Blog Posts
Posted by Pavel Baev on Thursday, 2 March 2017
Five years ago, Boris Nemtsov, one of the leaders of Russian liberal opposition, visited Oslo and made his cause for several audiences, who now remember his passion and joy. There is indeed much to reflect upon in this recent Russian history – and in its older pages as well. One hundred years ago … a peaceful revolution [gave] Russia an opportunity to emerge out of the catastrophe of World War I as a democratic state Late February not only marks a momentous anniversary in Russia’s long and difficult history, but also solemnizes a tragic event from its much more recent ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Wednesday, 15 February 2017
The annual Munich Security Conference will take place later this week (February 17–19) with many prominent speakers, including Dan Smith, former PRIO director and presently SIPRI Director. It was ten years ago at this forum that President Vladimir Putin delivered a famous speech detailing Russia’s deep dissatisfaction with the world order. A decade hence, Russian official media is today full of commentary on the spectacular success the country has purportedly achieved by following the course set by that speech (TASS, RIA Novosti, February 10). Although he did not, in fact, say much in his 2007 Munich address that had not ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Friday, 11 November 2016
The resonance of this U.S. election campaign is truly enormous, in every corner of the world. But despite much disgust about the mudslinging, it is not necessarily all that negative. Observers everywhere may be astounded that a candidate so arrogantly ignorant in international affairs could gather so much support, but that has also given them a greater understanding of the global stakes in this moment of choice. Paradoxical as it may seem, many people now have greater appreciation of the value of U.S. leadership and of their interest in preserving it. This leadership is indeed indispensable in various troubled areas, ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Monday, 10 October 2016
The crisis in relations with Russia, and in particular Russia’s behavior in the Syrian war, has become an unusually prominent theme in the U.S. election campaign. That means that a new administration could start with a set of tough pledges, rather than with a clean slate. Campaign trail rhetoric is worth only so much, but a new president would still have to demonstrate both readiness to contain Russia’s experiments in power projection and commitment to rebuild Syria in the wake of the catastrophe it has experienced. Moscow can try to act as a spoiler in Syria, but it is already ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 13 September 2016
The agreement on managing the Syrian civil war, reached between the United States and Russia in Geneva in the early hours of Saturday, September 10, was both surprising and pre-determined. US Secretary of State John Kerry had invested so much effort in the endless rounds of marathon talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that the absence of a deal would have amounted to a personal failure. US President Barack Obama, who met with Russian President Vladimir Putin a week ago in Hangzhou, China, for the G20 summit (September 4–5), was far from enthusiastic about the prospects for such a ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Friday, 2 September 2016
Vladivostok, which had an expensive facelift for the 2012 APEC summit, will this week host the Eastern Economic Forum, and President Vladimir Putin is due to preside over the proceedings. His goal is to reassert Russia’s commitment to playing a major role in Asia-Pacific geopolitics and to reinvigorate business ties with this dynamic region. The provisional results of Russia’s “pivot” to the East, launched two and a half years ago against the backdrop of the Ukraine conflict, are nevertheless quite disappointing. Not only has the volume of trade shrunk by about a third in this time, but Moscow’s ability to ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Thursday, 30 June 2016
Expectations regarding President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing on Saturday (June 25) had been rather subdued, and the modest results were mostly immaterial. Last year, the two leaders grandiosely celebrated their countries’ World War II victory over the Axis powers; and in 2014, they announced a great increase in economic ties and an allegedly historic natural gas deal (see EDM, May 22, 2014). But the implementation of this deal has been delayed, and the volume of bilateral trade—instead of the promised fast expansion—has contracted by about 30 percent. Thus, Putin’s argument that the Russia-China relationship should be redefined from a ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Monday, 6 June 2016
With the NATO summit in Warsaw coming up in July, the rhetoric in many Western quarters is becoming shriller about the need to contain Russian aggression. There are good reasons for concern about Russia’s intentions and capabilities, as elaborated at the recent Lennart Meri conference in Tallinn. But in the last couple of months, Moscow has actually been quite prudent. This self-restraint is entirely uncharacteristic and is often accompanied by typically assertive language, but it shouldn’t be ignored and deserves a closer look. What self-restraint? There is no denying Russia’s propensity to—and even preference for—using military force. However, this tendency hasn’t ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Friday, 22 April 2016
With the explosion of the Ukraine crisis in spring 2014, Russia made a determined effort to upgrade its strategic partnership with China and achieved instant success. Large-scale economic contracts were signed in a matter of a few months, and the military parades in Moscow and Beijing in respectively May and September 2015, in which the two leaders stood shoulder to shoulder, were supposed to show the readiness of two world powers to combine their military might. In fact, however, the partnership has encountered serious setbacks and as of spring 2016, is significantly off-track. It is the economic content of bi-lateral ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Thursday, 25 February 2016
Just a couple of weeks ago, Aleppo was seen as a crucial battlefield in the Syrian civil war and was compared with Sarajevo as a tragedy of intolerable proportions not only by hard-hitting journalists but also by such responsible politicians as Michael Fallon, UK Defence Secretary. Yet presently, this devastated city is portrayed as the main beneficiary of the ceasefire deal negotiated by US State Secretary John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and announced with due solemnity by President Vladimir Putin. The proposals for enforcing a no-fly zone and for punishing Russia with more sanctions appear to be ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Friday, 8 January 2016
At a time when most Russians were taking a long break from politics until after the Orthodox Christmas on January 7, there has been no respite in Russia’s air operations in Syria, nor in the quarrel with Turkey. Rather than focus on the bread-and-butter issues of making ends meet, Russian policymakers seem to be instead preparing their next round of conflict escalation in an attempt to energize the populace around a new rallying cry. The Kremlin cannot afford a sobering up that awakens the public to the stress of falling incomes and shameless corruption. So, it is working to supply ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 5 January 2016
President Vladimir Putin concluded 2015 with the approval of a revised National Security Strategy, which defines the strengthening of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a threat and commits to countering it by securing the unity of Russian society and by building up the country’s defense capabilities. In the course of the past year, Russia entered into a complex and self-propelling crisis—and the Kremlin’s only anti-crisis response has been to exploit the confrontation with the West as a means of sustaining “patriotic” mobilization and explaining away Russia’s deepening decline by pointing to hostile outside pressure. The new Strategy is ...
De-escalation of the crisis between Russia and Turkey, caused by the first ever air fight between them resulting in a destruction of a Russian Su-24, has suddenly become the hottest issue in global affairs. What has been overshadowed by this clash of military missions and political ambitions is the strengthening of ties between Russia and Iran achieved in the course of President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Tehran on 23 November 2015. This partnership-building may be of importance for the Syrian war, for the wider Middle East and beyond. All war trails lead to Damascus Since the start of Russian military ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Thursday, 5 November 2015
The Russian military intervention in Syria—launched in a great rush just over a month ago — came as a surprise; perhaps not as shocking as the swift occupation and annexation of Crimea, but a surprise nevertheless. But does Russia’s ability to surprise and to project force in Syria prove, as Garret Campbell claims, that Western attempts “to discredit Russian military capabilities” were inaccurate? In fact, the first month of the operation tells us little about Russian military capabilities. It does show that the Russian leadership is prepared to play with military instruments of policy way beyond the limit of, for ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Saturday, 10 October 2015
For observers who are confined by the boundaries of conventional strategic sense, every day of Russia’s military intervention in Syria brings fresh surprises. Indiscriminate strikes against Turkey-backed and CIA-trained opposition groups (which could not possibly be mistaken for ISIS) were followed by deliberate violations of Turkey’s airspace, and then by the spectacular cruise missile salvo from warships in the Caspian Sea. More astonishing turns are almost certain to come, prompting more reevaluation of the power projection capabilities that Russia brings to bear in this high-risk enterprise. Good morning, Latakia The intervention, which President Vladimir Putin preferred not to announce in ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Thursday, 1 October 2015
Russian military intervention in the Syrian civil war appeared to gain momentum every day over the past month, up until President Vladimir Putin’s address to the UN General Assembly on September 28th. The intention behind moving troops and equipment to Syria, while denying these deployments, was quite possibly to build momentum for Putin’s initiative. The content of this initiative has been clear since early August, when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov proposed building a broad international coalition against the so-called “Islamic State” (or ISIS). Yet, the proposal fell flat. It looked fairly agreeable until the point that this coalition should include forces ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Monday, 21 September 2015
Russia’s apparent escalation in Syria is less dramatic than it seems, but it still represents another depressing development in the ongoing nightmare of the Syrian civil war. While it appears no Russian troops are engaged in fighting, the volume of military cargo delivered from Russia to Syria by sea and air has significantly increased in the last couple of weeks. President Putin did assert that it was “premature” to talk about direct Russian participation in the yet-to-be-built coalition against the various terrorist groups in the country. And even though Putin says it, it might still be true. Clearly, putting scarce Russians ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 1 September 2015
The bilateral meeting in Beijing will be demonstratively cordial but loaded with mutual disappointment. Putin cannot fail to see that his hopes for harvesting rich dividends from closer Russian ties with China have failed to materialize and delivered him to a position of one-sided dependency. Xi, meanwhile, has few doubts about the trajectory of Russia’s crisis and probably understands that Putin’s mismanagement brings risks of a catastrophically hard landing. While Russia’s aggressive assault on the European security system is not helpful for China’s plans regarding the evolutionary transformation of the global order. Vladimir Putin has announced his intention to address ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 11 August 2015
Seven years ago, Russia launched its week-long war with Georgia. And what seemed then a victory can now be recognized as one of the worst August disasters in Russian history. On the one hand, it is true that the war generated a moment of national unity, which was deeply false but politically very useful. It also produced a conviction that the West was weak and divided, while the reproach in public opinion did not matter. Almost a year and a half ago, Putin sought to reproduce that moment of “patriotic” unity with the annexation of Crimea, but that spectacular triumph ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 4 August 2015
Exactly 40 years ago, the Soviet Union signed the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), accepting commitments to respect the norms of international behavior and to observe the standards of human rights. The Kremlin had, in fact, no intention to relax domestic pressure on dissidents (who formed the legendary Helsinki group) but saw the document as a matter of pivotal importance to establish the inviolability of European borders. Today, Putin’s Russia is recycling some of the most notorious Soviet methods of suppressing the human rights movement—but at the same time, Moscow also rejects ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 28 July 2015
Putin has always preferred to postpone decisions until the last possible moment and to keep his lieutenants and international counterparts in the dark about his intentions. This summer, however, he is arguably wasting time and maneuvering himself into a corner, from which the only escape will be jumping into another spasm of hostilities in eastern Ukraine with the hope that a victory can cancel all other problems. The risks are frighteningly high, and Putin has avoided them for yet another week. But now August is approaching—a month that has traditionally brought Russia multiple disasters. For the whole article, see Eurasia ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Wednesday, 22 July 2015
The United States needed Russian support to conclude the Iranian nuclear deal. As U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledged, “we would have not achieved this agreement had it not been for Russia’s willingness to stick with us.” But with U.S.-Russian relations at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War, Russian support came as somewhat of a surprise, even to Obama. So, why was Russia willing to support an Iran deal that even the normally anti-American Russian media describes as Obama’s personal achievement? As usual, the answer is far from simple and resides ultimately in the fevered mind of ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 21 July 2015
It was a year ago last Friday (July 17) that the Boeing 777 Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down by a missile over eastern Ukraine, resulting in a loss of 298 lives. The shock of that tragedy awakened Europe and the wider global community to the grave risk that the localized armed conflict in Donbas posed to international security. Russia strenuously denied responsibility, despite its direct involvement in sparking the very war that turned the sky over Ukraine into a battle-zone, and despite supplying the separatists with the surface-to-air missiles that inflicted heavy ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Friday, 17 July 2015
“Russia has been rather ambivalent about striking the deal, not because it is worried about the Iranian nuclear program, but because it is worried about the Iranian oil,” said Pavel K. Baev, a researcher at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo. Mr. Baev noted that at several crucial points in the long negotiations, Russia had seemed to be working to complicate things. In November, for example, it announced a new deal to build nuclear reactors in Iran, and in April said it was resuming the sale of S-300 surface-to-air missiles that Iran had ordered before a 2010 arms embargo was ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Wednesday, 15 July 2015
It was a rare coincidence in world politics that two pivotal and protracted negotiation processes—the European Union’s talks with Greece on managing its debt, and the “P5+1” talks on managing the Iranian nuclear program—both culminated in crucial agreements at the start of this week (July 13–14). Russia was a party (albeit not a very active one by the end) to the bargaining with Iran, but not with Greece (while demonstrating close engagement); and it has large stakes in both crises. Typically, while declaring support for reaching comprehensive agreements in both cases, Moscow was, in fact, more interested in the talks ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Friday, 10 July 2015
The striking outcome of this Sunday’s Greek referendum is that the collective attitude departed so decisively from common sense. The question on the ballot was convoluted, but the voters were well-informed about the EU’s demands. Having spent a week lining up at ATMs, Greeks grasped the reality of the coming bankruptcy—and yet, they chose to reject the clear demands of their creditors. One important part of the explanation for an apparently self-punishing choice is Russia. Many Greeks see Russia as a state that upholds its sovereignty and defies the EU diktat. This rosy view—centered on the idea of dignity—conveniently overlooks ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 16 June 2015
The pattern of brinksmanship, in which air incidents in the Baltic theater interplay with tank and artillery engagements in the Donbas war zone, is so obviously detrimental to Russia’s interests that a determined effort at breaking it appears inevitable. Western leaders focus on measures for containing Russia, expecting that the break may come in the form of discharging tensions and managing the hostilities. For the Kremlin, however, the incentives to go in this direction are weakened by the need to justify the consequences of the maturing economic crisis to the demobilized populace and disgruntled elites. The more emphasis is placed ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 9 June 2015
The swiftly terminated rebel attack on Maryinka was probably meant to be Putin’s “warning shot” to the Western leaders. But he only succeeded in reminding them about the near certainty (rather than risk) of a summer spasm in the “hybrid war.” While the Russian battalions concentrated in the war zone appear far from eager to go into battle, the assorted war-bands of local thugs and Russian “volunteers” of invariably aggressive persuasions have nothing else to do but to resume fighting. It seems Putin’s support base is eager to cheer for new victories but absolutely not ready to keep waiting for ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 2 June 2015
These attempts at curtailing the flow of information and persecuting the disseminators of politically undesirable news (including bloggers) might appear old-fashioned and inspired by Soviet-era KGB practices, which are held dear by Putin and his henchmen. They are, nevertheless, more effective than the spread of Internet-based social networks would suggest—and not only due to the impact of their vicious propaganda but also because the mass production of “patriotic” illusions has left many people disoriented and averse to facts and figures that puncture these illusions and leave them with feelings of foreboding disaster. The Kremlin exploits this disorientation and presents its ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 12 May 2015
The extraordinary pomp around the celebration of the V-Day made it possible for Putin to sustain the momentum of mobilization created by last year’s Crimean anschluss. Now that the fanfare and fireworks have fallen silent, this momentum may dissipate—and Putin, who has made himself into the central figure in militarized festivities, can ill afford such a slackening of “patriotic” fervor. The heavy emphasis on the decisive and glorious victory won by the “grandfathers” sits poorly with the evasive and ambivalent discourse on the on-going war with “brotherly” Ukraine. For the aggressively “patriotic” propaganda, it is hard to explain the point ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 5 May 2015
The focal point for the “patriotic” propaganda for the last several months has been the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory in the Great Patriotic War (as World War II is known in Russia), which is now just a few days away. Reflections on the horrible costs of that bitter victory or on coalition efforts with the Allies have been nearly nonexistent; instead, jingoistic triumphalism, combined with the traditional display of military might, translates into an eager anticipation of yet another victorious campaign. Putin has invested a lot of personal effort in turning this celebration into ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 21 April 2015
“Boring” is perhaps the prevalent impression of President Vladimir Putin’s televised four-hour-long Q & A session that aired last Thursday (April 16), which was meant to demonstrate his good health and relaxed attitude to the great many problems worrying his loyal subjects…. […] Typically, such commentary by high officials is merely camouflage for Russia’s real intentions. But Moscow is unlikely to try to escalate the conflict in the coming few weeks as the Russian Armed Forces are going through the spring draft cycle. Even more importantly, Putin obviously wants to stage picture-perfect May 9 Victory Day celebrations in Red Square, ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Wednesday, 8 April 2015
The words that Russian President Vladimir Putin chose for describing the nuclear angle of the special operation for seizing and annexing Crimea in March 2014, might appear so odd that it is well-nigh impossible to make sense of them. “Yes, we were ready,” he said to the question about whether the option of putting strategic forces on high alert was considered. He then clarified that these forces were always on high readiness status. And when “some military experts” advised him to use all available means of deterrence, he said “No,” according to the propaganda documentary shown two weeks ago on ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 7 April 2015
While Iran appears to be recognizing the need to reform its domestic politics and change its attitude toward the West, Russia is turning into a massively corrupt police state and is apparently thriving in the atmosphere of confrontation. The contrast between these two regimes has become strikingly sharp as nuclear negotiations approached the final stretch toward a binding agreement. Moscow still tries to present itself as a responsible stake-holder in the international system. But with every turn of the screw in the government’s repressions against members of the domestic opposition—stigmatized as “traitors” and “foreign agents”—Russia’s external behavior tends to turn ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 24 March 2015
While Putin may believe in his own infallibility, his courtiers have to persist in reassuring him about the fragility of Western unity. Just another push and a couple more bribes, they argue, will convince some North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members that Narva or Spitsbergen are not worth fighting for, or to persuade some EU members that the sanctions regime is counter-productive. This split needs to be achieved in the coming weeks, in time for a summer offensive in eastern Ukraine toward Mariupol and Melitopol (opening the land corridor to Crimea) to be condoned at new (Minsk Three) summit—where France ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 17 March 2015
Since the Ukraine crisis exploded a year ago, Putin’s system of power has rigidified into a uni-centric combination of a police state, kleptocracy and “propagandocracy” (if such a word could be invented), in which no transition of authority can be planned or envisaged. His recent poorly camouflaged and worse explained “disappearance” has not re-confirmed his indispensability, but signaled that the courtier-siloviki will not be able to manage the appointment of a new boss without unleashing a multi-clan feud—in which Kadyrov with his battalions and billions could be a major force. Putin is leading Russia toward state failure; and the incapacitation ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 10 March 2015
It took a week for the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to produce a pair of plausible suspects in the shocking murder of Boris Nemtsov on February 28. Last Saturday (March 7), FSB Director Aleksandr Bortnikov reported to President Vladimir Putin that two men implicated in the crime were under arrest; and on Sunday, another man killed himself with a hand grenade in Grozny… Too many loose ends in this crime persist, however, for one to have any confidence in the official version. Putin is no more able to assert effective control over rogue elements within the special services than his ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Friday, 6 March 2015
As days go by, the pain and shock from the news about Boris Nemtsov murder are turning into sad reflections on Russia’s predicament, and my bottom line goes as following: Nemtsov was a voice in the wilderness of Russian propaganda and self-deception. And his murder has cut away multiple layers of lies in Putin’s “war is peace” story. Tens of thousands of people who marched last Sunday across the bridge, which the man who refused to live a lie had walked to meet four bullets, may never learn the truth about the hand that pulled the trigger. They know, however, where ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Wednesday, 25 February 2015
It is entirely correct to say that the “Minsk Two” agreement, reached on February 12, after painstakingly long talks between the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany, was broken inside the first week of implementation. Yet, as the battle for Debaltseve has drawn to its predictable end, the opposing parties may find it opportune to take a break from the trenches (RBC.ru, February 18). Ukraine has suffered another humiliating defeat, and President Petro Poroshenko needs time to deal with its consequences, though he would perhaps do better by not denying the scale of this tactical disaster (Kommersant, February 21). ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Wednesday, 18 February 2015
Russia connects with Turkey seeking opportunities in the Middle East. Violent conflicts in the Middle East gained new momentum in 2014, and the forceful multilateral efforts to contain them yielded far from satisfactory results. Both Russia and Turkey have remained aloof from these efforts, and often oppose US-led endeavors but they have major stakes in the overlapping regional conflicts and so are exploring opportunities to claim a key role in pro-active conflict management. Russia’s best opportunity to boost its role in the Middle East is by launching joint initiatives with Turkey. Energy ties are a less solid foundation for this ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Wednesday, 11 February 2015
President Vladimir Putin loves to play the “divide-and-deceive” game, imagining that every split between the United States and Europe or inside the European Union is an opportunity to corrupt Western policies, opinions, and values. It was high time to turn this game against him, and last week he indeed found himself on the receiving end of an elegant “deter-and-engage” combination. As NATO announced the decision to strengthen its Response Force and military presence in the Baltic area, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande traveled to Moscow to impress upon President Vladimir Putin the urgent need to stop ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 10 February 2015
The week of February 2 registered an explosion in political intrigue around the war in eastern Ukraine, and some sort of pause in hostilities is likely to ensue. Undoubtedly, this is a positive development, but it would be an overstatement to describe the late-night talks in the Kremlin between President Vladimir Putin and the two European envoys—German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande—as the “last chance” to stop the war. The five-hour talks concluded without any agreement or press conference. And during their brief photo-session, the three leaders wore their sternest facial expressions, demonstrating how hard it was ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 3 February 2015
Russia has achieved much success last week in its rush toward self-isolation, and perhaps the most demonstrative step was made in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). Sergei Naryshkin, the Chairman of the State Duma, came to Strasbourg as the head of the Russian delegation expecting to reach a compromise on the issue of restoring Russia’s full participation in this important pan-European forum. But he was so irked by the international body’s decision to prolong its sanctions against Russia (including the suspension of the right to vote) for another three months that he stormed out of the ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Wednesday, 28 January 2015
The sharp escalation of hostilities in eastern Ukraine last week (January 22) has disheartened many in Europe who had hoped for a gradual resolution of the Ukraine conflict. On the other hand, it has been a welcome return to the path of victory for many in Russia who consume or produce the flow of war propaganda. For some observers, the fragility of the ceasefire and the impossibility of “freezing” the conflict in the present configuration were beyond doubt, so the question that is looming large in the commentary is not “Why?” but rather “Why now?” The rest of the article ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 13 January 2015
Despite the apparent deadlock in armed clashes in eastern Ukraine, an idea to bringing together the presidents of Russia and Ukraine, together with their peers from Belarus and Kazakhstan as well as the leaders of France and Germany, gained momentum at the end of last week. Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev made an unscheduled visit to Berlin on Friday (January 9), seeking to persuade German Chancellor Angela Merkel that a summit in Astana on January 15 could make sense to break the Russian deadlock in the talks, and he then had a telephone conversation with President Vladimir Putin (Rossiiskaya Gazeta, Kremlin.ru, ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 6 January 2015
The post–New Year holidays in Russia have brought less joy or happy expectations than usual to the country’s elites, the urban middle classes and even to Russia’s millions of labor migrants. Over the past 15 years, all these groups shared in the country’s prosperity, which had grown steadily since President Boris Yeltsin resigned and made Vladimir Putin his successor. The crisis of 2008–2009 delivered only a short interruption to this increase in incomes and fortunes, though the mass protests in 2012 revealed growing discontent among liberal-minded “creative classes” in Moscow. The year 2014, on the other hand, began with optimistic ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 25 November 2014
Last weekend (November 21), Ukraine marked the first anniversary of the EuroMaidan—the public protests in Kyiv that lasted through the hard winter of discontent and brought down the corrupt regime of Viktor Yanukovych on February 21. As its war for state survival continues to rage, the country is in no mood for street festivities. Nevertheless, the EuroMaidan clearly still drives Ukraine’s policy, as was illustrated by the formation of a broad governing coalition pledging to restore the country’s territorial integrity and deepen its pro-Western orientation, including the goal of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (Gazeta.ru, November 21). United ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Wednesday, 12 November 2014
In a case of striking symbolism, President Vladimir Putin traveled to Beijing on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, as if seeking reassurance against the specter of a mass public uprising. The dismantling of that icon of the Cold War signified a breakthrough in finally achieving a Europe united by the vision of freedom and democracy. But for Putin, as his past remarks suggest, it was a painfully traumatic experience that left him forever in fear of a sudden explosion of popular discontent (Gazeta.ru, November 4). The Chinese leadership shares his deep hostility to revolutions and ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 7 October 2014
In the past-but-still-present Soviet times, leading newspaper proudly carried a set of awards – like the Order of the Red Star – on their front pages. I can just imagine the fiercely independent Novaya gazeta sporting the Nobel medal on its banner (just above the usual political cartoon) – as an added challenge to the revival of the Soviet symbolism and propaganda. I wanted to write in this blog that there is far more to Novaya than its trademark defiant stance against creeping authoritarianism. The free spirit of this very special newspaper translates into sharp sports commentary, and spectacular photo ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 7 October 2014
The trickle of sad and sour economic news continues to exacerbate Russia’s stagnant economic outlook, but the Kremlin authorities remain resolutely indifferent to these negative trends. They presume that the arrival of a “technical” recession does not constitute a political challenge because the “below-middle” classes have rallied around the flag of confrontation with the West, while the business elites are lined up to follow the government’s “patriotic” instructions. It is the urban middle classes that tend to sink into discontent, but they remain disheartened by the hard-hitting propaganda and divided by selective repressions. This confidence in political control over the ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 30 September 2014
Big guns have mostly remained silent in eastern Ukraine last week, but diplomatic battles at the United Nations General Assembly have not shown any recess. Russia used to be able to score some easy points at this seasonal show by denouncing the United States’ unilateralism and hegemonic arrogance. This time around, however, it is Moscow which has been the main target of censure, a tone set by President Barack Obama, who defined Russia as one of the main threats to international security, on par with the Ebola epidemic and Islamist militant groups operating in Iraq and Syria (Kommersant, September 26). ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 16 September 2014
The tragic battles around Donetsk and Luhansk (collectively known as the Donbas region) have taken a pause, and as civilians try to rebuild a semblance of normal life, leaders are figuring out how to now move forward. In his first 100 days, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has shown the ability to absorb hard blows, but now he needs to find both resolve to rebuild confidence in his shell-shocked country and caution to avoid a full-blown war with Russia. It is, however, Russian President Vladimir Putin who is finding himself in an impossible and entirely self-made jam. He has avoided a ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Thursday, 4 September 2014
Just 75 years ago, the devastating war arrived to Europe – and this brave Polish cavalry perished fighting tanks. These days tanks are again rolling – and Europe needs to find a way to stop them. The summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that opens in the Welsh Celtic Manor resort tomorrow (September 4) will feature the Ukraine crisis as an agenda item of top priority and extreme urgency. Only a week ago, this crisis appeared manageable as Russian President Vladimir Putin shook hands with his Ukrainian counterpart, President Petro Poroshenko, in Minsk under the watchful eye of ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 12 August 2014
With the arrival of August, political expectations in Russia, informed by the long experience of setbacks and disasters, are turning negative. Second thoughts about the “victorious” war with Georgia that erupted six years ago blend with reflections on the centennial anniversary of World War I (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, August 6). At the same time, liberal-minded pundits remind the public about Russia’s 1998 fiscal default, while arguing that in a globalized world the most devastating battles are fought in the financial realm (Novaya Gazeta, August 6). Whereas, the smoke coming from the sunflower fields in eastern Ukraine, where the Moscow-backed separatist war ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 5 August 2014
Bad news hit the Kremlin thick and fast last week, but on Friday evening (August 1), President Vladimir Putin answered a phone call from US President Barack Obama, who again stressed that the Kremlin’s mounting problems can be resolved diplomatically (whitehouse.gov, August 1). Putin’s personal responsibility for the war in eastern Ukraine is apparently no longer up for discussion. Meanwhile, the West—after having vigorously mobilized a political effort to enforce far tougher sanctions than Moscow had budgeted for—is seemingly granting him an “honorable” way out. In Washington, and even more so in Berlin, there is understandable reluctance to heighten Putin’s ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 29 July 2014
If President Vladimir Putin really thought that the destruction of Flight MH17 with 298 people on board would soon blow over, the White House statement from last Friday must have disillusioned him—assuming his subordinates actually informed him about it. The White House statement directly noted: “we have concluded that Vladimir Putin and the Russians are culpable to this tragedy.” Russian media did its best to spin these words, whereas the official sources mentioned only the West’s lack of irrefutable evidence (Newsru.com, RIA Novosti, July 26). It is possible to interpret “the Russians” in this context in the narrow sense—as the ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 15 July 2014
The upcoming BRICS (a loose political-economic grouping of the large emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit, scheduled to take place in Fortaleza, Brazil, on July 15–17, provided an occasion for President Vladimir Putin to make a lengthy tour around Latin America, starting from Cuba last Friday and making a short unscheduled detour to Nicaragua on Saturday. Meetings with the Castro brothers as well as with Daniel Ortega did little to restore Putin’s international prestige, but they allowed him to make a grand gesture of writing off Cuba’s debt amounting to no less than $35 billion ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 8 July 2014
The most dramatic turn in the protracted Ukrainian calamity last week was the decision of President Petro Poroshenko to end the ceasefire and resume the offensive against separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Poroshenko had every reason to conclude that the cessation of combat operations plays into rebel hands, since Ukraine’s control over the border with Russia was not restored and reinforcements from Russia were pouring into the motley gangs of pretentious warlords (RBC Daily, July 2). Heavy fighting brought casualties among civilians, so Poroshenko had to dismiss the top brass and appoint a new defense minister, while insisting ...
Posted by Pavel Baev on Tuesday, 1 July 2014
The big picture of the Ukrainian conflict has changed significantly during the last week as this troubled state confirmed its hard-made European choice. The hundreds of rebels fighting in the trenches around Slavyansk and the hundreds of thousands of civilians, who are trying to make sense out of the violent disorder in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, are probably unaware of this change and may not know that the non-existent ceasefire is extended to Monday evening. Nevertheless, the signing of the association agreement with the EU was a major breakthrough in the efforts to pull Ukraine from the quagmire of state failure ...