Sanctions. Otto, SC: Red Pill Press, 2018. 56 Benjamin Bidder, ‘The Case of Sergei Magnitsky. Questions Cloud Story Behind U.S. Sanctions’, Spiegel Online, 26 November 2019, in German in Der Spiegel, 23 November 2019. Browder’s responding complaint against Der Spiegel was rejected by the German Press Council. European Court of Human Rights, ‘ECHR finds multiple violations of the European Convention in case concerning Russian tax adviser Magnitsky’, Decision. Article 5.1, https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng-press#{ %22itemid%22:[%22003-6486375-8551786%22]}. See also John Ryan, ‘Bill Browder, a Billionaire Accused of Being a Fraud and Liar’, The ANZ Review, 1 July 2020; Mark Landler, ‘Film About Russian Lawyer’s Death Causes an Uproar’, New York Times, 9 June 2016. 57 Michael Schwirtz, ‘European Court Partially Backs Kremlin in Khodorkovsky’s Prosecution’, New York Times, 31 May 201. 58 Royal Courts of Justice. In the High Court of Justice. Business & Property Courts of England & Wales. Commercial Court, Neutral Citation Number: [2019] EWHC 2621 (Comm), Case No.: CL-2015-00829, 8 October 2019. 59 ‘Khodorkovsky Was Denied Right to Fair Russian Trial, Court Says’, The Moscow Times, 14 January 2020; ‘European Court Rules Russia’s Khodorkovsky Denied Fair Trial’, RFE/RL, 14 January 2020. The ECHR agreed that the trial judge had not allowed a fair defence, but had not violated rules of impartiality, or the principle of presumption of innocence. 60 For the Free Russia Forum, https://www.forumfreerussia.org/en/announcements/2019-09-23/viii-forum-free-russia-november-9-10-vilnius/ffr/. 61 ‘Russia Reacts to U.S. Riots, Claims of Meddling’, The Moscow Times, 1 June 2020; Fedor Krasheninnikov, ‘Massovye besporiadki po-amerikanski i po-rossiiski’, Vedomosti, 3 June 2020; Ilya Klishin, ‘Russians Watch the American Protests as Clouds Gather at Home’, The Moscow Times, 3 June 2020; for the CNN interview with Susan Rice, https://www.facebook.com/cnn/videos/9329442 63812266/?type=2&theater. 62 For the MID statement, 29 May 2020, https://www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/ news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/4143459?p_p_id=101_ INSTANCE_cKNonkJE02B.w&_101_INSTANCE_cKNonkJE02Bw_language Id=ru_RU. 63 ‘Job Description’, New York Times, https://nytimes.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/ en-US/INYT/job/Moscow-Russia/Russia-Correspondent_REQ-008536, accessed 23 November 2020; for the Russian reaction, ‘NYT’s Russia Job Posting “Russophobic”, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Says’, The Moscow Times, 23 November 2020. 64 ‘Erklarung der Bundesregierung im Fall Nawalny’, Press release 306, https://www. bundesregierung.de/breg-de/aktuelles/erklaerung-der-bundesregierung-im-fallnawalny-1781790; Darina Bukharova, ‘V Germanii zaiavili o sledakh isda gruppy “Novichok” v organizme Naval’nogo’, Vedomosti, 2 September 2020; ‘Germany Says Kremlin Critic Navalny Was Poisoned With Novichok’, The Moscow Times, 2 September 2020; ‘Russia launches investigation into Navalny “poisoning” case’, OVD-Info, 26 August 2020. 65 ‘Glavnyi toksikolog Omskoi oblasti iskliuchil otravlenie Naval’nogo “Novichkom”’, Vedomosti, 8 September 2020; Pavel Felgenhauer, ‘The Navalny Poisoning and Russia’s Nerve Agent Politics’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 10 September 2020. 66 See Daniel Treisman, ‘Why the Kremlin Hates Levada Center’, The Moscow Times, 24 May 2013. 67 ‘Over 20 NGOs appeal to Russian ombudsman, Council of Europe …’, Interfax, 26 November 2020; Federal’nyi zakon, ‘O vnesenii izmenenii v otdel’nye

New Cold War  275 zakonodatel’nye akty … mer protivodeistviia ugrozam natsional’noi bezopasnosti’, 25 December 2020, http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/00012020123 00001?index=0&rangeSize=1. 68 Russian Ministry of Justice, ‘List of Foreign and International non-governmental organizations whose activities are considered undesirable in the territory of the Russian Federation’: http://minjust.ru/ru/activity/nko/unwanted. 69 ‘Amerikanskii fond “Svobodnaia Rossiia” priznan ugrozoi bezopasnosti RF’, Interfax, 1 July 2019. 70 Mark Raczkiewicz, ‘Russia Labels Atlantic Council Think Tank In Washington “Undesirable”’, RFE/RL, 26 July 2019; ‘Atlantic Council Response …’, 26 July 2019, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/news/press-releases/atlantic-council-responseto-the-decision-of-the-ministry-of-justice-of-the-russian-federation. 71 ‘RFE/RL Files Documents To Register As “Foreign Agent” With Russian Tax Service’, RFE/RL, 24 January 2020; ‘Russia Adds U.S. News Site RFE/RL to “Foreign Agent” Roster’, The Moscow Times, 13 February 2020; RF Ministry of Justice, ‘Reestr inostrannykh sredstv massovoi informatsii, vypolniaiushchikh funktsii inostrannogo agenta’, https://minjust.ru/ru/deyatelnost-v-sfere-nekommercheskih-organizaciy/reestr-inostrannyh-sredstv-massovoy-informacii, accessed 13 February 2020. 72 Putin, Board meeting of the Federal Security Service, Kremlin.ru, 6 March 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59978. These numbers were challenged in a blog by Mikhail Zelensky and Denis Dmitriev, Meduza, 3 March 2019. 73 ‘Butina Case: Neo-McCarthyism Engulfs America’, Strategic Culture, 9 August 2018; Michelle Goldberg, ‘That Russian Woman’, New York Times International, 28–29 July 2018. 74 Sharon LaFraniere, ‘Prosecutors Admit They Wrongly Accused Russian of Offering Sex for Republican Access’, New York Times, 8 September 2018; ‘Advokat Marii Butina rasskazal ob usloviiakh soderzhaniia svoei podzashchitnoi’, BRC.ru, 21 July 2018. 75 For the opinion that she was a scapegoat used to retaliate for Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election, see James Banford, “The Spy Who Wasn’t’, The New Republic, 11 February 2019; see also Tat’iana Baikova, Dmitrii Laru, ‘Spisok Butina: v GD prizyvaiut nakazat’ vinovnykh v areste rossiianki’, Izvestiia, 30 April 2019. 76 Vladimir Burnov, ‘Butina rasskazala, chto v SShA deistvuiut 4 zakona po inoagentam’, RAPSI, 26 November 2020. 77 ‘V Moskve zaderzhali amerikantsa po podozreniiu v shpionazhe’, Vedomosti, 31 December 2018; ‘Russia Detains American in Moscow Over Suspected Spying’, The Moscow Times, 31 December 2018. 78 ‘Is Paul Whelan an Internet Spy?’, Rosbalt, 3 January 2019; ‘Russian news agency says ‘U.S. spy” recently arrested in Moscow was caught “red-handed”’, Meduza, 3 January 2018. 79 For video of press conference, www.mid.ru/en/posledniye_dobavinenniye/-/asset_ publisher/MCZ7HQuMdqBY/content/idf/3476729; ‘Lavrov Holds Annual Press Conference, Ridicules Idea that Trump is Russian Spy’, The Moscow Times, 16 January 2019; Nataliya Vasilyeva, ‘Lawyers: U.S. Spy Suspect Had Classified Documents’, AP, 23 January 2019. 80 Aleksei Nikol’skii, Varvara Podrugina, ‘Osuzhdennyi za shpionazh Pol Uilan vriad li otsidit ves’ srok’, Vedomosti, 15 June 2020; ‘Russian court finds ex-US marine Paul Whelan guilty of espionage, sentences him to 16 years in prison’, RT, 15 Jun 2020; Vladimir Kuznetsov, Jake Rudnitsky, ‘Pompeo Slams Russia’s Jailing of American in Secret Spy Trial’, Bloomberg, 15 June 2020. 81 Angelina Krechetova et al., ‘Niderlandy vyslali chetyrekh rossiian za podgotovku kiberataki’, Vedomosti, 4 October 2018; for the December expulsions, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 10 December 2020.

276  New Cold War 82 ‘“Orchestrated Propaganda:” Russia Reacts to Dutch Hacking Accusations’, The Moscow Times, 5 October 2018; ‘Britain Accuses Russia’s GRU Military Intelligence of Global Cyber Attacks’, The Moscow Times, 4 October 2018; ‘U.S. Indicts 7 Russian Intel Officers in Alleged Doping Scandal Hack’, The Moscow Times, 4 October 2018; Steven Chase, ‘Canada joins censure of Russian hacking’, Globe and Mail, 5 October 2018. On Bad Rabbitt, see Hassane Oumsalem, ‘Bad Rabbit Ransomware: What to Know and How to Prevent It’, Hitachi Systems Security, Inc., 27 October 2017. 83 Jack Stubbs, Svetlana Reiter, ‘Insight – Treason charges against Russian cyber experts linked to 7-year old accusation’, Business Insider (Reuters), 26 February 2017. 84 ‘Russian Scientist Accused of Passing Tech Secrets to China – Reports’, The Moscow Times, 1 October 2020; Brittany Shammas, ‘Mexican national arrested in Florida on accusation of spying for Russia’, Washington Post, 19 February 2020. 85 Jim Sciutto, ‘Exclusive: US extracted top spy from inside Russia in 2017’, CNN. com, 10 September 2019; ‘Kreml’ podtverdil, chto “tsennyi agent” SShA rabotal v administratsii prezidenta’, Kommersant, 10 September 2019. 86 ‘Bolgariia vyslala rossiiskogo diplomata iz-za podozrennii v shpionazhe’, Vedomosti, 28 October 2019; ‘Poland Captures Suspected Russian Spy, Media Reports’, The Moscow Times, 28 October 2019; ‘Bulgaria expels Russian diplomat over espionage case’, EURACTIV Network, 29 October 2019; ‘Bulgaria Set to Expel Two Russian Diplomats Over Espionage’, The Moscow Times, 24 January 2020; ‘Bolgariia vysylaet dvukh sotrudnikov torpredstva Rossii’, Vedomosti, 23 September 2020. 87 ‘Latvia arrests “spy” working for Russia’, EU Observer, 3 March 2020; ‘Latvia Arrests Spy Working for Russia’, The Moscow Times, 3 March 2020. 88 Putin, ‘Meeting with public from Crimea and Sevastopol’, Kremlin.ru, 18 March 2020, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/63021. 89 ‘Czechs Expel Russian Diplomats Over Poison Plot Hoax’, The Moscow Times (AFP), 5 June 2020. 90 ‘Explainer: Russia’s Recent Tit-for-Tat Diplomatic Expulsions’, The Moscow Times, 1 September 2020; ‘CMI soobshchili o vysylke dvukh rossiiskikh diplomatov iz Kolumbii za shpionazh’, Kommersant, 22 December 2020. 91 Yuri Litvinenko, Ksenia Boletskaya, Aleksey Bela Liauw, ‘Byvshemu zhurnalistu “Vedomostei” Ivanu Safronovu pred’iavili obvinenie v gosizmene’, Vedomosti, 7 July 2020; ‘Russia’s Space Chief Adviser and Ex-Journalist Detained for Treason’, The Moscow Times, 7 July 2020. 92 ‘Colleagues Rally Behind Russian Former Journalist Detained for Treason’, The Moscow Times, 7 July 2020; Pavel Felgenhauer, ‘Russia Journalist Community Stands up to FSB’, Eurasia daily Monitor, 9 July 2020. 93 ‘Two men arrested in Russia on suspicion of treason’, RAPSI, 6 October 2020; ‘Brotherly treason’, RT, 6 October 2020; Anne M. Simmons, ‘Russia Charges Scientist With Passing Information to China’, The Wall Street Journal, 16 June 2020; ‘Russian Scientist Accused of Passing Tech Secrets to China – Reports;’, The Moscow Times, 1 October 2020; ‘Moscow City Courts sentenced Karina Turcan to 15 years in prison in espionage case’, RAPSI, 29 December 2020. 94 Dar’ia Korzhova, Anna Tret’iak, Aleksei Nikol’skii, ‘Osnovateliu investfonda Baring Vostok pred’iavili obvinenie’, Vedomosti, 21 February 2019; ‘U.S. Investor Michael Calvey Released, Put Under House Arrest in Moscow’, RFE/RL, 11 April 2019; ‘Moscow Court Freezes Calvey’s Assets’, The Moscow Times, 7 October 2019. 95 ‘Plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum’, Kremlin. ru, 7 June 2019, www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60707.

New Cold War  277 96 Donald Trump, ‘Executive Order on Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources’, 6 April 2020, https://www.whitehouse. gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-encouraging-international-supportrecovery-use-space-resources/; ‘Peskov prokommentiroval ukaz Trampa o prave SShA na dobychu resursov na Lune’, Interfax, 7 April 2020; Roscosmos website, ‘Plans to seize other planets’ territories damage cooperation’, 7 April 2020, http:// en.roscosmos.ru/21369/; ‘Russia Compares Trump’s Space Mining Order to Colonialism’, The Moscow Times, 8 April 2020. 97 Daniel Obergaus, ‘The US Hitches Its Final Ride to Space From Russia – for Now’, Wired, 8 April 2020. 98 Christopher Rickleton, ‘New Crew Reaches ISS in record Time’, The Moscow News, 14 October 2020; ‘Soyuz rocket reaches ISS in record time’, BBC News, 14 October 2020. 99 See, e.g. Ted Galen Carpenter, ‘NATO Partisans Started a New Cold War With Russia’, The American Conservative, 27 December 2018; Aaron Maté, ‘New Studies Show Pundits are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in US Politics’, The Nation, 28 December 2018; Michael Tracy, ‘In defense of Maria Butina. It seems entirely plausible that her biggest crime was networking’, Spectator USA, 21 December 2018; Tim Black, ‘Russia-mania takes over the world. In 2018, there were few things Western elites didn’t blame on Russia’, Spiked, 27 December 2018; Stephen F. Cohen, ‘The Long History of US–Russian “Meddling”’, The Nation, 6 March 2019. 100 Lydia Saad, ‘Majority of Americans Now Consider Russia a Critical Threat’, Gallup.com, 27 February 2019. 101 Annual Reagan National Defense Survey, ‘Americans Now View China as Greatest Enemy’, 26 November 2019, reagan-institute-2019-defense-surveyrelease-final.pdf. The survey was conducted in 0ctober with a sampling of 1,000 adult US citizens. 102 ‘Lawmakers Are Warned That Russia is Meddling to Re-elect Trump’, New York Times, 20 February 2020; ‘Russia is Helping Trump in 2020 Election, U.S. Intel Says – NYT’, The Moscow Times, 21 February 2020; ‘Russia denies backing Trump’s re-election as critics blast reported meddling’, Reuters UK News Break, 21 February 2019 (reprinted also in The Moscow Times); Bob Fredericks, ‘Trump denies Russians are meddling to help him win 2020 election’, New York Post, 21 February 2020. 103 Maggie Miller, ‘State Department Offers $10M reward for foreign election interference information’, The Hill, 6 August 2020; Shaun Tandon, ‘U.S. Offers $10M reward Against Russian Election Interference’, The Moscow Times (AFP), 6 August 2020. 104 Anna Arutunyan, ‘There is no Russian Plot Against America. The Kremlin Electoral Interference is All Madness and No Method’, Foreign Affairs, 5 August 2020; for the counter view, Alina Polyakova, ‘The Kremlin’s Plot Against Democracy’, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2020. 105 ‘Otnoshenie k stranem’, Levada-tsentr, 17 December 2019, https://www.levada. ru/2019/12/17/otnoshenie-k-stranam-5/. Russia’s ‘Generation Z: Attitudes and Values, pp. 68–71. 106 ‘4 in 5 Russians View West as a Friend – Poll’, The Moscow Times, 18 February 2020; Angelina Galanina, ‘Zapad stanovitsia blizhe’, Kommersant, 18 February 2020; ‘Otnoshenie k stranam’, Levada-tsentr, 18 February 2020, www.levada. ru/2020/02/18/otnoshenie-k-stranam-6/. 107 Sophie Tatum, ‘Washington Post: Trump concealed details from meetings with Putin’, CNN.com, 13 January 2019; Carla Baranauckas, ‘Trevor Noah Breaks Down Why The Idea of Trump being a Russian Spy is Preposterous’, Huffington Post, 15 January 2019; The Editorial Board, ‘Donald Trump: The Russia File’,

278  New Cold War New York Times, 14 January 2019; Paul Robinson, ‘Worst Secret Agent Ever’, irrussianality, 15 January 2019. 108 Lavrov’s annual press conference, www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_ publisher/cKNonkJEO2Bw/content/id/3476729, 16 January 2019; ‘Lavrov Holds Annual Press Conference, Ridicules Idea That Trump is Russian Spy’, The Moscow Times, 16 January 2019. 109 Clark Mindock, ‘FBI Director James Comey says Russia is “greatest threat of any nation on earth”’, The Independent, 3 May 2017; see also CNBC.com, 3 May 2017, and Tim Weiner, The Folly and the Glory: America, Russia, and Political Warfare, 1945–2020. New York: Henry Holt, 2020. 110 See e.g. Byron Tau, ‘Senate Democratic Report Alleges Russia Seeks to Undermine West’, The Wall Street Journal, 10 January 2018; Ben Cardin, ‘Never has a president ignored such a clear national security threat’, The Washington Post, 10 January 2018; Andrew Desiderio, ‘Huntsman: US–Russia Relations “Done” if There’s 18 Meddling’, Daily Beast, 9 January 2018; ‘Duma accuses foreign agents of meddling in Russia’s affairs ahead of election’, RT, 10 January 2018. On Yeltsin’s victory in 1996, see, e.g. cover story, ‘Yanks to the Rescue. The Secret Story of How American Advisers Helped Yeltsin Win’, Time Magazine, 15 July 1996. 111 Stephen F. Cohen, ‘The Cold War Ides of March’, The Nation, 20 March 2019. In a rare criticism of Russophobia in the US, the Washington Times made it clear that Russia had no reason to trust Washington, see Julia Gorin, ‘Can Russia trust the wily West?’, Washington Times, 11 December 2019. Stephen Cohen died in September, 2020, aged 81. 112 Joseph R. Biden, Jr., Michael Carpenter, ‘How to Stand Up to the Kremlin’, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2018. See also his, ‘Why America Must Lead Again’, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2020. 113 David Cenciotti, ‘U.S. B-52 Bombers Belonging to Task Force Deployed to UK Perform “Theater Familiarization Flights” Across Europe’, The Aviationist, 19 March 2019; Harry Howard, ‘Watch out, Putin! Huge American B-52s that can carry nuclear weapons land at RAF base as part of largest US bomber deployment to the UK since Iraq war’, Daily Mail, 17 March 2019. 114 See Republican and FOX News responses to witness statements before the inquiry conducted by the US Congress, ‘Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, joint with the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and the Committee on Foreign Affairs’, November 2019. The inquiry board included 13 Democrats and nine Republicans, with equal time to question. 115 ‘Putin response to a question at the Russia Calling! Investment Forum’, Kremlin. ru, 20 November 2019, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/62072/. 116 Lavrov, ‘Vstrecha s Gossekretarem SShA M. Pompeo, Sochi, 14 Maia 2019 goda’, http://www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/ content/id/3645867; Pompeo, ‘Remarks With Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Before Their Meeting’, www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2019/05/291629. htm. 117 Bolton, The Room Where It Happened, pp. 174–80, 181–2; David E. Sanger, Nicole Perlroth, ‘U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid’, New York Times, 15 June 2019; Nicole Perlroth, David E. Sanger, ‘Cyberattacks Put Russian Fingers on the Switch at Power Plants, U.S. Says’, New York Times, 15 March 2018. 118 ‘Russia Thwarts U.S., Cyber Attacks on its Infrastructure – News Agencies’, The Moscow Times, 17 June 2019. 119 For the Russian response, ‘Comment by the … Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development’, 6 July 2019, www.mid.ru/ru/­ foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/; ‘USAID Administrator Mark Green’s remarks on Countering Malign Kremlin Influence’,

New Cold War  279 5 July 2019, www.usaid.gov/news-information/press-release/jul-5-2019-administrator-mark-greens-remarks-countering-malign-kremlin-influence. See also Pavel Sharikov, ‘Will Russia’s Efforts to Prevent the Weaponization of Information Succeed?’ Russian Analytical Digest, No. 259, 30 November 2020, pp. 12–14. 120 US Department of Defense, Russian Strategic Intentions. A Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) White Paper, May 2019, https://www.politico. com/f/?id=0000016b-a5a1-d241-adff-fdf908e00001. 121 Natalia Romashkina, ‘Strategic Instability in the Era of Information and Communication Technologies: Crisis or the New Norm?’, Russian International Affairs Council, 7 November 2019. 122 ‘US–Russia Hold New Strategic Talks on Arms Control’, New York Times, 16 January 2020. 123 David E. Sanger, Nicole Perlroth, ‘Billions Spent on U.S. Cyberdefenses Failed to Detect Giant Russian Hack’, New York Times, 16 December 2020; David E, Sanger, Nicole Perlroth, Eric Schmitt, ‘Scope of Russian Hack Becomes Clear: Multiple U.S, Agencies Were Hit’, New York Times, 16 December 2020; Ben Fox, ‘U.S. cybersecurity agency says major hack of federal systems poses “grave” threat’, Globe and Mail, 18 December 2020; Robert Fife, Steven Chase, ‘Canada hit by major cybersecurity attack’, Globe and Mail, 19 December 2020. 124 Paul R. Kolbe, ‘With Hacking, the United States Needs to Stop Playing the Victim’, New York Times, 23 December 2020. 125 Vladimir Kozlov, ‘The pandemic causes a spike in cyber-attacks on Russian companies’, bne intellinews, 14 December 2020. 126 ‘Soveshchanie s postoiannymi chlenami Soveta’, Kremlin.ru, 18 December 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64678; Dmitri Trenin, ‘An “Act of War?” Avoiding a Dangerous Crisis in Cyberspace’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 21 December 2020; Paul R. Kolbe, ‘With Hacking, the United States Needs to Stop Playing the Victim’, New York Times, 24 December 2020. 127 Lionel Barber, Henry Foy, Alex Barker, ‘Vladimir Putin says liberalism has “become obsolete”’, Financial Times, 27 June 2019. Barber is Editor of the FT and Foy is its Moscow Bureau Chief. Barker was in Osaka for the G-20. For full transcript of Putin’s remarks, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60836. 128 ‘Discours du Président de la République á la conférence des ambassadeurs’, Élysée, 27 August 2019. 129 DmitriTrenin @DmitriTrenin-Aug 20, -21, -25, https://twitter.com/DmitriTrenin/ status/1165556361062682624. 130 Todd Prince, ‘U.S. Senate Hearing Exposes Partisan Differences Over New Russian Sanctions’, RFE/RL, 4 December 2019; Patricia Zengerle, ‘U.S. senators try again to pass Russia sanctions bill’, Reuters, 13 February 2019; Bolton, The Room Where It Happened, pp. 142–3. 131 Leonid Bershidsky, ‘U.S. Sanctions a Russian Pipeline Too Late to Stop It’, Bloomberg Opinion, 13 December 2019. 132 Vera Eckert, ‘EU “highly concerned” by U.S. stance on Nord Stream pipeline’, Reuters, 14 August 2020; Charles Kennedy, ‘U.S. Sanctions On Nord Stream 2 Upset European Lawmakers’, Oilprice, 14 August 2020; Tsvetana Paraskova, ‘Russia Cries War As U.S. Tries To Kill Nord Stream 2’, Oilprice.com, 21 December 2020; ‘Norwegian company refused to certify Nord Stream 2’, RBC. ru, 2 January 2021, www.rbc.ru/business/02/01/2021/5ff096349a794791d35 7ed31. 133 Gennadii Petrov, ‘V Vashingtone vystupili za “chestogo i priamogo” posla v RF’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 30 October 2019. 134 ‘Statement of John J. Sullivan. Nominee to be U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, October 30, 2015’, https:// www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/103019_Sullivan_Testimony.pdf.

280  New Cold War 135 For the full 120-page report, https://rsc-johnson.house.gov/sites/republicanstudycommittee.house.gov/files/%5BFINAL%5D%20NSTF%20Report.pdf. 136 Mark McKinnon, ‘China, Russia add COVID-19 hoaxes to their disinformation arsenals’, Globe and Mail, 28 March 2020; Mark J. Schwartz, ‘Russia Blamed for COVID-19 Disinformation Campaigns’, Bank Info Security, 23 March 2020; Ti-Ting Lien, ‘Why China’s COVID-19 Disinformation Campaign Isn’t Working in Taiwan’, The Diplomat, 20 March 2020. 137 ‘Coronavirus: Russia denies spreading US conspiracy on social media’, BBC. com News, 23 February 2020; ‘Putin Says Fake Coronavirus Rumors “Organized From Abroad”’, The Moscow Times, 4 March 2020 138 Homeland Security News Wire, http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/ dr20200414-putin-s-long-war-against-american-science; William J. Broad, ‘Putin’s Long War Against American Science’, New York Times, 14 April 2020. 139 See, e.g. Nick Robins-Early, Hayley Miller, Jesselyn Cook, ‘How Quack Doctors And Powerful GOP Operatives Spread Misinformation to Millions’, HuffPost, 28 July 2020; Michael D. Shear et alia, ‘Inside Trump’s Failure: The Rush to Abandon Leadership Role on the Virus’, New York Times, 18 July 2020. 140 Acot-Acot, ‘As the US nears 200,000 coronavirus deaths, Trump says he gives himself as A+ on pandemic response’, COVID-19 World News, 21 September 2020. 141 EUvsDiSiNFO, ‘The Kremlin and Disinformation about Coronavirus, 16 March 2020, euvsdisinfo.eu/the-kremlin-and-disinformation-about-coronavirus/; ‘Disinformation on the Coronavirus – Short Assessment of the Information Environment, ibid., 27 March 2020; ‘Kremlin denies evidence of Russian COVID19 Disinformation Campaign’, 19 March 2020, coronavirus-disinfo/30498024. html. 142 ‘Telefonnyi razgovor s Prezidentom SShA Donal’dom Trampom’, Kremlin.ru, 30 March 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/63086; ‘Russia Plane Heads to U.S. With Supplies for Virus Fight’, The Moscow Times, 1 April 2020; U.S. Department of State, ‘U.S. Purchase of Needed Supplies From Russia’, Press Statement, 1 April 2020, https://www.state.gov/u-s-purchase-of-needed-suppliesfrom-russia/. 143 See tweets by Leonid Volkov https://twitter.com/leonidvolkov/status/1245594577249038337; Al’ians vrachei, https://twitter.com/alyansvrachey/ status/1245614889726398464. 144 ‘Putin, Trump discuss anti-coronavirus efforts, situation on global oil market – Kremlin’, Interfax, 7 May 2020. 145 See, e.g. Kurt M. Campbell, Rush Doshi, ‘The Coronavirus Could Reshape Global Order’, Foreign Affairs, 18 March 2020; Andrew Korybko, ‘The Coronavirus: Crown Jewel of the New World Order or Crippling Blow to Globalization?’ Global Research, 19 March 2020. 146 See, e.g. Michael Green, Even S. Medeiros, ‘The Pandemic Won’t Make China the World’s Leader. Few Countries Are Buying the Model of the Message From Beijing’, Foreign Affairs, 15 April 2020. 147 ‘Russia, U.S. Should Help Each Other During Pandemic Kremlin’, The Moscow Times, 18 April 2020; ‘U.S. Ready to Send Ventilators to Corona-Hit Russia, Trump Says’, The Moscow Times, 18 April 2020; 148 ‘Russia coronavirus test sent to more than 30 countries’, Interfax, 8 April 2020; ‘Turning the Tables, Russia Send Virus Aid to U.S.’, New York Times, 4 April 2020. 149 ‘U.S. To Send Ventilators to Russia Amid Surge in Coronavirus Cases’, RFE/RL, 17 May 2020; ‘U.S. Plane With 150 Donated Ventilators Lands in Russia’, The Moscow Times, 4 June 2020. 150 Felix Light, ‘QAnon Gains Traction in Russia’, The Moscow Times, 30 November 2020; ‘Protesty v SShA posle vyborov prezidenta. Fotogaleria’, Vedomosti, 5

New Cold War  281 November 2020; ‘Tramp nazval nepravomernymi zaiavleniia Baidena o pobede do resheniia suda’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 7 November 2020; ‘Tramp nazval nezakonnymi zaiavleniia Baidena o pobede do resheniia suda’, Kommersant, 7 November 2020; ‘“More Divided Than Ever”: Russia Reacts to U.S. Election’, The Moscow Times, 5 November 2020; Sonam Sheth, ‘Vladimir Putin wasted no time in weaponizing Trump’s election conspiracies to spread Russian propaganda’, Business Insider, 23 November 2020. 151 Michael Mainville, ‘Russia Sees U.S. Democracy “Limping” After Capital Stormed’, The Moscow Times, 7 January 2021; Igor Dunaevsky, ‘Chto predveshchaet inauguratsiia v rezhime ChS dlia prezidentstva Dzhozefa Baidena’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 8 January 2021; ‘Chislo pogibshikh v bespriadkakh v Vashingtone vyproslo do piatiu’, Vedomosti, 8 January 2021. See also Pippa Norris, ‘It Happened in America. Democratic Backsliding Shouldn’t Have Come as a Surprise’, Foreign Affairs. This Week, 7 January 2021. 152 Tatyana Stanovaya, ‘A Farewell to Trump? Russia’s Elite Braces for U.S. Elections’, Carnegie Moscow Centre, 21 October 2020. 153 ‘Lukashenko nasval izdevatel’stvom nad demokratiei prezidentskie vybory v SShA’, Vedomosti, 7 November 2020. 154 Anna Arutunyan, ‘The Russian Media May Like Trump. It Doesn’t Mean the Kremlin Does’, The Moscow Times, 5 November 2020; ‘Moscow for Trump: metropolitan social media users support the current president’, Moscow Daily News, 3 November 2020; 155 Joe Biden, ‘Why America Must Lead Again’, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2020. See also ‘Biden and Russia’, The Bell, 24 October 2020. 156 ‘The Kremlin said that Putin will congratulate the US president after the official results’, TASS, 9 November 2020; ‘Pozdravlenie Dzhozefu Baidenu s pobedoi na vyborakh Prezidenta SShA’, Kremlin.ru, 15 December 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/ president/news/64660. 157 ‘Putin ob’iasnil, pochemu eshche ne pozdravil Baidena s pobedoi’, Vedomosti, 22 November 2020; Andrey Baklitskiy, ‘Will the U.S. Election Herald the Return of Arms Control?’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 3 November 2020. 158 ‘Oba khuzhe. Kto luchshe dlia Rossii – Tramp ili Baiden?’, Argumenty i fakty, 4 November 2020. 159 National Security Strategy of the United States of America, December 2017, pp. 47, 51, www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-20170905; Hilary Appel, ‘Are XI Jinping and Vladimir Putin Partners? Interpreting the Russia–China Rapprochement’, PONARS Eurasia. Policy Memo 603, July 2019. 160 See Leon Aron, ‘Are Russia and China Really Forming an Alliance?’, Foreign Affairs. Snapshot, 4 April 2019; ‘The junior partner’, The Economist, 27 July 2019, pp. 15–18. For a challenge to the mainstream narrative, Andrea KendallTaylor, David Shullman, ‘A Russian–Chinese Partnership Is a Threat to U.S. Interests’, Foreign Affairs. Response, 14 May 2019. 161 Dmitri Trenin, ‘Russia, China Are Key and Close Partners’, Carnegie Moscow Centre, 5 June 2019; see also Andrei Tsygankov, ‘The Global Economic Reshuffle: USA, China and Russia’, Valdai Club, 14 May 2019. 162 For a discussion, see Paul Goble, ‘China’s Plan for Railway to Uzbekistan is Transforming Central Asian Geopolitics’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 21 March 2019; and Jeff Sahadeo, ‘Springtime for Central Asia? Belts and Roads, Partnerships, and Risks amid Global Realignment’, The New World Disorder, Chapter 4, pp. 77–101. 163 See a detailed Russian perspective, Alexander Lukin, China and Russia: The New Rapprochement. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2018. Lukin is the head of the Department of World Economy and International Affairs at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics.

282  New Cold War 164 Dmitry Butrin, ‘Rossiisko-kitaiskoe prodvizhenie. Sanktsii i torgovye voiny pomogli Moskvy i Pekina’, Kommersant, 8 November 2018; 165 “Press statements following Russian–Chinese talks’, Kremlin.ru, 5 June 2019, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/60672. 166 ‘Lavrov: Rossiia i Kitai ne budut zakliuchat;’ voennyi soiuz’, TASS, 1 November 2019. 167 ‘Russia Slams Trump’s Decision to Cut WHO Funding as Coronavirus Rages’, The Moscow Times, 15 April 2020; Euobserver, ‘EU warns against anti-Chinese virus blame games’, 23 April 2020, https://euobserver.com/tickers/148157. 168 ‘Telephone conversation with President Xi Jinping’, Kremlin.ru, 28 December 2020, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64758; Rachel Zhang, ‘China–Russia ties won’t be broken, declare Xi and Putin in signal to Biden’, South China Morning Post, 29 December 2020. 169 Putin, ‘Zasedanie diskussionnogo kluba “Valdai”’, Kremlin.ru, 22 October 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64261. 170 Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt, Michael Schwirtz, ‘Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says’, New York Times, 26 June 2020; ‘MID nazval vbrosom stat’iu NYT o deiatel’nosti Rossii v Afganistane’, Vedomosti, 27 June 2020; @realDonaldTrump, 28 June 2020, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1277202159109537793. 171 Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt, Rakmini Callimachi, Adam Goldman, ‘New Administration Memo Seeks To Cast Doubts About Suspected Russian Bounties’, New York Times, 3 July 2020; Ben Aris, ‘US intelligence memo admits there is “no evidence” of Russian payment of bounties to Afghans for killing US soldiers’, BNE Intellinews, 7 July 2020; David B. Rivkin Jr., George S. Beebe, ‘Why we Need a little scepticism, and more evidence, on Russian bounties’, The Hill, 5 July 2020; Alan MacLeod, ‘In “Russian Bounty” Story, Evidence-Free Claims From Nameless Spies Became Fact Overnight’, FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting), 3 July 2020; Courtney Kune, Ken Dilanian, ‘U.S. commander: Intel still hasn’t established Russia paid Taliban “bounties” to kill U.S. troops’, NBC News, 14 September 2020. 172 Russia in USA @RusEmbUSA, 26 June 2020, https://twitter.com/RusEmbUSA/ status/1276692847698337792; Ebony Bowden, ‘Intelligence officials cast doubt on Times’ Russia–Taliban bounty scheme: report’, New York Post, 29 June 2020; for Peskov on NBC News, YouTube, 29 June 2020, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=bBMcvjxuNJo; Mark Galeotti, ‘The “Talibangate” Claims About Russian Bounties Still Don’t Add Up’, The Moscow Times, 3 June 2020. 173 Paul Waldie, Michelle Carbert, ‘Russian hackers tried to steal coronavirus vaccine research from Canada, U.S. and Britain, intelligence agencies say’, Globe and Mail, 17 July 2020; Julian E. Barnes, ‘Russia Is Trying to Steal Virus Vaccine Data, Western Nations Say’, New York Times, 16 July 2020; ‘UK, U.S. and Canada Accuse Russia of Vaccine Research Hacking’, The Moscow Times, 17 July 2020; ‘Russian Envoy Denies Moscow Helped Hackers Target Virus Vaccine’, The Moscow Times, 18 July 2020; ‘Developments in Oxford Vaccine Officially Shared With Russia, No Need to “Steal” Them – RDIF Head’, Sputnik, 16 July 2020. 174 For detailed discussions, Russell Buchan, Cyber Espionage and International Law. London: Hart, 2018; Ben Buchanan, The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2020. 175 See, e.g. Bret Stephens, ‘U.S. Should Pass A Navalny Act’, New York Times International, 19–20 September 2020; Michael Carpenter, Vlad Kobets, ‘What Russia Really Has in Mind for Belarus and Why Western Leaders Must Act’, Foreign Affairs, 8 September 2020. 176 See Madeline Chambers, ‘Calls mount for Germany to rethink Nord Stream 2 pipeline after Navalny poisoning’, Reuters, 3 September 2020; ‘North Atlantic

New Cold War  283 Council meets to address assassination attempt on Alexey Navalny’, NATO News, 4 September 2020, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news.htm; Anna Smolenko, ‘Russia Defies West as NATO Urges Cooperation Over Navalny’, The Moscow Times, 4 September 2020; ‘V Kremle otsenili riski ostanovki stroitel’stva “Severnogo potoka-2”’, Vedomosti, 7 September 2020. 177 ‘Rossiiskie vrachi predlozhili kollegam iz FRG sozdat’ sovmestnuiu gruppu po Naval’nomu’, Vedomosti, 5 September 2020. 178 Putin, ‘Zasedanie diskussionnogo kluba “Valdai”’, Kremlin.ru, 22 October 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64261. Putin spoke via video from Novo-Ogarevo. 179 Khrushchev’s statement, ‘My vas pokhoronim’, angered many ambassadors and they left the room, but it could also have been interpreted by the simultaneous translator as ‘we shall outlive you’, or ‘outlast you’, which might not have been so provocative.

7 The re-militarization of Russia, and the end of arms control?

Introduction From the moment of his appointment as prime minister on 9 August 1999, two days after the outbreak of the second Chechen war, the Russian armed forces again became a major instrument of Russian foreign policy. While this had always been true during the Soviet era, the military arm had slipped badly in effectiveness and credibility during the latter part of the 1980s and throughout the chaotic 1990s. It lost the first Chechen war. Since then, unhesitant NATO expansion eastward and foreign reactions to further war in the North Caucasus confirmed for Putin early on that Russia was, and would continue to be, under psychological and perhaps even military siege from the West. With no reliable allies, the state of Russia’s weaponry and its military capabilities regained priority as components of the Kremlin’s international relationships. After the Russian economy was rejuvenated and state revenues guaranteed by a reorganized system of taxation, modernizing the military moved to the top of the agenda for the Russian government, temporarily setting aside the earlier stress on societal needs. Putin made this clear in an address to the Federal Assembly in 2006, when he complained that Russia’s defence spending as a share of GDP was less than either that of France or Britain, and that the US’s ‘defence budget in absolute figures is almost 25 times larger than Russia’s’. Musing on the role of the army, he said it should be ‘professional and mobile’ and able ‘to fight in global, regional and also in several local conflicts if necessary’. Touching on another theme common to most of his addresses, Putin said: A huge number of young men of conscript age today suffer from chronic disease and have problems with drinking, smoking and sometimes drugs as well. I think that in our schools we need not just to educate our young people but also see to their physical and military-patriotic development. We need to restore the system of pre-conscription military training and help develop military sports.1 It is worth recalling that in Putin’s own school days, young Soviet males in Class 10 took a compulsory course on military-patriotic education.2 DOI: 10.4324/9781003158646-8

The re-militarization of Russia  285 Preparations for war fighting was but one of the objectives related to the military throughout Putin’s first two decades in office: government spending on armed forces personnel and procurement had always to be considered carefully, so too was the constant question of nuclear and other arms control treaties. Other issues, ranging from the debilitating practice of hazing to endemic corruption in the military, were also on the agenda. Spending Spending on the military grew exponentially from 2005, rising from 3.6 to over 5 per cent of Russian GDP by 2016, after which it decreased slightly.3 Budget allocations had grown especially sharply while the military sector underwent sweeping reform and structural reorganization in 2008–9, driven in part by obvious weaknesses exposed by the Georgia campaign.4 The later cuts in defence expenditures were due to Putin’s preference for domestic development in his fourth term, perhaps to ensure his legacy. According to SIPRI, Russian military allocations had already dropped by 20 per cent in 2017 and by the end of 2018 Russia had slipped to sixth place – from third – among the top defence spending countries. At $61.4 billion, it lagged behind the USA ($649 bln), China ($250 bln), Saudi Arabia ($67.6 bln), India ($66.5 bln) and France ($63.8 bln).5 This amount did not take into account the fact that Russia buys and develops all its weaponry internally, and pays for them in rubles; and it spends more on research and development, separately from the defence budget, than most other countries.6 It seemed at the time that Russia’s ventures in Ukraine and Syria during Putin’s third term were enough and, on the assumption that certain strategic goals had been achieved, the inclination in the Kremlin was to turn inward. Military allocations were also victims of Western economic sanctions and, for a while, low oil prices. The spending tide turned again in 2019 when, SIPRI reported, Russia moved into fourth place in global defence apportionments. This expenditure made up about 3.4 per cent of global spending, far behind the US and China, and took up 3.9 per cent of Russia’s GDP (Table 7.1).7 Talk of further spending on the military spread again in Russia after Washington released details of a massive 2020 budget for defence, which totalled $740 billion. The omnibus bill included some direct specific challenges to Russia, such as embargoes related to Nord Stream-2 and TurkStream, $300 million for Ukrainian security, and sanctions against Turkey for purchasing Russia’s S-400s (see ahead).8 The bill did not become law until the first week of 2021, when the US Congress overrode Trump’s veto. Some of the onus on Russian military production was lifted by the government’s decision in December 2019 to write off up to a third of the debt owed by the military industry complex. The bailout was designed to make it easier for the industry to meet crucial production deadlines and, it was hoped, ensure that the armed forces would reach the long-standing goal of 70 per cent modern weaponry and equipment, especially for ground forces.9

286  The re-militarization of Russia Table 7.1  Global Military Spending, 2019 SIPRI list of 15 countries with highest shares of world military expenditures in 2019

(in percentages)

United States China India Russia Saudi Arabia France Germany United Kingdom Japan South Korea Brazil Italy Australia Canada Israel Others

38 14 3.7 3.4 3.2 2.6 2.6 2.5 2.5 2.3 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.2 1.1 19

Arms control treaties targeted Particularly important to military planning in Russia was the fate of a number of arms control treaties signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and subsequent extensions or nullifications of each of them (see ahead). The unilateral abrogation of the ABM Treaty by George W. Bush in 2002, the disputes over and eventual mutual cancellation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) by 2016 and uncertainty about the future of the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) were all incentives for Russia to raise its nuclear defence profile. The fact that Russia and the US together possess more than 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear weapons, about 8,000 warheads between them, means that these treaties have immense significance for the entire world. Cancelled arms control agreements will leave fingers on triggers of new and more dangerous weapons, even nuclear weapons, that could too easily be pulled.10 The fate of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty typified the arms control conundrum. Signed in November 1990 by NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the CFE set ceilings on the numbers of troops and equipment either side could maintain close to each other’s borders, and allowed verification. Overtaken by the break-up of both Warsaw Pact and the USSR, the CFE was nonetheless ratified by its 30 signatories and came into force in 1992. Subsequent arguments about alleged violations by, and in, Russia, Ukraine, Armenia and Azerbaijan preceded a major conference in Istanbul in 1999. After much deliberation, all participants agreed on wide-ranging amendments to the CFE. But these were never ratified by NATO governments who demanded that Russia withdraw all troops from Georgia and Moldova first.

The re-militarization of Russia  287 Russia complied in the case of Georgia, but not completely in the case of Moldova (Transdniestria). In its turn Russia, demanded that the US not construct a vast missile defence system in Europe that, it said, would violate the Treaty. Moscow complained also that further NATO expansion violated the Treaty. With no accommodation forthcoming from either side, and the establishment of US military bases in Bulgaria and Romania in 2006, Russia suspended its part in the CFE in 2007 and by 2015 withdraw altogether. From behind the Kremlin’s wall, the fate of the CFE illustrated the West’s indifference to Russia’s security concerns. So, too, did the US’s unwillingness to reconsider its plans (touted disingenuously since 2002 as a defence vs. ‘rogue’ states such as Iran) to surround Russia in the West with a Europe-based missile defence system, which was turned over to NATO when it became operable in 2016. Whether or not the Kremlin’s assessments of the European missile defence story and NATO enlargement are correct, its perception of both have been key factors in shaping Russia’s defence policies. Conscripts Regular pronouncements about creating an army of contract soldiers (kontraktiki) notwithstanding, by 2020 about 70 per cent of army personnel were still conscripts drawn from all males between the ages of 18 and 33. Many individuals who have financial resources, important personal contacts or real (or fake) health problems avoid the call-up, assuring that conscripts on average represent the least advantaged of Russia’s young men. Putin claimed in 2019 that, eventually, conscription would be phased out completely and that the Russian army would be filled with professionals, but change will take time. At about the same time, Defence Minister Shoigu announced that the number of kontraktiki in the armed forces had reached 400,000 and would grow to a half million by 2025.11 That would still represent only about one half of army personnel. At least one of the reforms didn’t seem to take, that is, preventative measures against pervasive hazing (dedovshchina), the sometime brutalization or extortion of military recruits. Attempts to ameliorate these practices, which have led to deaths and suicides, failed even though since 2008 conscripted soldiers have served for only one year, as opposed to the traditional two years. In that year, a new military educational system and stiffer punishments for hazers were introduced, but dedovshchina is still practiced by bullies close to finishing their own one-year term, and the NCOs do little to prevent it.12 The Union of Committees of Mothers of Russian Soldiers (Materey Rossii) estimated that nearly 40 per cent of soldiers’ deaths are due to suicides, not combat, while the army says that most of these are the result of traffic accidents, safety violations and plane crashes. The Mothers of Russian Soldiers NGO works to expose human rights violation in the military, making the question of hazing a political one. ***

288  The re-militarization of Russia In a rare interview, granted in September 2019, Shoigu told the Moskovskiy komsomolets that Putin’s greatest long-term accomplishment in the military field was countering the West’s decision to expand NATO eastward in the 1990s so as to ‘destroy and enslave Russia’. With Putin at the helm, he said, ‘Russia awoke and began pushing back, rebuilding its military with great sacrifice to resist Western domination and managing to build a multipolar world’.13 These comments were delivered during an event that would have been thought inconceivable in 2000; that is, a massive military manoeuvre conducted in the Central Military District with Chinese, Indian, Pakistani and Central Asian troops participating. NATO now holds military exercises based on an assumption that Russia poses a danger to the Baltic States and the Alliance’s ‘entire eastern flank’, a flank that abuts Russia. Both sides indulge in what is loosely called ‘hybrid’ warfare, a term used to cover anything ranging from war by proxy, propaganda, or cyberattacks, plus financial aid to opposition movements and individuals, and support for colour revolutions.14 The cold warrior notion of a ‘Russian threat’, another phenomenon almost unthinkable in 2000, is back in vogue. Given from where it started, the resurgence of the Russian military has been a success story for Putin and most Russians – to the extent that polls taken in 2019 showed that the army was the country’s most trusted institution (see Chapter 1). In fact, Stephen Blank, an American scholar of military matters, rightly called the reform one of ‘Putin’s most important legacies’, because it represented a ‘systematic overhaul of the entire state administration and the national economy’.15 Two events in June 2020 exposed issues of image and strategic policy facing the Russian military and the Russian government. In the first place, when the postponed annual Victory Day parade was finally carried out, on 24 June, to non-existing crowds, some 14,000 troops from 13 countries marched, showcasing both vintage equipment and some of the latest military weaponry. Putin stood with be-medalled veterans and presidents of several former Soviet republics. Macron and Xi, who had been scheduled for the first event, could not attend because of the pandemic. Thus, a propaganda opportunity for Putin to gain public support for his looming constitutional vote was lost. A second disappointment came when the American delegation to strategic stability talks in Vienna (22 June) failed to consider a short-term extension of New START.16 Those talks started out oddly. The US delegation, led by Marshal S. Billingslea, arranged chairs at the table with flags of China on them, photographed them and then jeered when no Chinese representatives showed, even though China had always said they would not participate.17 The Russian delegation leader, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, had already given an interview in which he said that Russia ‘had no trust’ in the US, so this strange act could not have inspired much confidence before the meeting got underway.18

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Strategic issues As new waves of sanctions flailed the Russian state and people in 2018, China sent a high-level military delegation to Moscow, led by its newly appointed defence minister, Wei Fenghe. Though the official reason for the delegation’s visit was to participate in the Moscow International Security Conference, Wei made it clear to Shoigu that ‘the Chinese side has come to show Americans the close ties between the armed forces of China and Russia’.19 Since China was in the throes of a trade war with the US, spoken expressions of mutual support were important to both Moscow and Beijing. In that connection, in September 2018 the US launched its 60th sanctions package since 2011, this time against China for buying fighter jets and missile systems from Russia in violation of earlier US sanctions against Russia’s Arms Export Agency (Rosoboronexport). Ryabkov complained that imposing sanctions had become America’s new national sport.20 In the opinion of Rosoboronexport, these sanctions were also an American ploy to undermine competition in the arms trade sector. At about the same time, a scheduled Russian naval exercise in the Mediterranean off the coast of Syria was placed in an awkward position because of warnings from Donald Trump that he was going to launch missile strikes against Syrian targets in response to an alleged chemical release in Douma. The Russian ambassador to Lebanon threatened to shoot them down.21 Loose talk of war between Russia and the United States made this a very tense moment. The Syrian civil war grew more complicated for Russia after Israeli fighter jets fired cruise missiles against Iranian airfields in Syria. The on-going shadow war between Israel and Iran pitched a country with which Russia was friendly (Israel) against another with which it is a semi-ally (Iran). In the middle diplomatically, Russia was in the middle strategically as well, for in April 2019 Moscow reached a deal with Damascus for a 49-year extension of its lease on the Tartus naval base.22 In 2020, Russia’s MoD signed an agreement with Sudan to build a permanent naval base on that country’s Red Sea Coast. The agreement for a ‘logistical and support’ centre near Port Sudan has a 25-year lease, with automatic 10-year renewals unless one side objects. The Russian navy will be able to keep four ships at the base at a time, and some 300 military and civilian personnel. Russia already has military advisers on the ground in Sudan, with which it signed a military cooperative agreement in 2019.23 In the air, Russian long-range bombers continued to conduct flyover drills in international airspace close to the US border in Alaska and Canada’s Yukon and Northwest Territories. These were intercepted and escorted by US fighter jets without incident, though politicians made much of them.24 The West and Ukraine complained in June when Russia conducted a largescale military exercise in Crimea, just as the Pentagon was urging NATO defence ministers to raise the level of their military commitments in Eastern

290  The re-militarization of Russia Europe. Ukrainian analysts interpreted the Crimea drills, which saw over 100 Russian warplanes participate, as a precursor to further aggression against their country. These events in June 2018 overlapped with NATO’s own largescale military exercise labelled Saber Strike in Poland and the Baltic States.25 The infringement, or near infringement, of each other’s air space and waters continued to present awkward situations for Russia and the US well into 2020. China joins up Not to be outdone, Russia’s largest war game since the 1980s was spread over five days in September, when some 3,200 Chinese troops joined Russian armed forces in Vostok-2018. Conducted in the central and eastern military districts, the exercise confirmed earlier statements about deepening military ties between Moscow and Beijing.26 Altogether some 300,000 troops, 1,000 aircraft, parts of two fleets and all of the country’s airborne units participated. Commentators in Moscow pointed to NATO’s build-up on Russia’s western flank as one of the reasons for its manoeuvres. The MoD was also testing its ability to move large numbers of troops and equipment over long distances. The Russian navy was involved in Vostok-2018 too, holding drills on the Bering Sea, close to Alaska and Norway. China’s role also signalled that Moscow’s shift to the East had gone well beyond economic considerations and confirmed that hopes in Russia for accommodation with the West were fading away. In addition to military drills, security cooperation compelled Russia to make its most sophisticated weapons systems available to China, even extending to joint support in cyber space and intelligence gathering. Although China’s part in Vostok-2018 was deemed slight by some, its role in bilateral naval drills since 2012 have been extensive by any measure. For example, the Belt and Road summit held in Beijing in April 2019 coincided with more combined Russia–China naval drills, dubbed ‘Joint Sea 2019’. These exercises took place in the Sea of Japan, the Sea of Okhotsk, the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea and the South China Sea and, although they spoke of ‘anti-pirating’ training, it was plain that the operations were aimed at countering the American military presence in the region.27 At the end of 2019, Russia, China and Iran held joint naval drills in the Indian Ocean and the Sea of Oman, which is part of an important international water route for oil tankers. Russia’s first long-range air patrol with China in the Asia-Pacific region sparked controversy because it drew warning shots from South Korean fighter planes. South Korea and Japan both scrambled jets to intercept two Russian Tu-95 strategic bombers, two Chinese H-6 bombers and a Russian A-50 early warning plane, alleging that the mission violated their air space. Russia denied the charge. The incident also revealed growing tensions between Japan and South Korea, as they offered different interpretations of territorial air spaces.28 Facing unrest in Hong Kong, China responded by

The re-militarization of Russia  291 saying that it would increase military cooperation with Russia, ‘enriching [their] comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era and playing a significant role in maintaining global strategic stability’.29 China also let it be known that Russia was helping it construct an early warning missile system, made up of land-based radars, space-based satellites and data research centres. When completed, China will join Russia and the US as the only countries with comprehensive systems. This did not mean a military alliance, however. Dmitri Trenin put it this way: ‘the two militaries are becoming more familiar with each other. They are taking part in joint training; making their weapons systems more compatible; and syncing their communications, logistics, tactics, and military doctrines.’30 Pushed together by what they perceive as hostile actions from the US in the Pacific and NATO in Eastern Europe, Russia and China formed the strategic partnership that Western policymakers have long dreaded.31 Other strategic operations Just as Zapad-2017 drew forecasts from the West that the number of troops involved would be far more than Russia’s MoD promised and that Russia was preparing to invade the Baltic States, Vostok-2018 prompted warnings from security pundits that Russia was planning to take over the entire Arctic. These, and other large-scale Russian military exercises (with the exception of smaller snap drills), are all planned and announced at least a year in advance. They are scheduled on a rotating basis: Vostok (East), Zapad (West), Tsentr (Centre), and Kavkaz (South), correlating to Russia’s military districts, and the number of troops and materiel expected to participate is released well before the events. As of 2020, there have been no surprises.32 September’s Tsentr-2019 included 128,000 soldiers, 20,000 pieces of materiel, 600 planes and 15 warships, all training for ‘anti-terrorist’ operations. The exercises included anti-missile operations, reconnaissance and troop management. As mentioned above, troops from China, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan took part. Eight training grounds in Russia and one in each of the participating countries were involved.33 The drill was advertised as preparation for an Islamicist insurrection in Central Asia, although the participation of more than 20 Chinese warplanes, including heavy bombers, and subsequent Chinese commentary suggested that its sub-text was to showcase Moscow–Beijing joint military capabilities.34 Shortly thereafter, the Russian Ministry of Defence began a large-scale exercise in the Arctic to test Russia’s nuclear forces. Named Grom (Thunder)-2019, the three-day drill comprised nuclear submarines, aircraft, over 200 missile launchers and about 12,000 troops, spearheaded by the nuclear-powered battle cruiser Piotr Velikii. Ground and submarine missile launchings over Russia’s European Arctic and its Far East tested Russia’s command structure.35 Videos of various launches were shown to the public as Putin continued to speak in favour of renewing New START. In February 2020, Emergency Measures Minister Yevgeny Zinichev told reporters that he

292  The re-militarization of Russia had scheduled a series of Crisis Management Centres for construction in the Arctic to provide security for ships on the Northern Sea Route.36 In the interim, over Tokyo’s objections, Russia continued to build up military infrastructure on the Kuril Islands. Deployment of warplanes and a missile defence system in 2018 were part of the militarization of the island chain, as was an announced plan to construct a naval base there. These moves were made necessary, Moscow said, because Japan purchased two Aegis Ashore sites (missile defence systems) from the US.37 There were some direct clashes that threatened the military equilibrium. For instance, the quarrel between Russian and Ukrainian naval vessels on the Sea of Azov ended any chance of tensions easing between the two countries. In late November 2018, a Russian vessel rammed a Ukrainian naval tugboat and fired on two small Ukrainian artillery ships, wounding several crew members, and then seized the ships and 24 crew members. Moscow charged that the ships had entered Russian territorial waters illegally and accused Poroshenko of deliberate ‘provocations’ driven by his desperate attempts to win the forthcoming presidential election. With the Russian annexation of Crimea, ‘territorial waters’ took on quite different meanings for Ukraine and Russia when it came to the Sea of Azov. Each side charged the other with criminal actions, the EU and NATO called for restraint and insisted on Ukraine’s right to passage. Russian jet fighters (Sukhoi Su-25s) and helicopters flew over the scene. As accusations and counter-accusations swelled, Poroshenko declared 30 days of martial law in 10 regions close to the Russian border, accused the Russians of preparing to invade Ukraine and placed his army on full alert.38 Unsure of how far Poroshenko’s desperation would take him, the Russian MoD deployed another S-400 air defence battalion to Crimea, making four in all, and announced plans to construct a new missile early-warning radar station there. Its navy blocked Ukrainian shipping to its main ports on the Sea of Azov, Mariupol and Berdyansk.39 Russian submarine crews held naval and surface-to-air missile drills in the Black Sea region, and in December fighter jets were deployed to Crimea.40 In May 2019, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) demanded that Russia return the ships and crews to Ukraine.41 Although ITLOS has no enforcement abilities, the decision provided a test of Moscow’s willingness to ease tensions with Kyiv. The ships were returned – six months later (Figure 7.1). In early 2020, Putin observed another Russian naval exercise on the Black Sea from the deck of a missile cruiser. Chief of General Staff Valerii Gerasimov laid out Russia’s current strategic approach in March 2019. He noted that modern conflict features politics, diplomacy and informational pressures, along with demonstrable military power. Russia needs to defend itself against precision air- and space-based weapons, he continued, claiming that modern weaponry in Russia’s nuclear sector had reached 82 per cent. Calling for time-line targets for producing new types of weapons and labelling the US and its allies ‘aggressive’, Gerasimov went on the criticize them for conducting overt and covert regime change

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Figure 7.1  Sea of Azov, strategic site. Source: NATO Association of Canada.

policies in Iraq, Libya, Ukraine and Venezuela. ‘Colour revolutions’, ‘fifth column’ tactics and precision air strikes need to be countered by the creation of a set of pre-emptive measures designed to neutralize threats to Russia’s security.42 Gerasimov repeated Shoigu’s earlier statement that the percentage of Russian servicemen under contract would reach nearly half a million by 2025. Neither assertion about weapons nor kontraktiki could be verified. Buzzing – dangerous games An outburst of ‘buzzing’ incidents between Russian and US air and sea units raised tensions again in 2019, just as they had done for a spell in 2016. In June, US and Russian warships came within 100 feet of each other in the Pacific, both insisting they had to take emergency manoeuvres to prevent an accident. A few days earlier the US Navy accused Russia of challenging an American plane over the Mediterranean – three times. Another such incident took place early in 2020, when a Russian Navy ship veered dangerously close to a US Navy destroyer in the North Arabian Sea. Russia’s defence ministry blamed the US vessel. Perhaps an even more dangerous incident came in February when a US armoured vehicle pushed a Russian military heavy jeep off a road in north-eastern Syria, creating an eyeball-to-eyeball scenario with armed men. Cooler heads prevailed, but situations such as these could easily escalate into situations no one wanted, or almost no one.43 In August, Russian naval ships conducting a drill ordered

294  The re-militarization of Russia American fishing boats out of an area of the Bering Sea where the US has exclusive fishing rights. This may not have been buzzing, but the Russian ships and planes were using live ammunition.

Arms race and arms sales As NATO continued to build up its forces in Eastern Europe, and Poland purchased Patriot missile defence systems from the US, Putin stressed Russia’s evolving defence capacity. A long-threatened but downplayed new arms race could no longer be ignored. Shortly after the annual presidential address to the Federal Assembly in 2018, in which Putin described new and imposing weaponry developed for the Russian military, with emphasis on its nuclear capabilities and missile defence, Russia released video footage of a test launch of a new anti-ballistic missile. One of the weapons referenced in the 1 March 2018 speech, the Sarmat (Satan-2) purports to have a range of about 11,000 kms (7,000 miles) and could cross the North Pole to reach the US. 44 If it were actually under production and deployed, the Sarmat would have violated the INF. The US reaction was typified by a statement by John Hyten, US Strategic Command, before the Senate Committee on Armed Forces: Russia ‘is developing hypersonic glide vehicles’ while the US’s nuclear assets are ‘operating beyond their designed service life’.45 His appeal for more funds to build bigger and more deadly weapons by juxtaposing with Russia (and China) was old hat, but more dangerous now as diplomacy took a backseat to nationalist hyperbole everywhere. Later in the year Trump signed a $717 billion defence bill for 2019, the largest in the country’s history prior to the amount for 2020, again dwarfing the combined expenditures budgeted by Russia and China. In the meantime, NATO conducted its largest military exercise in decades, Trident Juncture, moving 60,000 or so troops, 10,000 vehicles, 250 aircraft and 645 ships from 29 NATO countries plus Sweden and Finland, to various locations in Norway. Its purpose, NATO’s Secretary General Stoltenberg said, was to test NATO’s response force against a ‘fictional near-peer’ invader in the North, that is, Russia. Launched in August, the gigantic deployment was completed in early November.46 Russia and Belarus sent observers. The Russian Navy tested missiles in international waters off Norway’s coast during the final week of Trident Juncture and, in February 2020, conducted more missile drills near Norway’s most northern pipeline. Both exercises were, presumably, testing abilities to block NATO’s access to the Baltic Sea, the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea. Notices were provided to airmen (NOTAM) so as to prevent civilian planes and ships from entering zones where live shooting might take place.47 Not to be outdone, in May 2020 the US Sixth Fleet sent four warships into the Barents Sea, accompanied by one ship from the UK. The anti-submarine exercise included surveillance planes. They were monitored by Russia’s Northern Fleet who referred to the US/UK group as a ‘NATO naval strike force’. Norway welcomed NATO presence in the international waters, but did not participate in the exercise.48

The re-militarization of Russia  295 Gerasimov publicized a successful test of a second hypersonic cruise missile in October. The Tsirkon was test-fired from the frigate Admiral Gorshkov in the White Sea and hit a target 450 km away in the Barents Sea, he said, travelling at hypersonic speed. It had been tested from the same ship on a ground target earlier in the year. More tests are planned and, if successful, the missile can be deployed on submarines and surface ships.49 The oft-promised new weapons kept coming as well. The first mass produced 5th- generation Su-57 fighter jets entered service in December, 2020, and test flights for the combat drone, Okhotnik (Hunter), were scheduled for early 2021. With protection of the Northern Sea Route in mind, the Central Scientific-Research Institute for Precision Machine Engineering re-opened an old Soviet lab for testing weaponry under Arctic conditions, also in December.50 INF saga and arms control Tension over the INF accelerated to the extent that, in October, 2018, Trump announced that the US would withdraw from the Treaty signed by Gorbachev and Reagan in 1987 if Russia did not return to ‘full and verifiable compliance’.51 That treaty prohibited the production, storage and testing of groundbased missiles whose range is from 500 to 5,500 km. American and Russian officials exchanged accusations of violations and Russia promised retaliation if, and when, the US pulled out. The US claimed that Russia was producing the 9M729 missile (NATO classification – SSC-8) and violating long-range maximums of the treaty. Russia insisted that it was not. Moscow invited Mike Pompeo to a public exhibition of the missile test; he declined. In its turn, Russia argued that the US’s Aegis Ashore missile defence system, its Mk-41 (Mark 41) Vertical Launching Systems sited in Romania and Poland, and parts of its drone system, violated the treaty. US Secretary of State Bolton, who later took credit for planning the ‘defenestrating’ of the INF, travelled to Moscow for discussion.52 This time, the issue for Washington was not so much Russia’s alleged violations, but rather clauses in the INF that prevented the US from deploying such weapons to the Pacific to counter an arms build-up by China, which is not bound by the bilateral treaty. China’s accumulation of missiles that would easily violate the INF treaty was a main, if unstated, reason why the US wanted either out, or to have the INF membership broadened. Indeed, ten countries, none of them European, have missiles with ranges beyond the INF limitations.53 Bolton and Putin agreed that points of contact should be encouraged, and Bolton hinted that a new, better treaty might be the answer. That said, on 6 December 2018 Pompeo demanded that Russia comply with the INF within two months or the US would withdraw. After Moscow ignored Washington’s demands, the US announced the start of withdrawal proceedings. The Kremlin responded by suspending Russian participation in the Treaty, and

296  The re-militarization of Russia said that Russia would start working on new missiles, including hypersonic ones.54 Under Article XV of the treaty, the sides had six months to reach a compromise. The demise of yet another control mechanism prompted 88-year-old Mikhail Gorbachev to write a long Op-Ed piece for the New York Times urging statesmen on both sides of the Atlantic to avoid a new arms race.55 Putin took the issue up in the 2019 address to the Federal Assembly, accusing the US of ‘directly and crudely’ violating the INF with its ‘launchers in Romania’, and warning that Russia would be ‘forced to create and deploy weapons’ if the US placed missiles in Europe. He would prefer disarmament talks, he said, ‘but we will no longer knock on a closed door’.56 The INF had become a cornerstone of the international non-proliferation regime. Once it disappeared, Moscow and Washington’s still wide-ranging cooperation on nuclear arms control went with it, leaving the field open for dangerous and expensive arms race activity.57 The New START treaty, due to expire in February, 2021, was the last hope. An immediate consequence of the INF suspension was a statement by Poroshenko that Ukraine would begin testing missiles ‘capable of hitting targets deep in the rear of the enemy’, in the Chernihiv region, close to Russia and Belarus. The US began manufacturing previously banned groundlaunched cruise missiles (GLCM) while the INF was suspended, but not yet formally cancelled.58 Both represented threats to Russia’s national security interests. Russia also continued to roll out new weapons. The subject was central to discussions Lavrov held with NATO’s Stoltenberg at the Munich Security Conference in February 2019, where, Lavrov insisted, the NATO leader failed to provide ‘a single thread of evidence’ that Russia was violating the INF Treaty. Zakharova was harsher, saying that Stoltenberg ‘lies without even blushing’.59 That episode boded ill for the future of the New START treaty.60 In fact, at the SPIEF-2019 Putin opened his address to representatives of the world’s media by blaming the US for violating the INF – again citing the deployment of missile launchers on land, in Romania and Poland. ‘We can choose not to renew’ the START, he said, if ‘no one is willing to talk about it with us’.61 He also attacked the notion of positioning weapons in outer space. NATO was not swayed. In June 2019, the Alliance threatened to ‘respond’ if Russia did not destroy its new nuclear-capable cruise missile system. Although the nature of the promised response was vague, the US’s final withdrawal from the INF treaty was clearly one of them, and it did so on 2 August 2019. Russia continued to insist that it had not been violating the treaty; NATO continued to insist it had.62 Less than three weeks later, the US tested its ground-launched cruise missile with a range well over the limit required by the INF. Putin ordered a ‘symmetrical response’.63 An arms race was underway. New START was the final remnant of the Gorbachev–Reagan arms control initiatives, and Putin complained again in December that Washington had not responded to his proposal that that treaty be extended for another five years.64

The re-militarization of Russia  297 Putin urged the US to de-escalate the spiralling arms competition. Speaking at the economic conference in Vladivostok in September, he said that Russia would go ahead and produce missiles previously banned by the INF Treaty, but would not deploy them unless the US did so first. He was especially concerned about rumours that Washington would site missiles in Japan and South Korea.65 In late October, Putin proposed again to de-escalate the arms race in Europe by calling for a reciprocal moratorium on missiles banned previously by the INF and offered stronger verification tools for NATO’s consideration. As an incentive, he again said that Russia would not deploy 9M729 missiles to Russia’s western borders if the NATO countries followed suit. The answer was the same as in the two earlier offers.66 Strategic consequences While both sides tested missiles previously forbidden by the treaty, Russia moved a missile system (BAL) to a location on the Sredny Peninsula on the Barents Sea less than 70 km from Norway’s Globus radar system at Vardo. The Norwegian system, which is part of NATO’s anti-missile system, was being enhanced at that time. Norway’s foreign ministry objected to Russia’s deployment; Russia’s foreign ministry said that it was part of counter-measures against both the NATO upgrade and the abolition of the INF.67 The Bal system (Styx to NATO) includes four mobile units, is equipped with antiship cruise missiles and can be used against both land and sea targets. Making matters worse, Donald Trump began hinting that he would like to withdraw the US from the Open Skies Treaty, which was agreed in 1992, and came into effect in 2002 with 35 member states. That treaty allows signatories to conduct surveillance flights anywhere after giving 72-hour notice. Trump acted on his threat in May 2020, announcing that the US would withdraw and blaming Russia for ‘repeatedly’ violating the treaty. The main point of contention was Russia’s refusal to allow US flights along the Abkhaz and South Ossetian border. The treaty forbids flights along the borders of third countries, but the West does not recognize those areas as independent countries. In a press statement, Pompeo called Russia a ‘serial violator’ of its arms control obligations, and claimed that it used Open Skies imagery as a means to target ‘critical infrastructure’ in the US and Europe. The Russian MoD countered that the treaty allows all signatories to request copies of all images and that the overflights are governed by strict mutual rules and quotas.68 Ryabkov declared that Russia would stay in the Open Skies Treaty with the remaining signatories, though he would have to wait and see what other NATO countries that are party to the treaty decide. In light of the US tendency to pull out of treaties unilaterally, the Open Skies officially on 22 November, chances for a renewal of New START dimmed, even though national security adviser Robert O’Brien said that US would enter into ‘good faith negotiations with Russia on nuclear arms control’.69 The US wants Chinese participation in the last-named treaty, but that too seemed unlikely given the way Chinese–American relations were heating up in 2020. If START

298  The re-militarization of Russia is not renewed, then Putin’s fourth term as president will be part of an era in which international arms control mechanisms disappeared, and the global security system unravelled. Much will depend on the approach taken by the Biden presidency. As Russian anxiety over the fate of New START grew, Putin approved a document outlining norms for the use of nuclear weapons by Russia’s armed forces. These criteria were not unchanged from those laid out in the Russian military doctrine of 2010. They can be used in response to an attack on it or its allies with the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction or in case of aggression with conventional weapons, if ‘the very existence of the state is threatened’. Among the list of dangers that could prompt a nuclear response were the build-up of nuclear delivery vehicles by an enemy near Russia’s borders, the deployment of missiles and high-precision and hypersonic weapons, shock drones or energy weapons.70 This was the first such detailed explication of ‘first use’ published in Russia and, although there was no change in basic policy, it was clear that the document was intended as an answer to similar publications in the West and also to play a part in the negotiations over New START. No countries were named in the document, so it could be applied to threats from both east and west. Arms control talks between Russia and US started again on 22 June 2020, with little chance of China taking part. In late September, Ryabkov rejected the US condition that China be covered by the arms control treaty and that verification protocols be more intrusive. A few weeks later, Putin proposes a one-year extension of START, without pre-conditions, to provide time for ‘substantial negotiations’. Washington called the proposal a ‘non-starter’, having earlier rejected the original suggestion of a five-year extension. The US side proposed a cap on all types of nuclear warheads, a pre-condition that Russia would not accept.71 Arms out of control Suggestions from US ambassadors in Germany and Poland, in 2020, that the US should consider transferring some of its nuclear weapons from Germany to Poland, suggest that the notion of reasoned balance of power was fading into the wilderness.72 Apparently, arms control was on the agenda during the July 2018 Putin–Trump summit in Helsinki and, although little was said publicly about it, later reports from Russia indicated that Putin presented Trump with several proposals related to nuclear arms management. These included the extension of New START, with various inspection guarantees, a re-affirmation of the INF Treaty and discussions about keeping weapons out of space. New START was agreed in 2010 as a follow-up to START I, START II (Russia withdrew in response to US unilateral abrogation of the ABM Treaty in 2002) and the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), 2002, usually called the Treaty of Moscow. The treaties cut the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers each side could retain by half and expanded the existing verification system. For the most part, they worked.

The re-militarization of Russia  299 Putin clarified the Russian official line in December 2018. During his annual press conference with journalists from around the world, he said that ‘we are now witnessing the collapse of the international arms deterrence system’, and went on to blame the US for starting the process by its unilateral withdrawal from the ABM treaty. He predicted it would do the same with New START, leading ‘to a global nuclear catastrophe’.73 According to RT in February 2020, the US rejected a Russian proposal for a formal meeting on extending the treaty by demanding pre-preconditions, such as persuading China to join. Whatever the reasons why meetings were not held, it was clear that time was running out.74 With this reality in mind, on the 10th anniversary of signing New START the Russian ministry of foreign affairs again proposed to its US counterpart that the two countries extend the treaty so as to ‘guarantee the predictability of the situation in the nuclear missile sphere, and contribute to maintaining strategic stability’. The message pointed out that there had been over 300 mutual inspections over that decade and some 20,000 notifications exchanged. The treaty worked, the MID said, and Russia hoped for a ‘speedy positive response’.75 It didn’t get one. When, in 2018, Russia’s Avangard unlimited-range intercontinental missile tested successfully, Putin called it ‘unstoppable’.76 Russian military officials boasted that the Avangard could reach a speed of Mach 27, which, if true, could make it impossible to intercept.77 On the other hand, without the INF as an obstacle, the US could test GLCMs of its own. Given that several Republicans urged Trump also to ‘unsign’ the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (NTBT), strategic nuclear arms control seemed to be limping to the finish line.78 Some of Russia’s hyperbole about new weaponry may have been prompted by nervousness. The US was already conducting war games in Europe in which troops were trained to respond to an ‘enemy’ deploying nuclear weapons, and Russia was named specifically. In one case, the US secretary of defense witnessed a ‘mini-exercise’ in which the ‘scenario included … a war with Russia, and Russia decides to use a low-yield limited nuclear weapon against a site on NATO territory’.79 This admission came during a briefing at which the Pentagon was bidding for funds to greatly enhance the US nuclear weapons arsenal. Much the same was going on in Russia, less quietly than in the US. Putin reviewed a task force of military vessels on the Neva River in St. Petersburg in July 2018, as the country celebrated Navy Day. He promised the military branch 26 new warships that year, and in April 2019 unveiled the longest nuclear submarine in the world, the Belgorod. The sub measures 184 metres and is capable of carrying six Poseidon nuclear underwater drones.80 Soon after, Russia’s annual Victory Day marchpast featured Yars mobile intercontinental nuclear missile launchers and S-400s, tanks and thousands of troops, but no foreign luminaries other than Kazakhstan’s Nazarbaev, and no examples of the new weaponry touted earlier. The day was also marked by memorial processions in many Russian cities where thousands of people carried pictures of relatives killed in the ‘Great Patriotic War’. Called the

300  The re-militarization of Russia ‘Immortal Regiment’, these processions raise patriotic feelings and keep memories of great sacrifices alive.81 Excitement over Russia’s submarine fleet cooled suddenly on 1 July when a fire broke out in one of the country’s nuclear-powered submarines within Russia’s territorial waters in the Arctic Ocean. Fourteen crew members of the Losharik died from smoke or toxic fume inhalation. The incident evoked memories of the Kursk tragedy in 2000, when a nuclear submarine sank, taking its entire crew of 118 down with it, and Putin’s new government grappled with telling the truth. At that time, the Navy and nationalist politicians first blamed the West, until a public backlash forced them to reveal that flaws in Russia’s navy apparatus were to blame.82 This time, Putin met immediately with Shoigu, who acknowledged on TV that it was fire in the battery flat that caused the disaster and provided full details of the accident to the media. He guaranteed that the nuclear power unit was sealed off, insisted that the submarine could be repaired by a deep-water submersible, and offered extensive restitution to grieving families.83 Meanwhile, the due date for the renewal of New START approached, and warnings that an unrestrained nuclear arms race would follow if the treaty expired were lost in the haze brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and looming economic collapse.84 Perhaps as a sign of what might come in a less constrained world, Russia’s most-advanced nuclear-powered submarine, the Knyaz Vladimir, entered service on 12 June 2020, in a naval ceremony featuring commander-in-chief of the navy, Admiral Nikolai Evmenov. This was the first of four strategic submarine missile carriers of the Borei series at various stages of construction at the Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk, Arkhangelsk Oblast. Four more are planned.85 Weaponizing space The issue of weapons in space grew more pressing in January 2019 when Trump unveiled a plan to develop space-based weapons to shoot down missiles, claiming that this was necessary because of growing capabilities in Iran, China, North Korea and Russia. The Russian MoD cautioned that the new US version of ‘Star Wars’ might launch an arms race in space. Since 1985, the US is the only country to vote against an annual UN resolution, ‘Prevention of An Arms Race in Outer Space’ (PAROS), that has been supported by Russia, China, Canada and almost every other UN member.86 Although it would never say so, the Kremlin cannot afford to allocate funds to a retaliatory programme in space affairs, let alone to an arms race, and at the same time maintain the socio-economic projects authorized by Putin. Weapons sales Russia moved into second place in global arms sales in 2017, and stayed there through 2020, though its market was cut by Trump’s renewed sanctions against Teheran, which listed six Russian defence sector entities for ‘violating’

The re-militarization of Russia  301 American non-proliferation rules for Iran, Syria and North Korea. Among other things these sanctions disrupted Rosoboronexport’s arms deals with India, where banks halted lines of credit to Russian companies after the US threatened to close all operations with firms that maintained ties with arms manufacturers in Russia. A projected deal to sell helicopters to the Philippines fell through for the same reason.87 Russia also lost money in small arms sales to the US. About 80 per cent of Russian-made conventional arms and ammunition are exported to the US and Europe annually, and most of these sales dried up in 2019. To ease the financial pain, Kalashnikov proposed amendments to Russian gun laws so as to increase sales domestically – with limited success.88 Kalashnikov decided to open up a plant to produce assault rifles in Korwa, India, where over 700,000 units of the AK-203 were scheduled for production in March 2019. (The AK-203 is an advanced version of the AK-47 assault rifle, the most widely-used firearm in the world.)89 Not entirely deterred by US sanctions, during his visit to Russia in May, Modi and Putin firmed up a deal in which India agreed to purchase four regimental S-400 anti-aircraft systems for $5 billion, with ammunition and spare parts. Over American objections, the deal was agreed formally in October 2018 while Putin was in New Delhi for an annual summit.90 Shortly thereafter, Indonesia disregarded American threats of sanctions and confirmed a purchase of Russian Su-35 combat aircraft. The US had already sanctioned China for similar weapons acquisitions from Russia.91 That said, in 2019, China signed contracts for the purchase of 103 helicopters, among them 18 military transporters, valued at over $2 billion.92 The deal to deliver two S-400 batteries to Turkey, for approximately $2.5 billion, met a stumbling block in March 2019 when the US resuscitated its two-year-old negotiations to sell Patriot anti-missile defence systems to Ankara. A main condition from Washington was that Turkey give up the S-400 acquisition. Washington and Brussels argued that the S-400 was incompatible with NATO standards, even though NATO members Greece, Bulgaria and Slovakia already have Russian-made S-300s. Even after the Pentagon warned of dire consequences, Turkey refused to renege on the agreement. Delivery of the systems began in July, 2019. A year later, Rosoboronexport signed a contract to supply Turkey with a second set of S-400s. The US State Department condemned the sale again in October, 2020, after Turkish armed forces conducted its first test of the system and, in December, the US levelled its first sanctions against a NATO ally.93 Egypt also remained a major market for Russian arms, signing a contract for ‘over two dozen’ Russia heavy jet fighters, the Su-35, in March 2019. These were to be delivered in 2020–21.94 Egypt is the largest importer of Russian arms in Africa. Algeria is close behind. In September 2019, defence officials in Algiers signed contracts for 16 Su-30 heavy jet fighters and 14 MiG 29M fighters for the Algerian air force. When delivered, these purchases will total nearly 60 Russian air force planes bought by Algeria since 2007. The new contracts were worth about $2 billion to Russian manufacturers.95 A

302  The re-militarization of Russia few weeks later, Russia delivered its second planeload of weapons to the Central African Republic, in return for mining rights. The deliveries were otherwise free, and approved by the UNSC as part of an effort to defeat Islamic rebels in that country.96 Saudi Arabia, the world’s leading importer of arms, received its first batch of heavy flamethrower systems from Russia in April 2019. In addition to the ‘Sunburn’ flamethrowers, constructed on the framework of the Soviet T-72 tank, the deal Riyadh signed in 2017 included ‘eventual’ delivery of S-400s, Kornet-EM anti-tank missiles, AGS-30 automatic grenade launchers and Kalashnikov AK-103 assault rifles.97 In that same month, Russia completed its deliveries of Su-35s to China, bringing the total to 30 such planes sent in three lots of ten since 2017. It was as a result of that first delivery that the US imposed sanctions against the Chinese military equipment branch.98 Russia transferred its first unit of S-400s to China in 2018, but a rumoured sale of the same missile defence systems to Serbia never materialized because Washington threatened sanctions against Belgrade if it bought them.99 When Washington imposed more sanctions against Russian arms manufacturers in May 2019, they targeted the Gatchina surface-to-air missile training centre, a precision weapons maker and a Moscow machine-building plant that makes missiles for S-400s, and prevented any US company from dealing with them.100 As it happened, Moscow rejected a request from Iran that it sell them the advanced missile defence systems, fearing, we can assume, that such a transfer would exacerbate the already tense situation in the Middle East, or perhaps choosing to preserve its good ties with Israel.101 There were some limited discussions of Russia delivering the vaguelypromised S-400s to Saudi Arabia during Putin’s visit to that country in October 2019, but nothing specific was made public. Saudi Arabian oil facilities had only recently been the victim of a devastating attack for which Yemeni rebels took credit, while most Western commentators blamed Iran.102 By that time, Russia had shipped either S-300s or S-400s to China, Iran, Egypt, Turkey and Syria and deployed them to home bases in Crimea and Kaliningrad, and to its base in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Russia remained a top arms supplier to Southeast Asia, completing a deal in late 2019 to send a dozen Yak-130 combat training jets to Vietnam, to which it also sold fighter jets, ships and submarines.103 These planes have also been acquired by Algeria, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos and Belarus.

The CSTO The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) has been Russia’s main military association since 1992. Its membership has fluctuated. The original members were Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Azerbaijan, Belarus and Georgia joined the next year. Since then, Uzbekistan has been in and out. Georgia and Azerbaijan withdrew in 2000. Uzbekistan withdrew for the second time in 2012. The CSTO’s expressed purpose in its early years was to fight international terrorism, drug

The re-militarization of Russia  303 trafficking and ‘Islamic fanaticism’, all threats emanating from Afghanistan.104 In 2002, it was formalized as a military alliance between five of the originals plus Belarus. It is registered at the UN as a regional organization. In November 2018, a CSTO Security Council meeting in Astana agreed to create ‘observer’ and ‘partner’ designations for non-members, supported Russia’s actions in Syria and adopted a common stance on the INF question.105 As we have seen, there was talk of Azerbaijan re-joining the CSTO, and even of Armenia making concessions related to Nagorno-Karabakh. If these talks were ever serious, they never materialized. Outward calm was misleading. The constant threat of war between the two Caucasus states over Nagorno-Karabakh threatened the stability of the CSTO, whose decision to select a representative of Belarus, and not from Armenia, in 2018 as the organization’s next general secretary caused some circles in Yerevan to talk of withdrawal. Armenia had already been angered by Belarusian overtures to Azerbaijan, to which Lukashenka may have disclosed confidential CSTO information, and was concerned with Russia’s large arms sales to Baku. Relations between Minsk and Yerevan became heated, and Moscow, which had kept out of the dispute, found having to choose between two important allies well before the crises of 2020 shattered that outward calm.106 At that time, civil uproar in Belarus and actual war in the South Caucasus, which Armenia lost with no assistance from Russia or the CSTO, weakened Russia’s southern and western border security for the first time since the Chechen wars. It was not yet clear how Yerevan’s humiliating loss to Baku in 2020 will affect the CSTO. After the fact, domestically embattled Pashinyan asked Moscow to strengthen its military ties with Armenia. The MoD has some important long-term decisions to make.

NATO Asked by David Frost in March 2000 what he thought of NATO, Putin answered, ‘Russia is part of European culture, and I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe and from the so-called civilized world. Therefore, I can hardly imagine NATO as an enemy.’ Suggesting that Russia could even become a member of NATO, but only as an ‘equal partner’, he added that he would continue to object to NATO’s expansion eastward.107 Western analysts, strategists and politicians believe now that a desire to sow division within NATO is central to Russia’s military policy. The fact is, Russia’s relationship with NATO has been a determining factor in Russian foreign, military and even domestic policy. The signposts in this relationship were set out in the 1990s when Russia watched helplessly as NATO moved eastward, absorbing former Warsaw Pact states and Soviet Republics. This situation was made more threatening by the fact that Russian authorities believed that Soviet acquiescence to the reunification of Germany in 1990 and East Germany’s accession to NATO came with a pledge that NATO would expand no further to the East. Rightly or wrongly,

304  The re-militarization of Russia the perception of broken faith informed Russian military and foreign policy decisions for the next quarter-century.108 When one Western analyst wrote recently that the enmity between Russia and NATO was not pre-ordained, and that, rather, it was caused by ‘Putin’s actions, not NATO enlargement’, she ignored, or was ignorant of, the importance of Russian perception of what the expansion meant from the beginning. In Soviet times NATO was presented to Russians by the Soviet state, and by NATO itself, as a dangerous enemy. There was no reason why Russians should change their thinking about NATO overnight in the 1990s. Any enlargement of the Alliance eastward while Russia was at its weakest point could not help but be seen then as aggression against their homeland. The doyen of Soviet and Russian foreign policy in the 1990s, Yevgeny Primakov, recognized this as early as November 1993. Director at that time of the Foreign Intelligence Service (FIS), he reported that NATO expansion eastward would create a ‘psychological storm’ in Russia, and also a buffer zone in reverse, isolating Russia from continental Europe.109 At that time, Western politicians either did not believe his cautionary tale or, more likely, did not care. Russia and NATO had formalized relations as early as 1997 when a ‘Founding Act on Mutual Relations’ created a Permanent Joint Council. This body was replaced in 2002 by the NATO–Russia Council, on which Russia could participate in most of NATO’s deliberations, but had no right of veto. These associations were sometimes useful for the Russian MoD, but for the most part consisted of its delegates being told what NATO was going to do while its own concerns were ignored. Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov voiced Russian frustration in 2006 when he complained that ‘the expansion of NATO’s military infrastructure and its approach to the borders of Russia cannot fail to cause us concern’. He was especially worried about NATO’s plans for a ‘global ABM system in Poland’ and the patently false explanation that their purpose was defence against ICBMs from North Korea and Iran, neither of which had such weapons at that time.110 More than a decade of negotiation, rumour and confusion related to Ukraine’s potential for accession to NATO, and the future of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, reached a climax in 2008 at a NATO–Russia Council meeting in Bucharest. The meeting was held just a few weeks after the US Congress adopted a resolution offering ‘strong support’ to Georgia and Ukraine for accession to NATO.111 As we saw in Chapter 1, Putin made a rare appearance at that Council session and warned ‘the appearance on our borders of a powerful military bloc … will be perceived by Russia as a direct threat to our security’. He made it clear that Russia would respond aggressively if either of the two countries were admitted to NATO.112 He was not taken seriously, though he should have been. In fact, just a few months later Russian forces crossed into Georgia and, though the incursion’s immediate cause was Georgia’s sudden invasion of South Ossetia, which involved overrun of an OSCE/UN-mandated Russian peace-keeping corps, it was also a response to the threat of further NATO expansion. Yet, it took Russia’s annexation of

The re-militarization of Russia  305 the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 to give NATO cause to pay attention and also a renewed raison d’état, for it revived scenarios involving the traditional ‘Russian threat’. Preparing for a NATO summit in July 2018, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis released a plan that would require the Alliance to have 30 land battalions, 30 air fighter squadrons and 30 navy ships ready to deploy within 30 days of being put on alert. According to one US official the purpose of the initiative was to counter Russia’s alleged efforts to ‘shatter’ NATO. The collective NATO military personnel strength was already more than double the number of Russian active duty forces, but somehow its generals assumed that Russia planned to invade the Baltic States and Poland.113 Moscow’s MoD continued to call this assumption absurd, and made it clear then and later that Russia’s armed forces were prepared to defend themselves against any incursion from NATO members. This was especially true as the long-standing international system of nuclear arms control began to evaporate.114 That 2018 summit of NATO leaders in Brussels marked what may have been a turning point in the NATO–Russia confrontation. After criticizing NATO for some weeks prior to the event, the US president came to the meetings urging members to increase their defence spending to 4 per cent of their GDP, brandishing threats to withdraw if they did not comply. Most Alliance members had not even reached the traditional target of 2 per cent. Trump denigrated Germany as a ‘captive of Russia’, referring to its reliance on Russian gas, thereby making the Nord Stream-2 an unexpected talking point at the summit. European leaders now had to at least consider NATO’s future without the US and the notion of an exclusively European army was revived. Most of them, however, assumed Trump’s statements to be typical political bombast and expected the storm to blow over soon enough. Ukraine’s President Poroshenko was at the summit and Georgia’s Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze arrived at NATO Headquarters soon afterwards. Supportive of Georgia’s eventual admission, NATO members made it clear that Ukraine had a lot of reforms to enact before it had a chance. Nevertheless, both countries were given tentative approval from NATO and the final Summit Declaration again accused Russia alone of failing to implement obligations under the Minsk agreement.115 Putin responded by again referring to the possible inclusion of Ukraine and Georgia in the Alliance as a ‘direct threat to Russia’ that would have ‘consequences’, which is exactly what he told NATO in 2008.116 In Georgia’s case, the fate of Abkhazia and South Ossetia were key to the issue of membership; so too was the Kremlin’s assumption that it was being ‘encircled’ by NATO.117 Soon after the summit, a NATO manoeuvre took place in Latvia. Organized explicitly to defend against a simulated invasion of Eastern Europe by Russia, the training session was led by Canadian forces. The scenario included Latvian personnel dealing with pre-invasion cyberattacks and disinformation programmes. Nemesis-2018 was Latvia’s largest military operation since the country re-established its independence in 1991.118

306  The re-militarization of Russia The 4th annual Noble Partner 2018 exercise that brought troops from the US and seven other NATO countries, plus Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia, for a three-week joint training operation on Georgian territory in August, heightened existing tensions. Some 3,000 troops, one-third of them American, participated with tanks and other armour. The Georgian-based exercise coincided with a smaller Russian and Serbian tactical drill in the Leningrad region of Russia. About 800 troops, 200 of them Serbian, took part in counter-sabotage and reconnaissance drills.119 NATO–Georgia drills continued in 2019. Secretary General Stoltenberg attended some of them in March and praised Georgia as the most important non-NATO contributor to the Alliance’s undertakings in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and pronounced that it warranted NATO support if it was attacked by Russia.120 Tempers flared in the summer of 2019 over checkpoints between Abkhazia and Georgia, prompting Putin to approve a proposal to fund the modernization of the breakaway republics’ armed forces.121 Apparently, Russia had increased the number of its troops stationed in Abkhazia and South Ossetia to 10,000 and integrated them, plus the 10,000 Russian troops in a military base in Armenia, into its Southern Military Command. In its turn, Georgia committed itself to participation in NATO’s Defender-Europe-20 military exercise, part of which was held on Georgian territory.122 This exercise, which included 20,000 US troops and thousands of military vehicles transported mostly to sites in Poland and the Baltic States in March 2020, was the largest movement of US troops across the Atlantic in a quarter century.123 NATO member countries continued to arm Ukraine. For example, the Canadian arms manufacturer, PGW Defence Technologies, boasted of a contract to send long-range sniper rifles valued at about $700,000 to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, along with maintenance and training support.124 A steady flow of modern armaments began after the US approved commercial supplies of lethal weapons to Ukraine in 2017. Presumably payments for the weapons were drawn from loans also offered by Western countries. Such weapon deliveries and training programmes, conducted since 2016, were always justified at home as help to Ukraine in its ‘war against Russian aggression’. In practice, the weapons are used to kill Ukrainian citizens in the Donbas. Towards the end of Trident Juncture, the sabre rattling continued in the form of an Iron Wolf exercise in Lithuania, with troops from seven NATO countries participating, and a joint NATO–Georgia naval operation on the Black Sea.125 NATO had suspended military and civilian cooperation with Russia in 2014 and, by 2019, senior military officials on both sides were expressing concern that there were no diplomatic mechanisms in place to prevent an accidental – or intentional – confrontation between them.126 The lack of diplomatic contact was evidenced in remarks tendered by Ambassador Huntsman, when the US deployed two Nimitz-class aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean. Making it clear that this was intended as a message to Russia, he boarded the carrier strike group and called it ‘200,000 tons of diplomacy’.127

The re-militarization of Russia  307 Following the demise of the INF Treaty, NATO rejected Putin’s offer to suspend the deployment of previously banned missiles if NATO would do the same in Europe. While the arms race accelerated in the fall of 2019, Putin again criticized NATO expansion as a threat to Russia, adding that he hoped that NATO’s ‘common security interests’ with Russia (terrorism, local wars, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction) would prevail at the NATO summit then underway in London. Although Macron’s earlier remarks about NATO suffering from ‘brain death’ and Trump’s railing about other member countries not spending enough on defence may have encouraged Putin, the status quo prevailed.128 With the pandemic raging, in May 2020 the Russian MoD again offered to suspend all remaining military drills for the rest of 2020, if NATO would follow suit. NATO rejected this suggestion too, calling it a propaganda stunt, so Russia went ahead with its scheduled training agenda. Shoigu told Shephard, a military-business media site based in the UK, that Russian training activities in 2020 would be more frequent than in 2019 and would focus deeper inside the country and on the Arctic.129 Russian military planners had hoped, especially, to see NATO manoeuvres on the Black and Baltic Seas curtailed. They also voiced concern over a NATO drill in the Barents Sea that emulated strikes against Russia, and US nuclear-capable strategic bomber flights over Ukraine.130 The promise to hold drills deeper inside Russia didn’t hold up for long. Shortly after the All-Russia Vote in July, Shoigu announced large-scale snap drills in the Southern and Western military districts. These involved about 150,000 troops, 400 aircraft and 100 naval ships, some taken from the Northern and Pacific fleets. The Black and Caspian Seas were among the theatres for the drills, which served as preparation for the revised Kavkaz-2020 war games.131 Launched on 21 September, Kavkaz-2020 activated about 80,000 personnel in the Southern Military District. Fighter jets conducted air defence drills at fields in Crimea, and the Krasnodar, Stavropol and Rostov Regions, with military units from Armenia, Belarus, China, Myanmar and Pakistan participating. Observers came from Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Sri Lanka. The Russian and Iranian navies practiced combat manoeuvres and precision firing at sea targets on the Black and Caspian Seas.132 Kavkaz-2020 included more troops, drones, jets and artillery, and the S-400, than the previous one, held in 2016.133 One day after the exercise ended on 26 September, Azeri forces attacked Armenian-occupied territories around Nagorno-Karabakh. The August 2020 electoral crisis in Minsk had raised the spectre of Russian troops deploying to Belarus, beyond the numbers posted there already in accordance with the Union Treaty (see Chapter 5). This posed a strategic problem for NATO because Russia’s military access to Belarus would undermine NATO’s ability to defend its Baltic members.134 As it happened, Russian troops arrived in Belarus in late August to take part in ARMI2020, a scheduled 10-day military competition that, in addition to the hosts and Russia,

308  The re-militarization of Russia included teams from Armenia, Vietnam, Serbia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.135 Later in the month, Russian and Belarusian forces conducted an annual military exercise titled ‘Slavic Brotherhood’ in Brest, close to the border with Poland. The previous year’s host, Serbia, dropped out at the last minute, after what its defence minister called ‘terrible’ pressure from the EU, which it hopes to join.136 Two days later, 12 September, Ukraine, the US and eight other countries launched a joint military drill in Yavoriv, Ukraine, also close to Poland’s border. More war games were hosted by Belarus in October, this time for the CSTO members. Simulated warfare seemed to be underway everywhere in or near East and East-Central Europe. *** There was some good news at the end of 2020. The Russian Navy was scheduled to participate in a joint exercise that includes NATO members off the coast of Pakistan in February 2021. Pakistan, the US, Britain, China, Japan, Turkey, the Philippines, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Indonesia will also take part. Though SCO, ASEAN and BRICS member countries are already associates of Russia, this will be Russia’s first joint action with some of NATO’s armed forces since 2011.137 Whereas it is clear that the EU, the US and Russia do not want war against each other in the South Caucasus or anywhere else, by the end of 2020 the European and Eurasian military vista looked as if the protagonists were poised on their starting blocks. In any case, the events of 2020 put the Russian armed forces on alert to a greater degree than they were even in 1999, and it was also much better prepared than it was during that earlier time. This was yet another point of concern for the Russian people.

Notes 1 Vladimir Putin, ‘Annual Address to the Federal Assembly’, 10 May 2006, in REDA 2006, Vol. 1 (2008), pp. 35–47. 2 On this, see A.F. Eliseev, Vospitanie soveksogo patriotizma i sovetskoi natsionalnoi gordosti. Moscow: Vysh. Shkol, 1952. 3 Gudrun Persson, ed. ‘Russian Military Capability in a Ten-Year Perspective – 2016’, Sweden: FOI Report No. FOI-R-4326-SE, p. 2. For background, Nathan Toohey, ‘Russia’s defense spending grows to third largest in the world’, The Moscow News, 17 February 2012. 4 For detailed background, see Bettina Renz, Russia’s Military Revival. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2018; on Russia’s military weaknesses in Georgia, Roger McDermott, ‘Russia’s Conventional Armed Forces and the Georgian War’, Parameters, Vol. 39, No. 1 (2009), pp. 65–80. 5 SIPRI Fact Sheet. April 2019, ‘Trends in World Military Expenditure, 2018’, www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2019-04/fs_1904_milex_2018.pdf; SIPRI, ‘Global military spending remains high at $1.7 trillion’, 2 May 2018. See also Fred Weir, ‘To pay for a “Russia first” agenda, Putin takes axe to military spending’, The Christian Science Monitor, 8 May 2018. 6 Michael Kofman, ‘Russian defense spending is much larger and more sustainable than it seems’, Defense News, 3 May 2019.

The re-militarization of Russia  309 7 ‘Russia Returns to Top 5 Defence Spending Countries Worldwide – Think Tank’, The Moscow Times, 27 April 2020. 8 US National Defense Authorization Act (N DAA), FY2020 NDAA Summary, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/FY20%20NDAA%20 Conference%20Summary%20_%20FINAL.pdf, accessed 12 December 2019; ‘$740Bln U.S. Defence Bill Targets Russian Pipelines’, The Moscow Times, 10 December 2019. 9 On this, Roger McDermott, ‘Putin Agrees to Major Write-Off of Russia’s Defense Industry Debt’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 19 February 2020. 10 See Ernest J. Monitz, Sam Nunn, ‘The Return of Doomsday: The New Nuclear Arms Race—and How Washington and Moscow Can Stop It’, Foreign Affairs, 6 August 2019. 11 ‘Military Service – Contract Service’, GlobalSecurity.org., accessed 20 February 2020; Dmitry Gorenburg, ‘The Russian Military under Sergei Shoigu: Will the Reform Continue?”, PONARS Eurasia, Policy memo 253, July 2013; Vladimir Isachenkov, ‘Russian defence ministry boasts about revived military power’, AP News, 11 March 2019. 12 Aleey Zhabin, ‘More Than a Decade After Military Reform, Hazing Still Plagues the Russian Army’, The Moscow Times, 18 February 2020; ‘High Suicide Rate Plagues Russian Military, Lawmaker Says’, The Moscow Times, 19 February 2020; ‘Dedovshchina vykhodit iz stroia’, RBC.ru, Gazeta, No. 192 (3147), 29 November 2019. 13 ‘Sergei Shoigu rasskazal, kak spasali rossiiskuiu armiiu’, MKRU [Moskovskiy komsomolets], 22 September 2019. 14 On this, see Ofer Fridman, Russian ‘Hybrid Warfare’: Resurgence and Politicisation. New York: Oxford UP, 2018, and Roger N. McDermott, Russia’s Electronic Warfare Capabilities to 2025. International Centre for Defence and Security, Estonian Ministry of Defence, 2017; see also Andrew Monaghan, ‘The “War” in Russia’s “Hybrid Warfare”’, Parameters, Vol. 45, No. 4 (2015–16), pp. 65–74. 15 Stephen Blank, ‘Modernization of the Russian Armed Forces – Achievement, Plans, Objectives’, American Foreign Policy Council, April 2018, www.academia. edu., rusmil-6-2018.docx. 16 ‘SShA ne predlagali Rossii kratkosrochnoe prodlenie Dogovora o SNV’, Kommersant, 24 June 2020; Jonathan Brown, ‘Russia Stages Grand WWII Parade Ahead of Vote on Putin Reforms’, The Moscow Times, 24 June 20/20; ‘Putin prinial parad Pobedy na Krasnoi ploshchadi’, Vedomosti, 24 June 2020. 17 ‘China rebukes US envoy for photo stunt at nuclear talks with Russia’, The World (Reuters), 22 June 2020; Alice Tidey, ‘US–Russia nuclear talks: Washington condemns “no-show” China at Vienna summit’, Euronews, 22 June 2020. 18 ‘Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkin: ‘“We Have No Trust, No Confidence Whatsoever” in America’, The National Interest, 29 May 2020. The interview was conducted by the journal’s editor, Jacob Heilbrunn. 19 Quoted in ‘Chinese Defense Minister Says China will “Support” Russia Against Americas’, Asia Times, 4 April 2018. 20 ‘Russia Says U.S. Is Playing with Fire by Imposing 60th Sanctions Package Since 2011’, The Moscow Times, 21 September 2018; ‘Kreml’ nazval deistviia SShA “sanktsionnoi isterikoi”’, RBC.ru, 21 September 2018. 21 ‘Russian Naval Exercises Scheduled Off Syrian Coast Amid Expected U.S. Airstrike’, The Moscow Times, 11 April 2018. 22 ‘Moscow Close to Finalizing Deal to Lease Syria’s Tartus Port For 49 Years’, RFE/RL, 21 April 2019. 23 Pavel Felgenhauer, ‘Russia to Build Naval Base in Sudan’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 19 November 2020; ‘Russia Signs Deal to Open Naval Base in Sudan’, The Moscow Times, 9 December 2020. 24 ‘Strategicheskii patrul’ deistvoval s razmakhom’, Krasnaia Zvezda, 14 May 2018.

310  The re-militarization of Russia 25 ‘Russia Conducts Massive Military Drills in Crimea’, The Moscow Times, 8 June 2018; Sergey Zgurets, ‘Military exercises in Crimea: What is Russia preparing for?’ UNIAN, 7 June 2018. 26 ‘Vostok-2018 exercise to be unprecedented in scale – Russian defense minister’, TASS, 20 August 2018; ‘Russia Starts Biggest War Games Since Soviet Fall, Near China’, The Moscow Times, 11 September 2018. 27 Bertil Lintner, Chiang Mai, ‘Eye on America, China-Russia flex naval muscles’, Asia Times, 5 April 2019; Alexander Gabuev, ‘Why Russia and China are Strengthening Security Ties’, Foreign Affairs. Snapshot, 24 September 2018. 28 ‘Russian–Chinese Air Patrol in Asia-Pacific Draws Fire from S. Korea Jets’, The Moscow Times, 16 July 2019; ‘Russia Denies It Apologized to S. Korea Over Alleged Airspace Breach’, The Moscow Times, 17 July 2019; ‘Chemical corrosion. Relations between Japan and South Korea are fraying alarmingly’, The Economist, 20 July 2019, p. 33. 29 State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, ‘China’s National Defense in the New Era’, Pt. VI, 24 July 2019, http://english.gov.cn/ archive/white_paper/2019/07/24/content_281476780919912.htm. 30 Dmitri Trenin, ‘How Cozy Is Russia and China’s Military Relationship?’, The Moscow Times, 12 November 2019. 31 On this, see Dmitry Gorenburg, ‘An Emerging Strategic Partnership: Trends in Russia–China Military Cooperation’, Russian Military Reform, 29 April 2020. 32 Elizabeth Buchanan, Mathieu Boulégue, ‘Russia’s Military Exercises in the Arctic have More Bark than Bite’, FP (Foreign Policy), 20 May 2019; for controversy over Zapad-2017, J.L. Black, Putin’s Third Term, p. 228. 33 ‘Minoborony anonsirovalo ucheniia s uchastiem 128 tys. Voennykh’, RBC.ru, 20 August 2019; ‘Troops to Hold Mass Military Drills at War Games, Russia Announces’, The Moscow Times, 20 August 2019. 34 For a general description in English, Pavel Felgenhauer, ‘Russia Completes Massive Tsentr 2019 War Games With Enhanced Chinese Participation’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 26 September 2019. 35 Thomas Nilsen, ‘Russia announces massive trans-Arctic nuclear war games’, The Barents Observer, 14 October 2019; ‘Massive Nuclear War Games Start in Russian Arctic’, The Moscow Times, 15 October 2019. 36 Sergey Sukhanin, ‘Completing the Arctic Shield: Russian Activities on Wrangel Island’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 9 April 2020. 37 ‘Japan’s deployment of U.S.-developed Aegis Ashore missile defense system could take six years 14 May 2018’, The Japan Times, 30 July 2018; ‘Russia Rejects Japan’s Protests Over Military Buildup on Disputed Islands’, The Moscow Times, 10 October 2018. 38 ‘Kyiv Says Russia Attacked Ukrainian Navy Ships, Seized Three in Black Sea’, RFE/RL, 25 November 2018; ‘Russia and Ukraine Clash Over Kerch Strait, Explained’, The Moscow Times, 26 November 2018; Yuri Laptev, ‘Martial Law in Ukraine: A Rehearsal for War’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 12 December 2018. 39 ‘Russia to Build New Missile Early-Warning Radar Station in Crimea’, The Moscow Times, 29 November 2018. 40 ‘Russia Deploys Fighter Jets to Crimea Amid Ukraine Tensions’, The Moscow Times, 17 December 2018. 41 ‘UN Maritime Tribunal Rules Russia Must “Immediately” Release Ukrainian Sailors, Ships’, RFE/RL, 25 May 2019; ‘Russia Must Release Detained Ukrainian Sailors – Maritime Tribunal’, The Moscow Times, 25 May 2019. 42 Andrew E. Kramer, ‘Russian General Pitches “Information” Operations as a Form of War’, New York Times, 2 March 2019; ‘Russia’s Geopolitical Rivals Preparing for High-Tech Wars in Space – Gen Staff’, Sputnik, 2 March 2019. See also Kier Giles, ‘Russia’s “New” Tools for Confronting the West. Continuity and

The re-militarization of Russia  311 Innovation in Moscow’s Exercise of Power’, Chatham House, Russia and Eurasia Programme, March 2016. 43 For a video of the road incident 20 February 2020, https://www.rt.com/ news/481277-syria-russia-us-collide/. 44 ‘Russia Tests New Anti-Ballistic Missile Designed to Protect Moscow from Attack’, The Moscow Times, 2 April 2018; ‘Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu Sobraniiu’, Kremlin.ru, 1 March 2018, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/56957. The test was the Sarmat’s second successful trial. 45 ‘Statement of John H. Hyten, United States Strategic Commander before the Senate Committee on Armed Services, 4 April 2017’. www.armed-services.senate. gov/imo/media/doc/Hyten_04-04-17,pdf 46 NATO Newsroom, ‘NATO Secretary General briefs on exercise Trident Juncture’, www.nato-int/cps/ua/natohq/index.htm, 24 October 2018; Dmitry Gorenburg, ‘NATO’s Trident Juncture Exercise as a Deterrence Signal to Russia’, Russia Matters, 1 November 2018. 47 ‘Russian Warships to Hold Missile Drills Near Norway’s Gas Pipeline to Europe’, The Moscow News, 4 February 2020; Thomas Nilsen, ‘Russian navy drill outside Norway ended without smoke’, The Barents Observer, 18 August 2019. 48 Thomas Nilsen, ‘U.S. Sixth Fleet enters the Barents Sea with missile defense destroyer’, The Barents Observer, 4 May 2020. 49 ‘Fregat “Admiral Gorshkov” vypolnil pusk giperzvukogo rakety “Tsirkon” iz Belogo Moria’, TASS, 7 October 2020; ‘Russia Successfully Test-Launches “Tsirkon” Hypersonic Missile’, The Moscow Times, 7 October 2020. 50 ‘Russia reopens Soviet-era laboratory to test weapons in Arctic conditions’, Devdiscourse.com, 24 December 2020, and Reuters. 51 US State Department, ‘Russia’s Violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty’, Fact Sheet, 4 December 2018, www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ ps/2018/12/287868.htm; Morgan Chalfant, ‘Pompeo: US to leave nuclear treaty in 60 days unless Russia complies with terms’, The Hill, 4 December 2018. 52 John Bolton, The Room Where It happened, op. cit. pp. 159–64. 53 David E. Sanger, William J. Broad, ‘A Cold War Arms Treaty Is Unraveling. But the Problem is Much Bigger’, New York Times, 9 December 2018; ‘Russia Warns of Retaliation After Trump Says U.S. Is Exiting Nuclear Treaty’, The Moscow Times, 21 October 2018; Tal Axelrod, ‘Trump confirms US will withdraw from key arms control treaty’, The Hill, 20 October 2018; ‘Kremlin Says U.S. Plan to Quit Flawed Nuclear Pact is Dangerous’, The Moscow Times, 23 October 2018; ‘INF Is Just Another Unenforceable Treaty (Op-ed)’, The Moscow Times, 6 December 2018; Pavel Felgenhauer, ‘Termination of the INF Treaty: The End of Arms Control?’ Eurasia Daily Monitor, 6 December 2018; Paul Robinson, ‘Arms Race’, Irrationality, 7 December 2018. 54 Putin, ‘Vstrecha s Sergeem Lavrovym i Sergeem Shoigu’, Kremlin.ru, 2 February 2019, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59763; Dmitry Stefanovich, ‘The INF Treaty Has Been Nixed. What’s Next? (Op-ed)’, The Moscow Times, 11 February 2019. 55 ‘Opinion. Michael Gorbachev: A Nuclear Arms Race Has Begun’, New York Times, 25 October 2018; Gorbachev, ‘V iadernoi gonke ne budet pobeditelei’, Vedomosti, 12 February 2019, reprinted in English in The Moscow Times, 14 February 2019. 56 Putin, ‘Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu Sobraniiu’, Kremlin.ru, 20 February 2019, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59863. 57 See Sarah Bidgood, ‘Trump Accidentally Just Triggered Global Nuclear Proliferation’, FP (Foreign Policy), 21 February 2019; Editorial Board, ‘Don’t Tear Up This Treaty’, New York Times, 15 December 2018; Tom Nichols, ‘Mourning the INF Treaty. The United States Is Not Better for Withdrawing’, Foreign Affairs. Snapshot, 4 March 2019.

312  The re-militarization of Russia 58 ‘Poroshenko anonsiroval ispytaniia raketnogo oruzhiia u granitsy s Rossiei’, RBC.ru, 13 March 2019; ‘Poroshenko: Ukraine Freed of Obligation Not to Develop Powerful Long-Range Missile Systems’, Ukrainian News, 6 March; Steve Trimble, ‘U.S. to Revive GLCM Fabrication Before INF Treaty Withdrawal’, Aviation Week, 8 March 2019. 59 ‘Diplomat says NATO chief failed to show any proof of Russia’s INF “Violations”’, TASS, 21 March 2019; Eurasia Diary, 21 March 2020. The Congressional Research Service report, Russian Compliance with the Intermediaterange Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty: Background and Issues for Congress, Updated February 8, 2019, 48pp., was surprisingly deficient in hard evidence. 60 Andrey Baklitskiy, ‘Arms Control is Dead. Long Live Arms Control’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 21 March 2019. 61 ‘Putin Says Russia Prepared to Drop Arms Control Treaty If U.S. Not Interested In Renewal’, RFE/RL, 6 June 2019; Putin, ‘Meeting with heads of international news agencies’, Kremlin.ru, 6 June 2019, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60675. 62 ‘MID Rossii zaiavil o prekrashchenii deistviia Dogovora o RSMD po initsiative SShA;’, Vedomosti, 2 August 2019; ‘NATO Calls on Russia to Destroy New Missile, Warns of Response’, The Moscow Times, 25 June 2019. 63 Putin, ‘Soveshchanie s postoiannymi chlenami Soveta Bezopasnosti’, 23 August 2019, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/61359; ‘Russia Accuses U.S. of Stoking Tensions with Post-INF Missile Test’, The Moscow Times, 20 August 2019; ‘Putin Orders Reciprocal Russian Response to U.S. Missile Test’, The Moscow Times, 23 August 2019. 64 ‘Bol’shaia press-konferentsiia Vladimira Putina’, Kremlin.ru, 19 December 2019, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62366 65 Putin, ‘Plenaroe zasedanie Vostochnogo ekonomicheskogo foruma’, Kremlin.ru, 5 September 2019, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/61451. 66 ‘Statement by Vladimir Putin on additional steps to de-escalate the situation in Europe after the termination of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty)’, Official translation, Kremlin.ru, 26 October2020, en.kremlin.ru/ events/president/news/64270. 67 Russian Federation Ministry of Defence, ‘The Northern Fleet has deployed the Bal missile system in position on the Sredniy Peninsula’, 8 July 2019, function. mil.ru/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12245818@egNews; ‘Russia Deploys Missile System 70km From Norway’s Vardo Radar’, The Barents Observer, 8 July 2019; Thomas Nilsen, ‘US and Norway upgrade eye on border to northern Russia’, The Barents Observer, 16 November 2018. 68 U.S. Department of State, Michael R. Pompeo, Press statement, ‘On the Treaty on Open Skies’, 21 May 2020, https://www.state.gov/on-the-treaty-on-open-skies/; David E. Sanger, ‘Trump Will Withdraw From Open Skies Arms Control Treaty’, New York Times, 21 May 2020; ‘Kosachev nazval nelepym reshenie SShA vyiti iz Dogovora po otkrytomu nebu’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 22 May 2020; Yevgeny Razumny, ‘Rossiia ne vyidet iz dogovora ob otkrytom nebe vsled za SShA’, Vedomosti, 22 May 2020. 69 ‘White House Official: Trump To Seek Extension Of New START Arms Treaty with Russia’, RFE/RL, 22 May 2020; Pavel Luzin, ‘The Doomed Treaty: Russia’s Position on Prolonging New START’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 18 May 2020. 70 Ukaz Prezidenta Rossiiskaia Federatsii, ‘Ob Osnovakh gosudarstvennoi politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii v oblasti iadernogo sderzhivanii’, 2 June 2020, publication. pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001202006020040. 71 Putin, ‘Soveshchanie s postoiannymi chlenami Soveta Bezopasnosti’, Kremlin.ru, 16 October 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64238; Zachary Cohen, Jamie Crawford, Kylie Atwood, ‘Trump’s national security adviser call Putin response to arms-control talks a “non-starter”’, CNN Politics, 16 October 2020; ‘Michael R. Gordon, ‘Russia Rebuffs Trump’s Arms-Control Proposal’, The Wall Street Journal, 1 October 2020.

The re-militarization of Russia  313 72 Steven Pifer, ‘US nukes in Poland are a truly bad idea’, Brookings, 18 May 2020; Alexandra Brzosowski, ‘Debate to relocate US nuclear weapons to Poland irks Russia’, Euractiv.com, 20 May 2020. 73 ‘Bol’shaia press-konferentsiia Vladimira Putina’, Kremlin.ru, 20 December 2018, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59455. 74 RT, 27 February 2020. See also Andrey Baklitskiy, The Prospects for U.S.-Russia Arms Control. Washington: CSIS, 2020. 75 ‘Zaiavlenie MID Rossii …, 8 April 2020, www.mid.ru/ru/press_service/spokesman/official_statement/-/asset_publisher/t2GCdmD8RNIr/content/id/4096810. 76 Putin, ‘Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu Sobraniiu’, Kremlin.ru,1 March 2018, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/56957; ‘Meeting with Government members’, 26 December 2018, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59518; Steven Simon, ‘Hypersonic Missiles Are a Game Changer’, New York Times, 2 January 2020. 77 ‘Official Reveals Russia’s Avangard Hypersonic Missile Speed’, Sputnik, 28 December 2018. 78 For useful discussions, Robert Legvold, ‘Death of the INF Treaty’, Valdai Discussion Club, 20 December 2018, and Ernest J. Moniz, Sam Nunn, ‘The Return of Doomsday’, Foreign Affairs, 6 August 2019, op. cit. 79 US Department of Defense. ‘Transcript: Department of Defense Background Briefing on Nuclear Deterrence and Modernization’, 21 February 2020, https:// www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/2090986/department-of-defense-background-briefing-on-nuclear-deterrence-and-modernizati/ source/GovDelivery/. 80 ‘Putin Unveils World’s Longest Nuclear Submarine at Shipyard Ceremony’, The Moscow Times, 23 April 2019; ‘Putin poobeshhchal 26 novykh korablei rossiiskomu flot v etom gody’, RBC.ru, 29 July 2028. 81 Dar’ia Korzhova, ‘V Rossii prokhodit aktsiia “Bessmertnyi polk”’, Vedomosti, 9 May 2019. 82 On the Kursk and its implications for Russian foreign policy and the backlash at home, see J.L. Black, Vladimir Putin and the New World Order, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004, pp. 77–80, 196–99. 83 Putin, ‘Vstrecha s Ministrom oborony Sergheem Shoigu’, Kremlin.ru, 4 July 2019, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60913; Pavel K. Baev, ‘Another Russia Sea Tragedy: Unlearned Lessons Obscured by Secrecy’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 8 July 2019. 84 See, e.g. Colleen Moore, Ben Freeman, ‘Nuclear Arms Nightmare: Don’t Let New START Die’, The National Interest, 8 April 2020; Daryl G. Kimball, ‘Prevent the outbreak of another global security threat. Extend New Start’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 8 April 2020. 85 Aleksandr Emelyanenkov, ‘“Kniaz’ Vladimir” otkryl sdatochnuiu programmu “Sevmasha” v 2020 godu’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 12 June 2020; Vladimir Soldatkin, ‘Russian nuclear-powered sub enters service amid arms control fears’, Reuters, 12 June 2020; Thomas Nilsen, ‘Naval Chiefs at Russian submarine ceremony ignore coronavirus safety rules’, The Barents Observer, 12 June 2020. 86 Federation of American Scientists, ‘Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space’, fas.org.programs/ssp/nukes …, accessed 6 September 2020; Karl Grossman, ‘The Next Frontier: Trump and Space Weapons’, Worldbeyondwar.org, January 2019. 87 ‘Global arms industry: US companies dominate the Top 100; Russian arms industry moves into second place’, SIPRI, 10 December 2018; Manu Pubby, ‘US sanctions rain on India-Russia defence parade’, The Economic Times (India), 5 May 2018; ‘Russia Downplays New U.S. Sanctions as Revenge for “Failed” Syria Strikes’, The Moscow Times, 10 May 2018; ‘Philippines to Buy U.S. Helicopters, Not Russian, Over Sanctions Fears’, The Moscow Times, 7 December 2018. For the sanctions, see US Department of the Treasury, www.treasury.gov/resourcecenter/sanctions/SDSN-List/Pages/default.aspx.

314  The re-militarization of Russia 88 ‘Russian Arms Makers Lost $760M Due to U.S. Sanctions, Official Says’, The Moscow Times, 1 March 2019. 89 ‘V Indii otkrylsia zavod po proizvodstvu avtomatov Kalashnikova’, Vedomosti, 3 March 2019. 90 ‘Rossiia i Indiia soglasovali usloviia postavki’ S-400 na $6 mlrd’, Kommersant, 29 May 2018; ‘India Signs $5Bln Deal to Buy Russia’s S-400 Missile System, Despite U.S. Pressure’, The Moscow Times, 5 October 2018; Pavel Felgenhauer, ‘Selling Russian Arms in New Delhi: Seeking Revenue and Influence’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 11 October 2018. 91 Robertus Wardi, ‘Defense Ministry Wants Sukhoi Fighter Jets, Despite US Sanctions Risk’, Jakarta Globe, 10 August 2018. 92 Aleksei Nikolsky, ‘Kitai zakupil v Rossii vertolety na summu boleee $2 mlrd’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 23 October 2020. 93 ‘Rossiia in Turtsiia zakliuchili vtoroi kontrakt na postavku 3RC S-400’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 23 August 2020; ‘Turtsiia otvetila na soobshcheniia ob otkaze ot amerikanskikh system PVO’, RBC.ru, 1 March 2019; ‘Turkey Weighs New U.S. Call to Delay Buying Russian Missiles’, The Moscow Times, 14 May 2019; David Gauthier-Villars, Ann M. Simmons, ‘Turkey Receives Russian Missiles System, Risking U.S. Sanctions’, The Wall Street Journal, 15 July 2019; Mathew Lee, ‘US sanctions NATO ally Turkey over Russian missile defence’, Canadian Press, 14 December 2020. 94 ‘SMI uznalo o pokupke Egiptom neskol’kikh desiatkov rossiiskikh Su-35’, RBC. ru, 18 March 2018. 95 Ivan Safronov, ‘Alzhir kupil rossiiskie istrebiteli na summy okolo $2 mlrd’, Vedomosti, 9 September 2019. 96 ‘Russia Delivers New Batch of Weapons to Central African Republic’, The Moscow Times, 27 September 2019. 97 ‘Russia Delivers Flamethrower Systems to Saudi Arabia – Reports’, The Moscow Times, 9 April 2019. 98 Franz-Stefan Gady, ‘Russia Confirms Delivery of 10 Su-35 Fighter Jets to China by Year’s End’, The Diplomat, 29 August 2018; ‘Russia Completes Delivery of Su-35 Fighter Jets to China for $2.5Bln’, The Moscow Times, 17 April 2019. 99 Arthur Lyons, ‘US threatens to sanction Serbia over Russian S-400 missile system purchase’, Voice of Europe, 14 November 2019. 100 ‘U.S. Sanctions Russian Arms Makers Over Alleged Iran, N. Korea and Syria Dealings’, The Moscow Times, 22 May 2019. 101 Zainab Fattah, Ilya Arkhipov, ‘Russia Rejected Iran S-400 Missiles Request Amid Gulf Tension’, Bloomberg, 30 May 2019. 102 ‘Putin i korol’ Saudovskoi Aravii obsudili voenno-tekhnicheskoe sotrudnichestvo’, Kommersant, 14 October 2019. 103 Ivan Safronov, Aleksei Nikolskii, ‘V’etnam zakliuchil kontrakt na rossiiskie uchebno-boevye samolety Iak-130’, Vedomosti, 29 January 2020; ‘Vietnam Orders $350M Combat Training Jets From Russia’, The Moscow Times, 29 January 2020. 104 See Black, Vladimir Putin and the New World Order, Chapter 10. 105 See Declaration. Collective Security Council. Collective Security Treaty Organization, 8 November 2018, Astana, odkb-csto.org/documents/detail. php?ELEMENT_ID=14225. 106 Eduard Abrahamyan, ‘Internal Discord in CSTO May be Pushing Armenia to Leave Russia-Led Alliance’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 29 November 2018. 107 Putin, ‘Interv’iu v efire programmy “Zavtrak s Frostom” na telekanale “Bi-bi-ci”’, Kremlin.ru, 5 March 2000, kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/24194. 108 NATO representatives deny that any such promise was made, but documents de-classified in December 2017 suggest otherwise, see Svetlana Savranskaia, Tom Blanton, ‘NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard’, National Security

The re-militarization of Russia  315 Archive, 12 December 2017, Briefing Book, #613, https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/ briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachevheard-western-leaders-early; Dave Majumdar, ‘Newly Declassified Documents: Gorbachev Told NATO Wouldn’t Move Past East German Border’, The National Interest, 12 December 2017; Jack Matlock, ‘The One Place NATO Could Turn for Help’, New York Times, 20 April 2020. As US ambassador to the USSR, 1987–91, Matlock was privy to these discussions. 109 See the FIS Report, ‘Opravdano li rasshirenie NATO?’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 26 November 1993; J.L. Black, Russia Faces NATO Expansion. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, pp. 8–9. For the ‘recent’ view that blamed Putin, see Kimberly Marten, ‘NATO enlargement: evaluating its consequences in Russia’, International Politics, 16 April 2020, on-line. 110 ‘Defence Minister Expresses Concern at NATO “Expansion”’, Interfax-AVN, 2 December 2006, REDA 2006, Vol. 1, p. 158. 111 ‘S.Res. 439 – A resolution expressing the strong support of the senate for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to enter into a Membership Action Plan with Georgia and Ukraine’, 14 February 2008, https://www.congress.gov/ bill/110th-congress/senate-resolution/439/text. 112 ‘Vladimir Putin vystupil na zasedanii Soveta Rossiia–NATO’, Kremlin.ru, 4 April 2008, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/44078, plus following Q&A press conference. 113 ‘U.S. pushes NATO to ready more forces to deter Russian threat’, Reuters, 5 June 2018, reprinted in The Moscow Times, 5 June 2018. 114 See Pavel Felgenhauer, ‘Moscow Increasingly Ready for Major Military Confrontation’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 21 March 2019. 115 ‘Secretary General: NATO is united in support for Georgia’s security’, www. nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_157482.htm, 18 July 2018; Ihor Kabanenko, ‘NATO Brussels Summit: Key Outcomes and Implications for Ukrainian Interests’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 18 July 2018. 116 Putin was speaking to a meeting of Russian ambassadors and permanent representatives, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/58037, 19 July 2018. 117 See Sean T. Crowley, ‘NATO “Encirclement” May Be Creating a New Crisis with Russia’, National Interest, 2 August 2018. 118 ‘Namejis 2018 military exercise underway’, The Baltic Word, 20 August 2018. 119 ‘Joint Russian–Serbian military exercise starts’, rs.n1info.com/a411708/English/ NEWS/Joint-Russian-Serbian-military-exercise-starts.html; Noble Partner 2018, 120 Giorgi Menabde, ‘NATO Again Demonstrates Strong Support for Georgia’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 1 April 2019. 121 ‘Russia to Fund Abkhazian Military Modernization Amid Growing Tensions’, The Moscow Times, 23 September 2019; ‘Iuzhnaia Osetiia so svoei storony takzhe prikazala postroit’ blokpost v khode poslednei eskalatsii na granitse’, OC Media, 1 September 2019; ‘Tensions Are Flaring Between Georgia and Russia-Backed South Ossetia. Here’s What’s Happened’, The Moscow Times, 2 September 2019. 122 Giorgi Menabde, ‘Russia Boosts Its Military Contingent in Georgia’s Occupied Territories’. Eurasia Daily Monitor, 19 February 2020. 123 ‘US troops arrive in Germany for “Defender Europe 20” military maneuvers’, DW (Deutsche Welle), 19 February 2020; see also NATO, ‘About DefenderEurope-20’, https://shape.nato.int/defender-europe. 124 ‘Canada’s firm to deliver $770,000 in sniper rifles to Ukraine’, UNIAN, 14 August 2018; David Pugliese, ‘Winnipeg firm wins $1M deal to send sniper rifles to Ukraine that could be used against Russian-backed forces’, Ottawa Citizen, 13 August 2018; ‘Kanadskaia firma postavit Ukrainie snaiperskie vintovki pochti na $800,000’, Vedomosti, 14 August 2018. 125 NATO Newsroom, ‘NATO Secretary General briefs on exercise Trident Juncture’, www.nato-int/cps/ua/natohq/index.htm, 24 October 2018.

316  The re-militarization of Russia 126 ‘MID RF zaiavil o polnom prekrashchenii sotrudnichestva Rossii i NATO’, Kommersant, 15 April 2019; ‘Russia Has Ceased “All” Cooperation with NATO, Foreign Ministry Says’, The Moscow Times, 15 April 2019; Robert Burns, ‘The chill in US–Russia relations has some worried about stumbling into a military conflict’, The Military Times, 14 April 2019. 127 Frederik Pleitgen, ‘In the Mediterranean, US aircraft carrier operations serve as floating American diplomacy’, CNN.com, 23 April 2019. 128 ‘Putin Criticizes NATO Expansion as Alliance Holds London Summit’, The Moscow Times, 3 December 2019; Putin, ‘Soveshchanie s rukovodstvom Minoborony i predpriatii’, Kremlin.ru, 3 December 2019, kremlin.ru/events/ president/news/62228; Elena Chernenko, Vladimir Solov’ev, ‘Raketyu srednei i men’shei mirnosti’, Kommersant, 25 September 2019. 129 Eugene Gerden, ‘Russia maintains training tempo after NATO rebuffs “offer” to freeze drills’, Shephard, 12 May 2020. 130 Vladimir Isachenko, ‘Russian general chafes at “provocative” NATO drills’, AP, 1 June 2020, https://apnews.com/4bf995f782fc4fd7d331622ec0074f83; ‘Russia Scales Down Military Drills Near NATO Borders in 2020 Official’, The Moscow Times, 2 June 2020. 131 ‘Russia’s Putin Orders Massive Snap Military Drills’, The Defence Post, 17 July 2020, also in The Moscow Times, 17 July 2020. 132 ‘Russia launches Kavkaz-2020 drills’, TASS, 20 September 2020; Dimitri Simes, ‘Russia, China, Iran, and Others Begin Joint Military Drills in Southern Russia’, CNSNews.com, 23 September 2020; Maxime Popov, ‘Russia’s Season of War Games United West-Weary Allies’, The Moscow Times, 23 September 2020. 133 Roger McDermott, ‘Russian Military Tests “Mobile Echelon” in Kavkaz 2020’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 28 October 2020; Pavel Felgenhauer, ‘Russia Watches as Karabakh War Reaches Decisive Turning Point’, Eurasia daily Monitor, 29 October 2020. 134 See, e.g. Frederick W. Kagan, ‘A knife at NATO’s throat: Why Belarus matters to the US’, The Hill, 20 August 2020. 135 Ministerstvo oborony Respubliki Belarus’, ‘The opening ceremony of the ARMI2020 competitions was held at Brest’, 23 August 2020, https://www.mil.by/ ru/news/spec_proect/104613/; ‘Russian Troops Take Part in Belarus War Games’, The Moscow Times, 28 August 2020. 136 Milica Stojanovic, ‘Serbia Quits Joint Military Exercise, Citing “Terrible EU Pressure”’, Balkan Insight, 10 September 2020; ‘Ukraine–U.S. Military Exercises Begin as Russia Holds Drills in Belarus’, Reuters, 17 September 2020. 137 ‘BMF Rossii vpervye za desiat’ let provedet sovmestnye s NATO ucheniia’, RIA Novosti, 10 December 2020; ‘Russian Navy to Join NATO Countries Joint Exercises in 10-Year First’, The Moscow Times, 15 December 2020.

8 Quality of life Media, mind and behaviour

Introduction Although the Russian Constitution guarantees a diversity of ideologies and religions, and forbids a state or compulsory ideology (Chapt. 1, Art. 13.2), the amendments offered to the public in 2020 legitimized a de facto conservative ideology by defining family as a union of man and woman, Russian as the state-forming language and Russian territory as indivisible. The revised Basic Law renders certain historical facts, or myths, about World War II unchallengeable, and prioritized Russian law above international treaties. These constitutional changes do not represent a single ideology in the usual sense of the term; rather, they confirm in law practices and sentiments that grew ever stronger over Putin’s first twenty years in high office. They exemplify outgrowths from the ‘besieged mentality’ that has been common to Russian state thinking for at least a century. Manifestations of the ‘besieged mentality’ have been easy to track in Russian foreign policy since the 1990s. Less obvious products of history are post-Soviet struggles over control of information distribution, the direction of science and education, and progress in the fields of human rights. These contests are driven, in part, by individuals and institutions competing to manipulate the thinking of Russians and, on the part of the church and state, to shield the public from ‘alien’ ideas coming to them from abroad. The dilemma of corruption may appear to be completely separate from matters related to ideologies, yet various forms of corruption provide the state and public with challenges that touch almost every aspect of Russian behavioural life. The contests noted above are fuelled, sometimes, by longstanding habit-forming corrupt practices and those practices nurture attitudes that, some say, are characteristic of the Russian world.1

Media Control of information dissemination was one of the most powerful weapons wielded by the CPSU to shape and monitor Soviet society and, it is fair to say, the introduction of glasnost (openness/publicity) by Gorbachev in the DOI: 10.4324/9781003158646-9

318  Quality of life late 1980s was the most significant of the irreversible concessions that brought the USSR down. Well aware of this, the state, the oligarchs and organized crime fought bitterly for control of the message in the 1990s. Oligarchs, such as Berezovsky and Gusinsky, purchased huge stakes in the print and TV sectors to help push their economic and political agendas. Bribes became a main source of revenue for poorly-paid journalists, editors and managers, as they did for employers and workers in other walks of life. Energy companies (e.g. LUKoil, Gazprom) bought controlling shares in the mainstream press whenever they could. Reporting the truth on the wars in Chechnya, economic chicanery or on political campaigns again became dangerous undertakings. Journalists, editors, columnists and talk show hosts were murdered by organizations and individuals whose nefarious activities they threatened to reveal. In fact, 16 journalists were killed in 2000 alone, five more went missing and 73 others had been attacked physically. They fell prey to war, various criminal or military organizations, or perhaps oligarchs whom they threatened with exposure.2 Many of the revelatory newspapers that emerged and flourished during Gorbachev’s perestroika floundered for want of readers by the mid-tolate 1990s, or were bought out by oligarchs who wanted to manage the headlines. In 1994, Yeltsin transformed the state TV and radio company inherited from the USSR (Gosteleradio) into a closed joint stock company called Russian Public TV (ORT). Although the state maintained 51 per cent of ORT, Berezovsky, then owner of Nezavisimaia gazeta and Kommersant, held controlling shares on its board of directors. He, along with Moscow’s Mayor Luzhkov (who had his own television channel) and other oligarchs, turned the media into a battlefield for rival political factions and businesses. The absence of any real libel laws made slanderous side-taking by TV and print commentators the norm. In 2000, Berezovsky used his effective hold on the ORT to denigrate Putin’s opponents and help him win his first presidential election. Within months of his electoral victory, Putin launched an attack against ‘organized crime’, meaning the media empire controlled by Berezovsky’s rival, Gusinsky, owner of Media-MOST, TNT, Ekho and several newspapers. Gusinsky was arrested in July. Freed a month later, he handed his holdings to Gazprom-Media to pay a debt. A pattern was set. Berezovsky’s place in the sun didn’t last long either. In that same year, he resigned his seat as a Duma deputy to protest Putin’s assault on the oligarchs and tried, unsuccessfully, to form his own political party. No longer benefiting from parliamentary immunity and charged with millions in taxes unpaid by his companies, including Avtovaz, Russia’s largest automobile manufacturing company, Berezovsky fled the country. In January 2001, Putin met with mass media leaders, telling them that media freedom was not in danger and that he welcomed constructive criticism. That remained to be seen. Newspaper and TV station closures were regular fare during Putin’s first term, and police raids against NTV in 2001 triggered the first large street rallies in support of freedom of the press, orchestrated then by Yabloko. 3

Quality of life  319 The government consolidated its hold on messaging in August that year when it formed a single government media enterprise called the Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Network, absorbing all its existing owned or controlled companies. By 2002, Russia had six nation-wide TV channels, two owned by the state, one by the city of Moscow and one by a joint stock company (ORT). The other two were privately-owned. The ORT was renamed Channel One. These national channels were later reduced to three. There were hundreds of smaller, regional and local channels, about half of them owned by the state or by state-owned enterprises, such as Gazprom. The previously independent polling group VtsIOM was taken over by the government in 2002. In 2005, the Public Chamber was handed the task of monitoring media freedoms and in that same year Russia Today (Rossiia Segodnia), the TV channel known now as RT, was launched to serve as Russia’s main overseas propaganda tool.4 Putin spoke on behalf of press freedom again in 2005, at the same time making it plain that ‘reverting’ to control of the mass media by oligarchs was ‘out of the question’.5 All the while, the state gradually strengthened its grip on the message, or at least a major part of it, which was one of the reasons why Reporters without Borders ranked Russia 140th of 167 countries in its index for press freedom in 2005. It was in 2006 that paid assassins murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaia outside her apartment, probably because she was preparing to submit a report on atrocities committed by Russian soldiers in Chechnya. Putin called the act ‘disgusting’, and promised to find the culprits.6 But it wasn’t until 2014 that five men were sentenced for the crime. She was the 42nd journalist killed in Russia since the early1990s. Of the changes in the relations of the media to the state, a law passed in 2014 preventing foreign investors from owning more than a 20 per cent stake in any Russian media outlet was especially important. Driven by the propaganda war between Russia and the West over the Ukraine crisis, the law was adopted by the Duma (430–2) without debate. Critics outside the Duma worried that the legislation would limit diverse opinion further than was already the case, and also make it difficult for smaller audience media to survive. Given that as recently as August 2020, 69 per cent of Russians still get their news and interpretation from TV, the state’s role in that medium is central, even if that number is well down from the more than 90 per cent it was a decade ago.7 Seeing doesn’t mean that viewers always believe the TV message. Trust in televised news hovers around 47 per cent, and the younger generation (under 35) tends to turn to social networks, video blogs and the Internet. Social media is, in fact, the second-largest source of information for Russians, at 39 per cent. Newspapers have dropped to 13 per cent and now lies behind radio (15%) as sources of information.8 Interpretations of domestic political matters and international events offered by Russian TV and Internet often differ dramatically. These Levada numbers were corroborated by a survey conducted by FOM, which found in October 2020 that 48 per cent of Russians depend on TV for

320  Quality of life news and 44 per cent rely on the Internet. A Russian analyst commented that, therefore, there are two communities of Russians living side-by-side who view ‘our life completely differently’.9 A clear demonstration of this came late in the year when a Levada survey showed that people who received their news from television, primarily the older generation, tended to accept the state’s version of the Navalny poisoning as a staged event; a younger generation of Internet users tended not to believe the official version.10 Internet interplay Surveys conducted in November 2018 by the HSE’s Institute for Statistical Studies showed that 83.7 per cent of Russians use the Internet sometimes, and 60.6 per cent go online almost every day, which means that most Russians have access to the same information, commercial operations and socializing systems that users have in the West. More than half of the regular users were under the age of 40. These numbers have grown and, according to HSE’s data in 2019, Russia was behind only Japan in its share of the world’s Internet users on social media. A Levada Centre survey put daily users up to 65 per cent by November that year. 11 Well aware of this, the state has tried to manipulate the Internet. After a Moscow court denied a final appeal by the messenger service Telegram, whose founders Nikolai and Pavel Durov refused to turn over its encryption codes to the FSB so that it could scan private conversations of users after a 2017 bomb blast in a St. Petersburg Metro station, Roskomnadzor began blocking that service. Calling the agency’s and court rulings ‘censorship’, Pavel Durov pledged millions of dollars to create tools for users to circumscribe government restrictions. In connection with the action against Telegram, several Google IP addresses were blocked, including Gmail and YouTube. Some major banks and online stores were also caught up in the clumsy sweep.12 The case represented one of personal privacy versus state security, a problem faced by most countries in the age of social media. As it happened, the government action against Telegram represented far more bark than bite. The messenger service was still used regularly by officials, media personnel and legislators; and even the government utilized it to broadcast information about COVID-19. Accepting reality, and moderate concessions by the Durovs, Roskomnadzor lifted its bans against Telegram in June 2020. The fact that YouTube reaches the same number of urban viewers between ages of 18 and 44 as state-owned TV, and that oppositionist political figures employ it regularly, means that more restrictive legislation could have a serious impact on the political discourse in Russia.13 This was found to be true as users experienced multiple disruptions of their services when the state regulator blocked millions of IP addresses, prompting international human rights organizations to call on Russia to stop attacking internet freedom. Ignoring such complaints, the Duma adopted a law to block websites that defame the ‘honour, dignity or business reputation of a

Quality of life  321 citizen’.14 Scattered and usually peaceful demonstrations on behalf of internet freedom led to brief detentions for over 20 people in Moscow in April 2018. Leaders of obscure organizations, such as the Black Bloc (anarchist), a Freedom of Speech group and the Association of Popular Resistance, were among the detainees, who now gained some free media attention.15 Authorities insisted that they were trying to develop national Internet servers independently of the current global system dominated by the US, and replace Western software (e.g. Microsoft) to regain ‘internet sovereignty’. Putin launched this campaign in 2015, hoping to provide security for the Russian Internet structure and data by creating top-of-the-line domestically produced software. Legislation submitted to the Duma in December 2018 authorized Roskomnadzor’s oversight of the Internet, and all major Russian tech companies agreed to participate. The law required providers to install technology that would enable the government to block banned online sources and monitor their compliance with traffic routing regulations.16 Critics saw the amendments as a means for the state to control the dissemination of political ideas in Russia, while its supporters saw them as a way to keep the country’s Internet exchange independent of ‘aggressive’ American cybersecurity strategy and relatively secure from use by terrorists. The draft bill, dubbed the ‘Yarovaya Law’ after its main advocate, Irina Yarovaya, passed its first reading in the Duma in February 2019 (334–47) and Putin signed it into law in May. Centralized control of all national traffic on the Internet enables Roskomnadzor to guard against being cut off from the World Wide Web, and also makes it easier to block banned – or opposition – websites.17 To make the government’s case stronger, Peskov told reporters that Russian sites were subject to cyberattacks regularly from the US and Europe; indeed, major US agencies boasted that this was true.18 Still, a large number of Russia’s citizens opposed the law.19 Protests to protect RuNet from potential isolation from global systems spread quickly, many of them orchestrated by a public organization, RosKomSvoboda, and the Libertarian Party which together launched a campaign titled Digital Internet Defence. Even the Presidential Council of Development of Civil Society and Human Rights objected to the authority the new regulatory regime gave to bureaucrats to shut down on-line sites.20 The outburst of protest forced the Kremlin to delineate carefully the types of perils that might prompt enforcement of the law: a threat to the network’s integrity, equipment failure, a major hacking attack or a ‘destabilising external threat’. Roskomnadzor would have the authority to take control of the Internet if any such menace materialized. All protests notwithstanding, the ‘sovereign internet’ law came into effect on 1 November 2019. The Duma adopted yet another internet-restricting bill (322–78) in March 2019. Legislation banning ‘disrespect’ of authorities and ‘fake news’ exposes online news agencies to fines if they broadcast insults against state symbols and government institutions, or disseminate ‘false information that is socially significant under the guise of accurate reporting’. Fake information that

322  Quality of life includes threats to health or property, or encourages public disorder, will be prosecuted. As we saw in Chapter 1, authors of insults directed against authorities in general, and the president in particular, are now subject to fines. Charges can be avoided if the offending materials are taken down within 24 hours. Critics argued that the wording of the bill left the way open for action against free speech activists, demonstrators and opposition commentators. Lawyers for Kommersant, Vedomosti, RBC and others called the law a means to pressure the media to conform. Authorities detained at least 30 of the 15,000 people who showed up at a rally against the law in Moscow.21 This law was one of the reasons why Reporters Without Borders dropped Russia to 149th of 180 countries on its press freedom list for 2019.22 In 2018, the Duma softened penalties for ‘extremist’ social media posts, decriminalizing some offences and providing lesser penalties (fines, administrative detentions) for first-time offenders. The existing legislation had called for sentences of up to five years in prison.23 Among other bills made into law in December 2018 was one that blocked websites that encouraged children to commit life-threatening acts illegal; another decree gave Rosmolodezh, the federal youth agency, the right to block websites it believes are harmful to young people.24 The MVD, Roskomnadzor and the tax service already had this right. Government control over the Internet was expanding exponentially. The Internet was targeted again just prior to elections set for September 2019 when Roskomnadzor ordered Facebook, Google and Twitter not to carry political ads during the Day of Silence just prior to an election or on election day, or face charges of meddling in Russia’s internal affairs. Twitter was later fined for failing to comply with Russia’s data storage laws. Most Russians approved this regulation by their government.25 In late December, 2020, the Duma adopted bills that would allow the state to restrict, or even block, US social media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook if they refused to remove ‘discriminatory’ labels on accounts from Russian media outlets and by some Russian officials. Repeated failure to remove banned content could lead to large fines levied against Internet providers and sites. The bills had not yet been signed by Putin as the year ended. Print & TV media While the near monopoly Russian television once held as the primary source of information for most Russians is shrinking, it is still the dominant news provider. On the domestic side, Putin and his policies get by far the most individual TV time because he is the president. On the foreign affairs side, the role of state TV is to present and explain the government’s perspective – not to challenge it. Dmitry Kiselev, director of RT and deputy director of Russian state TV, left no doubt of this when he told reporters in 2015 that his goal was to protect the interests of the state and that the era of ‘detached journalism’ was over.26

Quality of life  323 Russia’s international media hit a few roadblocks in 2018. For example, the RT news network went off the air in Washington as a result of its new status as a ‘foreign agent’, but continued to broadcast in a number of other US cities. In 2019, the UK’s media regulator fined RT for breaching impartiality rules while reporting on the Skripal case. Moscow retaliated by amending its laws so it could fine foreign media for similar violations. Russia’s Constitutional Court ruled in January 2019 that the law limiting external ownership of media in Russia to 20 per cent was legal, for its purpose was to protect the state’s information security.27 That law resulted in an exodus of large foreign publishers, as had the 2017 law allowing prosecutors to label media with funding from abroad as ‘foreign agents’. In June 2019, an amendment to the existing law made it still more difficult for firms from abroad to distribute publications in Russia. They must now be registered with Roskomnadzor. Russian journalists continue to face physical trials too. For instance, a popular television anchor was murdered in Nizhny Novgorod in July 2018. Denis Suvorov had been investigating Russian mercenaries in Syria.28 As usual, oppositionists blamed the Russia state, as some did in the death of well-known journalist and critic of Putin, Sergei Dorenko, even though all the evidence showed that he died of a heart attack while driving his motorcycle. In April 2019, two journalists for Kommersant wrote, quoting ‘sources’, that Valentina Matviyenko might soon resign her position as speaker of the Federation Council and would be replaced by Sergei Naryshkin, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). A month after this was denied by all concerned parties, which was no guarantee that the stories were not true, the two veteran reporters (one of whom was Ivan Safronov) were let go for ‘reporting rumours as facts’. Their story was called a violation of editorial standards by the editor-in-chief. Within an hour the entire political department of Kommersant, 10 people, resigned; and the next day 203 employees signed an open letter charging that the paper’s action was part of a ‘clampdown on freedom of speech’.29 Although nothing more happened at Kommersant, the story cast a pall over domestic reporting in Russia. The shroud grew murkier when, in June 2019, a journalist known for investigating corruption at Moscow’s City Hall was arrested and charged with drug-dealing. The Ministry of the Interior published photos showing, it claimed, drugs found in Ivan Golunov’s flat. His lawyer said that they were falsified and also that his client was beaten up at the police station. The ministry denied the accusations, while Mayor Sobyanin called for an ‘objective’ evaluation of the case. Golunov was a regular contributor to Riga-based Meduza and author of exposés on, among others, relatives of the deputy mayor of Moscow. Meduza is an independent Russian-language (with an English version) news site run by a group of former Lenta.ru employees headed by Galina Timchenko. On the face of it, the circumstances of the Golunov case sounded like a frame-up sent as a warning to Russia’s world of investigative journalism.

324  Quality of life Within hours, hundreds of single-person pickets began lining up outside the Ministry building. Up to 15 of them were briefly detained, many of them prominent members of the independent trade union of journalists.30 The newspaper publishing community fought back. Three mainstream newspapers, Kommersant, RBC and Vedomosti, carried the same headline ‘I/WE ARE IVAN GOLUNOV’ in large print, and even Putin ally Valentina Matviyenko questioned the police action. After celebrities spoke out in his defence, tens of thousands signed a petition and a massive demonstration was scheduled. The ministry ordered Golunov’s release. The public and independent media finally won a round. The division between Russia’s independent journalists and the official media was on display at a conference in Moscow on media freedom and safety for journalists. Hosted by the OSCE and the MID, the audience included journalists, legislators and diplomats, who delivered wide-ranging and sometimes rancorous speeches from the podium and the floor. Lavrov complained of Western restrictions against RT and Sputnik, some Russian media people complained of Russian restrictions against them, others complained about rival media sites as either too conformist or too oppositional, while the OSCE representative called for more legislation to protect journalists in Russia. Golunov spoke to the meeting, complaining that officialdom never listened. One disgruntled editor labelled the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, Russia’s ‘troll-in-chief’.31 No one seemed happy. All in all, the one-day conference was both revealing and refreshing, though perhaps not in the way many participants had hoped.32 Nothing said at the conference prevented Putin from signing legislation in November 2019 making it possible to label individual journalists ‘foreign agents’, expanding laws that already had NGOs and human rights organizations vulnerable to such charges. Russian authorities claimed that the new law was needed to counter Western propaganda by proxy; Russian critics saw it as further restrictions to freedom of speech in Russia.33 The most dramatic, and horrendous, journalist protest came in October 2020, when the editor of an independent website (KozaPress), Irina Slavina, set herself on fire in front of a police station in Nizhny Novgorod. She left a message asking her readers to ‘blame the Russian Federation’. Police had searched her apartment the day before her self-immolation, and had opened cases against her for disrespecting authorities and spreading ‘fake news’.34 Vedomosti sold Russia’s independent media suffered a hitch when, in March 2020, the popular daily Vedomosti was sold, along with Russia’s Harvard Business Review. Part of the BNM, a joint stock company owned by Demyan Kudryavtsev, Vladimir Voronov and Martin Pompadour, they were purchased by publisher Konstantin Zyatkov and businessman Aleksei Golubovich, manager of Arbat Capital. Vedomosti was founded in 1999 and operated independently with support from Finnish, British and American co-owners until 2015, when

Quality of life  325 the law limiting foreign ownership forced them to leave. Kudryavtsev purchased it then and maintained its independent character. Whereas both the new owners said they would not alter the editorial policies of the paper, former Vedomosti personnel assumed the nature of the paper would change for the worse, and take on a more ‘patriotic’ tone.35 Management changes (new editor-in-chief and editorial director) soon evoked criticism from former staff members and also the publisher of The Moscow Times, Derk Sauer, who tweeted, ‘As the founder of Vedomosti I am deeply worried by recent developments. The future of this great newspaper is in danger.’36 His words proved prescient, for the first direct action taken by acting editor-in-chief Andrei Shmarov was to delete items criticizing Putin, Igor Sechin and Rosneft’s attempts to prop up Venezuela’s oil industry.37 A scandal erupted over this act of censorship and the sale was delayed, temporarily, until it was finalized in June. On Shmarov’s confirmation, five senior deputy editors resigned. His close association with Rosneft and open willingness to censor items, including one that highlighted the Kremlin’s attempts to ensure a “yes” in the looming All-Russia Vote, sent a chill through the Russian independent media world.38 When the FSB detained Ivan Safronov (see Chapter 6), activists linked the arrest to state pressure against the media. His career as a journalist was controversial in that he was fired from Kommersant, and then left Vedomosti following the first meeting conducted by Shmarov. While his many supporters complained on social media that the charges were related to his reporting on arms deals and corruption in the military-industrial industry, police insisted the arrest was a result of his apparent connection with certain NATO personnel and had nothing to do with his activity as a journalist. Former colleagues at Kommersant and Vedomosti spoke publicly in Safronov’s defence, and the papers issued statements in his support.39 Even writers for state-owned RT and Sputnik, and pro-Kremlin Vzgliad demanded explanations and hinted that the action might be an FSB set-up.40 One group of ex-Vedomosti editors and journalists responded to the political pressure by launching a new platform called VTimes after Shmarov prevented Vedomosti from printing criticisms of Putin. The new site promised ‘independence, honesty, responsibility, respect for the reader, careful factchecking. And no taboo topics’. Its founders said they left Vedomosti because that paper had given up on ‘the principles of quality journalism’.41 Clearly, the independent media world was prepared to fight back.

Education, science and the arts Education Sweeping education reforms were undertaken in Putin’s first and fourth terms as president. In 2001 a plan to modernize Russian education included a larger budget allocation, a renewed emphasis on vocational training, and the introduction of unified state examinations (USE). The State Council was charged

326  Quality of life with creating a national education council and assisting the Ministry of Education in setting national education standards, among them standardized university admission protocols. To attract more teachers, wages were doubled over the next two years, and again in 2005, and male teachers were allowed to avoid conscription. According to then deputy minister for welfare, Matviyenko, federal expenditures on education that year were higher than on defence.42 Seventeen years after the first post-Yeltsin plan to modernize Russia’s education sector, the HSE and Kudrin’s Centre for Strategic Research put forward a sweeping reform programme for every level of the academic system, from pre-school development to technological innovation for schools, science and research. Early development would include support services for all children up to age 3 (special needs to age 6). Innovations would mean digital teaching replacing textbooks, Internet access for everyone and 40 new centres for Sirius, or summer camps for bright kids. Infrastructure improvement, new or repaired buildings, buses, labs and recreational facilities were also on the agenda, which highlighted more scholarships, better language training, and state-of-the-art techniques at the university level. Costs for the project were calculated at about ₽8 trillion ($128 bln). Although improvements were certainly made, the ambitious pedagogical scheme was stalled by the temporary loss of energy revenues in 2019–20 and, of course, the pandemic that kept students and staff out of the classroom for the winter and spring of 2020 and on-line in the fall (see Chapter 9). Following up on part of the reform project in 2018, the Labour Ministry introduced a programme to teach retirees how to use the Internet, especially for paying bills and maintaining documents online. Courses to train ‘digital curators’ to handle the teaching were established at vocational centres.43 There was a hiccup in university-level education when the Federal Service for the Supervision of Education and Science (Rosobrnadzor) revoked the accreditation of the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (Shaninka) for, it claimed, shortages in lecture hall space, second-rate instructors and weak curriculum. Critics believed with reason that the university’s association with British institutions persuaded the government agency to censor it. The precedent set in 2016 when the European University in St. Petersburg lost its certification, also for obscure reasons, confirmed that ‘liberal’ atmospheres in some universities were an anathema to government agencies.44 Although accreditation for the European University was restored in August 2018, its temporary loss shook higher education circles. Even Moscow’s HSE, an institution founded in 1992 by economists who hoped to bring Russia into the modern age, came under state scrutiny. Many of its students, whose invitation to Lyubov Sobol to speak on a student talk show was suspended by university management, protested openly in support of fellow student Yegor Zhukov (see Chapter 3). One result of this confrontation was an amendment to the HSE’s internal regulations to make it an ‘obligation not to make political statements’ in the name of the HSE or on behalf of an ‘indefinite circle of students or employees’. The admonition was

Quality of life  327 smoothed over with promises to curb corruption and provide greater student administrative support (printing, transportation).45 More in line with current ‘ideology’ was continued government support for patriotic education and related student events in the General (Secondary) School system.46 These efforts intensified in 2019 when Security Council head Nikolai Patrushev announced that delinquent youth could be sent to military-patriotic camps and called for volunteer bloggers to help inculcate patriotic and spiritual values in Russia’s youth.47 In keeping with amendments to Russia’s constitution, in May 2020 patriotism and military history were added to secondary school curricula.48 Critics saw this as a return to Sovietstyle vospitanie (upbringing), in which schools were expected to graduate ‘good citizens’, in that case young communists.49 The education and cultural sectors all found themselves with new ministers after the ‘January Revolution’. New Education Minister Sergei Kravtsov was a math teacher, with long experience in the Russian Academy of Education and the Education Ministry, and as overseer of Russia’s new USE. He had been served as head of Rosobrnadzor’s monitoring agency for education since 2013. Culture Minister Lyubimova had a reputable career as a television and movie producer, and was acting director of the ministry’s film department. They both have wide-ranging administrative experience in their respective fields and, on the face of it, readily satisfy Putin’s desire for bureaucratic efficiency. The new Science and Higher Education Minister, Valery Falkov, launched his tenure by cancelling a law adopted in February, 2019, that required scientists to seek formal approval from ‘superiors’ before meeting with foreign colleagues and to file reports on that meeting afterwards.50 That was a good start. Coronavirus disruption As it did in most other countries, the pandemic forced Russian schools and universities to close and, on 16 March, Falkov recommended that universities turn to distance learning, for which special training courses were arranged. Compliance was at first erratic, but soon became universal. After some nation-wide discussion, state exams, diploma defences and entrance exams were not cancelled. Instead, they were conducted online according to their original timetables.51 Russian schoolchildren went on a three-week ‘vacation’ from 23 March and this was later extended to the end of the normal school year. The USE was held in June with no apparent major problems and, on 27 July, Kravtsov announced that schools would open on 1 September, and that ‘all [safety] requirements will be taken into account in order to protect our children and teachers as much as possible’. This decision was confirmed in mid-August for all levels, including universities. In September, Kravtsov published a summary of what he expected from the school system. Stressing that children need to learn ‘skills for life, for a

328  Quality of life future profession’ and not simply memorize formulas and rules, he emphasized the value of science, math, technology and language. Echoing the old Soviet ‘good citizenship’ purpose, he wrote that the principal task of schools was ‘to form a modern person responsible for his actions, respecting the state, possessing basic knowledge, striving for development, able to work in a team, honest, decent, hardworking’. He announced the creation of an ‘All-Russian Pedagogical Council’, under his ministry, to aid in training teachers, and to make sure that all schools have access to the Internet and other information networks. The objective, Kravtsov pronounced, was to bring Russia into the top ten countries in the world in terms of general education, research and development. He offered no suggestions as to how much his ambitious projections would cost or how long it would take.52 The coronavirus wasn’t paying attention to these grand schemes. As Moscow’s daily caseload climbed precipitously in the fall, Sobyanin added a week to the annual fall break for schoolchildren and urged parents to keep them at home. 53 Grade 6–11 pupils in Moscow reverted to distance learning until mid-December. In November, Rosobrnadzor postponed December’s final test required of Grade 11 students for admissions to the HSE to April 2021, nationwide, and the final interview in the Russian language for Grade 9 to February 2021.54 Schools and universities in Moscow and St. Petersburg changed over to distance learning (see also Chapter 9). Science One of the most serious consequences of the troubled 1990s was that more than half a million scientists left the country in search of positions with better living conditions, better laboratories and guaranteed wages. The migration included physicists, biologists, chemists and computer programmers. In 2004, Putin told the Russian Science and High-Tech Council that the number of scientists in Russia had decreased by about 50 per cent between 1990 and 2002, most of them gone by 1994. He was trying to remedy the situation. Young scientists who demonstrated on the streets for pay raises and improved working conditions in 2001–2 had achieved some success. The annual budget for 2002–3 more than doubled allocations for science and scientific personal.55 In 2005, the president signed decrees providing substantial grants to young scientists and their tutors; and salaries for all scientists were doubled as of January, 2006. The brain drain slowed. The Innovation Centre at Skolkovo was given a boost in 2018 when Dvorkovich was elected co-chair of its development fund. Although left out of the new government, his long-standing links with personnel in it was expected to help raise Skolkovo’s status and fund-raising capacity.56 Set in motion in 2010, as part of President Medvedev’s modernization programme, Skolkovo was intended as a Russian version of the Silicon Valley, that is, a new technology innovation town (Innogorod) funded by both the state and private corporation investments. The government offered special tax incentives to investors and both tax and residency concessions to its foreign and

Quality of life  329 Russian scientists. The town itself enjoyed unique self-governing privileges. Its board of directors includes prominent Americans. The Innogorod houses some 500 Russian graduate students each year, with exchange privileges with top US universities.57 Arts The world of arts was relieved in September 2019 when theatre director Kirill Serebrennikov was freed after two years in custody. While the case against him for embezzling large amounts of money in government funds intended for theatre projects remained in the hands of prosecutors, the move signalled an impending end to the long and messy affair. Travel restrictions imposed as part of his bail condition in April were lifted as well, as were similar conditions set for two of his former colleagues in the Gogol Centre.58 Widespread public support for Serebrennikov from within the arts and theatre scene may have been a factor in gaining his release. In September 2019, similar backing erupted after actor Pavel Ustinov was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for, allegedly, injuring a policeman during one of the many street rallies in Moscow in August. Ustinov denied any such action, and a number of Russian celebrities and journalists came to his defence. Single pickets gathered in front of the presidential administration building in Moscow and videos in support of him flooded Russian social media in much the same way it did in defence of Ivan Golunov earlier.59 They both were freed. Serebrennikov and three other officials with the Seventh Studio were back in court in the spring of 2020, and were found guilty of embezzling state funds allocated for a project in 2011–14. Presumably, this action was part of the post-All-Russia Vote clampdown. The defendants called the charges ‘farfetched and absurd’. This time public outcry was muted because of the pandemic, though artistic celebrities in Russia and from abroad continued to support the defendants.60 Despite the prosecution’s demand that they spend years in prison, they were given suspended sentences and ordered to pay fines. Another victory for protesters, of sorts.

Human & civil rights Putin participated in two events in December 2018 linked closely to human and civil rights in the country. The first was the unveiling of a statue honouring Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whom he praised for exposing the totalitarian nature of the USSR. He added a political message of his own by describing the famous writer as a ‘great patriot’ who abhorred ‘any manifestations of Russophobia’.61 Meeting with the Council for the Development of Civil and Human Rights on that same day, he called for a moment of silence to commemorate Lyudmila Alekseeva, well-known defender of human rights who had recently died, aged 91, calling her ‘courageous’ for ‘defending justice’. Putin asked the

330  Quality of life Council to promote the development of civil society in Russia – and also to defend the rights of Russian citizens wherever they happen to be. He attended her funeral and spoke glowingly of her again. 62 Putin’s statements did not slow human and civil rights abuses against individuals connected to the Moscow electoral crisis of July–August 2019. Nor did they inhibit armed FSB officers from raiding the offices of human rights organizations, such as Justice Initiative and Astreya, that defend Russian citizens at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). They confiscated telephones and photographed passports; no reasons for the raids were given.63 The Russian presidential Human Rights Council (HRC) objected to some of these measures, which may explain the dismissal of long-time head of the council, Mikhail Fedotov, purportedly because he had reached the age of 70.64 UR member Valerii Fadeev replaced him. Other HRC members who were openly critical of the authorities during the Moscow electoral crisis were replaced as well. These included the head of Agora, a human rights group, an electoral law specialist and an NGO environmental activist. Agora was the agency that defended Ivan Golunov. 65 Their places were taken by individuals who fit more comfortably into the power vertikal and, as we saw in Chapter 3, civil rights abuses and exploitation of the law by law enforcement continued unabated. LGBT woes The Russian human rights centre, Memorial, kept human rights issues in the forefront by appealing to the UN Human Rights Council in July 2019 that it ‘draw attention to Russia’s permanent refusal to comply with its international obligations’. Memorial asserted that new laws restricted freedoms of speech and assembly, and permitted intolerance of LGBT people.66 It estimated that there were at least 297 political prisoners in the country and that there had been ‘no less than 377 hate crimes against LGBT’ persons over the previous five years. Given that the number of demonstrations demanding that political prisoners be released, opposing the suppression of civil rights in Crimea (Tatars), and alleging human and civil rights abuses by the authorities were rising, the appeal was timely, if not noticeably effective.67 Some of the problems faced by the LGBT community in Chechnya in 2019–20 have been noted already. Suffice to add here that when Moscow’s team of investigators arrived in Grozny in 2017 to verify stories of rabid discrimination that had gone international, officials there insisted that the tales were false and proclaimed their own tolerance, even to vowing that they would allow a gay parade. The protestations rang pretty hollow, and the investigations intensified. Observers who assumed that the homophobic attitudes in the North Caucasus could be blamed entirely on Islam were  set back by Orthodox Patriarch Kirill’s regularly repeated anti-gay pronouncements.68 The plight of LGBT activists in Russia was by no means confined to the Caucasus. In July 2019, for example, a lesbian activist was murdered near her

Quality of life  331 home in St. Petersburg. Yelena Grigorieva had been featured on a website that encouraged hunting down and killing gays as a game. Although state authorities blocked ‘PILA. Gomofobnaia igra’ (Saw. Homophobia Game), the damage had been done. This act of violence came at a time when Russian public acceptance of LGBT rights had reached its highest level in 14 years, at 47 per cent acceptance.69 Later that summer a Russian journalist and a dozen activists were detained in St. Petersburg for picketing against law enforcement’s tendency to keep silent about crimes against the gay community. An LGBT activist named Anna Dvornichenko fled Russia in October 2019 and was granted asylum in the Netherlands. She told reporters that authorities in Rostov-on-Don had ignored threats to her life and even threatened to prosecute her for ‘gay propaganda’.70 Gay pride events had been banned in Russia since the Duma adopted a law in 2013 against distributing ‘gay propaganda’ to children, and the Orthodox Church continued to rage against gays and lesbians. In fact, it was a proposal from the Patriarch that caused the notion that marriage is between man and woman to be enshrined in January’s amended Constitution. A draft bill amending the Family Code so as to ban gay marriages came to the Duma as quickly as mid-July 2020.71 According to the SOVA Centre the number of hate crimes against the LGBT community rose in 2019, while hate crimes generally and acts of violence against ethnic and religious minorities declined.72 In June 2020, LGBT activists in Moscow staged one-person pickets against charges laid against one of their colleagues in Komsomolsk-on-Amur who was facing a six-year sentence for posting artwork deemed pornographic by the authorities. Over 40 protesters were picked up in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Some solo-picketers held placards opposing the anti-gay amendment, others posted non-sexualized photos of themselves in little or no clothing, and artwork copying the work for which Yulia Tsvetkova was arrested. The movement in her support was also a protest against conservative views protected by the newly amended Russian Constitution.73 Those conservative sentiments appeared to give right-wing groups leave to harass LGBT individuals on the streets. In Yekaterinburg, for instance, men in Cossack uniforms bullied people they thought were gay during September 2020’s Pride Week in Yekaterinburg, while anti-gay groups organized a ‘traditional values’ week with a family parade and an Orthodox Christian fair.74 Women on the march and ‘family values’ A particularly sensitive area of Russia law was strained in mid-2019 when women’s groups took to the streets in a surge of long-festering anger over a bill adopted in 2017 decriminalizing some forms of domestic violence. Public resentments against the already very controversial bill, including a petition signed by over a quarter of a million people, single pickets and an unauthorized ‘sisters’ march’, were triggered by charges laid against three teen-aged sisters who killed their abusive father. The Khachaturyan sisters, Krestina, Angelina and Maria, faced up to 20 years in prison.

332  Quality of life The case opened up a wide-ranging discussion of the worst ramifications of the earlier law that, in addition to the UR-dominated Duma, was supported by patriarchal organizations, the Orthodox Church, and some rightwing ‘male power’ movements. An example of the last-named is ‘Male State’, a group that conducted anti-Khachaturyan pickets in September 2018. They were countered by militant women’s associations. At one demonstration in August 2019, about 1,000 people gathered on Lenin Square in St. Petersburg to show support for the sisters, who were still on trial. Organized by ‘For Justice for Women Forced to Defend, and for the Law on Domestic Violence’, participants waved signs carrying phrases like ‘Patriarchy kills’ (Patriarkh ubivaet).75 Activists were out picketing on the sisters’ behalf again in December, in Moscow, after the Investigative Committee finished its work with no change in the original charges. Protesters tied ribbons on the Patriarchal Bridge (Patriarshiy Most) in Moscow. The demonstrators also objected to the draft Law on the Prevention of Domestic Violence, published on 30 November, which ‘preserved the family’ but did little to protect victims of domestic violence.76 Endemic domestic abuse in Russia was spotlighted earlier when the ECHR ruled in favour of one Russian woman, Valeriia Volodina, and began hearing more than a dozen pending cases from Russia.77 This situation was another where the attitudes of young Russians differed greatly from an older, more conservative generation that tends to see such cases as examples of Western values eroding traditional ‘Russian’ family values. A Levada Centre survey conducted in September showed that nearly one-third (31%) of Russians had experienced domestic violence either first hand or indirectly and over 40 per cent supported the Khachaturyan sisters, showed why the issue had become a national cause.78 Backed by women’s and human rights groups, in December 2019 UR Deputy Oksana Pushkina and others introduced a draft bill to overthrow the 2017 law and recriminalize first-time domestic abuse. It stalled in the Federation Council.79 The 2017 bill had powerful advocates. As many as 181 Russian Orthodox Church and parents’ organization sent an open letter to Putin demanding that the 2017 law not be overturned, and in November 2019 the Minister of Justice insisted to the ECHR that the ‘magnitude of the problem’ [domestic violence] in Russia was ‘quite exaggerated’.80 For her trouble, Pushkina, a former TV personality and vice-chair of the Duma’s Committee on Family, Women and Children, received death threats.81 Some of the protests appeared to have succeeded. Russian prosecutors dropped the charges against the Khachaturyans in January 2020. The PGO re-opened the case in July 2020.82 It may have been no coincidence that this decision came just two weeks after the All-Russia Vote confirmed Putin’s proposed changes to the Constitution that favoured a socially conservative approach to the law. The organization Male State (Muzhskoe gosudarstvo) is merely one of the misogynistic groups Russian women must confront. Formed in 2016, when foreigners flocked into Russia to see World Cup events, it quickly grew to

Quality of life  333 include some 150,000 members and 25 local branches by objecting to Russian women forming liaisons with foreigners. Behaving as morality vigilantes, the movement purports to preserve ‘Russia traditional morals, traditional values and moral principles’. They advocate a national patriarchy and oppose gender equality. In short, their goal is to ensure male domination of all sectors of Russian life. Russia’s Investigative Committee arrested one of Male State’s founders in 2018 and charged him with excessive misogyny in texts and images he posted on Vkontakte.83 While Male State represents the extreme, and the Constitution guarantees equal rights to men and women, the labour market is often a difficult one for women. There are still jobs that are closed to females, and women are still the main caretakers of the home and children, even when they are employed full time elsewhere. Many old Soviet laws that kept women out of hundreds of types of jobs, such as truck or train drivers, crews of ships, automobile mechanics and serving in certain sectors of the armed forces remain in force, in practice if not always in law. This situation began to change after women won several important cases in which they sued organizations for not allowing them even to apply for jobs, in one case as a ship captain. The Ministry of Labour and Social Protection in 2019 reduced the discriminatory rules by 80 per cent as of 1 January 2021.84 In preparation for this law to come into effect, Russian Railways started to train women as engine drivers, and the Moscow Metro hired its first female drivers in January 2021. The Anti-Discrimination Centre Memorial (ADC) took up the women’s cause by starting an ‘All Jobs for All Women’ campaign (#alljobs4allwomen), hoping to put an end to the entire list of proscribed employment for women.85 A number of family-related legislative measures, such as cash payments for poor families with multiple children or children with disabilities, and lower taxes as families grew in numbers, were expected to ease family tensions. In practice, they tended to keep women in the home, for their purpose was to make procreation less daunting. Special grants for larger houses, mortgage and transportation relief all were touted to persuade Russians to have larger families. ‘We have done and will continue to do everything to strengthen family values’, Putin said in his 2019 address to the Federal Assembly.86 In Russia, as everywhere else, ‘family values’ can be interpreted in different ways. Indeed, in July 2020 the Federation Council began discussing a large package of draft bills to amend the Family Code in order to, it claimed, ‘strengthen the institution of the family’, taking into account the amended Russian Constitution. As we have seen, the bills included a ban on same-sex couples and sex-changing people from marrying and adopting children. There were more new rules involving adoptions: children cannot be returned to orphanages three years after adoption; a child can be selected [for adoption] only after a court decision (a list of 11 grounds is established for recognizing the child as being left without parental care); relatives have priority rights in adoption; brothers and sisters must be adopted jointly; and the views of

334  Quality of life children over 10 years of age must be considered when under temporary guardianship. Whereas most Russian specialists in the field of family law, and adoption agencies, approved these criteria, LGBT activists objecting to its discrimination against same-sex couples and transgender people were lining up with single pickets even before the bill was debated. Several picketers were detained.87 We have seen that the coronavirus pandemic touched all facets of Russian life, and the world of domestic violence was no exception. Lost jobs and selfisolation brought an increase in domestic violence, made worse by the shutdown of Moscow’s few women’s shelters and most medical abortion services.88 The Orthodox Church called for a ban on abortion and, although to date no such ban has been enacted, in October 2020 Mishustin called on regional and municipal governments to ‘re-assess’ abortion prevention strategies. He promised increased funding for legal, psychological and medical insurance programmes to persuade women not to abort. From the state’s perspective, the issue was a demographic, rather than a religious, one. In their turn, Pushkina and other Duma deputies asked Golikova to speed up the passage of measures to protect victims of domestic abuse, to no avail.89 In April 2020, the Duma acted on at least one piece of legislation important to families by allocating sums from government reserves specifically to make up for income lost by parents with three or more children due to the pandemic, and also to cover a certain percentage of payments on housing loans. The law allocated child benefits automatically until 1 October 2020 and, because of the uptick in coronavirus cases in that month, payments were extended at that time to the end of March 2021. 90

The dilemma of crime and corruption The USSR and its successor, the Russian Federation, are described regularly as ‘mafia’ states, or kleptocracies, or both, and ex-pats such as Alena Ledeneva have written at length on the way mafia-type practices have dominated the way in which Russian politics and business work.91 Fabian Burkhardt calls these labels too simplistic and Richard Sakwa sees them as a means for justifying the ‘personal demonization of Putin’.92 Author Karen Dawisha explained the resilience of corruption in Russia as a consequence of nefarious practices ignored by the CPSU in the late 1980s when its leading members began to salt away state assets so as to guarantee their own financial futures. The subsequent takeover of the state’s wealth and power by oligarchs and siloviki established a kleptocracy, she wrote, that neither Medvedev nor Putin could challenge effectively. Sakwa took exception to her doomsday portrayal, but did not deny the overarching presence of corruption.93 Whatever the case, such labels as ‘mafia’ and ‘kleptocracy’ have stuck. During the Soviet era, members of the Communist Party made up the single class of great privilege and, although there was not a lot of hard wealth

Quality of life  335 to spread among rank-and-file officials, they controlled all access to personal favours. Myriad perquisites, positions, goods and services were traded in kind, and the system of blat, or an exchange of favours, was daily practice. Offering and accepting bribes (vziatki) in return for concessions in the education, legal and business spheres was a commonly accepted way of getting things done. Bribe taking therefore came naturally to the post-Soviet Russian world. So, too, did the notion of a krysha (roof), a human scaffolding that encompasses legal and illegal enterprises and individuals for mutual profit, clans or ‘families’ unified for material gain, power and self-protection. The breakdown of the legal system in the 1990s, forced privatization and continued use of ‘telephone justice’, which saw judges picking up the phone and asking a superior for a decision based on politics or blat instead of the law, facilitated the growth of money laundering, large-scale fraud and embezzlement. The fact that underpaid law-enforcement officers were among the officials most susceptible to bribes meant that crime usually paid. For small business, the protection racket was a growth industry. In big business, raiding (raiderstvo) became the bane of successful operations. The term describes situations where corrupt officials imposed large and disproportionate tax requirements on companies, forcing them into bankruptcy. They were then bought up by complicit competitors.94 Russia refused to ratify Article 20 of the UN’s Convention against Corruption, which it signed in 2006, because the Article referred to the ‘illicit acquisition of personal wealth’. In Russia, those ‘acquisitions’ were, of course, in the hands of oligarchs and siloviki who dominated positions of power and influence and sat on the boards of government-favoured companies. Small-scale criminal operations, organized crime and corruption are difficult categories of anti-social activity to separate, and perhaps they should not be. It is attempted here for the purpose of simplifying the picture. It is worth bearing in mind that research conducted by the Levada Centre’s head, Aleksei Levinson, in 2019 showed that while the general public abhorred corruption it also believed it to be a natural phenomenon about which they could do little. The public also believed that headline arrests of senior officials may not be a matter of law and order in action; rather, they might be products of personal vendettas and internal struggles for power.95 Putin was well aware of the damage organized crime and corrupt law enforcement caused to Russia’s transition to modernization. In addition to lost billions in taxes and ruined businesses, the image of Russia as corrupt slowed foreign investment. As early as March 2001, he handed the Security Council a specific mandate to fight corruption, which at that time was blamed on the liberal reformers of the 1990s and the oligarchs who had benefitted most from their poorly thought-out ‘reforms’. Putin signed an anti-corruption law in 2003, and the Duma created a Commission to Combat Corruption to monitor the law’s results. Anti-corruption campaigns became almost annual events. Public opinion surveys conducted in 2006 that still placed police at the top of bribe takers forced Putin to admit that his wide-ranging anti-corruption

336  Quality of life drives were not working very well.96 There were too many foxes guarding the hen house. In April 2009, a Levada Centre survey revealed that 58 per cent of respondents thought it impossible to fight corruption in Russia.97 Medvedev discovered this during his one-term presidency, when curbing corruption was given priority. Shortly before achieving office he told an audience at an All-Russia Civics Forum that ‘corruption has an enormous scope today. The fight against it must become a national programme … Russia is a country of legal nihilism. No other European country has a similar level of disrespect for the law.’98 He made it clear that corruption was the fault of Russians themselves, a product of Russian history and not something foisted on them by outsiders. For that time, this was an extraordinary admission. Calling bad and inefficient policing in Russia a ‘chronic disease’, Medvedev signed a law in 2010 that reduced law enforcement staff by half and ordered training programmes to raise the qualifications of police personnel. All officers were dismissed and then rehired after they completed a re-certification course; senior officials (Generals) were fired, stiffer penalties were ordered for police guilty of crimes, and Russian businesses were barred from forming their own security forces.99 The government revised national strategies for fighting corruption and established anti-corruption committees everywhere, while media headlines raved about thousands of major and minor arrests, fines and demotions. These tended to be the tip of the iceberg.100 On the rare occasions that the most senior officials were singled out, political infighting was often the driving force behind accusations, though ‘abuse of office’, fraud, embezzlement and bribe taking were easily demonstrable. A ministerial dismissal was usually followed by sweeps of entire sectors for corrupt officials. This was the case after Minister of Defence Anatoly Serdyukov was fired in December 2012, and when Economic Development Minister Aleksei Ulyukaev was taken into custody in 2016. Upper-level regional officials, such as governors and mayors, were especially vulnerable. They were fired by the dozens over the years. So, too, were customs officials, including the head of the Federal Customs Service in 2016. Among mayors, the big catch in 2010 was Yuri Luzhkov, Sobyanin’s long-time predecessor in Moscow. Like Serdyukov, Luzhkov held lesser positions in Russia after he was removed from high office and he was not formally charged. His wife, Yelena Baturina, fled to London. Notorious as Russia’s richest women who amassed a fortune in real estate and development deals while her husband was in office, she represented the epitome of the oligarchic class that most Russians felt still ran the country’s economy. In 2020, the Petersburg Politics Foundation published the results of studies that showed that security forces had increased their scrutiny of governors and mayors ten-fold since 2010. More than 80 per cent of the high officials under investigation were accused of at least one crime against state authority while in office (abuse of authority, misuse of budget, bribery, and so on). It may well be that charges laid against many of the mayors and governors were politically motivated, but the possibility of them being guilty is equally probable.101

Quality of life  337 The criminal world Whatever the role of organized crime in the incidents of bribery and embezzlement, it is important to be aware of what Mark Galeotti calls ‘Russia’s Super Mafia’, that is, the Vory. In a book on the subject, he pointed out that organised crime had become ‘regularised, corporately minded and integrated with elements of the state’. In addition to regular criminal activities, if any of it can be said to be regular, the Vory compromise assassins, smugglers of EU goods for businesses, Chechen gangs, political links and sources of cheap labour. Drug trafficking and large-scale fraud in construction projects are huge operations. The Vory is everywhere.102 So are the police. MVD Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev told an interviewer for Argumenty i fakty in November 2018 that the number of murders in Russia had dropped by 27 per cent over the previous five years, and that the crime rate was also down substantially. Kolokoltsev also noted that 80 police officers were arrested in 2017 for drug possession or dealing. The police force itself numbered 895,000 people, he said, a decrease of nearly a half million since 2013. Better technology and training has made up for the big difference in personnel, he added.103 At least one change for the better had come in 2015 when the Duma adopted procedures for depriving former and even current members of their parliamentary immunity. In 2018, for instance, police apprehended billionaires Ziyavudin and Magomed Magomedov, the latter a former senator, who were suspected of embezzling large sums of money from state budget funds and organizing a criminal operation. A more startling case occurred when Rauf Arashukov, a sitting senator representing KarachayCherkessia, was arrested for an old murder and participation in a ‘criminal community’. He was detained within the chamber, which voted away his immunity.104 In the broader realm of crime and punishment, the Justice Ministry approved a new programme for setting monetary rewards for informants who helped solve a crime. These ‘snitching’ incentives worried oppositionists who saw them as a return to one of the more unsavoury practices of the Soviet era, when neighbours and colleagues informed on each other for cash and favours.105 Normally privileged security forces are no longer immune from arrest either. The Investigative Committee charged seven FSB officers in July 2019 for robbing a businessman as he deposited a large sum of money in a bank.106 The FSB image was tarnished further later in the year, when two former Alpha unit officers were accused of forming a criminal group and carrying out contract killings after leaving the service.107 To all intents and purposes, the organized crime dimension of post-Soviet Russia seems to have grown more professional, more selective in its targets and perhaps more lethal in its willingness to eliminate competition or critics. Among other things, this development made Navalny and other anti-corruption activists prime targets.

338  Quality of life Eternal corruption Corruption in the form of bribe-taking and embezzlement by officialdom and big business have been Putin’s bête noire throughout his decades in office. This was the area where the general population felt he had let them down the most. Ranked 135th of 180 countries on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2017, it appeared that repeated and aggressive attempts to stifle corruption in Russia, especially within officialdom, had failed.108 Yet various official anti-corruption bodies remained constantly busy. To quote the Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika: … in the first nine months of 2018, according to the results of prosecutor’s checks, 188 thousand violations of anti-corruption legislation were revealed. To eliminate them, prosecutors submitted more than 50 thousand representations, … At the request of prosecutors, 47.8 thousand officials were punished in a disciplinary manner. According to the materials of prosecutor’s inspections, 2.5 thousand criminal cases on corruption were initiated.109 Three months later, the PGO announced that 1,303 officials were dismissed in 2018 for hiding information about their assets and incomes, conflicts of interest or violating anti-corruption regulations. This number represented about 100 more dismissals than in the previous year.110 These extraordinary totals were made believable by blaring headlines drawing attention to cases in which officials, business people, professionals and even elected representatives were convicted of fraud, embezzlement, bribery and tax evasion. Broadened criteria for the publication of names of persons (public shaming) dismissed for various corruption-related offences, also forbade them from holding office for five years even if they were later cleared of the alleged offence.111 From time to time, Russian TV carried videos of stacks of money and jewellery discovered in apartments of corrupt senior officials. One could say that it was the scale of the task itself, not Putin’s indifference, that made curbing corruption so difficult. In fact, the PGO reported in December that bribery cases increased in 2018 by 10 per cent over the previous year, and that over 7,000 individuals were charged with corruption crimes that year.112 In that same year, law enforcement caught several officials from the MVD bribing auditors to end an investigation of the Department of Economic Security, and arrested the former head of the North-West Directorate of Rostekhnadzor for misappropriation. A regional court handed a judge from the Rostov district a seven-year sentence for fraud and a Moscow court gave ex-investigator Roman Boldyrev and lawyer Kirill Kulyavtsev ten years each in penal colonies for corruption. Two vice-mayors of Sochi and three lawyers were charged in 2018 with taking large bribes for construction projects. Two years later, the Investigative Committee disclosed that the total of bribes taken in Sochi amounted to 120 million rubles.113 The list goes on.

Quality of life  339 As more and more such cases came before the public, the investigators themselves came under attack, presumably by organized crime or individuals tied to specific cases. For example, an investigator with the IC was shot and killed outside her flat in October. Yevgenia Shishkina had already been threatened several times and her car was set afire earlier in the year.114 A bombshell press release from the Audit Chamber in May revealed that spending violations in the defence and space industries had doubled over the previous year, costing some ₽1.3 trillion ($20 billion) in misspent funds. Police arrested senior state contractors for the Vostochny Cosmodrome construction site for embezzlement and prosecutors claimed to have launched criminal cases against some 1,000 officials and contractors. The scandals were on-going. As recently as October 2020, the FSB took the director of the Vostochny spaceport, Roman Bobkov, into custody on charges of fraud.115 Given the importance of the Cosmodrome, built in the Amur region to replace the Baikonur site in Kazakhstan, these were depressing findings for Putin. In the spring of 2019 a government resolution approved a system for mapping out the levels of corruption in the various components of the Federation. It provided a methodology for conducting opinion polls in the regions, dividing questions into ‘everyday’ and ‘business’ categories, setting aside questions on politics, religion and social activity. Military and state personnel were excluded from participation in these surveys, whose focus was on the burden of bribes in the lives and businesses of Russians.116 On nearly the last day of the year, the government awarded the ruble equivalent of $690,000 to a private company for the purpose of organizing discussions around the country on anti-corruption and the development of civil society – round tables, lectures, seminars, forums and conferences.117 This work, of course, was interrupted by the pandemic. Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) was back in the headlines as well. After publishing a video in August 2018 that charged the National Guard’s food contractors with stealing some $29 million, he was embroiled in a series of lawsuits, winning one when head of the guard, Zolotov, lost a defamation suit against him, and losing another in 2019.118 The state dug further into Navalny’s affairs in late October, 2019, when the Moscow Arbitration Court ordered him, Sobol and the FBK to pay over $450,000 each for libel against the Moscow Schoolchild catering company. His bank accounts had already been frozen because of a criminal investigation for alleged money laundering.119 As we saw in Chapter 3, his flat and further assets were seized in 2020 purportedly as a result of the catering case, yet maybe in reaction to his accusations against Putin in the attempted assassination affair. In connection with money laundering, a publication by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) in March 2019 linked Russia’s Troika Dialog investment bank to a number of Western banks, mostly in Scandinavia and the Baltics, which, it claimed, laundered billions of Russian dollars.120 The report ranked Russia fourth behind China, Mexico

340  Quality of life and Malaysia in illegal outflows from false invoicing. While the European banking system was shaken, the reaction among Russia officialdom was muted (‘we’ll look into it’). Moscow was concerned that the OCCRP is funded by the US Department of State, USAID and other Western NGOs.121 In spite of myriad cases in which bribe takers were arrested or demoted in 2018, Russia was dropped a few more spots by Transparency International in 2019, which ranked it 138th of 180 countries. The organization blamed weak political and civil rights, cronyism and the absence of true checks and balances for Russia’s continuing problems with corruption.122 According to surveys conducted by the Levada Centre in April 2019, Russians appreciated the arrests of senior officials, but knew little about the cases even though they were widely broadcast; they also did not believe (78%) that upper echelon officials and politicians declared their incomes and assets honestly, and continued to feel that corruption was endemic and impossible to curtail.123 Sectoral corruption With its enormous wealth-generating potential, the energy sector is a natural breeding place for corruption. Here is where the most senior owners and directors appear untouchable, while lesser position holders and smaller private enterprises bear the brunt of state publicized anti-corruption campaigns. Still, in March 2019, the former head of Rosgeology, Ruslan Gorring, was charged with massive fraud related to illegal allocations of land.124 Soon thereafter, police arrested Dmitry Mazurov, CEO of Russia’s largest independent oil refiner, New Stream, for multi-million-dollar fraud. The company was forced into bankruptcy and its assets in the UK seized. Although the company re-appeared within a few months partnered with Sberbank and SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company, the case – and other similar ones – threw Russia’s refinery industry into disarray, especially when it came to finding non-state investors.125 Of all the sectors where corruption was rife, the military remained the top contender. In March 2019, Chief Military Prosecutor Valery Petrov told the annual board meeting of his office that corruption crimes in the military had increased fourfold since 2017. Nearly 3,000 military officials were charged with offences in 2018 alone.126 The transport sector was not far behind as a wellspring for corruption. An investigation opened in August into a possible embezzlement scheme that may have drawn up to ₽200 billion from the largest Russian Railways contractors, the 1520 Group. A central figure in the bribe-taking case, former MVD anti-corruption Colonel Dmitry Zakharchenko, was sentenced to 13 years in June. Police arrested several of his relatives and colleagues as well, and the later investigation involved searches for documents in several of the 1520 Group offices.127 Former high officials were now at risk too. In 2019 alone, an ex-minister of finance for the Moscow region was extradited from France and charged with taking bribes. Charges of money laundering were laid against a former head

Quality of life  341 of the Moscow region, and the minister of open government affairs under Medvedev and the former presidential envoy to the Far East were both charged with embezzlement and fraud. Even officials still near the top of their sector were no longer immune. In August, Medvedev forced the deputy head of the Russian Pension Fund, Aleksei Ivanov, to resign because he was under investigation for massive bribery violations. He and a senior employee of Technosery were arrested in July. Ivanov had been an adviser to the Pension Fund, Rosleskhoz and other businesses.128 The coronavirus pandemic did not slow the battle against dishonest officialdom. Indeed, arrests made during the height of the pandemic in Russia demonstrate the extent and permanence of the dilemma of corruption. For  example, in April 2020, the deputy head of the MVD’s Investigative Department and two other senior investigators were charged with abuse of office. Details were sparse, but bribery was clearly part of the investigation.129 Court cases were underway at the end of the month against a former president of Globex Bank for embezzling €12 million, a Moscow court sentenced the first deputy of CB Design Bureau to three years for embezzlement, and another court was still hearing an appeal from Pavel Grudinin, director of the Lenin state farm and CPRU presidential candidate, who was accused of stealing ₽1 billion from shareholders as the year ended. A court in Moscow handed the former deputy president of Vneshprombank, Yekaterina Glushakova, a six-year sentence in a penal colony for embezzlement.130 Police detained the deputy head of the Ministry of Education and Science, Marina Lukashevich, and an official from Rosstrudnichestvo, Mikhail Popov, in July 2020, charging them both with fraud of over ₽40 million.131 The parade of miscreants seemed never to slow. *** As the list of the caught grew, there was little evidence to show that the dilemma of corruption was resolved. This too was a sign of failure that could determine the nature of Putin’s legacy. Corruption handicapped the development of an actively free media because wealthy oligarchs were just as anxious to manage the message as the state was. They bought newspaper and television facilities, and columnists, to further their political and economic interests and supported the government’s efforts to restrict messaging on the Internet and various forms of social media. In that latter circumstance, the Russian people won their point and access to the Internet remained readily available. Key parts of the print media also endure as independent, if not widely read, while social media and the blogging world thrive. Human and civil rights advocates run afoul of authorities regularly, but remain active and vocal. Fighters for women’s rights in Russia are likely to become even more prominent in 2021 and will take to the streets (like their counterparts in Belarus) more frequently and with more specific targets. Driven in part by the increase of domestic abuse during the pandemic, they  and LGBT activists will have to confront both the newly amended

342  Quality of life Constitution and the Orthodox Church. Changes wrought in 2020 have made the obstacles they face more formidable. The field of education has been victimized by the ‘January Revolution’ in that secondary school curricula now must reflect patriotic themes and universities are monitored for too liberal programmes. Re-introducing ideology to the classroom, no matter how subtly, will make the post-2020 learning experience quite different from that of the 1990s and even the intervening years, and draw Russia still further away from the West, with which interpretations of historical events have again become a point of departure.

Notes 1 A.M. Almakaeva, O.V. Volchenko, ‘Dinamik sotsial’nogo kapitala v Rossii’, Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniia: Ekonomicheskie i sotsial’nye peremeny, No. 4 (2018), pp. 273–92; ‘Acceptance of Corruption Has Grown in Russia Under Putin, Report’, The Moscow Times, 16 October 2018. 2 ‘Sixteen Journalists killed in Russia in 2000’, ITAR-TASS, 13 January 2001, in REDA 2000, Vol. 1 (2001), pp. 245–6. 3 ‘V Moskve proshel miting v zashzhitu NTV: vystupali “Menty” i “Neschastnyi sluchai”’, Lenta.ru, 31 March 2001. The names refer to rock groups that played at the rally. ‘V nachalo bylo veskoe slovo Prezidenta’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 16 January 2001. 4 For background, Julia Ioffe, ‘What is Russia Today? The Kremlin’s propaganda outlet has an identity crisis’, Columbia Journalism Review, September/October 2010. 5 ‘Putin Insists That State Will Not Control Mass Media’, ITAR-TASS, 5 May 2005, in REDA, 2005, Vol. 1, op. cit., pp. 334–5. 6 Russian Federation President Information Office, ‘Vladimir Putin Answers Questions on the Murder of Anna Politkovskaya’, 10 October 2006, part of an interview with Suddeutsche Zeitung, just prior to a state visit to Germany. 7 ‘Preferred News Sources of the Russian Population’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 258, 9 November 2020. Data provided by the Levada Centre. 8 Denis Volkov, Stepan Goncharov, ‘Rossiiskii media-landshaft 2019’, Levadatsentr, 1 August 2019, https://www.levada.ru/2019/08/01/21088/; ‘Preferred News Sources …’, op. cit. 9 ‘Spravedlivost’ i nespravedlivost’, FOM, 6 October 2020, https://fom.ru/ TSennosti/14469; Paul Goble, ‘On Social Justice, Russia Now Split into Two Nations, “TV Russians” and “Internet Russians”, Shelin Says’, Window on Eurasia, 13 October 2020. 10 ‘Otravlenie Alekseia Naval’nogo’, Levada-tsentr, 24 December 2020, www.levada. ru/2020/12/24/chto-rossiyane-dumayut-ob-otravlenii-alekseya-navalnogo/. 11 ‘Dinamika pol’zovaniia inyernetom’, Levada-tsentr, 5 December 2019, www. levada.ru/2019/12/05/dinamika-polzovaniya-internetom/12/05/2019; ‘Over 60% of Russians use Internet every day, research shows’, TASS, 6 December 2018; ‘Russia: number of internet users 2013–1019’, Statista, 18 September 2019, annual updates; for general background, see Peter Rollberg, Marlen Laruelle, eds. Mass Media in the Post-Soviet World: Market Forces, State Actors, and Political Manipulation in the Informational Environment after Communism. Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2018. Distributed by Columbia UP. 12 ‘Google prokommentiroval soobshcheniia o blokirovke ego ir-adresov’, Vedomosti, 22 April 2018; ‘Google Services Blocked in Russia Following Telegram Ban’, The Moscow Times, 23 April 2018; Seraphim Hanisch, ‘Russian move to block Telegram creates wider access problems for Russian Internet users’, The Duran, 26 April 2018.

Quality of life  343 13 Neil MacFarquhar, ‘To Speak Freely, Russians Turn to YouTube’, New York Times International Weekly, 22–23 June 2019. 14 ‘International Rights Groups Implore Russia to “Unblock” Telegram’, The Moscow Times, 1 May 2018; ‘Russian Lawmakers Pass Law Censoring Internet Defamation’, The Moscow Times, 12 April 2018. 15 Human Rights Watch, ‘Russia: Assault on Internet Freedom, Cyber Security’, 30 April 2018, https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/04/30/russia-assault-internet-freedom-cybersecurity; on some of the protest agencies, Nadezhda Azhgikhina, ‘A New Organization is Battling Russia’s Culture of Impunity’, The Nation, 24 April 2017. 16 See Marlene Laruelle, ‘Isolation and Reconquista: Russia’s Toolkit as a Constrained Great Power’, Russia Matters, 12 December 2018. For the legislation, Russia Legislative Support System, No, 608767-7, ‘On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation (in terms of ensuring the safe and sustainable operation of the Internet on the territory of the Russian Federation)’, sozd.parliamenbt.gov.ru/bill/608767-7, 17 December 2018. 17 Federal’nyi zakon ot 01.05.2019, No. 90-F3, publication.pravo.gov.ru/Docment/ View/0001201905010025; ‘Suverennyi runet: kak on budet rabotat’ i chem eto grozit pol’zovateliam’, The Bell, 19 December 2018; ‘Russia Moves to Grant Government the Power to Shut Down the Internet, Explained’, The Moscow Times, 12 February 2019. 18 ‘Kremlin says cyber-attacks against Russia perpetually initiated from US territory’, TASS, 27 February 2019; Chris Mills Rodrigo, ‘Kremlin: US territory being used to launch cyber-attacks against Russia’, The Hill, 27 February 2019. 19 ‘V Rossii nastali tsifrovye vremena. Eksperty obsudili posledstviia razvitiia internet v RF’, Kommersant, 29 April 2019. 20 See ‘Derzhat’ “tsifrovuiu oborony”’, Novaia gazeta, 9 March 2019, and Denis Grekov, ‘Russia is Censoring More than Just the Internet’, The Moscow Times, 21 March 2019; Fred Weir, ‘“Fake News” in Russia: State censorship elicits an outcry’, Christian Science Monitor, 20 March 2019. 21 Gosudarstvennaia Duma, https://twitter.com/dumagovru, 6 March 2019; Angelina Krechetova, ‘Gosduma priniala zakon o blokirovkakh za feikovye novosti i oskorblenie vlasti’, Vedomosti, 7 March 2019; ‘Russia Passes Legislation Banning “Disrespect” of Authorities and “Fake News”’, The Moscow Times, 7 March 2019; ‘Online Sovereignty’, The Moscow Times, 11 March 2019; ‘Russian Bills Banning “Fake News”, Insults Head to Putin for Signature’, RFE/RL, 13 March 2019; Maria Lipman, Tanya Lokot, ‘Disconnecting the Russian Internet: Implications of the New “Digital Sovereignty” Bill’, PONARS Eurasia, 21 February 2019. 22 Reporters without Borders, 2019 World Press Freedom Index, Index Details, https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table, accessed 17 April 2019; ‘Russia Drops to 149th out of 180 Countries in World Press Freedom Index’, The Moscow Times, 17 April 2019. 23 Zakonoproekt No. 558351-7, ‘O vnesenii izmenenii v Kodeks Rossiiskoi Federatsii ob administrativnykh pravonarusheniiakh’, sozd.parliament.gov.ru/bill/5583517, 19 December 2018. For a discussion, see Alexander Verkhovsky, ‘Prosecuted “for Words”: Will Putin’s Amendment Have a Liberalizing Effect?’, PONARS Eurasia, 16 October 2018. 24 ‘Russia’s Youth Agency Granted Right to Block Websites’, The Moscow Times, 26 March 2019; ‘Putin podpisal zakon o blokirovke saitov, pobuzhdaiushchikh detei k soversheniiu prestuplenii’, TASS, 18 December 2018, 25 Ruchi Gupta, ‘After Facebook and Twitter, Russia Puts Google on Notice’, Market Realist, 12 August 2019; ‘Roskomnadzor predostereg Google i Facebook ot vmeshatel’stva vo vnutrennie dela Rossii’, Vedomosti, 6 September 2019; ‘Russia Says Facebook, Google Must Ban Political Ads During Moscow Election’,

344  Quality of life The Moscow Times, 7 September 2019; ‘Russian Court Fines Twitter $63,000 over Data Law’, The Moscow Times, 13 February 2020. 26 See Vivian S. Walker, ‘State Narratives in Complex Media Environments: The Case of Ukraine’, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown Universitry, Case 331, 2015. On Kiselev, J.L. Black, ‘Setting the Tone: Misinformation and Disinformation from Kyiv, Moscow, Washington and Brussels in 2014’, in Black and Johns, eds. The Return of the Cold War (2016), p. 181. 27 ‘Restricting Foreign Ownership of Media is Legal, Russia’s Top Court Rules’, The Moscow Times, 17 January 2019; ‘KS predpisal utochnit’ normu ob ogranichenii uchastiia inostrantsev v rossiiskikh SMI’, Vedomosti, 17 January 2019; ‘Russia to Amend Law to Fine U.K. Media After London Fines RT’, The Moscow Times, 1 August 2019. 28 ‘Russian journalist Denis Suvorov killed in Nizhny Novgorod’, European Federation of Journalists, 26 July 2018. 29 The open letter was published on Facebook: Aleksandr Chernykh, ‘Obrashchenie kollektiva “b” k chitateliam’, https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2 305865136159882&id=100002092548468; ‘200 Russian Journalists Protest “Clampdown on Free Speech” After Kommersant Firings’, The Moscow Times, 21 May 2019; Maksim Ivanov, Ivan Safronov [and 3 others], ‘Spikerov delat’ iz etikh liudei. U Valentiny Matvienko i Sergeia Naryshkina mogut smenit’sia obiazannosti’, Kommersant, 17 April 2019; Kirill Bulanov, Kseniia Boletskaia, ‘Zhurnalisty “Kommersanta” pokinut izdanie iz-za stat’i o Matvienko’, Vedomosti, 20 May 2019. 30 ‘Two activists and an activist were detained at a rally in support of Ivan Golunov’, OVD-Info, 7 June 2019; ‘Dozens Protest Russian Investigative Reporter’s Arrest’, The Moscow Times, 7 June 2019. 31 This was a commonly-used characterization of Zakharova, see Konstantin Benyumov, Emily Tamkin, ‘Meet the Woman Who Is Proudly Russia’s Troll-InChief’, Buzz Feed News, 22 October 2018. 32 OSCE, ‘Conference on Freedom of the Media and Safety of Journalists in the Russian Federation and in the OSCE Region: Challenges and Opportunities in the Digital Age’, 6 November 2019, https://www.osce.org/representative-on-freedom-of-media/436247. For a summary, Evan Gershkovich, ‘At Russian Media Freedom Conference, Discord Reigns’, The Moscow Times, 7 November 2019; 33 Gos. Duma, Zakonoproekt No. 345523-7, ‘O vnesenii izmenenii v Zakon Rossiiskoi Federatsii “O sredstvakh massovoi informatsii …’, 21 November 2019, https://sozd.duma.gov.ru/bill/345523-7; Irina Chevtaeva, Maksim Ivanov, ‘Kto mozhet byt’ priznan inostrannym agentom’, Vedomosti, 21 November 2019; Alexander Marrow, ‘Russian Parliament Backs Law to Label Individuals “Foreign Agents”’, Reuters, 21 November 2019; ‘Russia expands use of “foreign agent” label’, The Bell, 23 November 2019. 34 Ivan Nechepurenko, ‘Russian Journalist Sets Herself on Fire and Dies, Blaming Government’, New York Times, 2 October 2020; ‘ “Blame the Russia Federation for My Death”, Journalist Writes Before Self-Immolation’, The Moscow Times, 3 October 2020. 35 Kseniia Boletskaia, ‘U “Vedomostei” poiaviatsia novye vladel’tsy’, Vedomosti, 18 March 2020; ‘Vedomosti Owner Kudryavtsev Agrees on Sale Deal’, The Moscow Times, 18 March 2020. 36 Derksauer@derksauer, 23 March 2020, https://twitter.com/derksauer/ status/1242144969638412288. 37 ‘Paper’s New Editor Deletes Column Criticizing Rosneft Head’, The Moscow Times, 13 April “2020. 38 ‘The sale of Vedomosti is being delayed’, Open Media (Otkrytye media), 29 April 2020; ‘The end of the road for Vedomosti’, The Bell, 21 June 2020.

Quality of life  345 39 ‘Sud arestoval eks-zhurnalista Safronova po delu o gosizmene’, RAPSI, 7 July 2020; ‘Colleagues Rally Behind Russian Former Journalist Detained for Treason’, The Moscow Times, 7 July 2020. 40 Pavel Felgenhauer, ‘Russian Journalist Community Stands up to FSB’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 9 July 2020. 41 ‘Journalists from censored paper launch independent rival’, The Bell, 24 October 2020; for the VTimes website, see vtimes.io. 42 Irina Nevinnaia, ‘Pravitel’stvo nauchilos’ tzsenit’ uchitelei’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 6 September 2001; see also ‘Teachers’ Wages to Double’, REDA 2003, Vol 1 (2004), pp. 352–3. 43 ‘Russia Establishes New Profession to Teach Retirees How to Use the Internet’, The Moscow Times, 9 November 2018. 44 ‘Education Watchdog Revokes License of Top Russian University’, The Moscow Times, 22 June 2018; ‘Another Independent University Comes Under Fire’, The Moscow Times, 25 June 2018. 45 Vysshaia shkola ekonomiki, Vyshka dlia svoikh, ‘What will change in the HSE rules’, 17 January 2020, https://www.hse.ru/our/news/333129951.html. 46 Burcu Degirmen-Dysart, ‘Patriotic Education in Contemporary Russia. Sociological Studies in the Making of the Post-Soviet Citizen’, Europe–Asia Studies, Vol. 70, No. 9 (2018), pp. 1355–80. 47 ‘Russia to Re-Educate “Brainwashed” Youth in Patriotic Camps’, Russian Insight, 13 March 2019; ‘Russia’s Security Chief Warns of “Satanic” and Opposition Influence on Youth’, The Moscow Times, 15 May 2018. 48 Bill No. 9606545-7, ‘On Amendments to the Federal Law “On Education in the Russian Federation”’, sozd.duma.gov.ru/bill/960545-7, a draft submitted to the Duma on 21 May 2020; ‘Putin Adds Patriotism, War History to School Curriculum’, The Moscow Times, 22 May 2020. 49 On this, see J.L. Black, ‘Perestroika and The Soviet General School. The CPSU Loses Control of the Ideological Dimension of Vospitanie’, Canadian Slavonic Papers 33:1 (March 1991), 1–18. 50 ‘Minobrnauki otmenilo prikaz o pravilakh obshcheniia rossiiskikh uchenykh s inostrantsami’, Interfax, 10 February 2020. 51 Maria Agranovich, ‘Gosekzameny i zashchity diplomov ne budut otmeniat’ iz-za koronavirusa’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 9 April 2020. 52 ‘Sergei Kravtsov rasskazal, kakie izmeneniia zhdut rossiiskie shkoly’, Rosssiiskaia gazeta, 30 September 2020. 53 ‘Koronvirus. 2 nedeli shkol’nykh kanikul’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 29 September 2020; ‘The Mayor’s Office recommends returning to “remote”, and Muscovites over 65 not to leave their homes’, RAPSI, 25 September 2020; Sergey Sobyanin’s, ‘V zone riska – deti o pozhil’ye moskvichi. O perekhode na udalennyiu rabotu’, 1 October 2020, https://www.sobyanin.ru/v-zone-riska-i-operehode-na-udalyonnuyu-rabotu. 54 Kseniia Kolesnikova, ‘Shablonov.net. Datu itogovogo sochineniia v shkolakh mogut perenesti’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 15 November 2020. An interview with the head of Rosobrnadzor. 55 ‘Yurii Osipov: Biudzhet nauki rastet’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 15 August 2002. Osipov was then president of the Academy of Sciences. 56 Evgenia Kryuchkova, ‘“Skolkovo” poluchilo vtorogo rukovoditelia’, Kommersant, 18 May 2018. 57 For more detail on Skolkovo, see Black, The Russian Presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, pp. 100–3; and Skolkovo’s news website, sk.ru/news. 58 ‘Russian Theater Director Serebrennikov Goes Free After Court Returns Case’, The Moscow Times, 11 September 2019; for background, see text and sources in Black, Putin’s Third Term, op. cit., pp. 242–3

346  Quality of life 59 Elena Fomina, ‘Pal’, Efremov, Kukushkin: kto iz artistov vstupilsia za Pavla Ustinova’, Stil’, 17 September 2019; ‘Russian Actors Launch Flashmob in Support of Colleague Jailed Over Moscow Protests’, The Moscow Times, 17 September 2019. 60 Yuri Litvinenko, Anastasia Kornia, ‘Prokuror poprosil prigovorit’ Serebrennikova k 6 godam kolonii’, Vedomosti, 22 June 2020; ‘Prokuror zaprosil shest’ let kolonii dlia rezhissera Kirilla Serebrennokova’, RAPSI, 22 June 2020; ‘Serebrennikov Trial: Russia Finds Prominent Director Guilty in Fraud Case’, The Moscow Times, 26 June 2020. 61 ‘Monument to Alexander Solzhenitsyn unveiled in Moscow’, Kremlin.ru, 11 December 2018, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59371; ‘Putin Hails Solzhenitsyn as “True Patriot” On Centenary Of His Birth’, RFE/RL, 11 December 2018. 62 ‘Session of the Council for the Development of Civil and Human Rights’, Kremlin.ru, 11 December 2018, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/ 59374. 63 ‘Armed FSB Officers Search Office of Russian Rights Group’, The Moscow Times, 14 August 2019’ 64 Decree No. 51 ‘On Fedotov MA’, 21 October 2019, en.kremlin.ru/events/ administration/61868. 65 Andrei Pertsev, ‘Might Before Rights: Russia Shakes Up Its Human Rights Council’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 23 October 2019. 66 Memorial. Human Rights Center, ‘UN Human Rights Council urged to pay attention to Russia’s permanent refusal to comply with its international obligations’, 2 July 2019, https://memohrc.org/ru/news_old/sovet-oon-po-pravamcheloveka-prizvali-obratit-vnimanie-na-postoyannyy-otkaz-rossii. 67 ‘Na Krasnoi ploshchadi zaderzhali protestuiushchikh protiv presledovaniia krymskikh tatar’, Vedomosti, 10 July 2019; ‘Crimean Tatar Protesters Detained on Moscow’s Red Square’, The Moscow Times, 10 July 2017; Russia’s Political Prisoner Population Grew Sixfold in 4 Years – NGO’, The Moscow Times, 9 July 2019; Institute of Modern Russia, ‘Russia’s Political Prisoners: The Updated List’, imrussia.org, accessed 6 September 2020. 68 ‘Head of Orthodox Church Compares Homosexual Marriage to Nazism’, The Moscow Times, 29 May 2017; ‘Top Moscow University Official Resigns After Anti-Gay Remarks’, The Moscow Times, 25 May 2017; ‘V Chechne panika i sabotazh’, Novaya gazeta, 21 May 2017. 69 ‘Otnoshenie k LGBT-liudiam’, Levada-tsentr, 23 May 2019, www.levada. ru/2019/05/23/otnoshenie-k-lgbt-lyudyam/; ‘Russian LGBT Activist Killed After Being Listed on “Saw”-Inspired Gay Hunting Site’, The Moscow Times, 23 July 2019; ‘“She Was Not Afraid to Tell the Truth”: Russia Reacts to LGBT Activist’s Gruesome Killing’, The Moscow Times, 24 July 2019; ‘Rossiiskaia LGBT-set”, 23 July 2019, https://vk.com/wall-497578_87811. 70 ‘Rostovskaia feministka i LGBT-aktvistka sbezhala iz Rossii’, 28 January 2020, http://www.donnews.ru/Rostovskaya-feministka-i-LGBT-aktivistka-sbezhala-izRossii_103517; ‘Russian LGBT Activist Receives Dutch Asylum After Police Threats’, The Moscow Times, 30 January 2019. 71 ‘Putin Proposes to Enshrine God, Heterosexual Marriage in Constitution’, The Moscow Times, 3 March 2020; ‘Russia Moves to Ban Gay Marriage’, The Moscow Times, 15 July 2020. 72 Natalia Yudina, ‘Criminal Activity of the Ultra-Right. Hate Crimes and Counteraction to Them in Russia in 2019’, SOVA Centre, 5 February 2020. 73 ‘Na piketakh v podderzhku LGBT-aktivistki Iulii Tsvetkovskoi nachalis’ zaderzhaniia’, OVD-Info, 27 June 2020; Samantha Berkhead, ‘Russian Women Rally Behind Feminist “Political Prisoner”’, The Moscow Times, 6 July 2020. On Svetkova’s work, see ‘Body and Soul’, The Economist, 17 October 2020, p. 74.

Quality of life  347 74 ‘Cossacks took to the streets of Yekaterinburg to catch gays’, URA.ru (Sverdlovsk region), 7 September 2020, ura.news/news/1052448643; ‘Russian “Cossacks” Hunt Down LGBT Youth During Pride Week’, The Moscow Times, 8 September 2020 75 ‘V Peterburge prokhodit miting v podderzhku sester Khachaturian’, Livejournal (Varlamov.ru), 4 August 2019, https://varlamov.ru/3543698.html; Lilit Sargsyan, ‘Zhenshchinu, oborniaiushchiesia ot nasilkiia’, Novaya gazeta, 6 July 2019; ‘Russian Judge Denies Reprieve For Sisters Who Killed Abusive Father’, RFE/ RL, 26 June 2019; ‘Russian Court releases two sisters from detention facility’, TASS, 27 September 2018. 76 Dar’ia Kozlova, Svetlana Vidanova, ‘Na mostu sester’, Novaia gazeta, 14 December 2019. See also ‘Russia is failing in its obligations to protect women from domestic and sexual violence’, Equality Now, 20 October 2029, https://www. equalitynow.org/russia_domestic_and_sexual_violence. 77 European Court of Human Rights, Third Section, ‘Case of Volodina v. Russia. (Application no. 41261/17)’, Judgement, 9 July 2019, https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/ eng#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-194321%22]}; Andrew Higgins, ‘Abused Women Go Beyond Russia for Justice’, New York Times International, 20–21 July 2019. 78 Levada Tsentr, ‘Domashnee nasilie’. 13 September 2019, https://www.levada. ru/2019/09/13/domashnee-nasilie; ‘Domestic Violence Affects 1 in 3 Russians, Poll Says’, The Moscow Times, 13 September 2019. 79 Samantha Berkhead, ‘Russia Faces Up to Its Dark Domestic Violence Problem’, The Moscow Times, 13 December 2019; Sovet Federatsii, ‘Proekt zakona o profilaktike semeino-bytovogo nasiliia’, 29 November 2019, http://council.gov.ru/ services/discussions/themes/110611/. 80 Aleksandr Chernykh, ‘Pravitel’stvo zashchishchaet muzhchin ot zhenshchin’, Kommersant, 19 November 2019; Otkrytoe pis’mo prezidentu Rossii V.V. Putinu. Dokument. ‘My protiv priniatiia Zakona o profilaktike domashnego nasiliia!’, Regnum, 15 October 2019. 81 For a detailed discussion, see Alexey Yurtaev, ‘Inside the fight over Russia’s domestic violence law’, Open Democracy, 17 February 2020, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/russia-domestic-violence-law/. 82 ‘General’naia prokuratura utverdila obvinitel’noe zakliuchenie po delu sester Khachaturnian’, TASS, 12 July 2020; ‘Russian Prosecutors Uphold Khachaturyan Sisters Murder Charges’, The Moscow Times, 13 July 2020; ‘Prosecutor General’s Office approved indictment in case of Kachaturyan sisters’, RAPSI, 13 July 2020. 83 Kyril Avramov, ‘Russia’s Virtual Moral Police; Toxic Subculture in Pursuit of Purity’, The Globe Post, 27 March 2029; ‘Russian “Male State” leader faces criminal charges over extreme misogyny’, RT, 5 October 2018. 84 Official Internet Portal. Legal Information, Order No. 55594, 18 August 2019, http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001201908150010?index=0&ra ngeSize=1. 85 ‘The Campaign #alljobs4allwomen: Protection of the Labour Rights of Women’, ADC, https://adcmemorial.org/en/about-adc/kampaniya-alljobs4allwomen-zashhita-prav-zhenshhin-na-trud/, accessed 11 March 2020; ‘Moscow Metro Hires First Women Train Drivers’, The Moscow Times, 4 January2021. 86 Putin, ‘Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu Sobraniiu’, Kremlin.ru, 20 February 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59863. See especially, Theresa Hornke, ‘Russia’s Family Policy’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 249, 20 March 2020, pp. 10–14; and Andrea Chandler, Democracy, Gender and Social Policy in Russia. A Wayward Society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 87 Valeria Mishina, ‘Detei doveriat sud’iam’, Kommersant, 11 July 2020; ‘Senatory predlozhili zapretit’ smenivshim pol usynovliat’ detei i zakliuchat’ brak’, Kommersant, 14 July 2020; see timeline in OVD-Info, 18 July 2020, https://ovdinfo.org/ news/2020/07/18/v-moskve-i-peterburge-zaderzhali-uchastnikov-piketov-protivzakona-o-semeynom.

348  Quality of life 88 Piotr Sauer, ‘When Your Home isn’t a Safe Space. Russian Women Fear Rise in Domestic Violence as Coronavirus Quarantine Starts’, The Moscow Times, 30 March 2020. 89 ‘Deputaty predlozhili srochnye mery bor’by s domashnim nasilidem na izoliatsi’, RBC.ru, 22 April 2020; ‘Human rights activists said they stopped abortion in Moscow. Authorities deny it’, Dozhd, 22 April 2020, https://tvrain.ru/news/v_ moskve_prekratili_delat_aborty_v_period_povyshennoj_gotovnosti-507390/. The women’s organization was Nasiliyu.net (No to Violence). ‘Putin Orders Government to Improve Abortion Prevention Efforts’, The Moscow Times, 27 October 2020. 90 ‘Resheniia, priniatye na zasedanii Pravitel’stva 23 aprelia 2020 goda’, 23 April 2020, government.ru/news/39565/; Tatiana Zamakhina, ‘Avtomaticheskoe nachislenie vyplat na detei prodliat do marta’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 21 October 2020. 91 Alena V. Ledeneva, How Russia Really Works. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2006, and Russia’s Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange. New York: Cambridge UP, 1988. 92 Richard Sakwa, ‘Is Russia really a Kleptocracy?’, Times Literary Supplement (TLS), 4 February 2015; Fabian Burkhardt, ‘The Institutionalization of Personalism? The Presidency and the President after Putin’s Constitutional Overhaul’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 250, 9 April 2020, pp. 5–10. 93 Karen Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy. Who Owns Russia? op. cit.. For the rebuttal, see Sakwa, ‘Is Russia Really a Kleptocracy?’, op. cit. 94 See J.L. Black, ‘The Dilemma of Corruption in Russia’, in Black and Johns, From Putin to Medvedev. Continuity or Change? (2009), pp. 74–97; and Anton Kazun, ‘Stopping the feast in times of plague: fighting criminal corporate raiding in diverse Russian regions’, Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 36, issue 4–5 (2020), pp. 416–33. 95 Aleksei Levinson, ‘Ne bor’ba s korrupstiei, a “ikh razborki”’, Vedomosti, 28 March 2019. 96 Cited in Ben Aris, ‘Anti-Corruption Drive Takes Off’, Russia Profile, 4 March 2007; Valerii Vyzhutyovich, ‘Kormlenie z dolzhnosti’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 10 November 2006. 97 VTsIOM survey cited in RIA Novosti, 27 April 2009; Anna Nemtsova, ‘In Russia, Corruption Plagues the Higher-Education System’, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 22 February 2008. 98 ‘Dmitrii Medvedev: Glavnoe dlia nashy strany – eto prodolzhenie spokoinogo i stabil’nogo razvitiia’, Rossiiskaioa gazeta, 15 February 2008. 99 Edict No. 1468, 24 December 2009, in Rossiiskaia Gazeta, 6 March 2010; Russian Federation President, Information and Press Department, Press Release, 14 May 2010. 100 For descriptions, see Black, Russian Presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, pp. 191–6, and Putin’s Third Term, pp. 251–7. 101 ‘Vziatochnik tipichnei krovopiitsy’, Novaya gazeta, 14 July 2020; 102 Mark Galeotti, The Vory. Russia’s Super Mafia. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2018. 103 ‘Glava MVD Vladimir Kolokol’tsev: “Vor dolzhen sidet’ v tiur’me”’, Argumenty i Fakty, 7 November 2018. 104 Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, ‘As part of the criminal case on the embezzlement of natural gas of PJSC Gazprom, the investigation is interrogating a number of defendants’, 30 January 2019, https://sled.ru/news/ item/1294651/; ‘Russian Senator Detained on Murder Charges Inside Parliament’, The Moscow Times, 30 January 2019; Tatyana Stanovaya, ‘Senator’s Arrest Exposes Cannibalization of Russia’s Vertical Power’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 6 February 2019.

Quality of life  349 105 ‘MVD razreshili platit’ informatoram’, Kommersant, 21 August 2018; ‘Russian Police to Reward Informants Up to $150K Under New Plan’, The Moscow Times, 23 August 2018. 106 ‘Zaderzhannykh sotrudnikov FSB podozrevaiut v razboinom napadenii’, Vedomosti, 5 July 2019; ‘5 Russian Security Officers Arrested for Robbery’, The Moscow Times, 6 June 2019. 107 Main Investigation Department, Investigative Committee, ‘In Moscow, the investigation seeks the arrest of three accused of committing a number of murders in the capital’, 16 December 2019, https://moscow.sledcom.ru/news/ item/1424979/; ‘2 Elite Russian officers Charged with Killings in Moscow’, The Moscow Times, 27 December 2019. 108 Corruption Perceptions Index, 2017, www.transparency.org/news/feature/ corruption_perceptions_index-2017. 109 ‘“Dlia nas vazhno kachestvo nadzornoi deiatel’nosti”. Genprokuror Iurii Chaika – o protivodeistvii korruptsii’, Kommersant, 12 December 2018. 110 General’naia prokuratura Rossiiskoi Federatsii, ‘Bolee 1300 chinovnikov uvoleny v sviazi s utratoi doveriia za sovershenie korrupsionnykh pravonarushenii’, 26 March 2019, www.genproc.gov.ru/smi/news/genproc/news-1578650/; ‘More Than 1,300 Russian Officials Fired for Corruption in 2018 – Prosecutors’, The Moscow Times, 27 March 2019. 111 See, e.g. ‘Bolee 1,7 tys chinovnikov byli uvoleny iz-za korruptsii za poslednie poltora goda – GP’, RAPSI, 10 August 2018; ‘Prezident RF utochnil normy o vedenii reestra korruptsionerov’, RAPSI, 29 December 2017. 112 ‘Genprokuratura otchitalas’ o roste chisla vsiatok’, www.rbc.ru/society/09/12/20 18/5c0c5b119a79473b48669f02?from=main. 113 ‘Ex-investigator and lawyer received 10 years in prison for bribery’, RAPSI, 6 December 2018; ‘Prodlen arrest eks-glavy upravleniia Rostekhnadzora po delu o khishchenii 5.6 mlrd rub’, RAPSI, 6 December 2018; ‘Summa vziatok v dele sochinskikh vitse-merov sostavila 120 mln rublei’, Kommersant, 17 October 2020. 114 ‘V Podmoskov’e zastrelili sledovatelia po osobo vazhnym delam’, RBC.ru, 10 October 2018; ‘Police Uncover Multimillion Dollar Fraud in Russia’s Forex Market’, The Moscow Times, 10 October 2018. 115 ‘Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome Bosses Jailed for Mass Corruption’, The Moscow Times, 26 February 2018; ‘Vynesen prigovor v otnoshenii byvshego nachal’nika “Dal’spetsstroia” Iuriia Khrizmana i ego souchastnikov’, sledcom. ru/news/item/1205442/, 26 February 2018; ‘Over $150M Embezzled in Construction of Russia’s Far East’, The Moscow Times, 20 November 2018; ‘Vostochny spaceport scandals continue’, RT, 24 October 2020. 116 Dmitry Butrin, ‘Konturnaia karta korruptsii’, Kommersant, 3 June 2019. 117 Kristina V. Arianina, ‘Russia Continues Anticorruption Efforts in 2019’, The National Law Review, 23 January 2019, and AntiCorruption Blog. 118 ‘Russian Court Orders Navalny to Take Down Corruption Investigation Into National Guard’, The Moscow Times, 6 February 2019; ‘Miniust priznal fond Navaln’nogo inostrannym agentom’, Vedomosti, 9 October 2019. 119 ‘Arbitrazhnyi sud Moskvy postanovil vzyskat’ s FBK pochti 88 mln rublei po isku pishchevogo kombinata’, OVD-Info, 28 October 2019; ‘Kremlin Critic Navalny and Allies Hit With $1.4M Lawsuit Payout’, The Moscow Times, 28 October 2019. 120 ‘Delo “Troiki” ili ne tol’ko “Troiki”’, Vedomosti, 5 March 2019; ‘Russia Officials, State Media Meet Explosive ‘Troika Landromat’ Report With a Shrug’, The Moscow Times, 6 March 2019; Leonid Bershidsky, ‘The Troika Laundromat Shows How Not to Combat Money Laundering’, The Moscow Times, 6 March 2019. 121 See the OCCRP website, ‘About US’, www.occrp.org/en/about-us.

350  Quality of life 122 Transparency International, ‘Eastern Europe & Central Asia: Weak Checks and Balances Threaten Anti-Corruption Efforts’, 29 January 2019, https://www. transparency.org/news/feature/weak_checks_and_balances_threaten_anti_corruption_efforts_across_eastern_eu; ‘Russia Ties Lebanon in 2018 Corruption Perception s Index – Transparency International’, The Moscow Times, 29 January 2019. 123 ‘Korruptsiia v vysshikh echelonakh vlasti’, Levada tsentr, 7 May 2019, https:// www.levada.ru/2019/05/07/korruptsiya-v-vysshih-eshelonah-vlasti/05/07/2019. 124 ‘Eks-zamdirektora “Rosgeologii” pred’iavili obvinenie v osobo krupnom moshennichestve’, Vedomosti, 9 March 2019. 125 Rauf Mammadov, ‘High-Profile Arrest Is Latest Sign of Dysfunction in Russian Refinery Sector’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 23 July 2019. 126 General’naia prokuratura Rossiiskoi Federatsii, ‘V Moskve sostoialos’ zasedanie kollegii Glavnoi voennoi prokuratury po itogam raboty organov voennoi prokuratury v 2018 godu’, 21 March 2019, genproc.gov.ru/smi/news/genproc/ news-1575160/. 127 Aleksei Nikol’skii, Alisa Shtykina, Ol’ga Adamchuk, ‘V Moskve nachalis’ obyski po delu o khishcheniiakh u krupnogo podriadchika RZhD’, Vedomosti, 14 August 2019; ‘Russian Anticorruption Officer Gets 13 Years In Prison on Bribery Charges’, RFE/RL, 10 June 2019. 128 Ekaterian Eremenko, ‘Sud arestoval zamestitelia glavy PFR Ivanova’, Vedomosti, 12 July 2019; Aleksandra Chunova, ‘Medvedev uvolil zamglavy PFR Ivanova’, Vedomosti & Kommersant, 20 August 2019. 129 ‘Sud arestoval general MVD Aleksandra Krakovskogo’, RAPSI, 3 April 2020. 130 ‘Glavnye anonsy 27 aprelia–3 maia’, Kommersant, 26 April 2020; RAPSI, 24 April 2020; on Glushakova, RAPSI, 28 April 2020. 131 Artyom Hirsch, ‘Zamglavy Minobrnauki zaderzhali po delu o moshennichestve na 40 mln rublei’, Vedomosti, 3 July 2020.

9 Quality of life Pandemic, body & soul

Introduction Russians had already faced a decade or more of permanent chaos in their government and major disruptions in the quality of their lives or, as we call it, standard of living, when Putin first took office as president in 2000. Urban dwellers had grown accustomed to the ever-present sight of nouveau riche flaunting wealth and the equally ever-present sight of poverty, a condition in which a large percentage of the population languished. Lost savings accounts, raging inflation, high unemployment and economic despair had been daily fare for millions of citizens since the mid-1980s. At the end of 1999, Speaker Gennady Seleznev told the Duma that 57 per cent of the people of Russia lived below the subsistence level. Rosstat claimed in 2000 that life expectancy for males was 61 and for females 72, though reality may have been worse than these discouraging figures. The ‘shock therapy’ provided by Yeltsin and his team had produced lots of shock, but no therapy.1 There seemed to be no middle road between the newly rich and newly poor. Putin noted this while still acting-president in February 2000, telling Russians in a long open letter that ‘our priority is to overcome our poverty’, calling Russia a ‘rich country of poor people’.2 He vowed then to overcome this paradox. Not long after his election a month later, the government adopted laws raising the minimum wage and guaranteeing pensions, and also initiated legislation to provide compulsory arbitration in the case of strikes, help curb corruption and fight organized crime. The old Soviet labour code, created when almost everyone worked for the state, was replaced in December 2001 with protocols for contract relations, work conditions, dismissals and strikes. These and other edicts and bills launched a sequence of legislation acts designed to improve the daily lives of Russians, and bring some kind of order into the extraordinary societal disarray where Soviet rules and practices still clashed with new norms.3 The government had to combat a sense of hopelessness driven by blatantly corrupt oligarchs, politicians, law enforcement, courts and even school administrators. Any leader who offered a real chance at stability, security and a functional economy, would have been welcomed. At the time, Putin was that leader and for most of his first two decades a substantial majority of DOI: 10.4324/9781003158646-10

352  Quality of life citizens believed that he could, and did, create positive change. However, as the ashes cooled from the crises of 2020, many Russians began wondering if his early promise could ever be fulfilled.

Coronavirus pandemic and its over-arching implications Although the COVID-19 was a global phenomenon, it came to Russia at a time when the country was already shaken by proposed amendments to its Constitution, and an economic downturn due to the oil price crisis. The pandemic had a hugely disruptive impact on Russia’s domestic economy and its foreign trade. It wreaked havoc on daily life, forcing Russians to endure hardships through loss of employment, collapse of small businesses and, of course, the ever-present health hazard. The long-term economic consequences of the pandemic for Russia will not be determined for some time, though its political consequences may be seen sooner. The implications of the infectious disease, and its management, for the Russian psyche will take even longer to discern. Beijing identified, for the public, the first case of coronavirus on 7 January. On the 23rd, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the disease did not yet represent an international emergency situation. Taking no chances, Mishustin set up a special coronavirus headquarters three days after that, and ordered Rospotrebnadzor to draw up a national plan to prevent the spread of the disease in Russia. Its border with China closed before the month was out. The plan didn’t work very well. The border was porous and the first confirmed cases in Russia were reported on 31 January, when two Chinese tourists were diagnosed, and the first home-grown case was discovered on 2 March. Because numbers remained low, on 17 March Putin told the first meeting of a coordinating council to combat the spread of the infection that, thanks to steps taken early, ‘we were able to contain the massive penetration and spread of the disease in Russia’.4 Within a week, confirmed cases began rising. Before that, the government suspended work visas for Chinese citizens and used facial recognition techniques to pick up Chinese citizens in hotels, bars and public transportation, angering the Chinese Embassy in Moscow. Laboratories began developing an anti-coronavirus vaccine jointly with Chinese clinics anyway, and quarantine centres were set up in the Tyumen region for Russians evacuated from health risk areas in China.5 In July 2020, Russia announced that it had completed clinical trials of a COVID-19 vaccine on humans, the first country to make such a claim. Yelena Smolyarchuk, research director at the Centre for Clinical Research on Medications, Sechenov University, Moscow, proclaimed the trials effective. She added that volunteers were released and then remained in isolation for 28 days. The head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) said that more than 200 million doses of coronavirus vaccine would be produced before the end of the year.6 The Ministry of Defence also declared it had developed a ‘safe’ vaccine

Quality of life  353 after clinical tests on a group of 18 volunteers, though no details were revealed about the level of its effectiveness (see ahead).7 In the meantime, by the end of March the Russia–China border closings were mutual and the irritations forgotten. Russia has 14 land neighbours, so its vulnerability to human carriers coming in from abroad is greater than most other countries. Dealing with this, by the end of February Russia had closed down train and air traffic to Iran, South Korea, China and Hong Kong, train service from Moscow to Nice, and suspended tours to Italy. In fact, most of Russia’s victims in the first few weeks had contracted the disease in Italy. Russian passengers on infected cruise ships were quarantined, as were Russian citizens arriving from China and elsewhere. A major food distributor in Russia (Magnit) suspended imports of fruit and vegetables from China, and thousands of business trips to China and several other countries were postponed.8 From early March onward, both the print and televised media spilled over with daily analyses and warnings, protective advice and counts of coronavirus cases in Russia and abroad. When, at the end of February, Sobyanin announced plans to shut down the city if the epidemic hit it hard and banned all events of more than 5,000 people for a month, cynics accused him of plotting to prevent demonstrations against Putin’s constitutional changes. Yet, when he and regional Governor Andrei Vorobyov put the city and region on ‘high alert’ on 5 March and then closed them down at the end of March, the political critics were silent.9 A new coronavirus hospital designed for 1,300 beds as part of an existing hospital opened at the end of March.10 Scheduled religious processions were cancelled and school attendance made optional; Russia banned further export of surgical masks, ventilators and hazmat suits. All border crossings slammed shut as of 30 March. In April, Putin postponed the 75th Victory Day parade, held each year on 9 May to commemorate victory over Nazi Germany. The Russian administration soon discovered how quickly the number of cases could climb. The first sign of real trouble came in mid-March when the official number of cases doubled in one 24-hour period, and nearly doubled again over the next two days. The caseload reached 2,300 at the end of March, and then sky-rocketed with huge daily jumps that brought the official number of cases to 106,498, with slightly over 1,000 deaths by the end of April. It was never clear how accurate these totals were, a fact noted on 24 March by Sobyanin who told Putin that the ‘real number’ was probably much higher. In the early weeks, some of the coronavirus cases were reported as pneumonia. Sobyanin confused the issue further in early May, when he blogged that the ‘real number of infected’ in Moscow was 2 per cent of the city’s inhabitants, which could mean up to 250,000 people, and a few days later he contradicted the official number of cases in the city, 92,676, saying it was more likely 300,000.11 On 13 May, the Moscow Department of Health issued a detailed statement refuting the charge that it underestimated the mortality rate of COVID-19 in

354  Quality of life the city, saying that it calculated the number only after autopsies proved that coronavirus was the cause of death. Over 60 per cent of these mandatory autopsies of suspected COVID-19 victims showed alternative causes of the actual death, e.g. heart attacks, pneumonia, cancer, renal failure. Thus, it concluded, these individuals died with COVID-19, not of COVID-19. Peskov, disingenuously, told CNN that the low number of deaths was a result of Russia’s ‘effective’ medical system. None of these explanations prevented Western pundits from railing about Russian ‘lies’ related to the pandemic, the MID responded by demanding a retraction from the New York Times.12 Few in Russia or abroad doubted that there were many more deaths related to coronavirus than the nearly 10,000 officially reported at the end of June, the 20,000 by the end of September, or the 30,000 by the end of October. By December, Rosstat acknowledged that actual numbers of deaths were closer to 186,000, giving it the third-largest known death toll, behind only the US and Brazil, though per capita its rate is about the same as other European countries.13 Face masks were mandatory in Moscow as of 12 May and people had to wear them plus gloves in shops, shopping centres, chemists, offices and on all public transport, including in taxis. Municipal authorities asked individuals over the age of 65 to stay at home. These restrictions were extended regularly until mid-June. Although Moscow, the Moscow region, St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod had the most coronavirus cases, in that order, by mid-April the disease had spread to all parts of the Federation. New coronavirus infections rose exponentially in the spring, soaring well beyond the rate of the previous months. By the end of May, the number of infections hovered close to 400,000 and surpassed 850,000 at the end of July. In May, Russia was the second-most-infected country; by July it had fallen back to fourth, behind the US, Brazil and India. Although the Kremlin was slow to recognize the danger, it acted forcefully when the message finally sunk in. On 14 March, Putin created a new special working group within the State Council to combat the spread of the virus and placed Sobyanin in charge. The next day, Mishustin and his vice premiers announced a ₽300 billion ($4 billion) plan to ease the impact of the epidemic on citizens, including quarantined people, and the economy. They promised a system of on-line notification and a telephone hotline to provide Russians with full information, and formed a Coordinating Council to work with the State Council’s working group. Mishustin chaired the Council, with Golikova and Belousov as his deputies. Sobyanin sat as vice-chair and liaison with Putin’s working group.14 Sobyanin became the face of Russia’s official struggle against the pandemic. The federal government announced a ‘high alert’ for all component subjects on 19 March, and closed two terminals at Sheremetevo Airport. The RDIF said it would invest in developing coronavirus tests. At the same time that Russian schools took a three-week ‘vacation’, in March, Russian prisoners, students and military personnel were put to work producing medical masks. The city closed tourist sites, such as Lenin’s tomb, resorts, sanatoriums and children’s camps to the public, but no one (we assume) took

Quality of life  355 up Kadyrov’s suggestion that people who violate a coronavirus quarantine and infect others ‘should be killed’.15 The Orthodox Church kept its doors open to services until 29 March. Sobyanin announced a full self-isolation regime in Moscow for all residents, regardless of age, starting the next day.16 It wasn’t clear how this edict was to be enforced, though it added that an evertightening monitoring system would gradually be put in place. The ‘non-working week’ (see Chapter 4) was later extended, as was Moscow’s lockdown, and on 1 April Putin signed legislation that imposed severe penalties for anyone spreading false information about the coronavirus and breaking quarantine rules. Other bills provided easier access to medications. As the number of cases grew, all non-essential business in Moscow was suspended. Grocery stores and pharmacies stayed open, and the government, hospitals, protective gear manufacturers and the defence sector continued to work. All construction and maintenance work was suspended, as were car-sharing services.17 On 28 May, Putin and Sobyanin presided over the opening of a new hospital on the outskirts of Moscow designed specifically for coronavirus patients. The Demikhov clinical hospital was constructed in 30 days, has an 800-bed capacity, its own oxygen supply system and can conduct 10,000 tests per day.18 Signs that the state assumed the pandemic was not about to disappear were edicts at the end of the month extending the ban on large gatherings in Churches, Synagogues and Mosques and a change in Russia’s electoral law to allow citizens to vote electronically or by mail-in. This latter law included referenda. Even as Russia’s caseload rose, non-work restrictions eased as of 12 May. Industrial and construction companies re-opened, though the service sector remained locked down. Putin ordered the cabinet and coronavirus task force to draft an action plan for recovery, extended the authority of governors while the pandemic persisted and assigned ‘final say’ on when to lift restrictions to doctors.19 Moscow’s municipal authorities eased restrictions on businesses in Moscow on 1 June and on the self-isolation regime a week later.20 Limited international air travel restarted on 15 July. In response to a Levada survey conducted in late April, about a third of Russian families admitted to wage cuts or salary payment delays, or both. A quarter of respondents still feared dismissal. Workers in the private sector were considerably worse off than those who were employed by the state when it came to wage arears, wage reductions, or lost jobs.21 Public response Doctors who distrusted data issued by the government on the number of cases began publishing a List of Memory of colleagues, ‘doctors, nurses, technicians’ who died from the disease, the first of which appeared on 28 April and included 74 names.22 Within three weeks, the List of Memory counted 444 medical service personnel. Alla Samoilova, head of Roszdravnadzor, calculated the number of physicians who died of coronavirus to that time at 489.23 Putin created Roszdravnadzor in 2004 to serve as the

356  Quality of life federal watchdog over Russia’s healthcare system. It is subordinate to the Ministry of Health. State-owned pollsters showed that the population supported Putin’s antipandemic policies in general (74% – VTsIOM), yet grumblings bubbled to the surface. Complaints that local officials or banks were ignoring assurances – even orders – from Putin of financial assistance for individuals and small businesses, were common. So too were objections from medical personnel about deficiencies in equipment, unreasonable schedules and unpaid wages.24 Logistical problems became part of the national news. Ambulance crews in Siberia threatened strikes because promised bonuses didn’t show up, nurses quit because they were overworked and underpaid, ventilators blew up and caused fires. More than 100,000 people signed a petition from a union of medical workers, Deistvie (Action), demanding that bonuses be paid and criteria for determining recipients be expanded. Mishustin acknowledged that monies allocated by the central government were not distributed properly, or even at all, by local authorities, and Putin demanded immediate action on payments by the ministry of health.25 Western media, such as the New York Times, played up the healthcare problems in Russia, especially when three doctors ‘mysteriously’ fell from windows. Russian respondents suggested that the US media look to their own pandemic management system, and pointed out that all three doctors who fell, jumped or, as cynics implied, were pushed, were greatly overworked and had contracted the disease themselves.26 Worsening the situation, in a 165-page guidebook on treatment of COVID19, the Russian Ministry of Health continued to recommend the use of the discredited anti-malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine (GCX), both as a treatment for infected patients and as a preventative measure for people over the age of 65.27 While not presenting it as a cure, and warning of possible dangerous side-effects for heart patients, the ministry insisted that there had been no adverse effects of the drug on patients in Russia. Many Russian doctors objected, heralding yet another element of uncertainty in Russian society.28 The recommendation for GCX in Russia came at about the same time Trump advocated its use in the US, against the advice of American medical experts. More confusion was sowed directly from the top. On 20 April, Putin claimed that the spread was slowing while cautioning that the pandemic was yet to peak in Russia. During his fifth public address on the coronavirus, on 28 April, Putin extended the lockdown in two-week segments for the next two months. At the end of May, he again announced that the peak of new cases finally was passing and re-scheduled the previously postponed military parades for late June.29 On 1 June, all non-food shops and some service sector businesses re-opened in Moscow and walks outside using a schedule system for apartment buildings and all parks except for Zaryadye Park were permitted. The ban on foreigners entering the country eased on 25 June, if only for needed specialists. This concession was the results of requests from business associations and the diplomatic corps.30

Quality of life  357 Hydroxychloroquine’s moment having passed, the ministry of health started treating patients with a new anti-COVID-19 drug, registered as Avifavir, on 11 June. Clinical trials showed that it reduced the days a person was infected and cut the period of high fever.31 Russia, China, Japan and the US also registered drugs to deploy against the virus.32 In early August, the MoD claimed that its tests on an anti-COVID drug had been completed safely. There was a lingering suspicion that Russia was rushing drugs into production merely to demonstrate that it could get there first. Nearly six months after COVID-19 was acknowledged as a pandemic in Russia, the major restrictions, including self-isolation, closed shops and social gatherings, were cautiously lifted and, on 24 June, thousands of troops marched on Red Square, sans face masks. On that same day Putin announced that existing special payments to health care workers and social workers would be extended to mid-September, because of the continuing threat of infection. Bonus payments in place since 8 April were tax-free and, since there were delays and tales of corrupt officials seizing some of the allocated funds in the regions, Putin ordered that all appropriate payments be accounted for by the end of June. He also signed a law providing an additional one-time payment to Russian citizens who were ‘parents, adoptive parents, guardians, trustees of children under the age of 16’, of ₽10,000 for each child. Clearly, the pandemic was by no means over in Russia, and Putin was covering his tracks.33 Moscow’s indoor dining, fitness clubs, swimming pools and public sports and recreation facilities re-opened on 1 July. Cinemas and theatres unsealed a month later. Masks were still mandatory in stores and on public transport, but not on the streets. On the other hand, Aeroflot, which had planned to resume international flights on 1 August, and since late May had been selling tickets for hundreds of flights, postponed air connections to 87 countries until 31 August, leaving only the UK, Turkey, Tanzania and Switzerland as possible destinations by air. The airline promised automatic reimbursements, as the air travel industry suffered another serious kick while it was down.34 Flights to Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and South Korea resumed in September; and to Serbia, Cuba and Japan over the next two months. Second wave A general sigh of relief came too soon. A second wave surfaced with a vengeance and the number of cases in October quickly surpassed, by far, the peaks of the spring.35 Early in the month, Putin order the creation of a Security Commission charged with establishing a nationwide system for preventing the spread of infectious diseases, and named Medvedev its chair.36 The Commission’s existence passed almost unnoticed by the public, while ominous records were set repeatedly, reaching peaks of 635 single-day deaths and 29,935 single day-cases on 24 December.37 The total number of cases passed two million at mid-November, and three million in late December. The late fall surge was such that several hospitals across the country stopped

358  Quality of life admitting patients with other illnesses, and Peskov reported a serious scarcity of doctors in the regions. As early as 9 November, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko warned the government’s Coordination Council that the health care system was just barely coping with the new surge of coronavirus cases. Hospital bed occupancy had reached 80 per cent, or higher, he said, and the ministry had called out 25,000 medical students and 16,000 in-residency programme personnel to bolster medical staffs throughout the country.38 A month later, he proposed reinstating a ban on domestic travel, and republics were granted permission to limit internal border crossings. Sobyanin acknowledged the sharp upturn in infections, again advised citizens over 65 not to leave their homes and ordered businesses to transfer 30 per cent of their employees to work from home. This advice became an order on 26 November. He reminded Muscovites to wear masks and gloves in public places. Grade 6–11 pupils in Moscow reverted to distance learning until mid-December. Two temporary hospitals for coronavirus patients re-opened in October. At the national level, Rospotrebnadzor reinstated a nationwide order requiring all citizens to wear masks in public places and limiting all entertainment and restaurants services to the hours between 6:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m.39 Predictions that the second pandemic wave would hit the regions harder than the first one, and harder than Moscow, proved correct, and evoked wide-ranging frustration and anger because of shortages of hospital beds and medical personnel. People groused that the Kremlin lifted quarantines in the spring for political reasons. Social media carried videos of bodies wrapped in black bags and broadcast complaints from doctors from such disparate areas as the Altai Republic, Kalmykia and Dagestan, all casting blame on the central authorities for playing down the pandemic after the spring. In November, schools in Ulyanovsk and Sakhalin went exclusively on-line, Buryatia imposed its second full shutdown and Ivanovo ran out of space in its morgues. These stories were typical. The Murmansk region was the most heavily hit in the Arctic. Local anger was fuelled by the fact that nearly two-thirds of Russian medical people already disbelieved official statistics on coronavirus cases, and doubt among regional doctors was even higher.40 Moreover, by November nearly 60 per cent of respondents told Levada Centre pollsters they would refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Since 92 per cent said they wear a mask in public and 62 per cent approved the actions taken by their government, it may be that they did not trust the haste in which the antidote was being prepared.41 Perhaps aware that Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic cost him his job, Putin ordered the government to provide 5 trillion rubles to the regions, ‘immediately’, to cover free medicines for coronavirus patients and allocate another 10 trillion (circa $13 bln) for transport services, purchasing PPEs, and improving the ‘material and technical base and testing’. The money was to be used to fight the coronavirus and ‘not for anything else’.42

Quality of life  359 This announcement was made during a video-conferenced meeting with the government and broadcast on national TV, so no one could doubt who made the decision. Whether blame for the disease’s dramatic resurgence ultimately would fall on Putin, Sobyanin or local officials in the political arena remained uncertain. Putin told the ‘Russia calling!’ audience on 29 October that the ‘overall [pandemic] situation is really better’ and there would be no ‘nationwide shutdown’; rather, there would be targeted measures that would allow businesses to stay open if they showed ‘social responsibility’.43 This statement represented a dangerous denial. In fact, China took the spike in Russian cases so seriously that it suspended entry even for Russians ‘with valid Chinese visas and residence permits, involving work, resolving personal issues and family reunification’.44 The city of Moscow tightened up. The Mayoral decree of 10 November that switched all schools and universities to distance learning also prohibited catering establishments from serving people in-house at night, kept spectator numbers in theatres and concert halls to 25 per cent of capacity, and ordered sport events to exclude spectators. Children’s day camps and other in-door group activities were suspended.45 More significantly, the MoD constructed four medical centres for the sole purpose of treating coronavirus patients, two in the Astrakhan region and the others in Pskov and Severomorsk, and a special clinic for children also in Pskov. Built over a period of six months, they were completed in October and November and will be permanent. Two of them will eventually be transferred to South Sakhalin. Well-equipped with modern technology and doctors, or so Putin claimed, they will remain under the Ministry of Defence. More are planned for the regions.46 Asked about Russia’s preparedness for the pandemic at his 2020 year-end press conference, Putin admitted that Russia had an ‘ocean of problems’, but, in comparison to other countries, it was able to produce 277,000 beds ‘in fairly quick time’, 40 special-purpose hospitals, 30 of them built ‘quickly’ by the MoD and 10 by the regions, and train or re-train more than a half million medical personal to work in the field.47 True or not, Putin was going to have to wear the pandemic, so he was fortunate that the next presidential election in Russia was four years away. Vaccine nationalism In August, the WHO appealed for a global vaccine pact, i.e. the COVAX Global Vaccine Facility, warning that ‘vaccine nationalism’ would lead to an extraordinary imbalance in world recoveries from the pandemic. COVAX is led by Gavi, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the WHO. Its purpose is to guarantee fair access to vaccines.48 Even the conservative Rand Corporation published a report in November outlining the negative consequences of vaccine nationalism, among them the obvious inequitable access to vaccines. The corporation’s support for ‘international sharing’ of vaccines was mostly concerned with the huge costs to the

360  Quality of life economies of wealthy countries if the pandemic was not brought under control everywhere. Still, it drew attention to the issue, and was reported in the Russian media.49 A week prior to that appeal, on 12 August, the Russian Ministry of Health announced that it had registered the world’s first coronavirus vaccine. Called ‘Sputnik-V’, the vaccine was developed at the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow. An injection solution would be available for the public by 1 January 2021, it said.50 Reaction in the West was immediately sceptical because the Russia vaccine had not completed the standard Phase 3, in which it is compared to a placebo in thousands of people.51 The WHO said it would need to see the results of further tests. Russia insisted that its research was rooted in decades of scientific work on vaccines and viruses that helped it create a successful Ebola vaccine, and claimed to have already received orders from 20 countries. According to Britain’s The Lancet, the Russia vaccine passed its early trial tests in late August, producing antibodies with ‘no serious adverse events’.52 Phase 3 trials began in September. Health Minister Murashko repeated on 31 August that the first mass deliveries of the ministry’s Sputnik V would begin at the end of September. This too was greeted with doubt in the West and a certain amount of apathy in Russia, where the vaccine went first to health workers and teachers and was then extended to the civilian population in January 2021.53 Earlier, Putin told reporters that one of his daughters was injected and Aleksandr Gintsburg, chief of the Gamaleya Institute, said that he and the institute’s scientists had all been inoculated with the vaccine.54 On the other hand, a survey conducted among more than 3,000 Russian doctors found that 66 per cent felt that there was still insufficient data on its effectiveness and 52 per cent said they were not personally prepared to take it.55 Meanwhile, two anti-coronavirus drugs were approved in mid-September. These variants of Favipiravir were available at pharmacies as of 21 September. They were developed in Japan and manufactured in Russia and are touted for speeding up recovery time.56 Eventually, the truth of Putin’s Russian roulette-type gambit will be in the pudding. Putin boasted of Sputnik V in his video address to the UN General Assembly and said that Russia was ‘ready to share our experience … including supplies to other countries’. He offered to provide doses ‘free of charges’ to any employee of the UN and its branches.57 Producers of the earlier drug, Avifavir, which went through clinical trials in Russia and Japan, announced that supplies had already been delivered to six countries and 17 more had requested the drug. An announcement by the RDIF named the recipient countries: Avifavir will be delivered to Argentina, Bulgaria, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Kuwait, Panama, Paraguay, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, UAE and Uruguay. The drug has already been delivered to Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. 58

Quality of life  361 By mid-November, 50 countries had signed up to buy or locally produce Sputnik V, among them the first EU member (Hungary) to agree to carry out trials of the vaccine. South Korea’s GL Rapha contracted to produce 150 million doses annually. India’s Hetero will produce 100 million doses. Purchase orders came from Brazil (50 mln), Mexico (32 mln), Nepal and Egypt (25 mln each).59 On 23 November, the manufacturers of Sputnik V claimed 95 per cent effectiveness, and Golikova promised that mass vaccinations would begin in 2021.60 Russian researchers still work closely with their Chinese counterparts. A Russian pharmaceutical company, Petrovax, participated in China’s largescale clinical trials and reported in September that volunteers showed no side-effects after taking a vaccine (AD5-nCOV) co-developed with Chinese clinics. The Moscow company called for more volunteers after the first test and claimed to have vetted more than 3,000 candidates for more trials. If its vaccine is approved in concert with all international standards, it says it can produce five million doses per month.61 Putin announced a second vaccine in mid-October. The Novosibirsk Vector Centre registered EpiVacCorona after successful clinical trials on 100 volunteers, and scheduled plans for post-registration trials with 40,000 volunteers from areas across the country. The vaccine entered civilian circulation in December, at about the same time that up to 80,000 Russian soldiers were scheduled for vaccination with Sputnik V. Altogether, about 400,000 military personnel will be vaccinated, Shoigu said.62 The city of Moscow opened a vaccination station for at-risk groups on 5 December. These included teachers, healthcare and social service workers. In preparation for the launch, municipal officials acquired specialized warehouses and refrigeration facilities, and organized staff training programmes.63 The ‘race’ was on. An important announcement on 9 November by the US’s Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, that their vaccine was more than 90 per cent effective in preventing COVID-19, was followed almost immediately by the claims from the Russian Health Ministry that Sputnik V was equally or more effective.64 Both products were still in Phase 3, and everyone hoped that both manufacturers are correct. The UK approved Pfizer’s vaccine on 2 December and ordered 40 million doses; Kazakhstan started producing Sputnik V on 22 December. Belarus launched its vaccination programme with Sputnik V on 28 December, Hungary received its first 6,000 doses that same day and Algeria prepared for a half million does to arrive in January 2021. Orban’s office said, however, that Hungary will fill most of its requirements with supplies from the EU or China, because Russia’s production capacity is deficient. In turn, Skolkovos’s Hadassah Clinic announced that it would bring the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to Russia as soon as possible.65 The vaccination campaign in Russia was handicapped by the fact that it was not universally supported by the country’s medical professionals. According to a poll conducted by the RF Medics Network, some, perhaps

362  Quality of life many, were reluctant to participate and preferred a foreign, as opposed to home-grown dose. Inoculated Russians will be provided with immunity passports.66 Domestically produced Sputnik V is given free inside Russia. It is compulsory for front-line workers (doctors, teachers and social workers) and on a voluntary basis for everyone else.67

Quality of life Seeds of social (dis)satisfaction A social downslide began well before 2020. According to a Levada Centre survey conducted in January 2018, ‘the most disturbing problems’ facing respondents were rising prices (63%), poverty (47%), unemployment (40%) and corruption (38%). Foreign affairs crises, including sanctions, didn’t seem to bother them at all.68 Another survey, conducted a few weeks after the presidential election and published in May, placed the ‘unequal distribution of wealth’ at the top of grievances.69 In that connection, Forbes lists of billionaires for 2018 and 2019 had Russia ranking fifth, with 98 billionaires in 2019. No matter that this number paled against the US’s 607 billionaires, China’s 338 and Germany’s 152, the impression that Russia was run by its oligarchic billionaires was a persistent none. Promises made in his address to the Federal Assembly in March to allocate $162 billion spending for healthcare, education and infrastructure over the next six years were met with as much scepticism as hope, because of similar pledges in 2012. Analysts questioned these ambitions, and his overarching goal of lowering poverty levels, when the government published cost estimates in February 2019.70 Indeed, the May survey noted above showed that, while Russians were pleased with his performance in the international arena, they still viewed much of Putin’s domestic policy as problematic, especially in the areas of social safety networks, healthcare, pensions and wage disparities. On the other hand, it is a fact of Russian life that more than half the population believe in a fully paternalistic state, and that state support was both a right and a necessity. A major study by the Academy of Science’s Institute of Sociology in 2012 put this number at 52 per cent. The healthcare system and labour market were the crucial areas for popular concern; in the latter case, fair wages were the most desired goal.71 The pandemic was soon going to underscore these issues. Medvedev’s report to the Duma on government activities in 2018 maintained that there were 19 million people living in poverty in Russia, down 400,000 from the previous year. He declared that the decrease came from an increased minimum wage and adjusted social benefits.72 Poverty levels were also featured in Putin’s 2019 and 2020 addresses to the Federal Assembly. In the first instance, he proposed a ‘social contract’, guaranteeing that the state would alleviate poverty that ‘always literally crushes a person’.73 In contrast to 2018, when he emphasized new military technology, Putin’s

Quality of life  363 2019 address focussed on societal needs. A year later, he proposed changes to the Constitution to set Russia’s minimum wage at or above the subsistence line and to annually adjust pensions by the rate of inflation.74 In making recommendations for constitutional amendments, Putin was likely aware that a Levada poll conducted in August 2019 showed that rising prices again topped Russian ‘concerns’, followed closely by a lingering fear of poverty and corruption. Unemployment, access to medical care and a widening chasm between rich and poor in the country came next in that order. After twenty years with Putin behind the presidential desk, public worries about daily life had not changed very much, even though the quality of their lives had greatly improved. Other issues, such as the spread of drug abuse and HIV/AIDS and the potential for a general economic crisis, were all well ahead of limitations on democratic freedoms. The explosive question of retirement ages was almost absent from the responses.75 Numbers representing anger at corruption, the lack of justice in the courts and repression by the siloviki were up, if not by much. As the constitutional amendments were working their way through the system, newly appointed Prime Minister Mishustin ordered revisions in the state budget to boost welfare payments and pensions, and increase state investment in the economy.76 The budget adjustments were carried out expressly for implementing promises made by Putin in his ‘January Revolution’ address to the Federal Assembly. The problem, of course, was that in order for Putin to fulfil his 2018 promise to halve poverty in Russia by 2024, a higher rate of economic growth was necessary. The collapsing ruble, plummeting oil prices and coronavirus issues made Mishustin’s task seem impossible at that time.77 The question for Russia was whether the populace would continue to acquiesce. *** Putin’s 2018 commitments for his fourth term covered the entire spectrum of social needs in Russia and set high expectations for overall improvements in the quality of Russian life. When these economic pledges were jeopardized by a new surge of sanctions against Russia’s business class, the public seemed less concerned than one might have anticipated. As one Russian analyst wrote, ‘citizens are more willing to accept the authorities’ picture of the world’ when the problem is seen as a result of actions taken by ‘Western enemies’. Russia’s ruling elites are strengthened by sanctions, he argued, because the state helps them and the people tend to stand firm.78 That was probably an accurate assessment for 2018, yet it may not still reflect reality as 2021 comes around. Ministry of Economics reports in late 2018, showing that unemployment rates had dropped to 4.7 per cent and that real wages were growing, were encouraging, if somewhat misleading. Diminishing consumer confidence brought a slowdown in retail and catering organizations, and lower than expected yields in grains and vegetables caused food prices to rise.79 Moreover, the ministry’s data were debunked publicly by Rosstat numbers that showed

364  Quality of life real income declining consistently over the previous five years in spite of rising wage levels. According to the HSE, business incomes and social transfers were also in decline.80 The apparent indifference to sanction regimes expressed by Russian officials in the spring and summer of 2018 wavered already in the fall. Kudrin warned that a new round of Western embargoes would render the possibility of Putin achieving his inauguration assurances null and void. He made it plain that reducing international tensions was the only way to lower sanctions against the Kremlin.81 Whereas both Rosstat and the World Bank set the poverty level in Russia at 13.2 per cent in 2017, using different criteria the Presidential Academy of the National Economy and Public Administration reported in November 2018 that up to 22 per cent of the people were in the ‘poverty zone’, up from just a few years earlier.82 Rosstat raised the level somewhat in 2019, counting 20.9 million people living below the poverty line (14.3 per cent), thereby placing Putin’s goal of 12 per cent a little further out of reach.83 These data confirmed existing fears that the quality of life for millions of Russians was threatened by the issue of retirement ages that had been part of the public discourse for some years and then burst to the forefront in 2018. Surveys conducted in May that year showed that over half the respondents believed that the current age requirements were still appropriate (53%) and that only 6 per cent believed that the bar should be raised. A surprising number (35%) thought the pensionable age should be lowered. 84 When, in June 2018, the government finally decided to go ahead with the change in official retirement ages the transition period was set to start in 2019 and evolve gradually until 2028. Time was needed to soften the blow for expectant pensioners and also to enable the government to build up the pension fund to keep it above the inflation rate. Within a week of the announcement, over a million citizens signed an online petition opposing the change. Titled, ‘To the President of the Russian Federation, the Government, the Federal Assembly: Do not Raise the Retirement Age!’, it was authored by the Confederation of Labour of Russia, published on the Change.org website, and reached 2.5 million hits by the end of June.85 The Navalny movement, Yabloko and the Communist Party all staged authorized protests.86 The Confederation of Labour of Russia organized demonstrations in over 30 cities, including a World Cup host city. Dozens of applications for protest rallies were rejected and others remained ‘pending’. Still, demonstrators caught a break when the Russian Supreme Court ruled that municipal authorities could no longer reject an application for a rally simply because it might inconvenience non-participants.87 One commonly heard complaint was that over 17 per cent of Russian males and 6.5 per cent of females would not be expected to live long enough, or well enough, to benefit from their pensions. The Institute of Demography at the HSE made these numbers public in a life expectancy report in June 2018.88 The dispute also revealed that life expectancy for Russians had risen by nearly eight years since Putin took the presidency in 2000.89 Mortality rates

Quality of life  365 are one thing, quality of life is another. The additional work years meant that tens of thousands of Russians had to change their life plans, employers had to keep higher-paid people on salary longer than expected and younger people were now unable to take their places. Young families planning to have children had to wait longer so as to have retired grandparents help raise them. Aware that these criticisms hurt his ratings, Putin softened the reform, suggesting that the proposed pensionable age for women should be 60, instead of the 63 recommended in the draft law. He kept the proposed age for men at 65. His recommendations allowed early retirement for mothers of three or more children. The Duma approved (326–59) the bill on raising the age ceiling, along with amendments proposed by Putin, in late September, while Communists led a rally against it outside the House.90 Speaking to the issue, the president made it clear that Russia’s rapidly aging population and low birth rates were part of the consideration, as was the simple fact that Russia could no longer afford even existing pensions for the growing pensionable age group. He added that social benefits, such as discounts on public transport and prescription drugs, would be granted at the current retirement ages of 55 for women and 60 for men.91 Even with the pension situation mostly resolved, social unrest was in the air. According to Moscow’s Centre for Economic and Political Reforms (TsEPR), protests on behalf of particular social and economic interests spiked in 2018, when it recorded 2,500 events before the month of November.92 There were hundreds more in 2019, mass demonstrations and single pickets, many of them voicing grievances over deteriorating public services – hospital services, doctor shortages, transportation, garbage pick-up, schools and so on. Although the rise in social activism posed no threat to authorities, a perception that they might become politicized and even grow into a ‘colour revolution’ kept law enforcement on the alert. Increased demonstrations for economic reasons reflected a growing pessimism for the future of Russia. Results of a survey conducted by VTsIOM and published in November 2018 revealed that, while a clear majority was satisfied with their own life (58%), they were pessimistic about the economic future of their families.93 Attempting to defuse rising disaffection, in 2018 the government granted pay raises to teachers, doctors, social workers, veterinarians, researchers and other state workers. They were given another hike for 2019. Insurance pensions for non-working pensioners rose by 7 per cent, and the minimum wage increased, bringing it, finally, to the subsistence minimum. Unemployment benefits nearly doubled, and villagers were allocated a pension supplement. This last was awarded to anyone who worked in agriculture for 30 years. The right to purchase discounted bus, air and train tickets also expanded.94 By the fall of 2019, Rosstat claimed, unemployment had fallen to 4.4 per cent nationwide, with Moscow (1.3%) and St. Petersburg (1.3%) leading the way. Putin told potential investors at the ‘Russia Calling!’ forum in November that Russia’s unemployment rate was the lowest in its history.95

366  Quality of life Medvedev had addressed income disparities during a televised interview in February, saying that national budget funds should be distributed more fairly to villages, where about one-quarter of the population still lived, and incomes overall must be raised. His remarks came in the context of questions about new sanctions levelled by the US which, he said, would cause difficulties but would not prevent the National Projects from going forward.96 Mishustin’s budget amendments in 2020, noted above, and Putin’s constitutional proposals related to minimum wages and pension indexing capped a decade of slow progress on these quality of life essentials. Slowed by the pandemic in their attempts to improve daily living for Russians, and conscious of falling public confidence in it and the president, the government adopted legislation in June 2020 to supply soft loans for enterprises in single-industry towns, provide self-employed citizens with the same support measures that small and medium-sized businesses receive and double benefits for unemployed citizens with young children.97 In September, during an address to the Federation Council, Putin announced the indexation of pensions by 6.3 per cent for 2021 and substantial support for families with incomes less than the subsistence level.98 Keeping promises made during the pandemic and debates over the ‘January Revolution’, he announced that ‘maternity capital’ amounts were to be raised as of 1 January 2021, more places provided in nurseries for pre-schoolers, hot meals for all primary school children from the first to fourth grades, and pay increases for teachers. Funds were set aside to cover expenses for medical, teaching and digital economy university students, with priority granted to students from the regions.99 Whether these allocations would ease tensions in the regions and relieve pandemic-driven family anxieties overall would likely be clarified by the general elections of 2021. Climate change100 As if Russian families didn’t have enough to think about in their daily routines, accelerated global warming began to attract such concern in Russia that, in September 2019, the Kremlin ratified the Paris agreement on carbon emissions. Huge additional expenditures on Arctic development at a time when the Arctic ice is melting, equally costly droughts, wildfires and floods menaced budget allocations for the National Projects and unsettled the lives of thousands of Russian citizens. In 2020, Russia was still the world’s fourthlargest emitter of greenhouse gases, even though its overall consumption of oil and coal had been reduced and its use of natural gas increased. In early January 2020, Medvedev approved a national action plan to manage climate change.101 For some regions, especially Siberia, the Far East and the Arctic, the adaptation may have come too late (see Chapter 2). In July, the ice cover on the Arctic Ocean was the thinnest in recorded history; in June, the town of Verkhoyansk, in Sakha, suffered the hottest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic; and the nearby Batagalka crater, the largest megaslump in the world, began widening.102 By mid-June 2020, wildfires had

Quality of life  367 already burned through over 12 million acres in Siberia and Russia’s Far East. Greenpeace, which claimed that nearly three times that many acres were burning, and other experts warned that the year could be the worst in history for such phenomena. Wildfires that emit huge quantities of carbon dioxide, and trigger cyclones, increased five-fold during the spring/summer heatwave and raged within 50 km of the Arctic Ocean in Yakutia.103 By the end of August there were over 600 wildfires blazing in Siberia and the Russian Arctic, and reports showed that Russia had its warmest September ever, with its northern and Arctic regions averaging the largest rises in temperature.104 The massive diesel fuel reservoir collapse in Norilsk in June was also a consequence of climate change. Damage caused by the diesel fuel drew greater than usual attention to other such incidents and made it plain that they should not be seen as isolated incidents. Shortly after the spill occurred, an enrichment plant belonging to Norilsk Nickel was caught pumping wastewater from a dangerously full tanker into nearby tundra. The fact that responsible employees were suspended and the Investigation Committee opened an investigation did not mitigate harm done to Norilsk Nickel’s reputation, to the environment and to the public’s already limited faith in government oversight.105 This was followed by reports that a petroleum slick in the Khimki Reservoir that supplies water to Moscow was growing in size exponentially. The slick was traced to a drainage system from a company (Khimvodostok) that failed to follow a 2018 order that it install more modern waste management treatment equipment.106 Making matters worse, a landfill fire close to Norilsk sent plumes of smoke towards the tundra. Russia’s independent media picked up on these incidents, blogs and social media carried photos of the endangered sites, and climate change activists accused Nornickel of covering up the seriousness of the ‘ecological catastrophes’.107 Reports that the Russian climate was warming faster than anywhere else on Earth and that 2019 had been the country’s hottest year on record compelled the government to adopt the plan noted above, which emphasized damage control, and also outlined ways and means to exploit whatever advantages the changes might provide. The plan recognized global warming as a problem officially, noted that a rapidly warming climate generated new health risks, and foretold more natural disasters. It then outlined 29 preventative and opportunistic steps planned for 2020–22 as a first stage in climate change management. These included contingency plans for temporary resettlement and evacuations, vaccinations, infrastructure construction (dams, bridges), reduced reliance on fossil fuels and improved land use management.108 On paper, the plan sounded encompassing and properly based on science; getting it done was the problem. The National Plan has a lot of history to overcome. In 2019, the Germanybased NGO, the Climate Change Performance Index, placed Russia at 52nd of 61 countries for its adoption of policies to combat adverse climate change. The index compilers include greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy,

368  Quality of life energy application and climate policy in their categories for investigation. Russia fared poorly on each of them.109 Even though Kudrin’s Audit Chamber has advised that climate change will have a debilitating effect on Russia’s GDP and negatively impact the National Project targets,110 the action plan noted above did not propose any capping of greenhouse gas emissions. The fact that all Russian records for high temperatures were broken again in 2020 and the Russian Arctic and Siberia were the hardest hit, added an exclamation mark to the need for action on global warming. For the first time in recorded history, the Laptev Sea, the so-called birthplace of Arctic sea ice, was not frozen by the end of October.111 A step in the right direction came in December when experts from Russia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland formed a regional alliance (BRIES) to monitor the climate and environment in the Barents Sea region. Not an official government agency of any of the participating countries, BRIES comprises environmental and journalist organizations that will, presumably, keep appropriate authorities and the public informed of climate-related conditions.112 Yet another major ‘to do’ fell into Putin’s already full bucket.

General healthcare According to one Western analyst, Russia had a few ready-made advantages in combatting the coronavirus pandemic: more doctors and other medical workers per capita than most other countries, plenty of hospital beds, and universal medical insurance coverage.113 While these facts and the short-term remedies noted above were effective enough at first, in the long run the pandemic exposed serious weaknesses in Russia’s healthcare system. Overworked and underpaid medical workers found it difficult to manage the greatly increased workload. Cuts in government funding over the previous few years meant that, in fact, there were not enough ambulances or specialized ambulance crews, not enough hospital beds, young doctors, nursing assistants or hospital cleaners. Hospital equipment in many areas was old and of poor quality. Another problem was the long-standing intuitive distrust of the quality of medical care, which may have prevented many Russians from seeking help in time. Regional disparities were glaring as well: hospitals and healthcare in major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg are mostly modern and up-todate, while in many of the regions medical infrastructure is dilapidated and not much improved since Soviet times. Most importantly, cuts to healthcare in federal budgets over several years had made the study of medicine unattractive. The original purposes of the slashes that started in 2012 had been to make healthcare more efficient and modern, but they came at the expense of up to half the medical staff in some clinics. The Russian Medical Association warned Putin, in October 2019, that the ‘reforms’ had already cost Moscow over 2,000 infectious disease treatment beds and that further cuts might lead to ‘catastrophe’. They were

Quality of life  369 right. By mid-April 2020, student doctors were mobilized to work in understaffed hospitals, many of them as unpaid volunteers.114 The appointment of Mikhail Murashko as health minister was part of an attempt to resolve these and other issues. Named minister during the ‘January Revolution’, Murashko brought his experience as head of Rosdravnadzor (since 2013), Russia’s monitoring agency for health, to the job. A medical doctor with lengthy practice in the regions (Komi Republic), he had a reputation for efficiency and anti-corruption efforts in the medical field, both characteristics required for the hoped-for modernization of the sector. Serious medical issues exposed before the pandemic didn’t go away. For instance, in the spring of 2018 a surprising report to the effect that obesity levels in Russia had risen by nearly 50 per cent over the previous five years shook the healthcare system. The Ministry of Health claimed to have a strategy for the development of healthy lifestyles that included an ongoing campaign against heavy smoking and alcohol abuse, plus a public relations drive in support of good eating habits. A study released by Rospotrebnadzor assigned 63 per cent of deaths in Russia to bad nutrition. While calling for detailed labelling of food products, the agency blamed heavy consumption of ‘salt, sugar and fat’ for needless fatalities in the country and, especially among women, the surge of obesity.115 Supporters of these objectives had a hard row to hoe. Data compiled for The Lancet in 2018 showed that, even though both life expectancy and infant mortality rates had greatly improved in Russia, they remained low compared to countries with similar socio-demographic index levels. Russian women (76.2) continued to live on average 11 years longer than men (65.4 years), whose abuse of alcohol, drug use and smoking still prevailed.116 Minister of Health at the time, Veronika Skvortsova, laid the issue out starkly when she said that 70 per cent of fatalities among working-age men were associated with alcohol abuse, which led to cirrhosis and multiple other health complications, plus accidents.117 A year-end report by the State Traffic Inspectorate claimed that over 270,000 drunken drivers were stopped and 41,000 of them arrested in 2020. Skvortsova was given some slight help in this regard when a vigilante group calling itself ‘Lev Protiv’ (Lion Against) began patrolling public places on weekends and reporting drinkers to the police, or pouring the alcoholic beverage out.118 This group of young people also opposes smoking in public, sometimes spraying the cigarette from a water bottle if the smoker is in a non-smoking area and refuses to butt out. They take videos of their actions and post them on a YouTube channel.119 Even though smoking has declined significantly in Russia, anti-smokers still have a lot of work to do. A research report released by Skolkovo’s Centre for Health Care noted in December 2019 that 30 per cent of Russians still smoked cigarettes. Director of the Centre, Natalia Komarova, said that smokers were mainly men and that only about 8 per cent used vapes, hookahs or cigarettes with filters. Legislation adopted in that month equated e-cigarettes with conventional ones when it came to public places where smoking is prohibited.120

370  Quality of life Cuts to medical services in 2019, especially in the regions, where Putin had promised improvements, prompted protests that drew national attention. Activists and pensioners marched with posters demanding that local hospitals obey Putin’s orders that departments they closed be re-opened. In one case, low wages and poor working conditions motivated staff and doctors at a prominent cancer centre to walk out. They complained especially about their inability to treat children properly because of infrastructure deterioration and overcrowding. The walk-out was just one of many non-political actions taken at a time when almost any social grievance could trigger a demonstration: fires, floods, building and bridge collapses, unwanted garbage disposal facilities, unwanted state, regional or church construction projects, environment damage, police corruption and so on. Unauthorized spontaneous social protests were on the rise.121 Given the history of funding for healthcare, Russians were not impressed by Putin’s pledge in November 2019 to increase the percentage of GDP allocated to medical services. Financing of the sector would rise in 2020 to 4.1 per cent of GDP, he said, compared to the prior year’s 3.7 per cent. Specialists in his audience in Kaliningrad told Putin that the funds allocated to healthcare in his five-year projection were insufficient. He responded by noting that 4.1 per cent was, indeed, lower than in many developed countries, but the alternative was to raise taxes to the same level as those countries.122 The pandemic made this explanation look flimsy, at best. A lack of medicinal drugs, caused by a dramatic drop in imported medicines, regulations protecting domestic suppliers and, since 2019, a law setting minimum prices on government tenders for the purchase of medicines, had already grown serious before the pandemic hit Russia. Nearly a quarter of the tenders were not even bid on. The problem is especially acute for victims of diseases like HIV/AIDS and cystic fibrosis, who rely mostly on imported antibiotics. In his address to the Federal Assembly that year, Putin demanded that the issue of shortages be resolved ‘as soon as possible so that people, especially parents of sick children, no longer find themselves in a hopeless situation when the necessary medicines cannot be legally obtained’. The situation was worse in the regions where, he said, ‘purchases were actually being thwarted’, leaving people without ‘vital medicines’.123 All of this came back to haunt the government in 2020. Alcohol & drug abuse CPSU leaders from the time of Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s to M.S. Gorbachev in the 1980s have tried to curb the abuse of alcohol by Russians, with very limited success. Every leader was well aware of the problems the heavy consumption of alcohol caused in the workplace and in homes, that is, the loss of work time, industrial and traffic accidents, and domestic abuse. Low life expectancy, increases in suicides and a rise in crime were among other consequences of heavy drinking. What’s more, anti-alcohol abuse campaigns prompted drinkers to turn to dangerous home brews (samogon)

Quality of life  371 and, because the sale of vodka was a state monopoly, also cost the government large sums of money. In the 21st century, Putin could justifiably claim greater success in such efforts than any of his predecessors.124 Rospotrebnadzor announced in April 2018 that deaths from alcohol poisoning in Russia had dropped by 25 per cent in 2017. The consumer monitoring agency said that further steps taken over the year, such as tighter controls over retail sales of non-drinkable alcohol (e.g. food additives and flavouring), a ban on selling alcohol after 11 p.m. and increases in the minimum price on spirits, were among reasons for the improvement.125 Deputy Prime Minister Golikova submitted a recommendation to raise the legal drinking age from 18 to 21 to the Duma in February 2019.126 That failed. Nevertheless, the WHO reported in October 2019 that alcohol consumption in Russia had fallen 43 per cent between 2003 and 2016, and credited alcohol control measures introduced by various ministries during that period. This result also helped explain the rise in Russian life expectancy.127 Golikova and Murashko continued to advocate raising the age for retail purchase of alcohol to 21, even as the spread of the coronavirus infection took up the time of the ministry.128 Much less satisfactory was the important matter of children’s healthcare. A study issued by the Audit Chamber in February 2020 harshly criticized the ‘unsatisfactory technical and sanitary conditions’ of medical facilities used for children’s clinics. In the regions, some of these buildings lacked running water and central heating, and about half of them were not readily accessible by wheelchair. The paper noted that doctors and administrators alike complained about underfunding, too few trained technicians and dilapidated infrastructure. Deputy Director of the Audit Chamber, Galina Izotova, echoed these concerns in her introduction to the report.129 Shortly after the Audit Chamber’s study, and perhaps connected to its findings, the Ministry of Health issued new models for organizing health clinics so as to provide a ‘continuous increase in the availability, quality and safety of medical care by redirecting all the resources of the system to meet the needs of patients’. The ministry allocated funds to provide inspectors who would check for compliance at least every three years.130 Infectious diseases other than COVID-19 Reviews were mixed when it came to the management of infectious diseases prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. By the end of 2019, HIV cases were reaching epidemic levels, surpassing one million people. Although these numbers were disclosed by Rospotrebnadzor’s AIDS Control and Prevention Research Centre, the government remained mostly silent on the matter. According to activists, discrimination against LGBT communities was one of the reasons for the increase; others blamed the indifference of the government towards health issues in the regions. In the opinion of the Federal AIDS Centre director, Vadim Pokrovsky, the main culprits were insufficient

372  Quality of life funding for treatment and preventative programmes. Doubtless the Orthodox Church’s condemnation of gays and lesbians, and the lack of progressive sex education courses in schools, contributed to the problem.131 In at least one area, tuberculosis, there appeared to have been a major breakthrough. Skvortsova announced in 2018 that the WHO placed Russia close to the top among countries reducing the incidence of TB. The death rate for the disease dropped by 60 per cent over the previous decade, she said, and the number of cases by over 40 per cent. The disease remained a problem, though, as nearly 80,000 Russians contracted it in 2018, or about 48 per 100,000 people.132 World Cup, fitness and sport Putin has said many times that the road to health in Russia lies with fitness and competitive sport for everyone. He set the tone himself by remaining obviously fit, refraining from smoking and consuming little alcohol. His viewpoint also meant that success in international competitions by Russian teams and individuals were important both for reasons of national pride and also as an example to set for Russia’s youth. Victories in major sporting events, such as the World Cup, were central to these ambitions, just as the doping scandal of 2015 that caused Russia to be banned from country competition in the Olympics (IOC) and the International Amateur Athletic Federation was a major blow to the country’s sporting prestige and national pride (see ahead). All of his concerns about the place of sport in the national consciousness played out during preparations for the 2018 World Cup. As tickets sold out quickly, the sports ministry worried about acts of terrorism, hooliganism and the flood of tourists to the most watched events in international sport. Various crises in international relations and accelerated sanctions regimes caused governments, especially Western governments, to threaten boycotts, and the huge costs for facelifts on 11 host cities, 12 new stadiums, new hotels and airport reconstruction were daunting. Security expenses were estimated in the billions. Just as it had savagely denigrated Russian efforts to prepare for the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014, the Western media fell over itself to find fault in the lead-up to the FIFA events in Russia. Though Western leaders stayed away, there were no team or national boycotts for the World Cup and about 200,000 foreign visitors arrived in the country before the month-long tournament opened on 14 June 2018. Even with all the carping from abroad, the World Cup month was an enormous success. Tens of thousands attended the games, had fun, spent millions and went home satisfied. Russians revelled in the competition as their own underrated team advanced to the quarter-finals, greatly exciting Russian fans, few of whom expected their team to get that far. As the New York Times put it, ‘the crowd has gone absolutely bonkers in here’.133 Even Navalny cheered them on, while a state-owned newspaper called a victory

Quality of life  373 over Spain a ‘miracle’.134 In difficult times, an opportunity for pride in accomplishments witnessed by the entire world, both in the unexpected success of its team and in terms of the World Cup tournament itself, was an important boost to Russian morale. Putin basked in responses such as FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s description of the 2018 World Cup as the ‘best ever’.135 These words were an enormous relief to Russia’s sporting circles, who were still reeling from the well-known doping scandal, making the World Cup worth its extraordinary expense. There was even a short-lived breakthrough in Russia’s status as pariah in international track and field competition when, in September 2018, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) voted 9–2 to reinstate Russia’s anti-doping agency, RUSADA. The WADA’s controversial decision cleared a path for Russians to once again participate in major international track and field competitions. On the other hand, the IAAF maintained its suspension of Russia’s athletics federation.136 The relief was short-lived, and RUSADA found itself facing sanctions again in November 2019. WADA’s Compliance Review Committee (CRC) ruled that RUSADA was non-compliant, claiming it found evidence of manipulation of data from a Russian laboratory. In December, WADA banned Russian athletes from Olympics for the next four years, though ‘clean’ athletes were eligible to compete as neutrals, i.e. absent the Russian flag, anthem and team name. Putin called the decision ‘unfair’ and politically motivated.137 Russia’s appeal to regain team identity went before the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne nearly a year later.138 The appeal failed and a decision was reached to exclude Russia from ‘major’ international competitions: the Summer Olympics 2020 in Tokyo; the IAAF World Championships in 2021; the Winter Olympics 2022 in Beijing; the Women’s World Cup 2023; and the Summer Universiades in 2021 and 2023 (scheduled to be hosted by Russia). They are allowed to compete as a neutral team in Qatar at the Men’s Football World Cup 2022.139 Because it was too late to re-schedule, Russia will host the world’s volleyball championships in 2022. It also retained planned tournaments that were at the European rather than the world levels. The Court of Arbitration offered some relief in December 2020. The fouryear ban proposed by WADA was cut in half and clean Russian athletes will be able to compete in the Tokyo Olympics (2021) and Beijing’s Winter Games (2022). They can use ‘Russia’ on their uniforms, along with the words ‘neutral athlete’. In addition, RUSADA was ordered to pay a hefty fine to WADA. The doping scandal had resulted in a limited purge of senior sport officials in 2016, and it wasn’t until 2020 that a real sweep was undertaken in Russia’s international sports scene. The sports minister, Pavel Kolobkov, a former Olympian gold medallist who was named to the post in 2016 as a sop to critics, lost his job in January 2020. Oleg Matytsin, the president of the International University Sport Federation since 2015, and a member of the IOC’s education commission, took his place and vowed to fight for Russia’s reinstatement. Dmitry Chernyshenko, the former head of the 2014 Sochi

374  Quality of life Olympic Committee, was named as one of eight new deputy prime ministers, and the ministers for sport, health, education and culture were replaced. The sports world thought that this marked a final clean-up of the Russia’s international sports activities. Even that purge had limits. In August 2020, RUSADA fired its head, Yury Ganus, after he accused Russia’s sports leadership of failing to address the issue of doping seriously enough. Other officials resigned in protest of the firing.140 Not getting much help from management, individual Russian athletes tried to clear their own reputations, 43 of them as third parties in the four-day hearing in Lausanne held in November 2020. Others fought back earlier. Two-time Olympic biathlete champion Olga Zaitseva, now retired, filed a defamation suit in July against Grigory Rodchenkov, the doctor who claimed to have prepared drug cocktails for Russian sports stars, and whose testimony swayed WADA. Insisting that none of his tale was true, she and two others sued him and also filed an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Her vehement denials that she used illegal drugs were lent credence by information posted in Der Spiegel that revealed inconsistencies in Rodchenkov’s claims. At about the same time the president of the Russian Athletics Federation (RusAF), Yevgeny Yurchenko, resigned. He told reporters that the RusAF could not afford the heavy fine imposed on it by World Athletics.141 The scandal was a bitter pill for Russian sports enthusiasts to swallow, and left a long-term stain on Russia’s sports reputation. In the winter of 2020 the Duma adopted a package of bills that reorganized sports at the amateur and mass level. These were based on instructions given to the Presidential Council for the Development of Physical Culture and Sports by Putin in October 2019, and provided frameworks for various physical culture and sports societies. Local and regional organizations were handed greater obligations to plan and run inter-republic competitions, manage sports teams and sponsor widespread participation in sporting activities. According to Mikhail Degtyarev, then head of the Duma Committee on physical education, sports, tourism and youth affairs, the purpose of the bills was to raise the percentage of citizens who were ‘systematically involved’ in physical education and sport.142

Religion Russia has four ‘historical religions’, Christian Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam and Lutheranism, each of which gets subsidies from the state. Most other Christian organizations and mainstream non-Christian religions are represented in Russia too, among them an active Shamanisn in Siberia. According to the 1997 Russian law on religious associations, adherents of all religions have a right to ‘freedom of conscience and freedom of religious creed, and also to equality before the law, regardless of attitude toward religion and beliefs’.143 It doesn’t always work out that way in practice.

Quality of life  375 Catholicism functions openly, for less than 1 per cent of the population. As a proselytizing religion whose faithful owe allegiance to a foreign person, the Pope, it is looked upon with suspicion by the Russian state and as a competitor by the Orthodox Church. Other proselytizing Christian denominations are treated more harshly. The Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs), for example, is labelled an extremist organization by law and is prevented from congregating or handing out literature. The Russian Supreme Court ruled that the JWs put the Kingdom of God above country and are therefore potentially subversive. Accordingly, all 395 branches in Russia were ordered closed. Authorities launched a campaign against them in the spring of 2018, conducting raids and detaining dozens of members. In Novosibirsk, police seized religious literature, cell phones and electronic data from JW homes, and claimed to have found explosives. The group denied any subversive activity.144 In February 2019, a Danish Witness was found guilty of extremism and handed a six-year sentence in Russia, becoming the first member to be imprisoned for his faith. About 75 more Witnesses were arrested in the winter–spring of that year, and a spokesman for the JW asserted that some adherents were tortured after 19 were arrested in Surgut. Nearly 800 raids were conducted in 2019 and, as of December, over 300 people had been charged or convicted since the law passed in 2017.145 The JWs’ disregard for national anthems and flags angers Russians, but the notion that they are ‘extremist’ in the manner of ISIS is, of course, nonsense. Problematic for Russian church leaders and secular authorities is the fact that the JWs have a centralized structure with its headquarters in the US.146 International condemnation may have had some effect. Several sentences imposed on Russian JWs in 2019 were overturned in March 2020 by a court in Penza, and the Danish Witness was released early, in June 2020, and ordered to pay a fine in lieu of his remaining sentence.147 The difficulties facing the JWs, and other proselytizing religions such as the Church of the Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), stem in part from sweeping anti-terrorist laws passed in 2016 that included a ban on preaching or disseminating religious materials unless by authorized officials in registered religious buildings or sites. The laws covered activities in private homes and communications online.148 Police arrested leaders of the Church of Scientology (CS) in St. Petersburg in 2017 and accused them of extremism, illegal business activities and incitement. The CS is not a recognized religious institution in Russia, where it is considered a cult because of its programme of ideas called Dianetics. With its headquarters in California, its international financial enterprises linked globally and its proselytizing practices, it is unsurprising that Russian authorities are suspicious of the organization. France and Germany also consider CS a cult. Their sites in Russia have been raided regularly and several members have been charged with fraud and money laundering.149 The Constitutional Court heard complaints from Pentecostal groups who were fined for posting notices of their religious premises inside private

376  Quality of life residential premises, in short form, and not outside. The Court ruled in November that such notices must also be placed outside the building (if only in the foyer) using its full official name: Word of Life Church of Christians of Evangelical Faith (Pentecostals). Citizens must be able to understand what religion ‘they are dealing with’, so said the Court.150 At about 80 per cent of the faithful in Russia, Orthodoxy is by far the dominant historic religion. Its Russianness made it a victim of the Ukrainian crisis. Shortly after Poroshenko’s accusations against the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine (see Chapter 5), the Ukrainian Orthodox Church split from the ROC, with the blessing of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople. In response, the Russian organization froze relations with Patriarch Bartholomew I, archbishop of Constantinople (Istanbul), who in turn rehabilitated Ukraine’s Patriarch Filaret. Filaret had been excommunicated in 1997 for advocating a split with Russian Orthodoxy. Consequently, Putin could no longer claim to be the secular leader of the entire Orthodox Christian world (Russkii mir), and religious issues became yet another variable in the Russia-Ukraine contest.151 The degree to which church affiliation became toxic in Ukraine was symbolized in February 2019 when the Ukrainian SBU (security forces) prevented a bishop in the Moscow Patriarchate Church in Ukraine from re-entering the country and stripped him of his Ukrainian citizenship. Bishop Gedeon (Yuriy Kharon), who is also a US citizen, was accused of undefined ‘anti-Ukrainian activity’.152 Islam is the second-largest religion in Russia, numbering around 15 million adherents (or 10 per cent of the population). Several subjects of the Federation are predominantly Islamic: Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, KarachayCherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria, while Tatarstan and Bashkortostan are around 40 per cent Muslim. Although followers of Islam in the North Caucasus have produced domestic and international terrorists who serve in the ranks of ISIL, al-Qaeda and other such organizations, the republics themselves remain loyal components of the Federation, perhaps because their individual GDPs depend on Moscow’s largesse. As we saw in Chapter 2, inter-ethnic tensions in Russia are more often than not driven first by traditional religious disputes and then shaped by levels of poverty, unemployment and uncertainty about the future. The Jewish population of Russia makes up less than 1 per cent of the total and is mainly secular. Their once-large numbers were decimated by pogroms under the tsars, murders by invading Nazis and the Stalinist regime and, more recently, by mass emigration to Israel. The Jewish Autonomous Oblast (Birobidzhan) has about 2,000 Jews, a small part of the oblast’s population. On a more encouraging note, in June 2019 Putin presided over the inauguration of a monument dedicated to Jewish resistance leaders in Nazi concentration camps and ghettos. Construction of the monument was launched in January 2018 with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in attendance. The monument is located at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Centre in Moscow.

Quality of life  377 Another change for the better came when a law providing religious pilgrims with special status came into effect in November 2019. This status will be provided only to registered religious organizations, though pilgrims to sites can travel independently; for example, foreign Doukhobors who travel to the Tolstoy estate, Yasnaya Polyana. The law’s main expressed purpose is to prevent scams by agencies or individuals that take money for pilgrimages and then don’t fulfil their promises. Putin meets annually with representatives of Russian religious associations. On National Unity Day, 4 November 2020, delegates from Orthodox, Lutheran, Evangelical, Old-Rite and Armenia Christian establishments, plus Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist organizations attended. Putin stressed national unity and the role that all religions had played on historical turning points, such as the Time of Troubles and World War II. ‘Inter-ethnic and interreligious peace is the keystone for our huge country’, he said, while urging religious leaders to help harmonize relations and ‘prevent extremism and terrorism’. He cited from the Bible, the Quran, the Torah and Buddha to augment his video-conferenced message.153 Constitutional amendments 2020 The amendments proposed by Putin in 2020 included a description of the Russian Federation as a country that preserved ‘the memory of the ancestors who transmitted to us ideals and faith in God’. This addition was proposed to Putin by Patriarch Kirill and representatives of the other historic religions in Russia. It did not counter other articles that guaranteed Russians the right to profess any religion, or none, or violate the fact that officially Russia is a secular state.154 Coronavirus & the Church Reluctant to act at first, the Orthodox Church finally issued a series of 22 sanitary measures (no kissing of relics) for liturgy services, baptisms and communion, and requested that people with symptoms should not visit churches. These prescriptions were explained by citing Mathew 4:7, ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God’.155 It was not until late April that Patriarch Kirill recommended that parishioners pray at home and watch his Easter service on television, though he left final decisions to diocesan bishops.

Demographics, immigration & the workforce Rosstat data showed that the number of Russian citizens decreased in 2018, dropping to 146.8 million. Rising urbanization and slower immigration were part of this trend.156 Hoping to rectify the population loss, in March 2019 Putin signed a plan of action called the ‘Concept of State Migration Policy’ which made it easier for immigrants to gain citizenship. He named postSoviet states with Russian-speakers as potential ‘donor countries’ and

378  Quality of life ordered the creation of working groups headed by Tatyana Likatkina to implement the Concept.157 Seeking Russian-speaking immigrants was understandable, but it was likely that ‘Russian-looking’ was an unstated criterion as well. The simplified rules brought an upsurge in the granting of citizenships. For example, during the first quarter of 2020 double the number of passports were issued to foreigners than during the same time in 2019. Two-thirds of these, 108,500, were former Ukrainian nationals.158 Putin had taken up the never-ending problem of population decline in his February 2019 address to the Federal Assembly by offering mortgage benefits and property tax incentives to Russians with large families. These would augment the increased aid already pledged to low income families, families with ‘disabled’ children, and improved access to doctors and medical assistants in small towns and the countryside.159 Golikova told journalists that the proposed social benefits would be implemented as of January 2020 and cost about ₽80 billion, a sum covered in the annual budget. At that time, Russia’s National Welfare fund held about ₽2 trillion ($70 billion). Her assurances were overtaken by the pandemic and so had to be re-issued later in 2020 under quite different conditions. In further efforts to attract new citizens, in April 2020 the Duma adopted (302–0) legislation allowing for dual citizenships. Authors of the bill hoped to draw new citizens from Russian speakers in post-Soviet states and Germany, who will no longer have to renounce their other citizenships. The bill exempted spouses and children from a regulation that requires five consecutive years in residence before becoming eligible for citizenship.160 Employment opportunities were already difficult for labour migrants. For example, an amendment to immigration regulations in June 2018 complicated the process of registering foreign employees.161 The law now compels labour migrants to register a residence address with the Federal Migration Service (FNS) soon after their arrival in Russia. Previously, an employer could list them with a work address only. Since many, perhaps most, migrants rent space off the books, landlords do not want to comply with the new rule. This regulatory restriction further undermines Russia’s workforce, which is rated as one of the least productive in the world.162 The regulation mirrored the growing xenophobia in Russia revealed in surveys conducted by the Levada Centre. According to polls conducted in 2018, the percentage of Russians who approved restrictions on certain ‘undesirable’ nationalities had more than doubled since the previous year. So, too, had the number of Russians who advocated ‘Russia for [ethnic] Russians’ (Rossiia dlia russkikh). Even as the Central Asian and Balkan immigrants established deep roots in major Russian cities they faced significant discrimination.163 The problem was exemplified by angry anti-immigrant rallies in Siberia in 2019 after reports spread that three Central Asian migrants had abducted and raped a woman in Yakutsk. Police had to place a local mosque under protection, and authorities urged calm as they arrested three persons, all

Quality of life  379 Table 9.1  Q: Would You Limit those who come to live in Russia …, Percentage?

Roma Chinese Vietnamese Immigrants from former Central Asian Republics of the USSR From the Caucasus Any country Ukrainians Europeans *** Approve ‘Russia for Russians’ Limit flow of immigrants altogether Do not limit flow

July 2017

July 2018

17 15 12 19

32 31 26 25

22 28 8 4

23 28 17 12

10 58 28

19 67 28

Source: Compiled by the author from data produced by the Levada-tsentr, 19-25 July 2018, and by Elena Mukhametshina, ‘V Rossii rezko vyrosli ksenofobnye nastroeniia’, Vedomosti, 26 August 2018.

Kyrgyz. The level of distrust of Muslim migrants remained high in Siberia and other unauthorized protests were held; bus drivers failed to show up, fearing violence, and fruit stands usually run by migrants were closed. The governor of Sakha, Aysen Nikolaev, announced new measures against illegal migration, among other things barring them, counter-productively, from working in transport, commerce, construction and agriculture (Table 9.1).164 These obstacles aside, labour immigrants into Russia, especially Russian speakers from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, jumped in the first quarter of 2019 by nearly 100,000, almost double that of the same period in 2018. The numbers record only those with valid work permits. Many more come in illegally and work in the shadow economy, pay no taxes and, many believe, depress wages for Russian and migrant quota workers.165 The coronavirus threw a different light onto the migrant labour situation in 2020, when millions of registered and unregistered migrant workers lost their jobs, especially in the construction sector. Most of them had little or no financial support in Russia and also were unable to return to their, mostly, Central Asian homelands.166 Aid provided to registered migrants by the Russian government and charity groups helped, but the numbers were overwhelming. Even after home countries lifted travel restrictions for citizens, the situation remained difficult because planes and passenger trains were not moving. Migrant workers by the thousands were still living in tent camps in the late fall of 2020, waiting to go home. Russia’s Emergency Measures Ministry provided tents and other assistance while the migrants’ respective embassies in Russia did almost nothing to help them.167 Surveys conducted in the midst of the pandemic showed 51 per cent of respondents now supported the idea of ‘Russia for Russians’, either fully or within certain limits.168

380  Quality of life

Back to work In his post-All Russia Vote meeting with the Council on Strategic Development and National Projects, Putin requested that the revised prospects for national development have as their unifying task the improvement of the peoples’ quality of life. That meant investments in life expectancy programmes, fighting poverty, healthcare, education, research and development, plus improved housing and road transportation. The new agenda was not much different than previous ones. This time, though, he promised attention to reality and turned the projects over to Mishustin on the assumption that he would prove more efficient on the file than Medvedev had been. Pandemic management was a theme throughout the council’s discussion of Russia’s future and, not surprisingly, the national Healthcare Project now stood at the top of the list of 13 fields covered by the proposed new plan. It included a new system of long-term home care and the reorganization of vaccination programmes. Schools, ‘especially in rural areas’, must get necessary equipment for e-learning, and improved training facilities were to be made available to both teachers and medical personnel. At a press conference, however, Peskov warned that the earlier goals of raising life expectancy and cutting poverty in half would have to be delayed. Putin gave the Council three months to prepare a revised national development plan.169 Planning for the future did not mean that the pandemic was as yet under control. As the number of confirmed cases in Russia soared in the fall, officials found themselves again persuading citizens to wear masks, keep safe distances from each other and avoid crowds. This was not a task Putin could have foreseen when he launched the ‘January Revolution’ and the new social agenda in July. Talk of the national development plan faded even deeper from sight and mind as the pandemic hit its second stride in October and November. Unemployment numbers crept up and food prices rose. Putin called for a food price cap in December, as we have seen, but that may have been too late. As Russians had been doing for time immemorial, they were going to have to wait awhile for the next stage in their improved quality of life.

Notes 1 Reports from ITAR-TASS, 20 October 1999, and Interfax, 14 December 1999, in REDA 1999, Vol. 1 (2000), pp. 282–3. 2 Putin, ‘Otkrytoe pis’mo Vladimira Putina k rossiiskim izbirateliam’, Izvestiia 25 February 2000. 3 For a documentary narrative of the social impact of perestroika, the 1990s and Putin’s early years, follow the appropriate chapters in J.L. Black, ed. USSR Documents Annual and REDA. Vols. 1987–2007. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1988–2009. 32 volumes in all. 4 ‘Soveshchanie s chlenami Pravitel’stva’, Kremlin.ru, 17 March 2020, Kremlin.ru/ events/president/news/63001. 5 Irina Nevinnaia, ‘Poberegis’. V Rospotrebnadzore poiasnili, komu nado sdelat’ test na koronavirus’, Vedomosti, 1 March 2020; ‘How is Russia Preparing for the

Quality of life  381 Coronavirus?’, The Moscow Times, 29 January 2020; ‘Coronavirus in Russia: The Latest News’, The Moscow Times, 10 February 2020, and subsequent daily reports. 6 ‘Russia first nation to finish human trials for COVID vaccine’, The Economic Times (India), 13 June 2020; ‘Russia Eyes First Coronavirus Vaccine Launch in Mid-August’, The Moscow Times, 13 July 2020; Aleksandr Stepanov, ‘Dobrovol’tsam vveli vtoroi component vaktsiny ot COVID-19’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 13 July 2020. 7 ‘Russia Military Says Virus Vaccine Is Tested and Safe’, The Moscow Times, 15 July 2020; see also ‘Russia approves R-Pharm’s Coronavir for COVID-19 treatment’, Pharmaceutical Technology, 9 July 2020. 8 ‘Coronavirus in Russia: The Latest News, Feb. 28’, The Moscow Times, 28 February 2020. 9 Aleksandra Chunova, Bela Liauw, ‘V Moskve i Podmoskov’e zapretiat nakhodit’sia na ulitse bez propiska’, Vedomosti, 29 March 2020. 10 ‘Sobyanin otkryl samyi krupnyi v Moskve statsionar dlia bol’nykh koronavirusom’, Kommersant, 27 March 2020; ‘Moscow to Build New $135M Coronavirus Hospital – Reports’, The Moscow Times, 11 March 2020 11 Telegram, RBK, 7 May 2020, t.me/rbc_news/11867; ‘Soveshchanie o merakh po bor’be s rasprostraneniem koronavirusa v Rossii’, 24 March 2020, kremlin.ru/ events/president/news/63053. A special website, Covid-19, ‘Operativnye dannye’, provided a daily count. See stopkoronavirus.rf/#operational-data. On the problem of getting accurate information from regional hospitals, see Judy Twigg, ‘Russia’s Health Care System and the Covid-19 Pandemic’, Russian Analytical Digest, No.251, 20 April 2020, pp. 2–5. See also, Piotr Sauer, Evan Gershkovich, ‘Russia Is Boasting About Low Coronavirus Deaths. The Numbers Are Deceiving’, The Moscow Times, 8 May 2020. 12 Mosgorzdrav.ru, Koronavirus COVID-19 informatsiia dlia grazhdan, ‘DEPSDRAV denied allegations of incorrect calculation of mortality from COVID-19’, 13 May 2020, https://mosgorzdrav.ru/ru-RU/news/default/card/3952. html; Ivan Nechepurenko, ‘A Coronavirus Mystery Explained: Moscow Has 1,700 Extra Deaths’, New York Times, 11 May 2020; ‘Why so few COVID-19 deaths?’, The Bell, 17 May 2020. 13 Andrew Higgins, ‘New Data Triples Russian’s Covid-19 Death Toll’, New York Times, 29 December 2020; ‘Russia reveals it has world’s 3rd-highest overall Covid19 deaths after US & Brazil, per capita numbers similar to rest of Europe’, RT, 29 December 2020. 14 ‘Operativnoe soveshchanie s vits-prem’erami’, Novosti, 16 March 2020. 15 ‘Dva zhitelia Chechni zarazilis’ koronavirusom vo vremia khadzha’, Kavkazskii Uzel, 24 March 2020. 16 Sobyanin website, 29 March 2020, https://www.sobyanin.ru/koronavirusogranichenie-peredvizheniya-i-sospodderzhka-grazhdan. 17 Sobyanin website, 10 March 2020, https://www.sobyanin.ru/koronavirusdopolnitelnye-ogranicheniya-i-drugie-resheniya-100420. 18 Putin, ‘Soveshchanie po voprosy o sanitarno-epidemiologicheskoi obstanovke’, Kremlin.ru, 20 April 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/63229; ‘Postroennaia za metsiats infektsionnaia bol’nitsa v TiNAO nachala prinimat’ patsientov’, Moscow City website, 21 April 2020, www.mos.ru/news/item/72917073/; ‘Moscow Opens New Coronavirus Hospital Built in 30 Days’, The Moscow Times, 21 April 2020. 19 Putin, ‘Soveshchanie s rukovoditeliami sub’ektov Federatsii po voprosam protivodeistviia rasproctraneniiu koronavirusom infektsii’, Kremlin.ru, 28 April 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/63288; ‘Putin ob’iavil o zavershenii nerabochego perioda’, Kommersant, 11 May 2020. 20 Sobyanin website, https://www.sobyanin.ru/vtoroi-etap-smyagcheniya-ogranichenii-0106; ‘Sobyanin zaiavil Putinu o gotovnosto k paradu Pobedy’, Vedomosti, 27 June 2020.

382  Quality of life 21 ‘Zaniatost’ naseleniia’, Levada-tsentr, 19 May 2020, https://www.levada. ru/2020/05/19/zanyatost-naseleniya/; ‘Pochti tret’ rossiiskoikh semei stolknulis’ so snizheniem zarplaty v aprele’, Vedomosti,19 May 2020. 22 “Kafedra. Neotlozhnye sostoianiia’, https://www.facebook.com/groups/reanimatology/permalink/3532614320087598/, ‘Memory List’, https://sites.google.com/ view/covid-memory/home. 23 Memory List/Spisok pamiati, https://sites.google.com/view/covid-memory/ home?authuser=0; ‘V Rossii umerli 489 medikov, zarazivshikhsia koronavirusom’, RIA Novosti, 18 June 2020. 24 ‘“Vam Putin obeshchal – pust’ Putin lichno i vydaet”’, Novaia gazeta, 28 April 2020; ‘Pochemu pandemiia privedet k padeniiu reitingov vlasti’, Levada-tsentr, 27 April 2020, https://www.levada.ru/2020/04/27/pochemu-pandemiya-privedet-kpadeniyu-rejtingov-vlasti/. 25 Yurii Litvinenko, ‘Putin nazval “biurokaticheskoi kanitel’iu” situatsiiu s vyplatami medikam’, Vedomosti, 15 April 2020; ‘Siberian Ambulance Crews Vow Hunger Strike Over Putin’s Unpaid Virus Bonuses’, The Moscow Times, 15 May 2020. 26 See, e.g. Anton Troianovski, ‘As Coronavirus Overruns Russia, Doctors Are Dying on the Front Lines’, New York Times, 14 May 2020; ‘Russia Slams New York Times, Financial Times on Virus Deaths’, New York Times, 14 May 2020; ‘Third Russian Doctor Falls from Hospital Window After Coronavirus Complaint’, The Moscow Times, 4 May 2020. 27 Ministerstvo Zdravookhraneniia RF, Vremennye metodicheskie rekomendatsii. Profilaktika diagnostika i lechenie novoi koronovirusnoi infektsii (COVID-19), 28 May 2020. 28 Evan Gershkovich, Piotr Sauer, ‘As Russia Officials Back Hydroxychloroquine, Doctors Take Matters Into Their Own Hands’, The Moscow Times, 1 June 2020. 29 Alena Yakushova, Svetlana Bocharova, ‘Putin ob’iavil o provedenii parada Pobedy 24 iiunia’, Vedomosti, 26 May 2020. 30 Government of Russia, ‘The government has eased restrictions on entry into Russia for foreign specialists’, 25 June 2020, http://government.ru/news/39929/. 31 Andrew Osborn, ‘Exclusive: Russia to roll out its first approved COVID-19 drugs next week’, Reuters, 1 June 2020; ‘Things you need to know today’, The Moscow Times, 3 June 2020. 32 Yuliya Fedorinova, ‘Russia to Ship Covid-19 Drug to Hospitals in Race for Treatment’. Bloomberg News, 1 June 2020. 33 ‘Ukaz o edinovremennoi vyplate sem’iam, imeiushchim detei’, Kremlin.ru, 23 June 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/63553; Artem Grish, ‘Putin ob’iavil o prodlenii vyplat medrabotnikam’, Vedomosti, 24 June 2020. 34 Aeroflot, ‘Aeroflot korrektiruet programme mezhdunarodnykh reisov na avgust’, 6 August 2020, https://www.aeroflot.ru/xx-ru/news/61813?_preferredLocale= xx&_preferredLanguage=ru. 35 ‘Vtoraia volna’, Kommersant, 27 October 2020. 36 Ukaz Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii ot 12.10.2020 No. 620, ‘O Mezhvedomstvennoi komissii Soveta Bezopasnosti Rossiiskoi Federatsii po voprosam sozdaniia natsional’noi sistemy zashchity ot novykh infektsii’, http://publication.pravo.gov. ru/Document/View/0001202010120052?index=6&rangeSize=1. 37 These numbers come from a government website for daily information on coronavirus: stopkoronavirus.ru. They were reprinted daily in the government’s Rossiiskaia gazeta and the independent The Moscow Times. 38 ‘Meeting of the Coordination Council … to combat the spreads of new coronavirus infection in the RF’, 9 November 2020, http://government.ru/news/40801/. 39 ‘Rospetrebnadzor vvel vseobshchii masochnyi rezhim’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 27 October 2020; ‘Russia Reinstates Mask Mandate, Restricts Nightlife to Stop Virus Spread’, The Moscow Times, 27 October 2020.

Quality of life  383 40 ‘2 in 3 Medics Say Russia Unprepared for Second Coronavirus Wave – Poll’, The Moscow Times, 15 October 2020; Pjotr Sauer, ‘“We’re in Hell”: Russia’s Second Wave of COVID-19 Is Catching the Regions Off Guard’, The Moscow Times, 27 October 2020; ‘Chinovniki ob’iasnili skoplenie trupov v podvalakh gospitalia v Barnaule’, Interfax, 22 October 2020; Leah Silinsky, ‘COVID-19 in Russia’s Arctic’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 256, 5 September 2020, pp. 11–14. 41 ‘Koronavirus: strakhi i mery’, Levada-tsentr, 2 November 2020, https://www. levada.ru/2020/11/02/koronavirus-strahi-i-mery/. 42 Putin, ‘Soveshchanie s chlenami Pravitel’stva’, Kremlin.ru, 28 October 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64293; Anastasia Shinkeeva, ‘Putin poruchil vydelits regionam 5 mlrd rub. na lekarstva ot koronavirusa’, Vedomosti, 28 October 2020. 43 Putin, ‘Investitsionnyi forum “Rossiia zovet!”’, Kremlin.ru, 29 October 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64296. 44 Embassy of China in Russia, ‘Notice of temporary suspension of entry from Russia for persons holding valid Chinese visas and residence permits’, 5 November 2020, http://ru.china-embassy.org/rus/lsfw/bc/t1829738.htm. 45 Ukaz Mera Moskvy, 10 Noiabria 2020 g. No. 107-UM 2020, ‘O vnesenii izmeneniia v ukaz Mera Moskvy ot 8 iiuniia 2020 g. No. 68-UM’, published in Rossiiskaia gazeta, 10 November 2020. 46 Putin, ‘Otkrytie meditsinskikh tsentrov Minoborony dlia lecheniia patsientov c COVID-19’, Kremlin.ru, 2 December 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/ news/64535. 47 ‘Ezhegodnaia press-konferentsiia Vladimir Putina’, Kremlin.ru, 17 December 2020, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64671. 48 Stephanie Nebehjay, Karen Lema, ‘“Vaccine nationalism” will make the coronavirus pandemic worse, WHO says’, Global News (Reuters), 21 August 2020; on COVAX, see Geoffrey York, ‘New agreements seek to overcome “vaccine apartheid” in the developing world’, Globe and Mail, 19 December 2020. For Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, see, https://www.gavi.org/our-alliance/about. 49 Marco Hafner, et alia, ‘COVID-19 and the cost of vaccine nationalism’, Rand Corporation, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA769-1.html, accessed 4 November 2020; ‘“Vaktsinnyi natsionalizm”: k chemu mozhet privesti gonka stran za sredstvom ot COVID-19’, Aktual’nye kommentarii, 3 November 2020. 50 ‘Rossiiskaia vaktsina ot koronavirusa postupit v oborot s 1 ianvaria 2021 goda’, TASS, 11 August 2020; Talha Khan Burki, ‘The Russian vaccine for COVID-19’, The Lancet, 4 September 2020. 51 See, e.g. Jon Cohen, ‘Russia’s approval of a COVID-19 vaccine is less than meets the press release’, Science, 11 August 2020; Andrew E. Kramer, ‘Worldwide concern as Putin announces a coronavirus vaccine despite lack of testing’, Globe and Mail, 12 August 2020. Ukaz 52 Denis Y. Logunov and many others, ‘Safety and immunogenicity of an rAd26 and … in two open, non-randomised phase 1/2 studies from Russia’, The Lancet, 4 September 2020. 53 ‘Which Countries Have Signed Up for Russia’s Coronavirus Vaccine?’, The Moscow Times, 26 August 2020; ‘Rossiiskaia vaktsina ot koronvirusa postupit v oborot s 1 ianvaria 2021 goda’, TASS, 11 August 2020; ‘The maximum volume of COVID vaccine supplies will start in November–December’, Interfax, 31 August 2020; Justin Cremer, ‘Skepticism and caution greet Russia’s COVID-19 vaccine’, Alliance for Science (Cornell), 12 August 2020. 54 ‘“World’s First” Coronavirus Vaccine: What We Know So Far About Russian Injection’, The Moscow Times, 12 August 2020. 55 ‘Opros prodemonstriroval nedoverie vrachei k vaktsine ot koronavirusa’, RBC. ru, 14 August 2020.

384  Quality of life 56 ‘Minzdrav odobril ambulatornoe primenenie dvukh preparatov ot COVID-19’, RIA Novosti, 17 September 2020; ‘Russia Clears Two Coronavirus Drugs for Pharmacy Sale’, The Moscow Tines, 18 September 2020. 57 Putin, ‘75-ia sessiia General’noi Assamblei OON’, Kremlin.ru, 22 September 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64074. 58 CISION, ‘RDIF and ChemRar to supply Avifavir to 17 countries’, Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), 24 September 2020; https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/newsreleases/rdif-and-chemrar-to-supply-avifavir-to-17-countries-884826336.html. 59 ‘More Countries Line Up for Russia’s Sputnik V Coronavirus Vaccine’, The Moscow Times, 13 November 2020. 60 ‘Golikova announced the start of mass COVID vaccination in the Russian Federation in 2021’, Interfax, 24 November 2020; Sputnik V. Newsroom, ‘Second interim analysis of clinical trial data showed a 91.4% efficacy for the Sputnik V vaccine on day 28 after the first dose; vaccine efficacy is over 95% 42 days after the first dose’, 23 November 2020, https://sputnikvaccine.com/newsroom/pressreleases/ second-interim-analysis-of-clinical-trial-data-showed-a-91-4-efficacy-for-thesputnik-v-vaccine-on-d/; ‘RDIF and Hetero agree to produce over 100 million d0ses of the Sputnik V vaccine in India’, 27 November 2020, https://sputnikvaccine. com/newsroom/pressreleases/rdif-and-hetero-agree-to-produce-over-100-million-dosesof-the-sputnik-v-vaccine-in-india/. 61 Petrovax, ‘The First Group of Volunteers are Vaccinated with AD5-NCOV Candidate Vaccine in Russia’, 21 September 2020, http://petrovax.com/press_ centre/news/2020/1881/. 62 Kseniia Vorontsova, ‘Putin ob’iavil o registratsii v RF vtoroi vaktsinu ot COVID19’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 14 October 2020; ‘Bolee 400 tys. rossiiskikh voennykh budut privity ot koronavirusa’, Interfax, 27 November 2020. 63 Sergei Sobyanin, ‘Sobyanin anonsiroval otkrytie 4 dekabriia zapisi na vaktsinatsiiu ot COVID-19’, tweet reprinted in Rossiiskaia Gazeta, 3 December 2020; ‘Moscow Announces Coronavirus Vaccination Drive’, The Moscow Times, 3 December 2020. 64 Kate Thomas, David Gelles, Carl Zimmer, ‘Pfizer’s Early Data Shows Vaccine Is More Than 90% Effective’, New York Times, 10 November 2020; ‘Russia’s Sputnik V Coronavirus Vaccine 92% Effective – Interim Data’, The Moscow Times, 11 November 2020; Sputnik V, ‘The First Interim Data Analysis of the Sputnik V Vaccine Against COVID-19 Phase III Clinical Trials … Demonstrated 92% Efficacy’, 11 November 2020, https://sputnikvaccine.com/newsroom/pressreleases/ the-first-interim-data-analysis-of-the-sputnik-v-vaccine-against-covid-19-phaseiii-clinical-trials-/. 65 ‘Klinika v “Skolkovo” planiruet privesti v Rossiiu inostrannye vaktsiny ot koronavirusa’, Forbes, 28 December 2020; ‘Moscow Clinic Seeks to Bring Pfizer, Moderna Vaccines to Russia’, The Moscow Times, 29 December 2020; ‘What you need to know today’, The Moscow Times, 28, 29, 31 December 2020, 1 January 2021. 66 Anna Kiseleva, ‘V Rossii nachalas’ massovaia vaktsinatsiia ot kovida vrachei i uchitelei’, VTimes, 7 December 2020; Pjotr Sauer, Felix Light, ‘As Russia Begins Mass Coronavirus Vaccination, Its Medics Aren’t on Board’, The Moscow Times, 8 December 2020; ‘Pasport privitogo ot COVID-19 budut s ianvariia vydavat’ avtomaticheski na portale gosuslug’, TASS, 29 December 202l. 67 ‘5 Questions About Russia’s Sputnik V Vaccine, Answered’, The Moscow Times, 3 December 2020. 68 ‘Naibolee trevozhashchie problemu’, Levada-tsentr, 24 April 2020, www.levada. ru/2018/04/24/naibolee-trevozhashhnie-problemy-3/. 69 ‘Vladimir Putin’, www.levada.ru/2018/05/07/vladimir-putin-6/. 70 ‘Natsional’nye proekty: kliuchevye tseli i ozhidaemye rezul’taty’, 11 February 2019, government.ru/news/35675; ‘Putin’s Ambitious Plan to Overhaul Russia’s

Quality of life  385 Economy Will Cost $390 Bln, Government Estimates’, The Moscow Times, 11 February 2019. 71 Anastasia Manuylova, ‘Meditsina vazhnee pensii. Rossiiane zhdut reform v zdravookhranenii’, Kommersant, 23 May 2018. 72 ‘Government report on its performance in 2018’, government.ru/en/news/36422, 17 April 2019. 73 Putin, ‘Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu Sobraniiu’, Kremlin.ru, 20 February 2019, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59863. 74 ‘Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu Sobraniiu’, Kremlin.ru, 15 January 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62582. These changes were to Article 75, a) 5, b) 6. 75 ‘Trevozhashche problemy’, Levada-tsentr, 25 September 2019, www.levada. ru/2019/09/25/trevozhashhie-problemy-2/. 76 ‘Mikhail Mishustin poruchil podgotovit’ izmeneniia v zakon o federal’nom budzhete na 2020-2022 gody i zakon o biudzhete Pensionnogo fonda …’, 22 January 2020, government.ru/news/38805/. 77 Martin Brand, ‘Fighting Poverty in Russia’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 249, 20 March 2020, pp. 2–5; Anne-Mari Sätre, The Politics of Poverty in Contemporary Russia. London: Routledge, 2019. 78 ‘Pochemu sanktsii ne raskalyvaiut rossiiskuiu elitu’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 10 April 2018. 79 Yevgenii Gaiva, ‘Uroven’ bezrabotitsy v Rossii snizilsia do istoricheskogo minimuma’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 9 November 2018. 80 Anna Kholiavko, ‘Real’nye dokhody rossiian padaiut piatyi god podriad’, Vedomosti, 25 January 2019. 81 ‘Kudrin predzlozhil otsenivat’ effektivnost’ vneshnei politiki RF po rezhimu sanktsii’, Interfax, 10 October 2018; ‘New Sanctions Risk Wrecking Putin’s 6-Year Plan, Kudrin Warns’, The Moscow Times, 10 October 2018. 82 ‘One-Fifth of Russians Live in Poverty, 36 Percent In “Risk Zone”, Study Finds’, RFE/RL, 21 November 2018. 83 ‘On the ratio of money incomes of the population to the subsistence minimum and the number of poor people in the Russian Federation as a whole in the first quarter of 2019’, Rosstat, July 2019, https://new.gks.ru/bgd/free/b04_03/IssWWW. exe/Stg/d04/145.htm; ‘21M Russians Live in Poverty, Official Data Says’, The Moscow Times, 30 July 2019. 84 ‘V Sovfede otsenili mnenie rossiian ob optimal’nom pensionnom vozraste’, Izvestiia, 11 May 2018. 85 ‘Petitsiia protiv povysheniia pensionnogo vozrasta sobrala million podpisei’, Vedomosti, 17 June 2018. For the actual petition, Konfederatsiia truda Rossii website: www.ktr.su/content/news/detail.php?ID=5979. 86 ‘As World Watches Russia, Opposition Seeks to Score With Pension Protests’, RFE/RL, 21 June 2018. 87 ‘Russian Supreme Court softens rules for street protests’, RT, 26 June 2018. 88 ‘Study Shows 17 Percent of Russian Men Won’t Live to Retirement’, The Moscow Times, 27 June 2018. 89 ‘Skvortsovva rasskazala, kak izmenilas’ prodolzhitel’nost’ zhzni rossiian’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 24 September 2019. 90 ‘Gosduma odobrila povyshenie pensionnogo vozrasta v tret’em chtenii’, Vedomosti, 27 September 2018; ‘Gosduma odobrila pensionnuiu reformu vo vtorom chtenii’, Kommersant, 26 September 2018; see also ‘Russia’s Pension Reform’, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 225, 8 October 2018. 91 ‘Samye shchedrye pensionnye podarki ot Putina poluchili zhenshchiny’, Vedomosti, 29 August 2018; ‘Putin ob’iavil o smiagchenii uslovii pensionnoi reformy’, Vedomosti, 29 August 2018; ‘Putin Announces Concessions in Retirement Age Hike’, The Moscow Times, 29 August 2018; ‘Golikova: samymi bednymi v Rossii iavliaiutsia sem’i s det’mi, a ne pensionery’, Kommersant, 29 August 2018.

386  Quality of life 92 TsEPR, ‘Protests 2017-2018: growth of protest activity of the population’, 8 November 2018, http://cepr.su/2018/11/08/protests-2017-2018/. 93 ‘Sotsial’noe samochuvstvie rossiian: monitoring’, VTsIOM, 16 November 2018, wciom.ru/index.php?id=236&uid=9430. ‘Most Russians Are Pessimistic About Political and Economic Future – Poll’, The Moscow Times, 16 November 2018. 94 ‘Russia Shores up State Workers’ Support with New Wage Hike’, The Moscow Times, 9 January 2019; Marina Gusenko, Irina Zhandarova, Irina Nevinnaya, ‘V Rossii vyrosli posobiia pensii i zaplata’, Rossiiskaya gazeta, 9 January 2019. 95 ‘Bezrabotitsa v Rossii: v kakikh regionakh slozhnee vsego naiti rabotu’, Aktual’nye kommentarii, 28 October 2019; Putin, opening address at the ‘Russia Calling! Investment Forum’, Kremlin.ru, 20 November 2019, en.Kremlin.ru/ events/president/news/62073. 96 ‘Dmitry Medvedev answers questions …’, 14 February 2019, government.ru/en/ news/35737. 97 Kira Latukhina, ‘Putin poruchil podderzhat’ predpriiatiia monogorodov’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 6 June 2020. The other laws are described in the same issue of the state-owned newspaper. 98 ‘Putin zaiavil on indeksatsii pensii na 6.3 protsenta’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 23 September 2020; 99 Putin, ‘Vstrecha s senatorami Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, Kremlin.ru, 23 September 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64076. 100 For background, see Marianna Poberezhskaya, Communicating Climate Change in Russia. State and Propaganda. London: Routledge, 2016. 101 Pravitel’stvo Rossii, ‘Dmitrii Medvedev utverdil natsional’nyi plan meropriiatii pervogo etapa adaptatsii k izmeneniiam klimata na period do 2022 goda’, 4 January 2020, http://government.ru/news/38739/. 102 ‘Siberia’s “Gateway to the Underworld” Expands Amid Record Smashing Heat Wave’, The Moscow Times, 4 August 2020. 103 Anna Liesowska, ‘Arctic wildfires burning further north than previously spotted from space, satellite shows’, The Siberian Times, 27 June 2020; ‘Fivefold growth of forest fires in Siberia reported’, AP, 27 June 2020, (with aerial photos); ‘Russia’s 2020 Wildfire Cover Greece-Sized Area – Greenpeace’, The Moscow Times, 3 June 2020. This item includes a reference to the Federal Forestry Agency’s list of on-going wildfires, and the Greenpeace Russia source. 104 ‘Russia Sees Warmest September in Recorded History’, World News Monitor, 5 October 2020; ‘2020 Arctic Wildfires Emissions So Far Surpass All of 2019’, The Moscow Times, 31 August 2020; Maria Antonova, ‘Nearly 300 Wildfires in Siberia Amid Record Warm Weather’, The Moscow Times, 12 July 2020. 105 ‘Norilsk Nickel caught dumping poisonous waste into rivers month after the catastrophic diesel leak’, The Siberian Times, 28 June 2020. This piece came with pictures. 106 Federal’noe agentstvo vodnykh resursov, ‘Maximum permissible concentration during oil spill in the Khimki reservoir is exceeded 1000 times’, 29 June 2020, http://voda.mnr.gov.ru/news/detail.php?ID=552923; ‘Moscow Oil Spill Trigger’s 1,000-Fold Pollution Surge’, The Moscow Times, 29 June 2020; ‘Rasskazyvaem to, o chem drugie boiatsia dazhe podumat”, Novaia Gazeta@novaya_gazeta, accessed 29 June 2020. 107 ‘Industrial waste landfill caught fire in Norilsk’, Interfax, 29 June 2020; ‘“Chego tak boitsia “Nornikel’” i legshie pod nego siloviki?” CMI zaiavili o popytke zamolchat’ massshtaby ekologicheskoi katastrofy v Noril’ske’, Meduza, 29 June 2020; ‘Explainer: Russia’s Arctic Environmental Disasters’, The Moscow Times, 29 June 2020. 108 ‘Dmitrii Medvedev utverdil natsional’nyi plan meropriiatii pervogo etapa adaptatsii k izmeniiam klimata na period do 2022 goda’, 4 January 2020, http://government.ru/news/38739/; ‘Putin’s Top Climate Adviser Calls for Urgent Climate Action’, The Moscow Times, 10 January 2020.

Quality of life  387 109 Climate Change Performance Index, CCPI 2020: International Press Release, December 2019. 110 Ekaterina Mereminskaia, ‘Zagriaznenie vody, vozdukha i zemli v Rossii zamedliaet rost ekonomiki’, Vedomosti, 12 January 2020; Daniel Kozin, ‘Is Russia Finally Waking Up to Climate Change?’, The Moscow Times, 4 March 2020. 111 Mark Serreze, ‘Where’s the sea ice?’, The Maritime Executive, 3 November 2020; ‘Moscow Breaks 70-Year Heat Record’, The Moscow Times, 17 June 2020; ‘Arctic Temperatures Hit Record High in Russia Amid Heat Wave’, The Moscow Times, 22 June 2020. 112 ‘Environmentalists from five countries united to protect the Arctic’, ECO Media Barents, 8 December 2020, http://media-week.ru/; Leyla Latypova, ‘New Alliance Hopes to Raise Awareness of Arctic Environmental Crisis’, The Moscow Times, 11 December 2020. 113 On this, see Judy L. Twigg, ‘What Lies Behind Russia’s Coronavirus Containment Effort’, The Russian File, Wilson Center (Kennan Institute), 24 March 2020. 114 ‘Vrachi – Putinu: “Optimizatsiia” – meditsinu vedet k katastrofe”’, Novye Izvestiia, 1 October 2019; Aleksandr Sokolov, ‘Gotovo li rosisiiskoe zdravookhranenie bor’be s koronavirusom’, Vedomosti, 9 April 2020; Evan Gershkovich, Piotr Sauer, ‘Russia’s Healthcare System Faced Cuts for Years. Now Medical Students Are on the Coronavirus Frontlines’, The Moscow Times, 16 April 2020. 115 ‘Diseases caused by bad nutrition cause 63% of deaths in Russia – Rospotrebnadzor’, Interfax, 6 December 2018; ‘Minzdrav: chislo rossiian s ozhireniem uvelichilos’ pochti na 50% za piat’ let’, TASS, 4 May 2018. 116 ‘The Burden of disease in Russia from 1980 to 2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016’, The Lancet, 30 August 2018, online. 117 ‘Skvortsova nazvala glavnuiu prichinu smertnosti myzhchin v Rossii’, Vedomosti, 7 February 2019. 118 For a video of one such arrest, see ‘Young Russians Fight Against Drinking in Public’, The Moscow Times, 15 June 2019; Ivan Egorov, ‘V Rossii v proshlom godu poimali 270 tysiach p’ianykh voditelei’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 2 January 2021. 119 For an early account, ‘“Lev protiv”: gosudarstvennye gopniki?’, Kolokol Rossii, 26 April 2016, http://kolokolrussia.ru/vlast/lev-protiv-gosudarstvenne-gopniki; and Rashid Gabdulhakov, ‘Citizen-Led Justice in Post-Communist Russia: From Comrades’ Courts to Dotcomrade Vigilantism’, Surveillance & Society, Vol 16, No. 3 (2018), pp. 314–31. 120 ‘Opros: okolo 30% zhitelei Rossii iavliaiutsia kuril’shchikami’, TASS, 14 December 2019. 121 For a discussion of this, see ‘Russia’s new resistance. “Meduza” analyses the rise of a new wave of protest movements’, Meduza, 7 August 2019; Mathew Luxmoore, ‘Staff At Russia’s Main Cancer Center Quit En Masse, Citing Low Wages And Dire Conditions’, RFE/RL, 1 October 2019. 122 Putin, ‘Vstrecha s predstaviteliami obshchestvennosti Kaliningradskoi oblasti’, Kremlin.ru, 31 October 2019, Kremlin.ru/events/president/news/61941. 123 Putin, ‘Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu Sobraniiu’, 15 January 2020, kremlin,. ru/events/president/news/62582; Mariia Kotova, ‘Lekarstva doveli do sryvov’, Kommersant, 7 August 2019; Evan Gershkovich, ‘“People Could Lose Their Lives”: Medicine Shortages in Russia Have Left Patients Fending for Themselves’, The Moscow Times, 12 February 2020. 124 World Health Organization, Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health, Geneva, 2019. 125 For the full report, www.rospotrebnadzor.ru/about/info/news/news_details. php?ELEMENT_ID=9913, 16 April 2018; ‘Russia’s Alcohol Consumption Plummets More than 40% – WHO Study’, The Moscow Times, 1 October 2019.

388  Quality of life 126 ‘Minzdrav RF podgotovit proekt ob uvelichenii vozrasta, s kotorogo mozhno pokypat’ alkogol’, Interfax, 24 September 2018; ‘Russia Moves to Raise Drinking Age to 21’, The Moscow Times, 14 December 2018. 127 World Health Organization, Europe, Alcohol Policy Impact Case Study 2019. The effects of alcohol control measures on mortality and life expectancy in the Russian Federation, Copenhagen, 2019. 128 Edith Hancock, ‘Russia’s Health Minister wants to raise legal drinking age to 21’, Drinks Business, 14 May 2020. 129 Biulleten’ Schetnoi palaty RF. Zdravookhranenie, 11 February 2020, http://audit. gov.ru/upload/iblock/84e/84ed13237c0fe2b0dae052063e371cfe.pdf. For a summary of the 189-page paper’s conclusions, pp. 8–9. 130 Anastasiia Manuilova, ‘K zdravookhreniiu pribintovali berezhlivost”, Kommersant, 28 February 2020. 131 See esp. ‘HIV and Aids in Russia’, Avert. Global Information and Education on HIV and AIDS’, November 2018, www.avert.org/professionals/hiv-around-theworld/eastern-europe-centra-asia/russia; ‘Prezidenstckoe molchanie’, Novaia gazeta, 29 November 2019. 132 ‘Russia emerges as frontrunner in global fight against tuberculosis’, TASS, 27 September 2018; ‘Russian Federation sees 9.4% drop in TB cases in 2017’, World Health Organization, 19 March 2018. 133 See Andrew Das, Kevin Draper, ‘That Roar You Hear is From Russia, Where Its Team Just Stunned Spain’, New York Times, 1 July 2018; ‘Russia Reaches World Cup Quarterfinals with 4–3 Penalty Victory Over Spain’, The Moscow Times, 1 July 2018. 134 ‘Obychnovennoe chudo’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 1 July 2018; Tony Weselovsky, ‘Team Russia Scores Surprise Goal at 2018 World Cup: National Unity’, RFE/ RL, 2 July 2018. 135 Brian Homewood, ‘Infantino says 2018 World Cup is the best-ever’, Reuters, 13 July 2018. 136 ‘IAAF Maintains Ban on Russian Athletics Over Doping Scandal’, The Moscow Times, 11 March 2019; ‘Russia Facing Sports Isolation Over Missing Doping Data’, New York Times, 22 September 2019; ‘WADA Gives Russia Three Weeks to Explain Missing Doping Data’, New York Times, 23 September 2019. 137 ‘Bol’shaia press-konferentsiia Vladimira Putina’, Kremlin.ru, 19 December 2019, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62366; ‘Russia Facing Potential Olympic Ban After WADA Cites “Inconsistent” Data”’, The Moscow Times, 23 September 2019; ‘Komitet po sootvetstviiu WADA ob’iasnil prichiny rekomendatsii otstranit’ Rossiiu ot mezhdunarodnykh turnirov na 4 goda’, https://www.sports.ru/ biathlon/1080587070.html, 25 November 2019. 138 World Anti-Doping Agency, ‘WADA prepared for CAS hearing with Russian Anti-Doping Agency’, 30 October 2020. 139 Kirill Bulanov, ‘MOK osudil rossiiskie vlasti za manipuliatsii a doping-probami’, Vedomosti, 16 November 2019; ‘Russia Banned From Olympics for 4 Years Over Doping Scandal’, The Moscow Times, 9 December 2019; Tariq Panja, ‘Russia Banned from Global Sports for 4 Years Over Doping’, New York Times, 9 December 2019. 140 ‘Russia Fires Outspoken Head of Embattled Anti-Doping Body’, The Moscow Times, 28 August 2020. 141 Thilo Neumann, ‘Evidence Casts New Doubts on Russian Doping Whistleblower’, Spiegel International, 3 July 2020; ‘Russian Athletics Federation president steps down’, Globe and Mail, 14 July 2020. 142 ‘V GD vnesen paket zakonoproektov o razvitie massovogo i liubitel’skogo sports v RF’, RAPSI, 13 March 2020. 143 ‘Rossiiakaia Federatsiia federal’nyi zakon, O svobode sovesti i on religioznykh ob’edineniiakh’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 1 October 1997. English translation available in REDA 1997, Vol 1 (1998), pp. 40–9.

Quality of life  389 144 ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses Leader Detained in Siberia’, The Moscow Times, 12 November 2018. See also ‘Russia; Sweeping Arrests of Jehovah Witnesses. Religious Persecution, Other Abuses’, Human Rights Watch, 28 June 2018; ‘Russia: Court Bans Jehovah’s Witnesses’, Human Rights Watch, 20 April 2017. 145 ‘7 Jehovah’s Witnesses Brutally Tortured in Russia, Spokesman Says’, The Moscow Times, 20 February 2019; for the Investigative Committee’s report on the arrest, hmao.sledcom.ru/news/item/1300284, 15 February 2019; ‘EU Citizen Abused in Russian Jail – Jehovah’s Witnesses’, The Moscow Times, 20 March 2019; ‘Memorial Recognized Another 75 Believers of Jehovah’s Witnesses as Political Prisoners and Politically Persecuted’, Memorial. Human Rights Center, 13 May 2019; Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia, ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses Under the Yoke of Repression: Results of 2019’, 31 December 2019, www.jw-russia.org/en/ news/19123114-1512.html. 146 Roman Lunkin, ‘Russia’s Crackdown on Jehovah’s Witnesses Hits Critical Milestone (Op-ed)’, The Moscow Times, 7 February 2019. 147 ‘In the City of Penza, Court of Appeal Overturns Conviction of Six Jehovah’s Witnesses. Alushkin Must Leave Jail in the Near Future’, Jehovah’s Witness in Russia, 25 March 2020, https://www.jw-russia.org/en/news/2020/03/7.html; ‘Russia Overturns First Jehovah’s Witness Convictions’, The Moscow Times, 26 March 2020. 148 Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra, ‘Russia’s Ban on Evangelism is Now in Effect’, CT (Christianity Today), 21 July 2016; Michael Alison Chandler, ‘Missionaries are struggling to work under new Russian law banning proselytizing’, The Washington Post, 20 September 2016; Emma Friedlander, ‘Russian Mormons Search for Identity and Acceptance in an American Church’, The Moscow Times, 26 February 2019. 149 ‘St. Petersburg Scientology Leader Released [on bail] 2 Years Into Arrest’, The Moscow Times, 15 November 2019; ‘Russian Scientology Church Raided in Fraud Investigation’, The Moscow Times, 29 March 2019; ‘Russian Orthodox Church Labels Scientology a “Brutal, Totalitarian Sect”’, The Moscow Times, 5 October 2016; See also SOVA, ‘Freedom of Conscience in Russia: Restrictions and Challenges in 2018’, 17 April 2019. SOVA issues these reports annually. 150 ‘Tserkov’ mozhet ne afishirovat’ svoiu deiatel’nost’ i obkhodit’siia bez ulichnykh vyvesok – KS’, RAPSI, 6 November 2020. 151 Mark Mackinnon, ‘Ukraine’s split from Russian orthodoxy a blow for Putin’, Globe and Mail, 13 October 2018; ‘Russian church official says “impossible” to remain united with Ecumenical Patriarchate’, RFE/RL, 13 October 2018; ‘Putin Vows to Defend Believers in Ukraine Church Dispute’, The Moscow Times, 12 October 2018; Veera Laine, ‘The “Russia World” and the Orthodox Church in the Post-Soviet Space’, in Arkady Moshes, András Rácz, eds. What Has Remained of the USSR. Exploring the Erosion of the Post-Soviet Space. FIIA Report, No. 58 (February 2019), pp. 195–216. See also ‘Russian Orthodoxy’, special issue of the Russian Analytical Digest, No. 252, 8 May 2020. 152 Christopher Miller, ‘Ukraine Deports Russia-Aligned Priest, Strips Citizenship, in Church Rift’, RFE/RL, 15 February 2019. 153 Putin, ‘Vstrecha s predstaviteliami religioznykh ob’edinenii’, Kremlin.ru, 4 November 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/674336. 154 Tatyana Zekakhina, “Komitet GD odobril popravku ob upominanii Boga v Konstitutsii’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 3 March 2020. 155 Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov, ‘Instruktysiia nastoiateliam prikhodov in podvorii, igumenam i igumeniiam monastyrei Moskovskoi eparkhii v sviazi s ugrozoi rasprostraneniia koronavirusnoi infektsii’, 17 March 2020, http://www. patriarchia.ru/db/text/5608418.html. 156 ‘Russia’s Population Decreases for First Time in a Decade’, The Moscow Times, 20 September 2018; ‘Russian population put in its first full-year decline in a decade’, Intellinews, 24 January 2019; ‘Russia’s Migrant Numbers Hit Record Low in 2018’, The Moscow Times, 9 April 2019.

390  Quality of life 157 ‘Obrazovana rabochaia gruppa po realizatsii Kontseptsii gosudarstvennoi migratsionnoi politiki’, Kremlin.ru, 6 March 2019, kremlin.ru/events/administration/59986; ‘Kremlin Seeks Russian-Speaking Migrants to Offset Population Decline’, The Moscow Times, 14 March 2019; Daniel Shapiro, Natasha YefimovaTrilling, ‘Russian Population Decline in Spotlight Again’, Russia Matters, 13 September 2019; ‘Russia’s Natural Population Decline to Hit 11-Year record in 2019’, The Moscow Times, 13 December 2019. 158 Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, ‘Summary of key performance indicators on the migration situation in the Russian Federation for January–March 2020’, 21 April 2020, https://xn--b1aew.xn--p1ai/Deljatelnost/ statistics/migracionnaya/item/20020603/; ‘Za god Rossiia stala v dva s polovinoi raza chashche predostavliat’ grazhdanstvo’, RBC.ru, 19 May 2020. 159 ‘Poslanie Prezidenta Federal’nomu Sobraniiu’, Kremlin.ru, 20 February 2019, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/59863. 160 Vladimir Solov’ev, ‘Mnogopasportiinaia sistema’, Kommersant, 7 February 2020; ‘Russia Passes Dual Citizenship Law, Hoping to Add 10M Citizens’, The Moscow Times, 17 April 2020. 161 On this, see esp. Anna-Liisa Heusala, Kaarina Aitamurto, eds. Migrant Workers in Russia: Global Challenges of the Shadow Economy in Societal Transformation. London: Routledge, 2018; ‘Russia’s FSB Publishes Foreign Worker Statistics for First Time in 20 Years’, The Moscow Times, 16 August 2019. 162 ‘Despite Long Hours, Russians Named Among World’s Least Productive Workers’, The Moscow Times, 5 July 2018; ‘Vneseny izmeniia v zakon o migratsionnom uchete inostrannykh grazhdan’, Kremlin.ru, 27 June 2018, kremlin.ru/ acts/news/57883; ‘Foreigners in Russia are Panicking Over New Migration Rules’, The Moscow Times, 5 July 2018. 163 On this, Jeff Sahadeo, Voices from the Soviet Edge. Southern Migrants in Leningrad and Moscow. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2019. See also Agnieszka Kubal, Immigration and Refugee Law in Russia. Socio-Legal Perspectives. Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2019, which lays out the complications for individuals brought on by inconsistent laws and practices related to immigrants and refugees in Russia. 164 Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, ‘On the progress of the criminal investigation into the crimes committed against a resident of the city of Yakutsk’, ykt.sledcom.ru/news/item/1314222/, 18 March 2019; ‘Siberian City Holds Unauthorized Protest After Rape Blamed on Migrants’, The Moscow Times, 19 March 2019; ‘Siberian Region Bans Migrant Workers Amid Tensions Over Rape Case;’, The Moscow Times, 28 March 2019. 165 Anna Chervonnaia, ‘V Rossiia safiksirovan skachok chisla migrantov’, Vedomosti, 23 July 2019; ‘Russia’s Migrant Numbers Surge to Highest Levels in a Decade, Study Says’, The Moscow Times, 16 July 2019. 166 On this, see Tom Balforth, ‘Russia’s stranded migrants lose jobs, rely on handouts and peers for food’, Chronicle Herald (Halifax, NS), 27 April 2020; ‘Stranded in the pandemic’, Meduza, 24 March 2020. 167 Olga Putilova, ‘“Tut i beremennye est’, gde rozhat’ oni bydut – na zemle?”’, Novaia gazeta, 13 September 2020, on Uzbek migrants; ‘More than 1000 Azerbaijanis are waiting for a pass to their homeland near Kullar’, Caucasian Knot, 21 September 2020; Evan Gershkovich, ‘Six Months Into Pandemic, Migrant Workers in Russia Live in Makeshift Camps as They Wait to Go Home’, The Moscow Times, 28 September 2020. 168 ‘Ksenofobia i natsionalizm;’, Levada-tsentr, 23 September 2020, www.levada. ru/2020/09/23/ksenofobiya-i-natsionalizm-2. 169 Putin, ‘Zasedanie Soveta po styrategicheskomu razvitiiu i natsional’nym proektam’, Kremlin.ru, 13 July 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/63635; ‘Russia Resets Ambitious National Development Plan’, The Moscow Times, 13 July 2020; ‘Russia Ditches Goal of Becoming Top 5 Economy’, The Moscow Times, 21 July 2020.

Closing remarks What’s left after 2020?

In 2020, Russians at home faced social and political unrest, never-ending corruption exposés and a rapidly warming climate. The biggest public stories, however, were the pandemic, the lengthy protest in Khabarovsk and the Navalny poisoning. None of these phenomena were gone as 2021 dawned. At the level of pure politics, the 2020 ‘January Revolution’, marked by constitutional changes that could keep their president in office for another two terms after 2024, still divided Russians a year after the fact. From abroad the Kremlin encountered an increasingly hostile Western front, instability on their southern and south-eastern flanks and an economically aggressive China moving into Central Asia. Extraordinarily bitter divisions in the US, which resulted in the storming of the Capitol in Washington by manic Trump supporters just prior to Biden’s accession to office, left the Kremlin worrying that newly empowered Democrats might vent their spleen on Russia – and also gloating that the US ‘model’ was discredited, at least for a time. The next few years will reveal how well Russians coped with this broadside of potential calamities. In fact, two major events in January 2021 give us cause to speak of a second ‘January Revolution’ in Russia. In contrast to those of a year earlier, these happenings were expected, even planned for, but the degree to which their ripple effects reached tidal proportions was not foreseen. The episodes in question were: 1) domestic and foreign reactions to the Navalny imprisonment; and 2) the raised level of hostility towards Russia exhibited by both the new Biden Administration in Washington and by the EU.

Stability anyone? Before 2020, maintaining internal stability after the chaotic decades of the Gorbachev and Yeltsin eras was the personal accomplishment for which Putin most often congratulated himself, and for which Russians were likely most grateful. Paradoxically, 2020 marked an apex of more recent instability in Russia, largely hidden from sight because of restrictions required by the COVID-19 pandemic. After a relatively quiet first decade, politically, elements of anxiety and anger that hovered just beneath the veneer of calm burst sporadically into dramatic incidents of public unrest. These included DOI: 10.4324/9781003158646-11

392  Closing remarks huge demonstrations against election rigging in 2011–12, pension reform in 2018, ballot discrimination in Moscow in 2019 and the arrest of a popular governor in Khabarovsk in 2020. Street actions over the Navalny arrest in 2021 were only the most recent of such outbursts. The trigger causes of the outbursts always broadened into protests against a larger gamut of pent up grievances. Even if there was never a real danger of a Russian Maidan, or ‘coloured’ revolution supported by Western governments, the administration’s reaction to each flare-up of public energy was fashioned by its fear of one. In practice, worry about insecurity caused heavy-handed police clampdowns against peaceful demonstrations and that, in turn actually created instability. To date, the state has emerged from political upheaval unscathed for two main reasons: 1) pragmatic social decision-making by the government itself, i.e. concessions; and 2) the intuitive preferences of the majority of the Russian people who have had no desire to overturn the government, or toss Putin out. Although we might have to wait until 2024 to see if these considerations still apply, the reset, the pandemic and downturn in the Russian quality of life in 2020 will determine what happens in that presidential election year. The Presidency In January 2021, a full year after he proposed amending the Russian Constitution, Vladimir Putin’s approval ratings hovered between 60 (FOM) and 61 per cent (VTsIOM) in polls conducted by government-funded agencies, and at 65 per cent by the independent Levada Centre.1 Two of these returns were close to all-time lows. The ratings made his handling of Navalny’s return to Russia on 17 January (see ahead) especially sensitive. The international and domestic uproar generated by the attempt to assassinate Navalny carried over into 2021 with a vengeance. Complicating matters for Putin personally, two days after Navalny arrived back in Russia his Anti-Corruption Foundation released a two-hour video of a vastly expensive, allegedly secret, construction of what it called ‘Putin’s Palace’ in Gelendzhik, a resort town on the Black Sea, Krasnodar Krai.2 Although Putin responded a week later during a videoconference with university students that ‘nothing listed there as my property belongs to me or my close relatives, and never has’, his protestations came too late. The video of the $1.3 billion estate, with Navalny providing the introduction, had 100 million views in its first five days.3 The braying didn’t stop after Arkady Rotenberg told journalists that he and his brother owned the property and planned to turn it into an apartment hotel resort.4 The protesters now had more than just Navalny’s fate to complain about. Labelled the ‘Underpants Poisoner’ by Navalny, Putin’s persona became ever more toxic to Western politicians and media, and his already unblushing authoritarianism grew more stringent at home. 5 The Kremlin seemed no longer to care about Western perspectives and only time would tell if the ‘risk– reward’ approach would work at home again

Closing remarks  393

The domestic political scene The uproars noted above made it plain that the most successful political activity in Russia was the street demonstration and that political parties other than United Russia were ineffective in achieving their agendas. ‘Putin’s Party’, the UR, won control of the official political arena handily, but could never dominate or behave in the manner of the old CPSU. Of the parties represented in the Duma, only the nearly moribund Communist Party served, from time to time, as an opposition party. Parties and movements outside the Duma were more visibly active, yet they tended to rely on single personalities for leadership – and these personalities competed against each other for media and public attention to such a degree that attempts at unity among them were usually stillborn. Among the many activist opponents of the government, only Navalny attracted consistent national and international attention, but there was never any evidence that he was admired enough to win regional or national elections. In fact, both state and independent pollsters consistently placed him low on their ‘trust’ and ‘confidence’ rankings. A handicap borne by Navalny and other ‘liberals’ when it came to Russian voters was the simple fact that they were lionized in the West. Watched closely and harassed by law enforcement already before the AllRussia Vote on constitutional amendments, the chances of the extra-systemic political opponents of the regime gaining in effectiveness after 2020 were slim, but possible. Without a foothold in the power vertikal, the only obvious opportunity for change rests with the regions, especially in Siberia and the Far East where Moscow’s grip is not so tight, the natural resources essential to Russia’s economy are nearby and local political leadership is increasingly popular. Regional elections in the fall of 2020 and sustained protest in Khabarovsk provided some small signs of growing opposition to the UR. Beyond specific political parties, environmentalists, LGBT activists, religious and ethnic movements all gained confidence in 2018–20 and can hope to play a role in shaping post-pandemic Russia. Women’s movements, in particular, have grown in stature. Poisoned politics Putin’s third term opened with the damaging Skripal affair and took a turn for the worst in 2020 with the Navalny affair. In both assassination-by-poison attempts, the majority of Western politicians and people pointed their fingers directly at Putin. In neither case did the majority of Russian people agree with them. This difference in perspective is symptomatic of a new great divide. Whoever the guilty parties were, these horrible events revealed what may prove to be an insoluble problem for the Russian state. Highly publicized assassinations seriously damage the image of Russia and its president abroad and energize opposition forces at home. Whether such acts of

394  Closing remarks violence are commissioned by rogue officials, oligarchs, senior law-enforcement or military officers, criminal bosses or financiers threatened with exposure for corruption, or the Russian state, blame will always be attributed to the state generally and to Putin specifically. The culprit may even be a self-styled ‘patriot’ who believes that he or she is doing the right thing for Russia’s honour – witness 6 January in Washington. Although it is unlikely that Putin ordered the kills, for he has too much to lose and too little to gain, they occurred on his watch. Such acts are far more unsettling to the security, or stability, of the Russian state than street demonstrations and are something that Putin must do something about if he wishes to soften his legacy.

The international arena In the international arena, one could say that the first big gap in the aura of stability provided by Russia’s central government was the annexation of Crimea in 2014, an event that is often depicted as the starting point of the new Cold War.6 Where that particular action won Putin great popularity at home, at the time, it lost the West to Russia and forced the Kremlin to ‘pivot to the East’ and rely on China for trade and political comfort. The Russia–China relationship stepped up as a consequence of their common economic interests in the face of Washington’s economic and sectoral sanctions against Russia and its trade war with China. Moscow’s turn eastward was motivated by expediency at first, and then drew tighter as the Eurasian continent cautiously integrated as an economic competitor to the EU and the US. The fact is, Russia’s foreign policy during the first two Putin decades was pragmatic and reactive and, in spite of claims to the contrary from critics, had too few clearly thought-out objectives other than an urge to renew the country’s Major Power standing. The MID could boast of diplomatic successes in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, but was well aware that opportunism, rather than careful long-term strategic planning, was a key ingredient to its good fortune in those regions. Assad’s Syria, Erdogan’s Turkey, Al-Sisi’s Egypt, Maduro’s Venezuela and Rouhani’s Iran are not particularly reliable partners and Russia’s ties to them could pull apart quickly if circumstances change. The same could be said about Russia’s relations with its neighbours in the South Caucasus, and with Belarus. The Russian foreign ministry discovered in 2020 that even the appearance of steadiness in the EEU, the BRICS, the SCO and the CSTO associations was deceiving. Border conflicts between India and China and between India and Pakistan, the outbreak of war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and unrest in Central Asia and Belarus threatened to emasculate all of the abovementioned organizations. They will all have to make full recovery before Russia can feel secure in its international skin again. There has been a good start in this regard. In most of the cases of conflict noted above, Moscow could have made zero-sum choices, that is, line up on one side or the other.

Closing remarks  395 Instead, it offered diplomacy and waited the situation out. Not only did this approach counter the popular view of Russia as ‘aggressive’, it worked.7 Hot spots left over from the devolution of the USSR continue to plague Moscow’s MID as well. The peoples of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, NagornoKarabakh and Transdniestria all maintain that their de facto separations from Georgia, Azerbaijan and Moldova respectively were earned by bloody wars for independence in the 1990s and reached de jure status by the Westernset Kosovo ‘precedent’ in 2008.8 The West presumes, instead, that the Kosovo case was sui generis and so inapplicable to the other secessions. The fate of these hotspots is tied theoretically to interpretations of two potentially contradictory articles of the UN Charter, one that supports the ‘principle of equal rights and self-determination of people’ (Art. 1.2) and another that supports the ‘territorial integrity of any state’ (Art. 2.4). All too often, the Kremlin takes one side of this question and the West takes the other, both persuaded more by their geopolitical interests than by some moral or legal standpoint. For example, Nagorno-Karabakh was returned to Azerbaijani control against the wishes of the its inhabitants by force of arms, and the West wants Crimea ‘returned’ to Ukraine. Most Crimeans prefer to be part of Russia. Who gets to decide their fate? In that connection, Russia’s greatest success in international affairs was, in fact, the annexation of Crimea, an act that elated Russians, made the president popular and kept NATO expansion temporarily at bay. The annexation was also Russia’s greatest failure in international affairs. It brought generations of close economic, political and cultural relationships between Russians and Ukrainians to an end, perhaps forever. It also brought NATO’s and Russian armed forces to a point of confrontation in East and East-Central Europe, and forced Moscow to look eastward for political and economic succour. Biden in office Less than a week after his official inauguration, Biden’s press secretary told journalists that, in the president’s first telephone call to Putin, 26 January, he insisted that Navalny be released, and listed other US grievances against Russia. Russia’s presidential press release stressed only that the two presidents agreed on a five-year extension of the New START treaty. The latter decision was a great relief to the Kremlin, the other matters set out lines in the sand. The real message came from Washington during Biden’s first major speech on foreign policy, 4 February, in which he said that the US would no longer be ‘rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions’, and went on to proclaim that the US ‘leadership must meet this new moment of advancing authoritarianism, including the growing ambitions of China to rival the United States and the determination of Russia to damage and disrupt our democracy’.9 The new Cold War appeared destined to grow hotter.

396  Closing remarks Demonization of Russia It has become de rigueur for Western analysts to blame the Russian state and Putin for polarization in the international arena, the rise of populism, street disorders in Europe and even Brexit.10 Russia’s repeated denials and requests for evidence are rarely taken seriously. By attributing international disarray to Russian ‘aggression’ or, to use the new favourite, ‘malign influence’, Western governments free themselves from the tiresome task of seeking out root causes (e.g. in the Donbass), or contemplate blaming themselves at least in part. Nor do they need to consider the possibility that blameworthy events might have been the responsibility of rogue actors, Russian or otherwise.11 As a case in point, long before the US presidential election was held in November 2020, American punditry was already falling over itself with accusations that Russian hackers were preparing to ‘destroy American democracy’, again.12 Russian cyber trolls may well have been in play, but domestically-based conspiracy theorists provided all the ammunition needed to taint the US electoral process.13 Whatever damage American democracy suffered in 2020, it was self-inflicted. While it is certainly true that some of the Kremlin’s behaviour in international affairs cannot be excused, even by realpolitik, the point here is to recognize that: a) Russian actions in the global arena do not take place in a vacuum; and that b) if its security interests are seriously threatened, the Kremlin will use force to protect them. Moscow is hardly a unique actor in the international arena, where geopolitical interests have shoved traditional diplomacy aside everywhere.

The economy As nightmares about the 1990s fade in the Russian memory bank, recent delays in Russia’s better economic future were caused primarily by factors over which the government had little control: the pandemic, a decline in demand for Russian oil and gas, and further sanctions. These variables made Putin’s offers of ‘great expectations’ a matter of waiting with bated breath. In fact, in the summer of 2020 the Kremlin officially gave up on its ambition to become one of the world’s five largest economies by 2024 and reset its development targets to the year 2030. No one can doubt that Putin yanked Russia out of the economic doldrums of the 1980s–90s. That success was based on three fundamental props: continued reliance on the energy sector for government revenues; large-scale government intervention in the economy; and oligarchic dominance of both private and government enterprises. Specialists, including Russian ones, have warned for years that each of these features could lead to stagnation and deterioration of the economy. After surviving recessions and exponentially increasing sanctions by unexpected margins of comfort it was left to a pandemic and climate change to highlight threats to the Russian economy. These include the fact that the market for Russian energy may never recover fully,

Closing remarks  397 plus the extraordinary costs of restructuring the country’s healthcare system, and managing the projected hurt expected from global warming. According to Minister of Finance Siluanov, the pandemic cost Russia 9 per cent of its GDP in 2020 and the planned surplus budget for 2021 will, in fact, be a deficit.14 Reports made public in January revealed that the year 2020 saw the lowest level of foreign direct investment in Russian enterprises since the mid-1990s. Gloomy as these reports were, the economy was not doing as badly as the average citizen might naturally think. Very low foreign and domestic debt, and Russia’s huge and growing reserves, are still there to fall back on if need be. Even the usual reliance on energy export prices is not as pressing as it could have been, because, if Putin’s statement in a December press conference was accurate, 70 per cent of the federal budget now comes from non-oil and gas revenues.15 There was little doubt in Russian homes, however, that real disposable income was dropping in purchasing power.

Quality of life Even while the president signed multiple laws in 2020 boosting incomes, pensions and other benefits for the Russian people, foreign investments slowed. Projections of greater contractions in the Russian economy in 2021 compelled the government to invest in poverty amelioration and delay the National Priority Projects for at least another six years. Agreement with producers kept prices for sugar and several other commodities under control and, as a New Year’s bonus, in December Putin announced cash gifts of 5,000 rubles to families for each child up to seven years of age.16 Such efforts helped sustain his image for many Russians as the ‘people’s president’. Although the oft-mentioned plans to diversify the economy are off the drawing board for now, Europe and China still need Russian oil and gas, and export markets for grains, NPPs and weapons continue to expand. Thus, the Russian government has sufficient revenue to provide wide-ranging public benefits. Higher taxes for the wealthy will contribute too. That said, community worries are rooted in household realities. A survey conducted by FOM in December 2020 reported that 33 per cent of Russians considered themselves poor. That was an increase of 5 per cent since March that same year. Well aware of this, Putin admitted at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in January 2021, that the poverty level in Russia rose the previous year. He blamed the pandemic and, yet again, proclaimed that the struggle against poverty was a priority for his government.17 Rosstat data showing that living standards in 2020 were the lowest since 2013 made those words ring a little hollow at home. Frustrations caused by economic anxiety from spilled over into protests originally intended as support for Navalny.18 Pandemic futures There was some good news, relatively speaking.

398  Closing remarks The coronavirus second wave that savaged Russia in the fall of 2020 began to slow in January 2021. On 1 January, the Ministry of Health confirmed 27,039 new coronavirus cases that day and 536 deaths. On 31 January, the record revealed a slight, but consistent drop to 18,359 cases and 485 deaths. The decline in cases continued into February. But distrust lingered. As the ministry launched the anti-virus vaccination programme for the general public on 5 January, more than half the population had told pollsters that they would not take the Russian vaccine. The programme continued unabated anyway, while travel and business restrictions were gradually lifted.19 Many foreign governments had no such reservations about Sputnik V. Kazakhstan, Belarus, Algeria and Bolivia began public vaccinations with it in mid-January. The first EU country to receive large quantities was Hungary, without EU authorization, and the first Middle East nation to do so was the UAE, both in late January. NATO member Turkey signed up. Six Latin American countries had registered the Russian vaccine by early February, and others began getting in line. San Marino was the 31st country to approve the vaccine. Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Italy soon followed, even though the EU had not yet approved its use. Russian doses are less expensive than most Western ones, at less than $20 for a two-shot vaccination, and is easier to transport because they do not need to be deep-frozen.20 Yet, even after clinical trials published in The Lancet on 2 February showed Sputnik V to be 91.6 per cent effective against symptomatic COVID-19, over 60 per cent of Russians were still hesitant about taking a jab.21

Government and society going into 2021 There is no point in repeating here the number of authors who describe Putin as a dictator or a tsar, and Russia as a totalitarian state. Most of these complainants sharpened their pencils after the constitutional amendments were introduced in 2020. Still, there are scholars who recognize that Russia is more nuanced than that. Richard Sakwa, for example, wrote that Putin has created an ‘administrative regime’, or a ‘network of social relations’ that is neither an authoritarian system nor a democratic one. His strength, Sakwa says, lies in his ability to draw a wide variety of competing factions and ideas together and govern by consensus, thereby preventing ‘an excess of authoritarianism’.22 Robert Service, who is by no means inclined towards Putin, said that ‘dictator’ is ‘too strong a word’. He called the system of government in Russia ‘authoritarian’, because ‘there remains much free air to breathe in Russia’.23 Both were right. Authoritarian as the Russian government obviously is, it is difficult to make the case that a country is a dictatorship while public demonstrations flourish, often with less police interference than in many European countries. Anti-government and anti-head-of-state placards are waved openly on Russia’s streets and social media carries every conceivable political opinion. More importantly, to date the system seems to be what most of the Russian people prefer. That is their prerogative. There are lots of detainees, to be sure,

Closing remarks  399 and extra-systemic opposition leaders are harassed by law enforcement. Yet opposing viewpoints are heard and disseminated, sometimes even from inside a jail, bloggers flourish and opposition parties and movement have their own websites. This may get more difficult over the next few years and, if so, the generally supportive consensus could fade. No matter his constitutional prerogatives and support from most of the siloviki, the Russian president faces potentially obstructionist forces, such as federal and regional bureaucracies, parts of the security services that act on their own, the Orthodox Church, regional activists and, of course, the traditional Russian handicaps to progress: corruption and inertia.24 When Putin undertook to amend the Russian Constitution, and reset his terms in office, he shook the entire political structure of Putinism, causing cliques, interest groups, political parties and the public to regroup. Coinciding as it did with the outbreak of a global pandemic, a crisis over which his leadership appeared uncertain, the ‘January Revolution’ of 2020 may have given Putin more executive authority while denting his mantle of invulnerability. Putin’s image suffered further when the general public grew suspicious of data about the pandemic released by the government, and of the Kremlin’s overall handling of the health crisis. As the number of cases began spiking again in late September and then worsened, much of that chariness fell on Putin. Faith in him as leader wavered also because his government appeared to mismanage climate change and never got around to act extensively on the oft-proclaimed need for infrastructure upgrades. Setting some of the old social conservative themes in stone, that is, in the amended Constitution, did not help much. Conservative laws banning ‘disrespect’ of authorities and ‘fake news’, with the state acting as judge, punishing the LGBT community and decriminalizing some forms of domestic violence may, in fact, prompt Russians eventually to regret what they wished for.

A second ‘January Revolution’, 2021 A survey conducted by FOM in January 2021 put the UR at 32 per cent support, trailed by the LDPR (13%) and the CPRF (12%). A Just Russia stood at 5 per cent and about a dozen small parties received one per cent or less.25 The surprise was the lack of interest in long-standing oppositional parties, such as Yabloko. Not mentioned in the survey was Navalny’s still unregistered Russia of the Future. The fact that over 10 per cent of respondents said they would spoil their ballot or not vote at all, and seven or eight small parties attracted at least some attention suggested that there was a potentially large voter catchment for any opposition leader able to garner some unified support. It was not clear whether Navalny could fill that bill, for in an openended question as to which public figures respondents trusted the most, even after all the furore noted ahead, only 5 per cent included Navalny among the five or six names they picked. Putin still led easily, but at 29 per cent his own trust rating had slipped a full 5 per cent since October 2020.26

400  Closing remarks Navalny comes home The storm began on 13 January, when Navalny announced via Instagram that he would be returning to Russia four days later and called on followers to ‘come and greet me’. He said that ‘Putin, who gave the order for my murder is screeching all around his bunker and telling his servants to do everything so that I do not return. The servants act as usual: They fabricate new criminal cases against me.’ These inflammatory words earned over 150,000 ‘likes’ within hours. The Instagram message was reported fully in Kommersant and The Moscow Times, without the blame cast on Putin in Vedomosti, and not at all in the state-owned Rossiiskaia gazeta. RT summarized Navalny’s message, including the part where he blamed Putin for the assassination attempt.27 The widely-touted ‘return’ attracted swarms of journalists to airports in Germany and Moscow, and prompted authorities in Moscow to divert the flight to an unscheduled landing site at the last moment. In fact, Navalny didn’t need journalists to greet him for the publicity. Representatives of CNN, Associated Press, ABC News, Washington Post, The Economist, Reuters, Ekho Moskvy, Dozhd, RFE/RL, Nastoiashchee vremia, as well as Navalny’s lawyer, were among the excited passengers on the aircraft with him.28 Amid Western calls for his release and protesters gathering outside the police station where he was held, Navalny released a video message calling on his followers to ‘take to the streets’. Head of his regional headquarters network, Leonid Volkov, told FBK HQ’s around the country to ‘immediately begin preparations for large rallies across the country on January 23rd’.29 It was at this timely moment that the FBK released the video carrying aerial photos of the opulent ‘Putin’s Palace’. Systemic party leaders Zyuganov, Zhirinovsky and Mironov, and House Speaker Volodin, all railed against Navalny’s gambit, calling him various names, such as ‘traitor’ and ‘cheat’ financed by foreign governments.30 Lavrov, Volodin and Zakharova hinted that the entire Navalny affair, including the poisoning, may have been staged by Western agents. Older Russians believed them; younger Russians did not.31 Street protests against the odds The legislation introduced in late 2020 tightening up restrictions related to demonstrations came into force in January 2021. They made it possible to designate individual Russian citizens as foreign agents, toughened sentences and fines for libel, and adopted further restrictions on the Internet. These last made it more difficult to draw people to demonstrations.32 Nevertheless, on 23 January demonstrations took place in about 110 Russian cities and towns. By mid-afternoon that day the number of detainees in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk and dozens of other cities showed the degree to which the state felt threatened. According to OVD-Info, about 4,000 were detained across the country, 1,500 of them in Moscow. Sobol was held, and Yulia Navalnaya posted a photo of herself inside a police wagon.

Closing remarks  401 A Pussy Riot leader, Maria Alyokhina, and Navalny’s brother Oleg were confined for 48 hours. 33 A post-demonstration sweep of FBK homes and offices resulted in charges against dozens of members and associates. Most of the detainees were released within hours, but criminal cases were opened against a few, including Volkov, who called for a second national rally the next week.34 As editor-in-chief of Nezavisimaia Konstantin Remchukov pointed out, none of this was unexpected. Navalny had violated the conditions of his suspended sentence even when not in a coma and was warned as early as 29 December 2020 that he would be detained on his arrival in Russia. On the other hand, he and his supporters knew that the longer he stayed out of the country the more credible the state’s charge that he was an agent of foreign powers would become.35 Most of the demonstrations were unauthorized, and protest organizers knew they were likely to be apprehended. Many were taken in for participating in a large public gathering without wearing a mask – also illegal by pandemic rules. All classic Catch-22 situations. Russian official and pro-Putin sites showed videos of violence against the police; opposition and foreign sites showed videos of violence against protesters. Significantly, many of the placards carried by demonstrators expressed anger at the regime itself, against Putin, the oligarchs and corruption. After three nation-wide rallies, the FBK gave it up and promised a return to public action in the summer and spring – in preparation for the September elections.36 These protests were dominated by people in the age bracket between 25 and 39, many of whom were university educated and reasonably well off; that is, Russia’s middle class. They were less interested in Navalny per se than they were in the manner in which the state treated him, meaning that opposition to Putin was no longer a marginal point of view.37 Herein lay the revolutionary nature of domestic events in January 2021. After a year of confusion and frustration, Russia’s domestic affairs and foreign relationships had come full circle, and now seemed to be spiralling downwards. *** As one prominent sociologist at the Levada Centre put it towards the end of 2020 even massive street demonstrations have tended to be local and so had not threatened the natural ‘order of things’. There were always people who are ‘outraged, insulted and disagree’ with one policy or another, he said, but they ‘are marginal to the mainstream, [always forced to ponder] “if not Putin, then who?”’. When it comes down to the notion of an uprising, the ‘mass consciousness’ prefers the status quo, as long as living conditions do not get seriously worse.38 That may be changing. The first January Revolution, in 2020, was planned in the form of constitutional amendments, but took on far greater meaning than expected as the pandemic came to roost over Russia. The second January Revolution, in 2021, was expected if not planned, but its manifestations may have far greater consequences for Russian than the earlier one. As, or if, the dust settles from the January to January crises, Putin’s apparently ad hoc reaction to the

402  Closing remarks pandemic and the concomitant social and political unrest may finally force substantive changes in the Russian world, perhaps not for the best. The general elections set for September 2021 will test the degree to which Putinism has come unglued – or if it has. Now that he has immunity from prosecution after he leaves office and a permanent seat on the Federation Council, stepping down in 2024 may look more inviting than it did in January 2020.

Notes 1 ‘Vladimir Putin: otsenki raboty, otnoshenie’, FOM, 31 December 2020, https:// fom.ru/Politika/10946; ‘Odobrenie deiatel’nosti Vladimira Putina’, Levada-tsentr, November 2020, accessed 13 January 2021; ‘Odobrenie deiatel’nosti gosudarstvennykh institutov’, VTsIOM, December 2020, accessed 13 January 2021, https:// wciom.ru/ratings/dejatelnost-gosudarstvennykh-institutov/. 2 For the film, see ‘Palace for Putin. The history of the biggest bribe’ (Dvorets dlia Putina. Istoriia samoi bol’shoi vziatki), Naval’nyi, 19 January 2021, https:// navalny.com/p/6453/. 3 ‘Vstrecha s uchashchimisia vuzov po sluchaiu Dnia rossiiskogo studenchestva’, Kremlin.ru, 25 January 2021, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64922; ‘BillionDollar Palace in Navalny Investigation “Doesn’t Belong to me,” Putin Says’, The Moscow Times, 25 January 2021. For Navalny’s claim of 100 million viewers, see ‘Vam pis’mo!’, https://navalny.com/p/6460/. 4 ‘Nazvano prednaznachenie stroiashchegosia pod Gelendzhikom “dvortsa Putina”’, Vedomosti, 29 January 2021; ‘Russian Billionaire Arkady Rotenberg Says He Owns “Putin Palace”’, The Moscow Times, 30 January 2021. 5 See, e.g. Peter Dickinson, ‘Putin the Poisoner’, Atlantic Council, 16 February 2021; Michael McFaul, ‘How to Contain Putin’s Russia’, Foreign Affairs, 19 January 2021; Tony Wood, ‘Putin Isn’t As Strong as he Looks’, New York Times, 2 February 2021. 6 See, e.g. essays in Paul J. Saunders, ed. Costs of a New Cold War: The U.S.–Russia Confrontation Over Ukraine. Washington: Center for the National Interest, 2014, and in J.L. Black, Michael Johns, eds. The Return of the Cold War. Ukraine, the West and Russia, Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2016. 7 For a Russian perspective, Dmitri Trenin, ‘Moscow’s “New Rules”’, Carnegie Moscow Center, 12 November 2020. 8 On recent references to the Kosovo precedent, see Milena Sterio, ‘The “Frozen” Conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh’, Opinion Juris, 2 October 2020, https://opiniojuris.org/2020/10/02/the-frozen-conflict-in-nagorno-karabakh/. 9 The White House, ‘Remarks by President Biden on America’s Place in the World’, 4 February 2021. 10 For recent examples of ‘blame the Russians for everything’ and the ‘evil empire’ under new leadership, see Luke Harding, Shadow State: Murder, Mayhem, and Russia’s Remaking of the West. New York: Harper, 2020, and Catherine Belton, Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. 11 For example, Larry Diamond, Ill Winds. Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency. New York: Penguin Books, 2019, and Mitchell Orenstein, The Lands In Between: Russia and the West and the New Politics of Hybrid War. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2019. 12 On this, e.g. Alina Polyakova, ‘The Kremlin’s Plot Against Democracy’, Foreign Affairs, (September/October 2020); Gennady Rudkevich, ‘In the

Closing remarks  403 West, Russia Backs Chaos, not Candidates’, The Moscow Times, 25 February 2020; Paul Robinson, ‘Exposing the Disinformation Industry’, Irrussianality, 8 April 202. 13 There is a huge literature on this, for a summary see Nick Corasaniti, Jim Rutenberg, Kathleen Gray, ‘As Trump Rails Against Loss, His Supporters Become More Threatening’, New York Times, 9 December 2020. 14 ‘Pandemic to cost Russia 9% in 2020–2021 — Siluanov’, Interfax, 26 October 2020. 15 ‘Ezhegodnaia press-konferentsiia Vladimira Putina’, Kremlin.ru, 17 December 2020, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64671. 16 Tatiana Zamakhina, ‘Putin ob’iavil o vyplatakh na kazhdogo rebenka do semi let k Novomu godu’, Rossiiskaia gazeta, 17 December 2020. 17 ‘Sessiia onlain-foruma “Davosskaia povestka dlia 2021”’, Kremlin.ru. 27 January 2021, kremlin.ru/events/president/news/64938; ‘Putin nazval bor’bu s bednost’iu glavnoi zadachei Rossii’, Vedomosti, 27 January 2021. 18 Federal’naia sluzhba gosudarstvennoi statistiki, ‘Informatsiia o sotsial’no-ekonomicheskom polozhenii Rossii’, https://rosstat.gov.ru/compendium/document/50800, accessed 29 January 2021; ‘Pandemic Pushed Russians’ Household Finances to Decade Low’, The Moscow Times, 29 January 2021. 19 ‘Chislo zhelaiushchikh privit’sia ot COVID v Rossii vernulos’ k letnemu urobniu’, RBC.ru, 15 January 2021; Lucian Kim, ‘Poll: More Than Half of Russians Don’t want to Get Vaccinated’, NPR, 24 December 2020. 20 ‘What you need to know today’, daily summaries of the state of coronavirus pandemic carried in The Moscow News. See also Henry Meyer, ‘Putin’s Once-Scorned Vaccine Now Favorite in Pandemic Fight’, Bloomberg, 6 February 2021. 21 ‘Bol’she poloviny rossiian odobriaiut vaktsinatsiiu ot COVID, po oprosu VTsIOMa’, Vedomosti, 28 January 2021; ‘Safety and efficacy of an rAd26 and rAd5 vector-based heterologous prime-boost COVID-19 vaccine: an interim analysis of a randomised controlled phase 3 trial in Russia’, The Lancet, 2 February 2021; Ilya Yablokov, ‘How The Kremlin’s Years of Conspiracy Spreading Are Biting Back’, The Moscow Times, 1 March 2021 22 Richard Sakwa, Russia’s Futures. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2019, pp. 57–71. 23 Robert Service, Kremlin Winter. Russia and the Second Coming of Vladimir Putin. London: Picador, 2019, pp. 187–9. 24 Andrew Higgins, ‘Is Putin as Powerful as He Acts?’, New York Times International, 30–31 March 2019. 25 Ivan Rodin, ‘Reiting “partii Naval’nogo” – ot 5 do 9%’, Nezavisimaia gazeta, 24 January 2021. 26 ‘Prezidentskie reitingi i polozhenie del v strane’, Levada-tsentr, 4 February 2021, www.levada.ru/2021/02/04/prezidentskie-rejtingi-i-polozhenie-del-v-strane/? fromtg=1. 27 Navalny, message & video on Instagram, ‘navalny. Vosvrashchaius’ domoi’, 13 January 2021, https://www.instagram.com/tv/CJ-lt0YoT2s/?utm_source=ig_ embed; ‘Navalny Announces Return to Russia Despite Prison Threat’, The Moscow Times, 13 January 2021; ‘Naval’nyi nazval datu vozvrashcheniia v Rossiiu’, Vedomosti, 13 January 2021; Sam Greene, ‘“Meet Me”, Alexei Navalny Wrote’, The Moscow Times, 13 January 2021. 28 Tweeted by Yuliia Vitiazeva, who also was on the plane, 17 January 2021, https:// mobile.twitter.com/Vityzeva/status/1350809571519066112. 29 ‘Navalny urged supporters to go out. Its headquarters are preparing rallies on January 23’, Meduza, 18 January 2021. 30 Elena Mukhametshina, Maksim Ivanov, ‘Gosduma otkryla sessiiu s obsuzhdeniia Alekseia Naval’nogo i vyborov v SShA’, Vedomosti, 20 January 2021; ‘Kremlin Calls Navalny’s Viral Putin Palace Report “Nonsense”’, The Moscow Times, 20 January 2021.

404  Closing remarks 31 ‘Zakharova sochla prizyvy osvobodit’ Naval’nogo napisannymi “pod kopirku”’, RBC.ru, 3 February 2021, www.rbc.ru/politics/02/02/2021/6019a5219a79474793c 4a91e. For a list of statements by Western leaders, see ‘“Pure Cowardice”: World Leaders React to Navalny’s Imprisonment’, The Moscow Times, 3 February 2021. 32 ‘Legislative restrictions of freedom of assembly at the end of 2020’, OVD-Info, accessed 10 January 2021, https://ovdinfo.org/reports/legislative-restrictionsfreedom-assembly-end-2021. 33 ‘Detainee Lists … according to OVID-Info as of 23.01.21 15:21’, and later at 16.02, https://ovdinfo.org/, accessed 23 January 2021; ‘As It’s happening: Thousands Rally for Navalny’s Release Across Russia’, The Moscow Times, 23 January 2021; Uliana Pavlova, Felix Light, ‘Protests for Jailed Kremlin Critic Navalny Sweep Russia’, The Moscow Times, 23 January 2021. This last includes videos of mob attacks on police lines. 34 ‘Navalny Allies Announce Second Nationwide Protest Sunday’, The Moscow Times, 25 January 2021; ‘OVD-Info statement on the number of people detained at the Freedom Navalny protest rallies’, 26 January 2021, https://ovdinfo.org/ articles/2021/01/26/zayavlenie-ovd-info-o-kolichestve-zaderzhannyh-na-akciyahprotesta-svobodu. 35 ‘Konstantin Remchukov ob areste Naval’nogo i piati predposylkakh revoliutsii’, Nezavisimaia, 18 January 2021. 36 ‘Leonid Volkov anonsiroval protestnuiu aktsiiu 14 fevralia’, MBKh-media, 9 February 2021, https://mbk-news.appspot.com/news/14feb/; ‘Leonid Volkov announced a new action in support of Navalny’, VTimes, 9 February 2021; ‘Navalny Team Switches Tactics in Call for New Protest in Russia’, RFE/RL, 9 February 2021. 37 ‘Prezidentskie reitingi i polozhenie del v strane’, Levada-tsentr, 4 February 2021, www.levada.ru/2021/02/04/prezidentskie-rejtingi-i-polozhenie-del-vstrane/?fromtg=1; ‘Dissatisfaction With Putin Surges Among Young Russians — Levada Poll’, The Moscow Times, 4 February 2021; Alexander Baunov, ‘The New Face of Russian Protest’, Moscow Carnegie Center, 25 January 2021. 38 ‘Knopka. Pochemu protesty v Rossii ne ugrozhaiut vlasti’, Levada-tsentr, 12 October 2020, https://www.levada.ru/2020/10/12/knopka-pochemu-protesty-vrossii-ne-ugrozhayut-vlasti. An interview with Aleksei Levinson, director of the Socio-Cultural Research Department of the Levada Centre.

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This list is of recent English-language books, with a few earlier volumes for background, or if they are cited. It does not include the many references to Russian- and English-language items from popular periodicals and newspapers found in endnotes to each chapter. For earlier items, see bibliographic lists in Black, The Russian Presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, 2008–2012 (2015), and Putin’s Third Term as Russia’s President, 2012–18 ((2019). Ademmer, Esther, Russia’s Impact on EU Policy Transfer to the Post-Soviet Space. The Contested Neighborhood. London: Routledge 2017. Aleksashenko, Sergey, Putin’s Counterrevolution. How Putin’s Autocracy Undercut Russia’s Economy and Chances for Democracy. Washington: Brookings, 2018. Arutyunyan, Anna, The Putin Mystic: Inside Russia’s Power Cult. Northampton, MA: Interlink, 2014. Åslund, Anders, Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy. New Haven: Yale UP, 2019. Baklitskiy, Andrey, The Prospects for U.S.–Russia Arms Control. Washington: CSIS, 2020. Baldwin, Natylie, The View from Moscow. Understanding Russia and U.S.–Russia Relations. Portland: Double Eagle, 2020. Becker, Torbjorn, Susanne Oxenstierna, eds. The Russian Economy Under Putin. London: Routledge, 2020. Belton, Catherine, Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. Beumers, Birgit, Alexander Etkind, Olga Gurova, Sanna Turoma, eds. Cultural Forms of Protest in Russia. London: Routledge, 2017. Birchfield, Vicki L., Alasdair R. Young, eds. Triangular Diplomacy among the United States, the European Union, and the Russian Federation. Responses to the Crisis in Ukraine. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Black, J.L., ed. Russia & Eurasia Documents Annual, 1987–2007. 30 vols., Gulf Breeze, Fl: Academic International Press, 1991–2009. (REDA). Prior to 1992 volume, USSR Documents Annual. Black, J.L. Into the Dustbin of History. The USSR from Coup to Commonwealth August-December 1991. A Documentary Narrative. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1993.

406 Bibliography Black, J.L. Russia Faces NATO Expansion. Bearing Gifts or Bearing Arms? Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. Black, J.L. Vladimir Putin and the New World Order. Looking East, Looking West?, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. Black, J.L. The Russian Presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, 2008–12. The Next Step Forward or Merely a Time Out? London: Routledge, 2015. Black, J.L., Michael Johns, eds. Return of the Cold War. Ukraine, the West and Russia. London: Routledge, 2016. Black, J.L. Putin’s Third Term as Russia’s President, 2012–2018. London: Routledge, 2019. Black, J.L., Michael Johns, Alanda Theriault, eds. The New World Disorder. Lanham, MD: Lexington Press (Rowman & Littlefield), 2019. Blake, Heidi, From Russia With Blood. The Kremlin’s Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin’s Secret War on the West. Boston: Little Brown, 2019. Blank, Stephen J., ed. The Russian Military in Contemporary Perspective. Carlisle, PA: U.S. War College & Strategic Studies Institute, 2019. Boekken, Havard, Law and Power in Russia. Making Sense of Quasi-Legal Practices. London: Routledge, 2018. Bolton, John, The Room Where It Happened. A White House Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020. Browder, Bill, Red Notice. A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man’s Fight for Justice. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015. Buchan, Russell, Cyber Espionage and International Law. London: Hart, 2018. Buchanan, Ben, The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2020. Buckley, Mary, The Politics of Unfree Labour in Russia. Human Trafficking and Labour Migration. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2018. Carpenter, Ted Galen, Gullible Superpower: U.S. Support for Bogus Foreign Democratic Movements. Washington: Cato Institute, 2019. Casier, Tom, Joan DeBardeleben, eds. EU-Russia Relations in Crisis. Understanding Diverging Perceptions. Abingdon & New York, NY: Routledge, 2018. Chandler, Andrea, Democracy, Gender and Social Policy in Russia. A Wayward Society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Cohen, Stephen F. War with Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate. New York: Hot Books, 2019. Connolly, Richard, Russia’s Response to Sanctions. How Western Economic Statecraft is Reshaping Political Economy in Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2018. Conradi, Peter, Who Lost Russia? How the World Entered a New Cold War. London: Oneworld, 2017. Crumley, M. Sowing Market Reforms: The Internationalization of Russian Agriculture. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Dahrendorf Forum. Debating Europe, Avoiding a New ‘Cold War’: The Future of EU-Russia Relations in the Context of the Ukraine Crisis, LSE Ideas. Special Report, SRO20, March 2016. D’Anieri, Paul, Ukraine and Russia. From Civilized Divorce to Uncivil War. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2020. Dawisha, Karen. Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014. De Ploeg, Chris Kaspar, Ukraine in the Crossfire. Atlanta, GA: Clarity, 2017.

Bibliography  407 Diamond, Larry, Ill Winds. Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency. New York: Penguin Books, 2019. Dragneva, Rilka, Kateryna Wolczuk, eds. Eurasian Economic Integration: Law, Policy and Politics. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2013. Drezner, Daniel W. The Sanctions Paradox: Economic State Craft and International Relations. New York: Cambridge UP, 1999. Dugin, Alexander, Putin vs. Putin. Vladimir Putin Viewed from the Right. London: Arktos, 2014. Translation of Russian original written in 2012. Dunlop, John B. The February 2015 Assassination of Boris Nemtsov and the Flawed Trial of His Alleged Killers. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2019. Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, Vol. 185. Elsenhaus, Hartmut, Salvatore Babones, BRICS or Bust? Escaping the Middle Income Trap. Stanford: Stanford UP 2017. Farrow, Ronan, War on Peace. The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence. New York: W.W. Norton, 2018. Filis, Constantinos, ed. A Closer Look at Russia and Its Influence in the World. Athens: Nova, 2019. Freedman, Lawrence, Ukraine and the Art of Strategy. New York: Oxford UP, 2019. Fridman, Ofer, Russian “Hybrid Warfare”: Resurgence and Politicization. New York: Oxford UP, 2018. Frye, Timothy, Property Rights and Property Wrongs: How Power, Institutions, and Norms Shape Economic Conflict in Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2017. Gabowitsch, Mischa, Protest in Putin’s Russia. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2017. Galeotti, Mark, The Vory. Russia’s Super Mafia. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2018. Galeotti, Mark, We Need to Talk About Putin. How the West Gets Him Wrong. London: Ebury Press (Penguin), 2019. Gessen, Masha, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. New York: Random House, 2017. Giles, Keir, Moscow Rules: What Drives Russia to Confront the West. London: Chatham House (RIIA), 2019. Gorbachev, M.S. Chto postavleno na kartu: bydushchee global’nogo mira. Moscow: Ves’ Mir, 2019. Greenberg, Andy. Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Search for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers. New York: Doubleday, 2019. Greene, Samuel A., Graeme B. Robertson, Putin v. the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia. New Haven: Yale UP, 2019. Gudkov, Lev, Natalia Zorkaya, Ekaterina Kochergina, Karina Pipiya, Alexandra Ryseva, Russia’s ‘Generation Z’: Attitudes and Values 2019/2020. Bonn & Washington: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2020. Güler, Mehmet Cagatay, Building a Nuclear Empire: Nuclear Energy as a Russian Foreign Policy Tool in the Case of Turkey. Istanbul: Cinius, 2020. Gustafson, Thane, Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2012. Hahn, Gordon M. Ukraine Over the Edge. Russia, the West and the New ‘Cold War’. Jefferson, NVC: McFarland & Company, 2018. Hale, Henry E., Richard Sakwa, Stephen White, Developments in Russian Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Hampson, Fen Osler, Mikhail Troitskiy, eds. Tug of War. Negotiating Security in Eurasia. Montreal: McGill-Queens Press, 2017.

408 Bibliography Hamilton, Robert E., Five Years of War in the Donbas. Washington: Foreign Policy Research Institute, 2019. Black Sea Strategy papers. Harding, Luke, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win. London: Penguin, 2017. Harding, Luke, Shadow State: Murder, Mayhem, and Russia’s Remaking of the West. New York: Harper, 2020. Helmer, John, Skripal In Prison. Independently published, 2020. E-Kindle & Paperbound editions. Healey, Dan, Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. Hendley, Kathryn, Everyday Law in Russia. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2017. Heusala, Anna-Liisa, Kaarina Aitamurto, eds. Migrant Workers in Russia: Global Challenges of the Shadow Economy in Societal Transformation. London: Routledge, 2018. Hill, Ronald J., Ottorino Cappelli, eds. Putin and Putinism. London: Routledge, 2013. Hill, William H., No Place for Russia. European Security Institutions Since 1989. New York: Columbia UP, 2018. Hoffman, David E. The Oligarchs. Wealth and Power in the New Russia. Philadelphia: Perseus Books, 2011. Hoffmann, Thomas, Andrey Makarychev, Russia and the EU: Spaces of Interaction. London: Routledge, 2019. Holmes, Stephen, Ivan Krastev, The Light that Failed. Why the West is Losing the Fight for Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Pegasus Books, 2020. Isikoff, Michael, David Corn, Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump. Boston: Twelve Books, 2018. Jaffa, Joshua, Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia. New York: Tim Duggan Bks, 2020 Jolicoeur, Pierre, ed. Putin and the New Militarization of Russian Foreign Policy, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2017. Khrushcheva, Nina, Jeffrey Tayler, In Putin’s Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time Zones. New York: St. Martin’s, 2019. Kovalik, Dan, The Plot to Scapegoat Russia. How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Russia. Introduction by George Talbot. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2017. Krainer, Alex, The Grand Deception: The Truth About Bill Browder, the Magnitsky Act and Anti-Russian Sanctions. Otto, NC: The Red Pill Press, 2018. Krishna-Hensel, S.F., ed. Media in Process: Transformation and Democratic Transition. London: Routledge, 2016. Kubal, Agnieszka, Immigration and Refugee Law in Russia. Socio-Legal Perspectives. Cambridge, UK: CVUP, 2019. Kuzio, Taras, Putin’s War Against Ukraine: Revolution, Nationalism, and Crime. Toronto: Chair of Ukrainian Studies, 2017. Lagutina, Maria L. Russia's Arctic Policy in the Twenty-First Century National and International Dimension. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. Laqueur, Walter, Putinism. Russia and Its Future with the West. London: Thomas Dunne, 2015. Laruelle, Marlene, Peter Rollberg, eds. Mass Media in the Post-Soviet World: Market Forces, State Actors, and Political Manipulation in the Informational Environment after Communism. Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2018. Distributed by Columbia UP.

Bibliography  409 Laruelle, Marlene, ed. Russia’s Policy in Syria and the Middle East. CAP Paper No. 212, Georgia Washington University, January, 2019. Laurie, Richard, Putin: His Downfall and Russia’s Coming Crash. New York: St. Martin’s, 2017. Ledeneva, Alena V. How Russia Really Works. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2006. Ledeneva, Alena V. Russia’s Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange. New York: Cambridge UP, 1988. Levitsky, Steven, Lucan A. Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2010. Lo, Bobo, Russian Foreign Policy in the Post-Soviet Era. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Lo, Bobo, Russia and the New World Order. London: Chatham House, 2015. Loftus, Suzanne, Insecurity and the Rise of Nationalism in Putin’s Russia. Keeper of Traditional Values. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Lukin, Alexander, China and Russia: The New Rapprochement. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2018. Macaes, Bruno, The Dawn of Eurasia: On the Trail of the New World Order. New haven, CT: Yale UP, 2018. MacKinnon, Mark, The New Cold War: Revolution, Rigged Elections and Pipeline Politics in the Former Soviet Union. New York: Random House, 2007. Mälksoo, Lauri, Wolfgang Benedek, eds. Russia and the European Court of Human Rights: The Strasbourg Effect. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2017. Makarychev, Andrey, Alexander Yatsyk, eds. Vocabularies of International Relations after the Crisis in Ukraine. London: Routledge, 2016. Marochkin, Sergey Y. The Operation of International Law in the Russian Legal System. A Changing Approach. Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2019. Marples, David, Understanding Ukraine and Belarus. A Memoir. Bristol, UK: E-International Relations, 2020. Martynov, Andrei, Losing Military Supremacy. The Myopia of American Strategic Planning. Atlanta, GA: Clarity, 2018. Matveeva, A., Through Times of Trouble. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018. McFaul, Michael, From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia. New York: Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2018 Medvedev, Sergei, The Return of the Russian Leviathan. Cambridge: Polity, 2019, translated by Stephen Dalziel. Mettan, Guy, Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria. Atlanta, GA: Clarity, 2017 Migacheva, K., & B. Frederick, eds. Religion, Conflict, and Stability in the Former Soviet Union. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2018. Miller, C. Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Monaghan, Andrew, Power in Modern Russia. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2017. Monaghan, Andrew, Dealing with the Russians. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2019. Morgan, W. John, Irina N. Trofimov, Grigori A. Kliucharev, eds. Civil Society, Social Change and a New Popular Education in Russia. London: Routledge, 2018. Moshes, Arkady, András Rácz, eds. What Has Remained of the USSR. Exploring the Erosion of the Post-Soviet Space. FIIA Report, No. 58 (February 2019). Nance, Malcolm, The Plot to Betray America. How Team Trump Embraced Our Enemies, Compromised Our Security, and How We Can Fix it. New York: Hachette, 2019.

410 Bibliography Naylor, Aliide, The Shadow in the East. Vladimir Putin and the New Baltic Front. London: I.B. Taurus, 2020. Opdahl, Ingrid M. The Russian State and Russian Energy Companies, 1992–2018. London: Routledge, 2020. Orenstein, Mitchell, The Lands in Between: Russia vs the West and the New Politics of Hybrid War. Oxford: OUP, 2019. Ostrow, Joel M., Georgiy A. Satarov, Irina M. Khakamada, The Consolidation of Dictatorship in Russia. Westport, CN: Praeger, 2007. Foreword by Garry Kasparov. Paul, T.V. Restraining Great Powers: Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2018. Pearce, James C. The Use of History in Putin’s Russia. Wilmington: Vernon Press, 2020. Petro, Nicolai N., Ukraine in Crisis. London: Routledge, 2017. Perseus Strategies, The Kremlin’s Political Prisoners: Advancing a Political Agenda by Crushing Dissent. Co-commissioned by Free Russia Foundation, the Human Rights Foundation, the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice, and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, May, 2019. Pikulicka-Wilczewska, Agnieszka, Richard Sakwa, eds. Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspective. Bristol, UK: E-International Relations Publishing, 2016. Pleshakov, Constantine, The Crimea Nexus: Putin’s War and the Clash of Civilizations. New Haven: Yale UP, 2017. Plokhy, Serhii, Lost Kingdom. The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation. New York: Basic, 2017. Poberezhskaya, Marianna, Communicating Climate Change in Russia. State and Propaganda. London: Routledge, 2016. Politkovskaya, Anna, A Russian Diary. New York: Random House, 2007. Ponars Eurasia Policy Perspective, Ukraine in the Poroshenko Era. The Politics of Power, Reform, and War. Washington: George Washington University, 2017. Ponars Eurasia Policy Perspectives, Russia’s New Domestic Scene. Economy, Nationalism, Power, Opposition. Washington: George Washington University, 2017. Putin, Vladimir, First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait. New York: Public Affairs, 2000 Pynnoniemi, Katri, Andras Racz, eds. Fog of Falsehood. Russian Strategy of Deception and the Conflict in Ukraine. Helsinki: Finnish Institute of International Affairs, 2016. Radin, Andrew, Clinton Bruce Reach, Russian Views of the International Order. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2017. Raik, Kristi, Andras Racz, eds. Post-Crimea Shift in EU–Russia Relations. Tallinn: International Centre for Defence and Security, 2019. Raikhel, Eugene, Governing Habits. Treating Alcoholism in the Post-Soviet Clinic. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2017. Ratelle, Jean-Francois, Laurence Broers, eds. Networked Insurgencies and Foreign Fighters in Eurasia. London: Routledge, 2017. Reddaway, Peter, Russia’s Domestic Security Wars: Putin’s Use of Divide and Rule Against His Hardline Allies. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Reisinger, William M., Bryon J. Moraski, The Regional Roots of Russia’s Political Regime. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2017. Renz, Bettina, Russia’s Military Revival. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2018. Robinson, Paul, Russian Conservatism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2019.

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Index

Note: Page number followed by n refers to footnote number Abdulatipov, Ramzan 67 Abdullah II, King 213 Abe, Shinzo 140, 218, 219–20 Abkhazia 34, 52, 180 Abramchenko, Viktoriia 34 Afghanistan 76, 216, 235n186, 236n187, 240, 259, 268–9 Africa 220–2 Agora 330 Agriculture 163–5 A Just Russia 21, 95, 96, 107 Akimov, Maksim 22, 267 Aksyonov, Sergei 63 Alekseeva, Lyudmila 329 Aliev, Ilham 191, 193, 213 Al-Khattab, Ibn (Samir Saleh Abdullah) 10 All-Russia People’s Front (ONF) 63, 98 All-Russia Public Opinion Research Centre (VTsIOM) 16, 24, 25, 35 All-Russia Vote, see Constitution Al-Qaeda, see terrorism Alyokhina, Maria 401 Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) 92, 103, 105, 114; see also Navalny Antifa 249 anti-Semitism 62, 107 Apakhonchich, Daria 251 Applebaum, Anne 206 Arashukov, Rauf 337 armed forces, see military, Russia Armenia 228n71, 286, 307, 308 arms race 286, 294–7; military, Russia 284–308 arms reduction treaties 240, 286, 288, 294, 298–300 arms sales 294, 298, 300–2 Artyukhov, Dmitry 57 Arutuyan, Anna 257

Aslund, Anders 17, 250 Assad, Bashar al 194–5, 198–9, 394 Association of Southeast Asian Countries (ASEAN) 149–50, 217 Astreya, see Human rights Atambaev, Almazbek 217 Azerbaijan 228n73–n77, 286 Babich, Mikhail 201 Baburin, Sergei 12 Baghdadi, Abu Bakr al 76 Bakhtadze, Mamuka 305 Bakiev, Kumanbek 217 Baltic States 179, 200–1, 209, 288, 305–6 Bartholomew I, Patriarch 376 Basaev, Shamil 10, 71 Batkivshchyna 182 Baturina, Yelena 356 Belarus 201–4, 307; Union State (with Russia) 202–3 Belousov, Andrei 34, 40, 354 Belt and Road 148–9, 161, 209, 213, 218, 267 Berdimuhamedow, Gurbanguly 153 Berezovsky, Boris 11, 318 Berlusconi, Silvio 209 Beslan 72; see also terrorism Biden, Joe 240, 248, 259, 260, 265–6, 267, 391, 395 Biegun, Stephen E. 192 Billingslea, Marshal S. 288 Blank, Stephen 288 Bobkov, Roman 339 Boldyrev, Roman 338 Bolsonaro, Jair 144 Bolton, John 107, 212, 242, 259, 295 Borisov, Yury 22, 197 Bortnikov, Aleksandr 16, 19, 75, 211

414 Index BRICS 143–4 Bridenstine, Jim 242 Brouillette, Dan 162 Browder, William 17, 89, 206, 208, 247, 248 Burkhardt, Fabian 334 Butina, Maria 252, 253, 256 Calvey, Michael 255, 259 Canada 186, 203, 204, 212, 247 Cardin, Ben 258 Caspian Sea 142 Chaika, Yuri 33, 67, 71, 89, 338 Champagne, Françoise-Philippe 204 Chapman, Anna 252 Chebotarev, Sergey 22 Chechen wars 10–1, 61, 284 Chechnya 6, 51–2, 59–60, 70, 81n49; see also Kadyrov Chekunkov, Aleksei 41 Cheremisov, Konstantin 373 Chernyshenko, Dmitry 34 China 3, 171n90–n93, 213, 223, 267–8, 285, 288–9, 290–1, 294, 295, 298–9, 300, 301–2, 307, 308; see also Belt and Road; Xi Jinping Chubais, Anatoly 41 Churchill, Winston 7 Church of Scientology 375; see also religion Chuychenko, Konstantin 22 CIS, see Commonwealth of Independent States climate change 26–7, 65, 366–8; see also environment Clinton, Hillary 244, 246 coal, see energy Cohen, Michael 132 Cohen, Stephen F. 39, 241, 258–9 Cold War 3, 178, 239–70 Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) 302–3 ‘coloured revolution’ 20, 72, 102, 178, 202–3, 204, 217, 250, 269, 292 Comey, James 258 Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) 76, 179, 183 Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) 57, 88, 94–8, 104–5, 116 Conscription, see military Constitution, Russian 6, 7–8, 13, 42, 51n137, 178; All-Russia vote 29, 31–2, 51n137, 51n141, 111, 188; amendments 30–3, 53–4, 47n80, 59, 125n127–n130, 377, 384n64

Conte, Guiseppe 209 Coronavirus, see COVID-19 Corruption 14, 19, 22, 26, 57, 67, 68, 77, 89, 90, 92, 95, 98, 115, 131, 139–40, 317, 323, 325, 327, 334–4; Armenia 191; Moldova 205; Ukraine 185; see also crime Council of Europe 234n162 COVID-19 1, 35–7, 57, 67, 78n15, 78n17, 78n19, 122–3, 142, 162, 169n45, 263–5, 327–8, 352–60, 397–8; vaccine nationalism 222, 383n48–n49; vaccines 111, 144, 211, 269, 352; see also healthcare crime 334–41; see also corruption Crimea 2–3, 7, 52, 53, 60–4, 188–9, 292–3; see also Ukraine Crimean Tatars 61, 63, 224n21 Cruz, Ted 155 CSTO, see Collective Security Treaty Organization Cuba 211–12 cyberattacks 258–61 Czech Republic 254 Dagestan 60, 80n43; see also terrorism Dawisha, Karen 334 Degtyarov, Mikhail 97, 112, 374 demography 21–2, 365, 377–80; life expectancy 21, 351 demonstrations, see protests Deripaska, Oleg 132 Diaz-Canel, Miguel 211 Ditrich (Dietrich), Yevgeny 22, 41, 146 Dodon, Igor 205, 223 Doguzova, Zarina 152 Donbass (Donbas) 182, 184–8; see also Ukraine Donetsk People’s Republic, see Ukraine Donnelly, Christopher 206 Dorenko, Sergei 323 Double-Headed Eagle Society 107 drug and alcohol abuse 369, 370–1; see also smoking Druzhba 131 Duda, Andrzej 200, 205 Dugin, Aleksandr 15, 107 Durov, Nikolai 320 Durov, Pavel 73, 320 Duterte, Rodrigo 213 Dvorkovich, Arkady 21, 328 Dvornichenko, Anna 331 economics 7, 11, 129–66; see also energy; pipelines; sanctions

Index  415 education 325–8 Efimov, Aleksandr 197 Egypt 194, 231n111; see also Sisi Eldzharkiev, Ibragi 67 elections, Russia 6, 12, 96–7, 100–6, 128n173–n174 electoral reform 117 energy 65–6, 151–60, 162–3; coal 161; gas 151–6, 157; LNG 157; NPPs 149, 155, 160, 195, 259; oil 150–9; pipelines 129–30, 142, 173n128–130; see also Nord Stream; Power of Siberia; TurkStream Environment 66, 93–4; see also climate change Erdogen, Recep Tavyip 144, 191, 192, 194–7, 354 Espionage 251–5 Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) 107, 143, 149, 150, 165 Eurasianism 107 Euromaidans 61, 183, 187, 239 European Council 203, 234n162 European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) 91, 209, 248, 330 European Parliament (PACE) 206, 209 European Union (EU) 199–205, 207–17, 231n125, 232n126 Evans, John 9 Evmenov, Admiral Nikolai 300 Extra-systemic opposition 88–94 Fadeev, Valerii 330 Falkov, Valery 327 Farage, Nigel 206 Farion, Irina 62 Fatherland-All Russia Party 84 Fayzullin, Irek 41 Federal Migration Service 378 Federal Security Service (FSB) 2, 10, 16, 19, 21, 23, 25–6, 77, 82n76, 82n79, 82n82, 84, 91, 106, 111, 115, 117, 136, 251, 252, 253–4, 320, 325, 330, 337, 339 Federation Council, see governance Fedotov, Mikhail 330 Filaret, Patriarch 376 Filip, Pavel 205 food, see agriculture Foreign Policy Concepts, Russian 179 For Human Rights party 98–9 Forum of Free Russia 248 Fradkov, Mikhail 9 France 186, 190, 191, 196, 205, 206, 210, 211, 213; see also Macron

Francis, Pope 209 fresh water 161 Frias, Leopoldo Cintra 211 Frost, David 178, 303 FSB, see Federal Security Service Fukuyama, Frances 239 Furgal, Sergei 56, 98, 116, 126n144–145 Gabbard, Tulsi 246 Gadzhiibragimov, Dzhamaludin 60 Galeotti, Mark 38, 337 Gamidov, Abdusamad 68 Ganus, Yury 374 gas, natural, see energy Gaugazia 52, 205 gays, see LGBT Gazprom 130, 132, 140, 151–6 Gedeon, Bishop (Yuriy Kharon) 376 Georgia 179–80, 189, 209, 228n66–69, 304 Gerasimov, General Valerii 292–3, 295 Germany 186, 201, 206, 207–8, 211, 213 Ghani, Ashraf 214 Gintsburg, Aleksandr 360 Glasser, Susan 15 Glushakova, Yekaterina 341 Goble, Paul 39 gold 161–2 Golikova, Tatyana 22, 34, 37, 267, 334, 354, 361, 371, 378 Golodets, Olga 22 Golos 39 Golubovich, Aleksei 324 Golunov, Ivan 99–100, 323–4, 329 Gorbachev, Mikhail S. 6, 10, 52, 239, 286, 295–6, 317–8, 391 Gorbunov, Valentin 103 Gordeev, Aleksei 22, 84, 163 Gorring, Ruslan 340 governance 8–9, 15–6, 21, 33, 53, 54, 84, 118n5, 380n2–n4, 391–2, 398–9; governors 54–7 Gref, German 13, 129 Grigorieva, Yelena 331 Gromov, Aleksei 21 Grudinin, Pavel 12, 88, 341 Guaido, Juan 212 Gudkov, Dmitry 92, 96–7, 101, 111 Guriev, Sergei 111 Gusinsky, Vladimir 11, 85, 318 Guterres, António 161 Haftar, General Khalifa 221 Haley, Nikki 196, 241 hazing (dedovshchina) 285, 287

416 Index healthcare 368–72, see also COVID-19 homosexuality, see LGBT human rights 329–30; see also European Court of Human Rights, LGBT Hungary 205 Huntsman, John 258, 262–3, 306 Hydroxychloroquine 356 Hyten, John 294 Ignatiev, Mikhail 57 immigration/migration 372–80 Import Substitution Commission 167n21; see also sanctions India 195, 210, 211, 213–14, 216–18, 223 industry/manufacturing 132, 134, 136, 142, 161–2, 170n75–n76 Infantino, Gianni 373 Ingushetia 51–2, 60, 70, 80n43, 80n45 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) 286, 294, 295–7, 298, 299, 303, 307 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 129, 134, 135, 138–9, 140, 144, 149, 213 internet 320–2, 326, 341 interpol 246–7 investment, foreign 145, 146–7; domestic 145–6; see also SPIEF Iran 181, 207, 213, 229n91–n94, 230n105–n106, 242 Iraq 180, 229n92–n93 Ishaev, Viktor 57 Ishchenko, Andrei 98 Islam 61, 66, 67, 71–2, 194, 376 Islamicists, see terrorism Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIL) 77, 242; see also terrorism Israel 152, 164, 181, 193–4, 213, 230n105–n106 Italy 205, 209, 222 Ivanov, Aleksei 341 Ivanov, Sergei 304 Izotova, Galina 371 January Revolution 1, 28, 29, 77, 88, 391, 399–400 Japan 172n100–n101, 213, 218, 219–20 Japarov, Sadyr 217 Jaresko, Natalie 250 Jeenbekov, Sooronbai 217, 223 Jehovah’s Witnesses 375; see also religion Jews 376; see also anti-Semitism Johnson, Boris 113, 208 Kabardino-Balkaria 67–8 Kadyrov, Ramzan 13, 37, 59, 68, 70, 73, 89, 99, 110, 355

Kalashnikov 301, 302 Kalimatov, Makhmud-Ali 68 Kaljulaid, Kersti 200 Kamath, K.V. 144 Kamian, Harry 185 Kara-Mursa, Vladimir 89 Karzai, Hamid 213–14 Kasparov, Garri 39, 247, 248 Kasyanov, Mikhail 9, 84, 89, 247 Katz, Maksim 92 Kazakhstan 74, 213, 216, 236n187, 236n190–n191 Kelin, Andrei 208 Kerch Strait 136, 189, 245, 292–3; see also Sea of Azov Kerch Strait Bridge 145, 188 Kerry, John 185 Khabarovsk protests 126n144, 126n150, 126n152; see also demonstrations Khabrieva, Taliya 28 Khachaturyan sisters 331–2 Kharichev, Aleksandr Khodorkovsky, Mikhail 11, 89, 93, 99, 247–8 Khrushcheva, Nina L. 245 Khrushchev, Nikita 61, 270, 370 Khusnullin, Marat 34 Kim Jon-Un 218–9 Kirill, Patriarch 12, 330, 377 Kiriyenko, Sergei 15, 21, 84, 100, 108, 211 Kiselev, Dmitry 322 Klishas, Andrein 28 Kobak, Dmitry 22 Kobylkin, Dmitry 22, 41 Kolbe, Paul R. 260 Kolesnikova, Maria 203 Kolobkov, Pavel 22, 373 Kolokoltsev, Vladimir 18, 22, 100, 337 Kolomoyskiy, Ihor 185 Komarova, Natalia 369 Konovalov, Valentin 22, 98 Kosachev, Konstantin 194 Kosovo 179–80 Kosovo precedent 180 Kostin, Andrei 134 Kotukov, Mikhail 22 Kozak, Dmitry 34 Kozlov, Aleksandr 22, 41 Kramer, Mark 241 Krasheninnikov, Pavel 28 Krasnov, Igor 33 Krasovsky, Anton 97 Kravchuk, Leonid 52 Kravtsov, Sergei 34, 327–8

Index  417 Kuchma, Leonid 6 Kudrin, Aleksei 13, 21, 25, 37, 58, 96, 129, 130, 139, 141, 161, 326, 364, 368 Kudryavtsev, Demyan 324–5 Kudryavtsev, Konstantin 115 Kulikov, Sergei 41 Kulyavtsev, Kirill 338 Kumin, Vadim 97 Kurds 195, 196–7, 198–9 Kuril Islands, see Japan Kurz, Sebastien 205 Kyrgyzstan 216–17, 223 labour 130, 135, 141, 351, 362, 364, 379; see also migrants Laden, Osama bin 71 Lagarde, Christine 140 language 57–9, 62, 64 Latin America 211–13 Lavrentiev, Aleksandr 196 Lavrov, Sergei 22, 109, 110, 115, 191–2, 193, 194, 196, 212, 217, 219–20, 240–1, 252, 258, 259, 269, 271n24, 296, 400 Ledena, Alena 334 Le Pen, Marine 206 Levinson, Aleksei 335 LGBT 70, 330–31 Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) 21, 39, 57, 88, 96, 97, 98, 105–6, 111–12, 116 Libya 179, 195, 207, 211, 221 life expectancy, see demography Linkevicius, Linas 204 Litvinenko, Aleksandr 11 LNG, see energy Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), see Ukraine Lukashenko (Lukashenka), Alyaksandr 6, 143, 160, 201–4, 266, 269, 303 Lukashevich, Marina 341 LuKoil 140, 155 Luzhkov, Yuri 318, 336 Lyubimova, Olga 34, 37, 327 Maas, Haiko 208 Macron, Emmanuel 113, 140, 186, 192, 194, 203, 204, 205, 210, 211, 261, 288, 307, 207 Maduro, Nicolas 159, 212, 394 Magnitsky Case 208, 240, 247–8 Magnitsky, Sergei 248 Magomedov, Magomed 337 Magomedov, Ziyavudin 337 Maguire, Mairead Corrigan 2

Maidan, see Euromaidans Malaysian Airliner MH17, 11, 184–5, 186 Malofeev, Konstantin 107 Manturov, Denis 22, 267 Matovnikov, Aleksandr 67 Mattarella, Sergio 209 Mattis, James 305 Matviyenko, Valentina 84, 109, 323, 324, 326 Matytsin, Oleg 373 May, Theresa 181, 208 McCain, John 89 McFaul, Michael 246, 263 Mearsheimer, John J. 241 media 317–20, 322–5; see also propaganda Medinsky, Vladimir 22, 34 Medvedev, Dmitry 7, 9, 13, 16, 21, 23, 33, 35, 87, 93, 108, 129, 150, 161, 216, 267, 328, 334, 336, 341, 362, 366 Melikov, Sergei 67 Memorial 100 Merkel, Angela 113, 153, 194, 203, 204, 206, 207–8, 221, 249 Meshkov, Yuriy 61 Mezentsev, Dmitry 201 Michel, Charles 203 Miftakhov, Azat 93 migrant workers 378–9 Mikhailov, Aleksandr N. 57 Mikhailov, Col. Sergei 253 military, Russia 284–308; defence spending 287–8; manoeuvres 291–3, 297–8, 309n23, 316n132 Miller, Aleksei 153, 216 Minsk-1 & 2 2, 192, 227n51, 227n53 Mironov, Nikolai 108, 265, 400 Mirziyoyev, Shavkat 160 Mishustin, Mikhail 9, 33, 35, 40, 41, 59–60, 109, 114, 132, 141–2, 204, 334, 337, 339, 352, 354, 356, 363, 380 Mitchell, A. Wess 243 Mitrokhin, Sergei 92, 97, 101 Modi, Narendra 140, 217–8, 301 Moldova 52, 204–5 Mongolia 213, 216, 222 Mormons 375; see also religion Moskalkova, Tatyana 252 Mothers of Russian Soldiers 287 Mueller Report 243, 273n44–n46 Mueller, Robert 243–4, 246 Murashko, Mikhail 37, 358, 360, 369, 371 Musk, Elon 255 Mutko, Vitaly 22

418 Index Nabiullina, Elvira 13, 142 Naftohaz, see Ukraine Nagorno-Karabakh 52, 180, 191–3 Naryshkin, Sergei 191, 323 national guard 18–9, 101, 103, 104, 110 nationalism 125n121, 125n123–n125 nationalists 106–7, 186, 200, 214, 217 National Priority Projects 13, 35, 40, 139–40, 165 NATO 7, 178, 180, 190, 195–6, 200–1, 207, 210, 211, 240, 266, 269, 303–08, 309n13–n14, 311n44, 311n46–n48 NATO expansion 178, 180, 240, 242–3, 246, 257 Navalnaya, Yulia 400 Navalny, Aleksei 11, 12, 17, 19, 23–4, 25, 35, 39, 76, 94–5, 113–17, 119n21–n25, 119n27–n28, 121n69–n70, 123n104–n105, 124n107–n108, 125n136, 126n138, 126n139–n140, 207, 211, 249, 264, 269, 320, 400, 402n1; poisoning 113–16, 391–2 Navalny, Oleg 401 Nazarbaev, Nursultan 216 Nekrasov, Andrei 248 Nemtsova, Zhanna 99 Nemtsov, Boris 11, 17, 99, 109 Neo-Nazis 62, 107, 182; see also Right Sektor Netanyahu, Benjamin 197–8, 376 Neverov, Sergei 108 NGOs 18, 20, 75, 99, 100, 105, 117, 250–1, 287, 324, 330, 340, 367 Niinisto, Sauli 210 Nikolaev, Aysen 379 nord stream 1 & 2 153–7, 173n116–n117, 206, 208, 210, 262 Normandy Quartet 186, 187, 188, 211 Nornickel 161, 367 North Caucasus 66–70 Northern Sea Route 65–6, 158, 171n90 North Korea 218–9, 222, 246 North Ossetia 60 Norway 135, 151, 152, 156–7, 159, 290, 294, 297 Noskov, Konstantin 22 Novak, Aleksandr 22, 37, 41, 158, 162 Novatek 140, 150, 157 Novichok 127n155, 181–2; see also OPCW nuclear power plants, see energy Nuland, Victoria 239 Obama, Barack 140, 147, 240, 248 O’Brien, Robert 297 Odesa massacre 183

oil industry, see energy oligarchs 6, 9, 11, 17, 25–6, 37, 96, 129, 130, 131–3, 163, 166 OPEC, see Organization of Oil Exporting Countries Open Russia 89, 93, 99, 112 Open Skies Treaty 297 Orban, Viktor 155, 205–6 Oreshkin, Maksim 13, 22, 33, 34, 267 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 141 Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) 181, 196 Organization of Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) 137, 158, 159, 162 Orthodox Church, Russian 15, 60, 73, 86, 94, 107, 184, 190, 194, 209, 355, 372, 374, 376; see also religion Orthodox Church, Ukrainian 184 Other Russia 96 Pakistan 213–14, 217–18 Pamfilova, Ella 39, 116 pandemic, see COVID-19 Parliamentary Assembly of Europe (PACE) 62, 209 Pasechnik, Leonid 185 Pashinyan, Nikol 191, 192–3, 303, 327 Patriots of Russia Party 96 Patrushev, Dmitry 22, 164–5 Patrushev, Nikolai 84, 115, 164 Pence, Mike 197 Pensioners of Russia Party 85 pension reform 94–7, 118n5, 141, 385n71 Pentacostals 375–6; see also religion perestroika 6 Peskov, Dmitry 15, 31, 37, 40, 112, 114, 116, 134, 136, 156, 164, 188, 253, 262, 266, 267, 321, 354, 380 Petrov, Valery 340 Petukhov, Leonid 165 Pipelines, see energy ‘Pivot to the East,’ 7, 147–50 Pivovarov, Andrei 93 Plotnitsky, Igor 185 Pokrovsky, Vadim 371 Poland 200–1, 209, 232n135, 290, 294, 295–6, 298, 304, 305–6, 308 Politkovskaia, Anna 11, 319 Poltavchenko, Georgy 57 Polyudova, Darya 92–3 Pompadour, Martin 324 Pompeo, Mike 113, 156, 185, 192, 198, 202, 212, 214, 241, 252, 259, 295, 297 Ponomarev, Ilya 48 Ponomarev, Lev 99, 250, 251

Index  419 Popova, Anna 37 population(s), see demography Poroshenko, Petro 186–7, 189, 224n23– n24, 225n26, 292, 296, 305 Potanin, Vladimir 65 poverty 60, 351 Power of Siberia 151–2, 155 Praviy Sektor, see right sector presidency 6–42; see also elections presidential envoys 17–8 Prigozhin, Yevgeny 114, 244 Primakov, Yevgeny 84, 304 prisons, see crime Prokhorova, Irina 111 Prokopchuk, Aleksandr 246 propaganda 265–8 Prostakov, Sergei 112 protests (demonstrations, rallies) 19–20, 27, 32, 88–94, 95–6, 98–107, 118n3–n4, 125n137, 400–1 public chamber 18, 29; see also presidency Pushilin, Denis 185 Pushkina, Oksana 332, 334 Pussy Riot 113 Putinism 2, 9, 14–6, 21, 38–9, 114 Putinophobia, see Putin, demonization Putin, Vladimir: career 1–3, 9–12, 84; demonization 1–2, 11–2, 39, 180–1, 247–9, 334, 396; on education 284; on language 56–8; personal wealth 17, 392; popularity/trust 7, 10, 16, 19–20, 23–5, 29, 32, 35, 37, 41, 392; and Stalin 212; and Trump 261–2, 265–7, 271n11–n12, 271n15; see also putinism Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) 218 Raab, Dominic 208 Radionova, Svetlana 65 railways, see transportation rallies, see protests Razvozhaev, Mikhail 63 Reagan, Ronald 286 Reeker, Philip 263 religion 60, 107, 374–7; see also individual denominations Remchukov, Konstantin 401 Reshetnikov, Maksim 33 Rice, Susan 248 Right Sector 183 roads, see infrastructure Rodchenkov, Grigory 374 Rogozin, Dmitry 147, 242, 254

Romania 189, 204–5, 295, 296 Roslyakov, Vladislav 74 Rotenberg, Arkady 392 Rouhani, Hassan 195, 394 Rubio, Marco 89, 248 Russia-Georgia war 7, 11, 180, 190 Russian foreign relations, see individual countries Russian Imperial Movement 107 Russian Liberation Movement, see South East Radical Bloc Russian March 107 Russia of the Future Party 92 Russophobia 207, 273n54, 329; see also Putin, demonization Rutskoi, Aleksandr 8 Ryabkov, Sergei 288, 297 Rybakov, Nikolai 92 Saakashvili, Mikheil 189–90 Sabaev, Aleksandr 249 Sachs, Jeffrey 14 Safronov, Ivan 254, 323, 325 Sakwa, Richard 334, 398 Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, King 137, 159 Salvini, Matteo 205, 206, 209 Samoilova, Alla 355 Sanctions vs. Russia 129, 130–2, 133–7, 140–1, 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 153, 155–6, 161, 163, 166, 174n141, 174n147, 181, 185, 186, 189, 194, 195, 199, 200, 203–4, 210–12, 213, 233n149, 242–3, 244–5, 259, 260, 262–3, 267–8, 269, 289; vs. Belarus 204; vs. China 263; vs. Iran 197–8, 263; vs. Turkey 196–7; vs. Venezuela 212 Sandu, Maia 205 Sargsyan, Serzh 190–1 Saudi Arabia 1, 70, 181, 194, 199 Sauer, Derk 325 Savelyev, Vitaly 41 Savitskaya, Lyudmila 251 Schulmann, Yekaterina 31 Science 328–9 Sea of Azov 245, 292–3 Sechin, Igor 159–60, 162, 325 Seleznev, Gennady 351 Semenova, Marina 95 Sentsov, Oleg 93, 186 Serbia 179, 308 Serdyukov, Anatoly 336 Serebrennikov, Kirill 329 Serukanov, Vitaliy 92 Service, Robert 2, 398

420 Index Shalkov, Dmitry 21 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) 216, 235n185 Sharabokova, Oksana 95 Shaymiev, Mintimer 52 Shelby, Richard 243 Shershukov, Aleksandr 98 Shestun, Aleksandr 39 Shevchenko, Anastasia 93 Shevtsova, Lilia 93 Shishkina, Yevgeniia 339 Shishov, Lt. Gen. Mikhail 19 Shmarov, Andrei 325 Shoigu, Sergei 22, 38, 75, 84, 109, 110, 193, 210, 300, 307, 309n11, 361 Shulginov, Nikolai 41 Shushkevich, Stanislav 52 Siberia 61, 64–5, 74, 132, 140, 148, 151, 158, 161; see also Northern Sea Route; Power of Siberia Siberiaks 110 Sidorov, Artem 93 Siloviki 17, 25–6, 37, 57, 348n93 Siluanev, Anton 22, 34, 132–3, 136, 140, 159, 201, 267, 397 Singh, Rajnath 218 Sipyagin, Vladimir 98 Sisi, Abdel Fattah al 146, 160, 198, 394 Skolkovo 21, 328–9 Skripal affair 224n15, 224n17 Skripal, Sergei 11, 113, 135, 208, 224n15, 224n17, 224n19, 252 Skripal, Yulia 181 Skvortsova, Veronika 22, 369, 372 Slavina, Irina 324 Slovakia 165 smoking 369 Smolenkov, Oleg 253 Smolyarchuk, Yelena 352 Sobchak, Anatoly 9 Sobchak, Ksenia 12, 92 Sobol, Lyubov 104, 114, 122n84–n85, 326, 339, 400 Sobyanin, Sergei 37, 38, 59, 97, 109, 110, 122n86, 323, 328, 359, 381n10–n11, 381n16–n17, 381n20 social issues 20–1, 51n146, 351–80, 396–7; see also pension reform Soleimani, Qassem 194 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr 329 South Caucasus 51n146, 190–3 South East Radical Bloc (SERB) 107 South Ossetia 34, 52, 72, 180 SOVA 20 space 255–6

SPIEF 140, 142, 144, 176n162, 213, 255, 296, 313n80 Spiridonova, Karina 73 sport 372–4; doping scandal 374 Sputnik V., see COVID-19 Stalin, Josef 11–2, 61, 376 Stanovaya, Tatyana 35, 38, 57, 115 State Council 27, 29, 33; see also governance Steele, Christopher 206 Stein, Jill 246 Steinmeier, Frank-Walter 186 Stoltenburg, Sec.-Gen. Jens 294, 306 St. Petersburg Economic Forum, see SPIEF Strache, Heinz-Christian 206 Sullivan, John J. 260, 263, 265 Suraykin, Maksim 12 Surkov, Vladislav 14, 34 Svetov, Mikhail 101 Sviridov, Ilya 95, 97 Svoboda (Freedom) Party 62, 183 Syria 179, 195–7, 199, 207, 261, 285 Tajikistan 213, 308 Taliban 76, 214, 216; bounties 268–9; see also terrorism Tarasenko, Andrei 98 Taro, Kono 220 Tatars 57, 58–60, 61, 63, 224n22; see also Crimean Tatars Tatarstan 52–3, 58, 74 Taxation 130, 168; see also economics Tereshkova, Valentina 30, 31 terrorism, terrorists 71–7, 224n24–n25 Timchenko, Galina 323 Titov, Boris 12 Tkachev, Aleksandr 164 Tokaev, Kassym-Jomart 213, 216 Topilin, Maksim 22 Torshin, Aleksandr 252 tourism 142, 145, 165, 352, 354–5, 372 Tourist Police 18 trade 231n110; see also economics trade unions 86, 94, 98 Transdniestria 52 Transneft 155 transportation 145, 353–5; airlines 141; railways 64, 139, 140, 141, 145–6, 147–9, 161, 353; roads 140–1, 145 Trenin, Dmitri 240, 241, 245, 262, 267, 291 Trump, Donald 2, 11, 25, 36, 75, 76, 132, 153, 156–7, 159, 162, 185, 192, 193–4, 196–7, 206–8, 210–11, 212–13, 218–19, 244–5, 255–6, 259, 261–2,

Index  421 263–7, 269, 271n11–n12, 286, 289, 294–5, 300, 305, 307, 312n68–n69, 312n71, 358, 391 Trutnev, Yury 22, 149 Tsepkalo, Veronika 203 Tsikhanouskaya, Sviatlana 203–4 Tsipko, Aleksandr 39 Tsukanov, Nikolai 41 Tsvetkova, Yulia 331 Tsygankov, Andrei 15, 241 Turcan (Tsurkan), Karina 254 Turkey 144, 151, 155, 160, 164, 174n142, 181, 189, 191–2, 195, 199, 213, 221–2, 229n87–n90 Turkmenistan 142, 153 TurkStream 152, 155, 156 Tymoshenko, Yuliia 185 Udaltsov, Sergei 19, 94 Ukraine 7, 11, 23, 34, 52, 53, 60–4, 131, 135, 140, 152–3, 155–6, 164, 179, 180, 182–90, 195, 204, 208, 210, 211, 212, 239, 240, 242–3, 244–5, 247, 254, 259, 285, 286, 289–90, 292, 296, 304, 305–6, 308; Naftohaz 130, 153, 184; see also Crimea; Donbas Ukrainian civil war 7, 180, 182–3, 184–8, 247, 261–2, 306 Ulyukaev, Aleksei 336 unemployment 95, 140, 351, 362, 363–4, 365–6, 380; see also social issues United Kingdom (UK) 181–2, 196, 206, 208, 213; Brexit 206 United Russia (UR) 13, 30, 46n59, 86–8, 95–6, 98, 116–17, 118n8, 124n112, 330, 332 United States 240–70; see also Biden; OBama; Pompeo; Trump Usmanov, Alisher 147 Ustinov, Pavel 104, 329 Uzbekistan 213, 214, 216, 308 Vaccines, see COVID-19 Vaino, Andrei 21 Vasilieva, Olga 22 Vasiliev, Vladimir 67 Vekselberg, Viktor 132–40 Velayati, Ali Akbar 198 Venezuela 235n178–n183, 246, 261, 267, 268 Verhofstadt, Guy 206 Vietnam 213, 308 Volkov, Dmitry 37 Volkov, Leonid 91, 400, 401 Volodina, Valeriia 332

Volodin, Vyacheslav 13, 30, 108–9, 243, 400 Vorobev, Stanislav 107 Vorobyov, Andrei 97, 353 Voronkov, Vladimir 75 Voronov, Vladimir 324 Vucic, Alexander 197 Vyatkin, Dmitry 117 wages, see economics, see social issues Wang Qishan 140 Wang Yi 241 weaponry, see arms Wei Fenghe 289 Weir, Fred 9 Whelan, Paul N. 252–3, 259 women 331–4; see also social issues World Cup 388n133 Xi Jinping 144, 147, 151, 161, 218, 267–8, 288 Yabloko 84, 92, 94 Yakovenko, Aleksandr 208 Yakushev, Vladimir 22, 37, 41 Yanaev, Gennady 8 Yanukovych, Viktor 61, 225n27 Yarovaya, Irina 321 Yashin, Ilya 96–7, 101, 109 Yatsenyuk, Arseniy 186–7 Yavlinsky, Grigorii 12, 84, 92, 97 Yeltsin, Boris 1, 6, 8, 9, 14, 52, 84, 129, 130, 178–9, 258, 318, 391 Yevkurov, Yunus-Bek 68 Yuarmiia 188 Yurchenko, Yevgeny 374 Zaitseva, Olga 374 Zakharchenko, Aleksandr 340 Zakharova, Maria 111, 249, 269, 296, 324, 400 Zelenskiy, Volodomyr 25, 187, 189, 202, 225n31, 259 Zhdanov, Ivan 104 Zhirinovsky, Vladimir 12, 24, 61, 84, 88, 108, 110, 114, 400 Zhukov, Yegor 326 Zinichev, Yevgeny 22, 65, 291 Zolotov, Gen. Viktor 18, 67, 339 Zorkin, Valerii 31 Zubkov, Viktor 9 Zurabishvili, Salome 190 Zyatkov, Konstantin 324 Zyuganov, Gennady 6, 84, 88, 97, 103, 108, 114, 117, 400