It’s hard to place blame for and responsibility for a vast array of problems at the feet of one single human being. They are, after all, only human.
But when that one human has all paths of power leading to their door, and all levers of power at their hands, it becomes necessary and realistic to frame the problems of a country through the prism of that one personality.
Russia does have problems – pretty severe problems. They didn’t start with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as one writer recently observed in an excellent essay: “When Russia’s first freely elected (more or less) leader, Boris Yeltsin, resigned in 1999, the country’s progress depended on his successor being more democratic, less corrupt and less drunk. It got one out of the three.”
It is true to say that not only has Putin managed to center power in his hands, in his office, and in his tight circle of cronies, he has also, at the same time, managed to create a cult of personality around himself that deflects blame from him for any of the ills in Russia today, and that’s an astounding feat. Whereas the Russian people appear to hold Putin in high regard, and the opinion polls that are oh so important to him give him an 80% popularity rating, at the same time, his government gets 51% and the State Duma gets just 42%.
Technically, the Government of Russia is a separate executive branch of power, but given the fact that Putin kept the prime minister’s chair warm while Dmitry Medvedev kept the president’s chair warm between 2008 and 2012, we know that there really isn’t any separation of powers here. Indeed, Vladimir Putin enjoys the power to remove ministers at will and to give a godfatherly blessing to ministerial appointments as well. If the government only gets a 51% approval rating (and that figure must be balanced against how controlled both polling and media messaging are in Russia) how does Vladimir Putin not cop some responsibility for the actions of the government that his workout buddy heads?
If the Duma gets a 42% approval rating, are they not just a rubber stamp for anything that Vladimir Putin requires of them at any moment in time? Well, yes, and so they sit in Parliament under the patronage of Putin, ready to do his bidding without debate, and any dissenters can, literally, be hounded out of the country, as was the case with the one Duma member who had the balls to object to the crazy annexation of Crimea and saw the problems that this would lead to. Ilya Ponomorev now lives in exile outside of Russia. His commonsense stand against the first military land grab in Europe since the Second World War had him branded at the time a “national traitor” on Moscow billboards, and a convenient fraud case against him was launched.
Let’s not pretend that Russia’s state Duma is anything like a democratic debating chamber, it was and is thoroughly under the control of the system that runs down from Vladimir Putin and those around him. When they’re not doing the president’s bidding, these people are simply engaged in acts of personal enrichment, something we in Ukraine know a lot about, and as the echelons of Russian power know as well (because the #SurkovLeaks has told us this), it is this corruption that caused Ukraine’s most recent revolution.
Having dispensed with any notion that there is any power structure in Russia that isn’t subordinate to Vladimir Vladimirovych, what problems does Russia have?
A catastrophic economy
Some elements of this are not entirely the fault of Vladimir Putin, but almost all of them are. No, Putin can’t control global oil prices, but he’s been in power for 16 years now and could have done something in that time to try to diversify the Russian economy – he did not. U.S. Senator John McCain has said that “Russia is a gas station run by the mafia masquerading as a country,” which, of course, is not very subtle, but what else (other than misery) does Russia export?
In 2009, while enjoying holding the office of president, Medvedev announced a new economic modernization program, a key aspect of which was that Russia becomes a global IT giant. While it appears Medvedev was genuine in his ambition, the Russian system had other ideas, and monies that were allocated for Research and Development grants at the flagship “Skolkovo” start-up park ended up being used for neither research nor development, but, of course were instead doled out to friends and family or anyone who would kick part of the cash back to the grantee.
What has most threatened the potential for developing IT and web services in Russia is that companies in this field need to have freedom to innovate, but the curbs on internet freedoms since Putin returned to the top job just don’t allow this space, while the rest of the world gets more open and connected as a result of technical innovation, Putin’s Russia is doing everything possible to stop the open exchange of information and ideas, because the only way to keep today’s mirage alive is to control what messages the general public sees in every single possible way.
Conversely, there is a $1.7 billion dollar project to create a new tech hub around Moscow State University, but rather than it actually being a new tech hub, this may be just another way of doling out an ever-dwindling pile of state cash to connected people, because the project is headed by none other than the daughter of, you guessed it, Vladimir Putin. Maybe they’re serious about coming up with some innovation out of this venture and might find a way to interfere in future U.S. elections without being caught.
Russia’s economy suffers from many ills, and not having diversified is just one of them. It also suffers from a lack of investment. Where there is no rule of law (because the courts are subordinate to the same system, and thoroughly corrupt) there will be no investment. As a one-time major investor in Russia, Bill Browder knows what he’s talking about when he says: “what makes Russia so untenable is that there, if you have a successful venture, there’s the risk that someone will take it away from you.”
What is happening in Russia is the atrophy of what should be a great state, at the hands of a man who exercises absolute power over the way that state works. The restrictions that hamper development, the nepotism and theft of monies that could be improving the country – these are the hallmarks of Putin’s Russia, they are the realities of the system he is the president of. These realities have led to a brain drain from Russia, further hampering the possibilities for positive development.
But there’s one other absolutely key factor in the current financial plight of the Russian state, and that is the sanctions that have been imposed on Russia for their undeniable role in the conflict against Ukraine. The Russian people can be told that this is all some kind of western plot, and they can have that message banged into their heads ten times per day, but the simple facts are these:
These sanctions are a direct and inevitable result of Putin’s military misadventures. The sanctions and the cost to Russian economy because of them are entirely his fault.
If Russia, under Putin, had not invaded Ukraine, there would be no sanctions.
If Russia wants the sanctions to go away, all they need to do is leave Ukraine alone.
No amount of spin can change that.
Part Two of “Russia’s Putin Problem” is coming soon.
