To understand President Putin and his policies, it is important to have a perspective independent of what is projected in the West. This is not easy as other than those who have direct contact and experience of Russia, the sources of information about Russia and its leadership and analyses about developments in that country come from western sources.
Our own information about Russia is also derived from these sources. We have no media presence in Russia; contact at think tank levels is sporadic; people to people ties are limited. The language barrier restricts access to Russian media, including social media, as well as publications in general providing an insight into Russian thinking on various issues on the international agenda. In addition to all this, the Russians are not as good as the West in the art of communication.
The West controls the narrative on any issue in which its interests are involved. The higher the stakes they have in an issue, the tighter the control. All resources are used to build a narrative of their choice — the media, the think tanks, the intelligence agencies, academics, political lobbies, foundations, NGOs, and so on.
Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and its ideological challenge, America’s Cold War with Russia did not end geopolitically. This took the form of expanding Nato closer and closer to Russia’s borders — with the parallel expansion of the EU — as a kind of a security and economic cordon. At the same time, the democracy agenda was pushed in Russia itself from the outside, by promoting colour revolutions in erstwhile constituents of the Soviet Union, notably in Georgia and Ukraine, and targeting Russia directly on the issues of democracy, human rights and its ruthless suppression of terrorism at home.
This background is important in understanding the West’s view of Vladimir Putin who has been in power since 2000. His agenda from the start has been to put Russia back on its feet, politically and economically, which required restoring the writ of the Russian state in the political and economic domains, badly eroded during the Yeltsin years. Strengthening the Russian state meant countering the oligarchs who had acquired political, economic and media power at its cost through privatisation of state assets, in league in many cases with foreign interests, especially American. Putin, in particular, sought to exert state control over Russia’s hydrocarbon resources penetrated significantly by American and British majors. The take over of the Yukos (Siberian oil fields) and arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003 (Russia’s wealthiest man of that epoch), which affected US investors, were storm signals for the US at the direction Russia was taking under Putin.
State control over politics to prevent a further break-up of the country and economics to prevent a loot of the state by the oligarchs meant veering away from the agenda and conception of ‘democracy’ and the ‘market economy’ espoused by the West. Russia under Putin has continued on that path in line with his view of Russia’s national interest, with the result that alienation between the West and Russia has continued too, adding to mutual antagonism.
Putin has been in power, either as President and Prime Minister, for 21 years. His present term ends in 2024. He has left open the question whether he will stand for re-election again, explaining that any clarity at this stage will be politically de-stabilising. His long tenure in office has been projected by the West as somehow not democratic, forgetting that Biden, let us say, has been Vice-President for 8 years and now President for 4 years. France’s Mitterrand was President for 14 years and Chirac was PM and President for 16 years. Nearer home, Nehru was PM for 17 years, his daughter Indira for 15 years and her son Rajiv for 5 years — a total of 37 years, not counting Sonia Gandhi’s 10 years of effective power during the UPA government.
The West has hoped that Putin will get disowned by the public in elections for suppressing dissent, the poor state of the economy, the alienation of the entrepreneurial class because of lack of economic freedoms, etc., but Putin’s approval ratings have remained consistently high to the frustration of anti-Putin lobbies in the West. Opposition figures like Alexei Navalny are lionised and made larger than life to bring disrepute to Russia’s political and justice system under Putin.
The propaganda about Putin’s KGB past is incessantly recalled to reinforce the image of a ruthless spy who doesn’t play by the rules and would use all tricks of the trade to eliminate opponents. If a Russian spy residing in the UK is poisoned or a political figure of the Yeltsin era, Boris Nemtsov, is assassinated, an impression is created of Kremlin’s involvement. It is assumed that even after 21 years of handling the affairs of the state at the highest level, Putin hasn’t outgrown his KGB past. Didn’t Angela Merkel outgrow her East German past? George Bush Senior was head of the CIA before he became President. Did that taint his presidency? Did Dwight Eisenhower as a general think and act like one as US President?
The US and Europe have periodically expelled Russian diplomats in large numbers on spying charges, applied sanctions on Russia and on the close entourage of Putin, including those who supposedly manage his “ill-gotten wealth”, in the hope of creating disaffection against his policies that punish their financial interests. Russian interference in US elections that supposedly led to Trump’s victory and Hillary Clinton’s defeat, having become a toxic issue in US domestic politics, has triggered a series of severe sanctions on Russia, including through CAATSA (Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act) which affects our defence ties with Russia.
Earlier, in 2012, the US Congress passed the Magnitsky Act intended to punish Russian officials responsible for the death of Russian tax lawyer Segei Magnitsky, now applicable globally since 2016 to those seen as human rights offenders whose assets can be frozen and entry into the US denied. Russia is also accused of meddling in European elections as well as for malicious cyber attacks against the West.
The US, UK and Europe have announced sanctions of unprecedented severity if Russia invades Ukraine, which it says it has no intention of doing. Biden has publicly promised that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany directly will not be allowed to become operational. The mutuality of interest between Russia and Europe in gas supplies is seen as an unacceptable level of dependence, which contrasts with willing economic over-dependence of the US and Europe on China. Putin has proposed a new security architecture for Europe that takes into account Russia’s security interests and has used the mobilisation of its troops to deliver a strong message that he will no longer tolerate the erosion of Russia’s security in Europe by US/Nato.
Through these years, apart from Nato expanding relentlessly, the US repudiated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) and more recently the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. It has positioned components of its ABM system in Poland and Romania, with Nato moving ground forces into the Baltic states. Putin has, in response, invested in Russia’s defence sector, developing new missiles and submarine capabilities to counter the US. He has also prevented the US from continuing its regime change policies in West Asia by countering it in Syria. This has also engendered more US hostility toward Russia as a destabilising power.
Putin’s alienation of the West now finds expression in the distinction he makes between the Russian and Western values. The West, he believes, has gone too far in its accent on individualism, detachment from Christian values and campaigns in favour of homosexuality. He now discerns a difference in civilisational values between the Slavs and West Europeans. He is laying more emphasis on Russia’s Eurasian profile. Differences between Russia and the West have pushed him towards China.
All this has led to a sustained campaign to demonise Putin personally, to the extent that it might seem irrational to a neutral observer. The contrast between the West’s grievances and policies towards Putin’s Russia and the much more tolerant and cautious policies towards Xi Jinping’s China is glaring. It raises the question whether the West has got its geopolitics wrong and is being short-sighted in weakening a weak opponent and strengthening a stronger rival, to its own eventual cost.
Kanwal Sibal is the former Indian Foreign Secretary. He was India’s Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, France and Russia. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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