Current Affairs

With the end of Navalny, Russians seem to have lost the one voice that could be heard by millions who were either gasping at the audacity of his latest prank or just finding an understanding of what an extraordinary man he was. But Russia has never been short of these kind of characters until now, which is probably a seminal moment in Russian history. The GREATS, Peter, Ivan, Catherine have been joined by Putin, not quite a great but a significant other. He has not fought Napoleon to a standstill, expanded Russia or built a great military…. but he has lost the wealth of millions of Russians in a war that has never been quite winnable.

In many ways Putin has reached out to the West with a year zero threat of nuclear Armageddon. His threats and red lines have been ignored for the most part, but the threats have led to some back peddling by the likes of Biden and Scholz, who have trodden just that bit to carefully. Biden has come off the fence he was sitting on and given the Ukrainians permission to use long range missiles. It is not all good as the Ukrainians are now waiting for the British and Germans to come to a decision.

Power is the element that most concerns Putin. And it is the projection of his power that is the most significant argument in the Russian arsenal. The idea of a nuclear threat is just that, a threat. But it is the Western worlds pandering of Putin and Russia that has empowered his thirst for territory and the end of Ukraine, which he threatens to break up and put a proxy government in power if Trump’s negotiations go his way. But the  Ukrainians are holding on and with the West arguing for the independent voice of Ukraine to be heard, there is a belief that Ukraine can and will manage to gain some of the territory they have lost.

Existentially Vladimir Putin is not just a threat to Ukraine, he is a threat to the Western world order. The ideas of the West are being challenged by expansionist Russian arguments. The argument of the Sino-Russia pact is for a new world order, which empowers the authoritarian governments around the world. But there are also movements that challenged Russian/Chinese hegemony and that is whether Russia will continue to haemorrhage the assets that it has tied up in the agreements the two states have.  

The idea that the threats emanating from a revanchelist Russia are just threats, is missing the point. The ideas coming from Russia are that it is fighting a war to encase its argument that it is a world power. The factors challenging this narrative are that Russia is the 11^th largest economy in the world, with $2.18 trillion GDP, which puts Russia behind countries like UK, Germany, Italy and India. It’s economy is inherently dependent on oil, mineral extraction and forestry. It is no longer an industrial power and technically it is dependent on the Chips that China produces to feed its armaments industry.

Russia’s position in BRICS is that of a partner, it is not dominating the summits and with economies such as China, Brazil and India in the partnership, Russia is very much out industrialised by these economies. What BRICS offers is an alliance that empowers the up and coming economies onto a world stage. Though Russia has used this stage to project its arguments and assume a modicum of power, the elements that make up BRICS are superseding the position of Russia, other than viewing it as a major oil producer.

There is a call to the West to bury the regime in Russia with further sanctions, especially in the oil market, which is still buying Russian oil at a premium from shadow tanker fleets. Also countries such as India are selling Russian oil at world prices and the question arising from whether these markets can be shut off, challenges the West ability to place sanctions on economies that challenge the world order. Sanctions have worked concerning the gas tanker fleets in Russia’s north, the fleets cannot be expanded because of sanctions and as such Russia has lost market share.

In an article in RUSI, Volodymyr Ohryzko, Roman Sohn and Ariana Gic, argue that Russia today is a “criminal, militarised, totalitarian, aggressive revanchelist and genocidal regime to international peace.” Though these arguments have been on the world stage for the past twenty years and widely written about by authors such as Catherine Belton and Mark Galeotti, since Putin came into power, the West has pandered to the Russian states corrupt view of the world. But it is these same elements of corruption that has empowered Putin, the FSB and his world view. The elements that have been described have been put in place in outlets such as Novosti, RT and other news outlets that have spread propaganda, which have corrupted and been fed into media elements in the West that to a degree are also corrupt.

During the first presidency of Trump, Putin congratulated the president and with a slight smirk on his face – attributed the victory to the FSB, RT and other outlets that led a campaign to elect Trump to the presidency. This time Putin claimed nothing, the Russian media have only acknowledged Trump’s victory with the publication of nudes of Melania Trump, what this means is unknown, but it seemed to be a warning to Trump not to push Putin. Though the US is very much going to be focussed on China during Trump’s next presidency, Trump’s determination to mend the forever wars is also a warning that Europe will have to take up some of the slack in its campaign against the Putin regime.

The concentration of the West on the war in Ukraine, is also a realisation that the arguments found in Washington are not sympathetic to the Ukrainians. But if China is to be the next conflict centre then the Sino/Russian agreement needs to be challenged and to do this there needs to be pressure put on the weaker partner Russia. But the alliances that have been created among the authoritarian governments has also been an element in the war in Ukraine. Both Iran and North Korea have been partners to Russian aggression, so much so that Iranian made drones are above Ukraine and North Korean shells and men are part of the frontline, which has led to a response from the US in the form of the ATACAMS.

Today is the 1000^th day of war in Ukraine. Russia has not reached its objectives and the war continues at a pace. The idea that Putin has succeeded in this war is very much a myth, however there has been a realisation this time that the West has pandered to a revisionist who seems to view the world circa 1989, and with the failure of the offensive in Ukraine, there have been arguments that if this war goes on for another year, Russia will be in a deep economic malaise that will prove to be very difficult for the state to get out of this time…. Though there have been predictions for the past twenty years that Russia will be in the top ten of economies (the mishandling of the state by Putin) the state is expected not to reach its potential because of the corruption, mismanagement and resources that have been sucked into the war in Ukraine.