Regular watchers of Russia’s political theater have noticed a striking change in the voice of one familiar player.
This man, regularly appearing at the Kremlin’s highest propaganda platform, “The Great Game” hosted by Dmitry Simes, has for more than a year allowed himself cautiously, but unmistakably, to deliver skeptical assessments of both the course of the “Special Military Operation” and the political concept behind it from the start. The irony is truly striking.
Konstantin Zatulin, a State Duma deputy and First Deputy Chairman of the Committee for CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration, and Relations with Compatriots, is not some random nobody. Since the 1990s, he has been one of the chief ideologues of Russian imperial revanchism.
Long before 2014, he openly called for the annexation of Ukrainian territories. He repeated the mantra that Ukraine is an artificial state that the Donbas must be part of Russia, and that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people.” When the aggression began in 2014, Zatulin was among its most active protagonists. He regularly traveled to Donetsk and Luhansk, met with militant leaders, and publicly supported the separatists.
Such a transformation from an imperial Saul into a peace-loving Paul provoked bewilderment and natural curiosity. And on Feb. 26, after sufficiently warming up the reading public, Zatulin gave Simes a long interview on the theme of war and peace.
These people did not suddenly become liberals or democrats… What has changed is simpler: they now see that under Putin Russia will only weaken until it begins to come apart.
Simes asked him a question point-blank, which, by today’s standards, regardless of the answer, already sounds like a ticket to at least six years in prison for “discrediting” not only the Russian army in general but the supreme commander-in-chief personally:
“Do you think we now have the possibility, within some foreseeable time frame, to achieve those fairly concrete goals of the special military operation that we proclaimed in Ukraine?”
Zatulin’s reply and his subsequent reflections made the pious audience of Channel One contemplate not merely a prison term for the dissenter, but something closer to life imprisonment.
“Objectively speaking, some goals declared by our president are difficult to achieve, or simply unattainable. There is what we desire, and there is what is possible. It is hard now to believe that Ukraine as an independent state could disappear from the political map of the world…”
“I believe!” the crafty Simes screamed just in case, waving his hands as if physically pushing away his guest’s indecently free-thinking sentences.
In general, Zatulin was unusually emotional that evening. He seemed to be shaking off a heavy burden accumulated over the years, a burden of irritation at the man he so clearly despises and hates. Not because Putin tried to conquer and subordinate Ukraine. But because in Zatulin’s view, Putin did it so ineptly and so disastrously that he has ruined forever the dream that Zatulin himself had nurtured for decades, and which has now become unrealizable.
How could such an openly lethal critique of the Russian dictator be allowed to sound in prime time on the country’s main television channel?
Zatulin is an experienced “apparatchik,” a bureaucratic operator, not a self-destructive whistleblower. For quite a long time, he had been cautiously plowing the soil and testing the mood of the upper layer of Russia’s “political elite.” Evidently, knowing this milieu perfectly, he concluded that the evaluations he dared to voice were already close to a consensus snapshot of their common views and expectations.
These people did not suddenly become liberals or democrats. They remain imperialists, nationalists, and supporters of a “strong Russia.” What has changed is simpler: they now see that under Putin Russia will only weaken until it begins to come apart. People who not only rule Russia but own it are not prepared to lose their huge property in pursuit of a fantasy, the destruction of Ukrainian statehood.
Yes, Putin could arrest one particular Zatulin or feed him a dose of “Novichok” if he felt like it. But Putin, as a dictator, has not reached the Stalin-1937 level of personal power. He cannot send his entire “nomenklatura” under the knife.
What conclusions, regardless of the personal fate of Zatulin or Putin, can Ukraine draw from the “Zatulin phenomenon”? Very positive ones. The Russian political class, in the mass, including persistent haters of Ukraine, has realized Russia’s defeat in the war against Ukraine. The “root cause of the conflict” – the unattainable goal of liquidating a sovereign Ukrainian state – has been eliminated.
This mad dream, it seems, remains in the head of one stubborn person. But not for long.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the authors’ and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.