Vladimir Putin – A Remarkable Success Story

by Mustang

Vladimir Putin is a remarkable success story — one that began when President Boris Yeltsin first selected Putin to serve as an aide and later when he chose Putin to be his heir apparent.  He was the rising star of the Russias.  But now, we must pause to consider what that expression means: All the Russias.

The Rus were early medieval eastern Europe, modern Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian.  Great Russia corresponds to modern European Russia.  White Russia is Belarus (which translated means white Russia), and Little Russia is now the central region of Ukraine.  These three Russias are what the Tsar of Russia referred to when said to be the ruler of all the Russias.  But there are other Russias, as well.  Red Russia is Western Ukraine, a little-known region called Galicia, and Black Russia constitutes the Northwestern part of Belarus that extends along the Memel River.

Why is the preceding information relevant?  In July 2021, Vladimir Putin published a 500-word essay titled, “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians.”  In this essay, Mr. Putin asserts that Ukrainians and Russians are one people — a precursor to and in defense of the Ukraine invasion.  The fact is that there is no Ukrainian history before 1918. 

It is a country today, but it was not a country in 1917.  Ukraine’s history is part of a realm known as Kievan Rus (862-1242), a loose federation located in modern-day Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia.  In this context, was Vladimir Putin lying?  No.  Does Vladimir Putin have an interest in maintaining Russian unity?  You have to put on Putin’s shoes to answer that question — and then, you be the judge.

When President Boris Yeltsin recruited Vladimir Putin to serve as his aide, the young Putin was regarded as a rising star in a new Russia.  Putin was from St. Petersburg — a city constructed by French and Italian architects, for Peter the Great … the great westernizing influence in Russia.  Mr. Putin was nothing, if not enthusiastic about the new path for Russia, and he immediately sought to establish closer ties with Western leaders — notably, U.S. President George W. Bush and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair.

“Vladimir Putin – World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2009” by World Economic Forum 

This was when Bush looked into Putin’s soul and determined that he was a good man.  Putin did seem like a natural among the international elite.  He coordinated policy with Western powers on several key issues — including a place for China in global trade, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and Islamic terror.  At the end of the first decade, Putin realized that the Western powers were leading Russia, his beloved country, down the primrose path. 

While glad-handing Putin, the NATO alliance was converting former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact members to weapons platforms.  Putin did not — and could not — respond well to the West meddling in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine.

At the time, Putin had limited options available to address the problem.  At the time, as the West was looking elsewhere (Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen), Putin was making a whirlwind world tour forging new alliances — with Iran, Turkey, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, China, Japan, North Korea, and South Korea.

But Vladimir Putin had to rise to many challenges at home, and none of these were suitable for a bull in a china shop.  No, taming domestic Russia would require intelligence, guts, wisdom, and ruthlessness.  Putin had to consolidate his power; he did that by organizing a vertical structure, and while he may have admired the political systems in America and the United Kingdom, neither would be suitable for his homeland. 

Moreover, tackling challenges at home would demand a hands-on management style.  He needed to put together a system that would allow him to do whatever he wanted to do or needed to do with minimum interference from those who didn’t want to comply.  Step one, avoid financial crises.  Step two seize control of every aspect of Russian politics and society — including the labor wonks, criminals, civil servants, and oligarchs.  Putin did this, and none of what he accomplished would have been possible for a merely average Russian politician.

Putin’s economic policy involved four distinct periods: the reform period (1998-2003), the statist period (2004-2008), The War Period (2009-2014), and the global period (2014-present).  In the first eight years in office, either as president or prime minister, Putin’s policies increased the income of the average Russian by a factor of five (as measured against the U.S. dollar).  Industry increased, along with production, construction, real income, credit, and the middle class. 

By 2005, Putin’s economy had paid off all Soviet Union’s debt.  Seven years later, Russia joined the World Trade Organization.  By 2014, Russia had signed a deal with China to provide 38-billion cubic meters of natural gas (per year); Russia’s net from this one deal alone is estimated to exceed $400 billion over the next 30 years.

Finally, as recently reported at Bunkerville, Vladimir Putin has masterminded the Eurasian Economic Union, which presently consists of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Cuba, Moldova, Uzbekistan, and potentially in the next few years, several East Asian countries and Iran. 

To assist him in these efforts, Barack Obama implemented one of his key policy goals: to limit U.S. economic power in Russia’s sphere of influence.  One may recall that hot mike comment Obama made to then Russian President Medvedev: “Tell Vladimir I’ll get back to him after the election.”  Spoken in Russian as fortochka Obama, Putin’s arrangement with Obama was a window of opportunity.

At the time, Beijing realized that its economy depended more on its relationships with the Americans than the Russians … but that has since changed.  Since 2017, the common enemy of Russia, China, and Iran has become the United States: under Trump, dangerously adversarial, and under Biden foolishly weak and exploitive.

Putin is a chess player.  Biden plays with Barbie dolls.  Putin can see that China is coming around to his way of thinking, and since about 2015, Russia and Iran have developed very close ties — such that what is suitable for one of them is equally good for the other.  And Iran realizes that it need not rattle its sword vis-à-vis nuclear weapons.  Iran, Russia, and the Eurasian Economic Union now posture themselves to challenge Western economies in several areas.  As a body, EAEU deeply resents Western sanctions, and some argue that Biden’s insistence on sanctions strengthens the Eurasian alliances.

How close is the Russian-Iranian alliance?  Close enough to allow Russia to provide Iran with its S-400 missile system and sufficient to assist Iran in its support of Syria.  Moscow and Tehran are also well on the way to modernizing Syrian ports for use by both Russian and Iranian navies.

Now, Vladimir Putin has involved himself in what he terms “a special military operation” (SMO).  Any Russian journalist who uses the words “invasion” or “war” is subject to arrest, the charge becoming “misinformation,” which does sound eerily similar to American Democrats’ efforts to limit free speech inside the United States.  But on 24 February, Mr. Putin explained that Russia could not feel safe because of threats made toward Russia from modern Ukraine — one of the former Russias.  The Western press claims that Putin’s justification for the SMO is irrational — but is it?”

“T-90S” by Dmitry Terekhov 

The West may easily regard Putin’s SMO as irrational, particularly in terms of the words and phrases Mr. Putin uses to describe his principle issues with Ukraine, especially since there is no evidence of genocide or bullying against ethnic Russians in Ukraine.  Such charges are amazingly similar to those Putin levied against Georgians when that country signaled an interest in joining the North Atlantic Treaty. 

World leaders must wonder, how far will Putin go inside Ukraine?  My guess is that Mr. Putin is conducting a demonstration aimed at more than Ukraine — and if that is true, then Putin’s SMO may not be irrational from his point of view.

To whom else is Mr. Putin speaking?  I think he’s sending messages to his economic and trading partners, offering assurances that Russia is, and will remain, a world power.  Mr. Putin is offering reminders to the former Warsaw Pact countries.  He is also sending a clear message to the EU, which imports between 60-75% of their energy sources.

Note: In the long-term, Russia’s behavior in Ukraine may harm its oil and gas industry by forcing the EU to accelerate its conversion from fossil to renewable energy sources.  But the question remains, how far will Putin go in Ukraine?  My guess is — far enough to convince Ukrainians that it does not serve their interests to be at loggerheads with their Russian brothers.  What Putin must want to avoid is a prolonged insurgency.  That trap may spell his doom because it will most assuredly hurt the Russian economy.  It won’t be sanctions imposed by the west that hurt Russia most; it will be the cost of the Ukrainian conflict — which the Ukrainians themselves can prolong almost indefinitely.

Mustang also blogs at Fix Bayonets and Thoughts From Afar