Steve Gutterman's Week In Russia

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Vladimir Putin told Russians they will go to heaven as “martyrs” if the country is destroyed in a nuclear war, and warned of a new “arms race” if the United States abandons key treaties. The Russian president got bad news on the home front, with a trusted ally issuing a grim economic forecast and a poll putting his approval rating close to an all-time low.

Meanwhile, a Crimean film director who is struggling to recover after a 145-day hunger strike in a Russian prison was awarded the Sakharov Prize, and a prominent Russian director faces trial.

Here are some of the key developments in Russia over the past week and some of the takeaways going forward.

#HeavenIsOurs

In several days of diplomacy dominated by talk of weapons and war, the most striking words came from Vladimir Putin, who said that Russians will “go to heaven as martyrs” in the event of a catastrophic nuclear conflict with the West. Citizens of the “aggressor” country, he added, “would just croak because they wouldn’t even have time to repent.”

If Putin’s promise of heaven was meant to reassure Russians, a hail of comment on social media and in real life suggested that for some, the effect was the exact opposite.

“He’s not afraid -- but we are,” blogger SerpomPo wrote, expressing particular concern about Putin’s claim that Russian citizens have a “predisposition…to give their lives for the fatherland.”

“Everybody to heaven!” was how one bitterly sarcastic meme summed it up, while commentator Viktor Shenderovich said on Ekho Mosvy radio: “I don’t want to go to heaven, I want to live.”

Standing before a backdrop of blue skies and cottony clouds on independent Dozhd TV, satirist and Kremlin critic Dmitry Bykov read out a short verse in which he said he would prefer to go to hell, not heaven, but “on the condition that Putin won’t be there.”

Likening Putin’s words to a “jihadist formula,” liberal opposition politician Grigory Yavlinsky suggested it was a highly irresponsible statement coming from a leader who, as president of a nuclear-armed nation, has “every opportunity to send us all to heaven in an instant.”

The mocking memes and outraged responses fit in with long-standing suspicions among some Russians that Putin sees citizens of his country not as individuals he should serve but as subjects whose main purpose is to serve the state -- to the point of willingly dying in a nuclear war.

Critics point to past statements as evidence of this upside-down relationship between the Russian public and Russia’s top public servant, including Putin’s suggestion in 2013 that gay couples are less than patriotic because they “don’t produce children” and a remark in which he indicated that a fire that killed 60 people at a Siberian shopping mall – many of them children trapped in a movie theater -- was bad for the country’s “demographics.”

Several posts included the phrase Rai Nash! (Heaven is Ours!) -- a play on Krymnash (Crimea is ours), a sardonic term used to mock the jingoistic outburst that followed Russia’s takeover of the Ukrainian peninsula in March 2014.

Approval Wanes

Russia’s seizure of Crimea led to a surge in public support for Putin, whose approval rating stood at 64 percent in 2013 -- the lowest since 2000, his first year in office -- but shot up to 88 percent in 2014 and remained at that level in 2015, according to the independent Levada Center polling organization.

This month, approval is down to 66 percent, according to the latest Levada poll -- the lowest since 2013. And the proportion of Russians voicing disapproval was 33 percent, the highest since 2013.

While the Kremlin professes not to pay much attention to Putin’s ratings, the decline has led to speculation that he might do something drastic -- something comparable to the takeover of Crimea -- to push the numbers back up.

​Worse Than We Thought

There’s certainly little evidence that the economy could give Putin a boost in the near future.

The government has forecast that economic growth will contract to 1.3 percent in 2019, from an expected 1.8 percent this year. But Aleksei Kudrin, whose 11-year stint as finance minister included the boom times of oil-fueled annual double-digit growth during Putin’s first two terms, in 2000-2008, said this week that gross domestic product may expand “considerably” less than 1 percent.

“Unfortunately, the deceleration in growth will be sharper than expected by the government,” Kudrin, a fiscal conservative who has been passed over repeatedly for the prime minister’s post and now heads the Audit Chamber, told Bloomberg News in an interview.

Putin’s comments on nuclear weapons and nuclear war may have been meant to seem explosive. After years of anti-Western propaganda, condemning a putative “aggressor” to nonexistence with no chance of redemption might play pretty well with a segment of his domestic audience.

Six days later -- after U.S. President Donald Trump announced his intention to abandon the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and John Bolton delivered the message in person -- Putin followed up with a warning that if the United States deploys currently-banned missiles in Europe, Russia will be forced to target the host countries with its own warheads.

Treaty Me Right

In both cases, Putin’s rhetoric probably hid a softer message for the West than it might have seemed on the surface.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov appeared eager to make that clear when he told reporters that that when Putin said Russia would use its nuclear weapons only in response to an incoming attack -- and not fire first -- he meant just that.

Russia “will never be the first to attack anyone” but will respond with devastating force if attacked, Peskov told reporters who asked about Putin’s comments. “This is the key idea, which is important to understand. All the rest is an allegory."

And when Putin spoke of Trump’s stated intention of abandoning the INF treaty, he seemed careful to indicate that a Russian “mirror response” would come not when Washington pulls out of the treaty but rather when -- and if -- it deploys new missiles in Europe in the wake of its withdrawal.

Moscow’s fears on that score are well-founded, Russian analyst Aleksei Arbatov, a negotiator of the 1994 START I treaty, suggested in a commentary for the Carnegie Moscow Center.

New U.S. deployments of intermediate-range missiles in Europe could “force Moscow to commit significant resources to increasing the survivability of its nuclear forces and their control systems…at a time when Russia’s economic situation is necessitating defense cuts,” he wrote.

But while Putin and others in his ruling elite have warned against a U.S. pullout from the INF, several arms control experts have argued that at least at this point, the move may be far more advantageous for Russia than for the United States.

End Of New START?

They point out that it would free Moscow from the treaty’s constraints, which Western nations say Russia is flouting by deploying a missile in violation, while allowing it to blame Washington for the demise of a landmark pact that remains popular in Europe.

In his comments at talks with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on October 24, Putin suggested he may be more concerned with the future of the New START treaty -- which put caps on long-range nuclear arsenals and is due to expire in 2021 -- than the fate of the INF.

Putin lamented the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in 2002 -- back in his first term, when George W. Bush was in office. Now the INF is under threat, he said, and added that “the fate of New START is unclear.”

Sakharov, Sentsov, Serebrennikov

In other news this week, one of Russia’s best-known prisoners won an award named after one of the Soviet Union’s best-known dissidents -- the late physicist Andrei Sakharov.

Oleh Sentsov, a Ukrainian film director condemned to 20 years in prison in Russia after opposing its takeover of the Crimean Peninsula, was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

Not all directors facing the prospect of years behind bars in Russia on criminal charges that Kremlin critics say are politically motivated are Ukrainian, however.

Kirill Serebrennikov, a prominent Russian theater and film director who has been under house arrest in Moscow for over a year, could be sentenced to 10 years in prison if he is convicted of embezzlement by a court that postponed his trial until November 7 at a hearing this week.

Here are some of the key developments in Russia over the past week, and some of the takeaways going forward.

Orthodox Rift

When Moscow was hit with its latest affront on the international stage, the mouthpiece for a major Russian institution promised an “adequate and tough” response.

If you think that sounds like Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov or Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, you’re right – but think again. The warning came from the spokesman for Moscow Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, after a synod led by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople – the “first among equals” in Orthodox Christianity – said it would grant autocephaly, or independence, to the Orthodox church in Ukraine.

The temporal tone of the vow to retaliate was one of several reminders that the spiritual rift widening at the heart of one of the world’s great religions is also – and perhaps predominantly -- a gloves-off geopolitical scrap with potentially far-reaching consequences for at least two countries, and maybe more.

The Russian Orthodox Church did respond swiftly, announcing a “complete break in communion” with the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Lavrov did weigh in shortly afterward, calling the steps toward autocephaly in Ukraine a “provocation” staged “with the direct encouragement and public support of Washington." Its “obvious” motive, he said, was to "take another step towards tearing Ukraine away, not only politically but also now spiritually, from Russia."

The Russian Orthodox Church response was announced at a synod in Minsk on October 15, less than 72 hours after Putin discussed the situation surrounding Orthodoxy in Ukraine with members of his Security Council.

One of the Kremlin’s goals in publicly announcing that the church situation was discussed may have been to portray it as a security matter – an issue that requires the attention of the Russian defense chief and senior security officials.

Words Of Warning

That fits in with persistent warnings from Russian clerics, officials, and lawmakers that Ukrainian authorities or the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate may try to take over churches and monasteries long controlled by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, which is an affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on October 12 that if the historic church rift in Ukraine leads to “illegal actions” or violence, Russia will “defend the interests” of Orthodox Christians there.

While he said it would use “exclusively political and diplomatic” means to do so, the remark drew attention in Ukraine and the West – as it may have been designed to – because it echoed one of Russia’s explanations for its military interference in Ukraine since 2014, when it seized Crimea and helped start a war that has killed more 10,000 people in the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.

At the time, Putin spoke of the need to protect Russians and Russian-speakers from what he claimed was a threat of violence.

Patriarch Filaret, head of the Kyiv Patriarchate, said in June that two major monasteries belonging to the Moscow-controlled church should change hands after autocephaly is secured. With the war in the Donbas ongoing and candidates seeking to prove their patriotism ahead of a presidential election in March, tension over the church rift is unlikely to decrease.

So far, though, there has been no violence, and it may be in Ukraine’s best interests to keep it that way.

In its October 11 announcement of the autocephaly decision – which was a big step but not the final one for the Kyiv-based church in its independence drive -- the Ecumenical Patriarchate urged “all sides” to avoid the appropriation of property “as well as every other act of violence and retaliation, so that the peace and love of Christ may prevail.”

At a news conference that day, Filaret said that "Moscow wants a conflict but we Ukrainians do not."

School Shooting

For several hours on October 17, it looked like another incident would pile still more tension into the tattered ties between Russia and Ukraine: an attack at a college in Kerch, Crimea – the city at the Crimean end of the new bridge Putin opened in May linking Russian territory to the Black Sea peninsula Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014.

After initial reports that an explosion at the college was caused by gas, Russian authorities said it was a bomb and a suspected terrorist act.

That shift unleashed speculation by the usual suspects – such as Russian state TV channels, commentators, and lawmakers who shape the narrative by stating things some time before they solidify into the official Kremlin line – that Ukraine could have been behind the attack.

Frants Klintsevich, a member of the upper parliament house, said he doubted that “the hand of Islamic State (IS) is capable of reaching Kerch” – a surprising assertion, given that IS has claimed responsibility or been blamed for several attacks and alleged plots in Russian cities much further from the Middle East.

Instead, the attack more likely left a “Ukrainian footprint,” Klintsevich said, according to his office. Behind it, he said, could stand Ukrainian state authorities or “rabid nationalists who are ready to anything out of hatred for Russia.”

School Attack

But talk of a terrorist act gave way swiftly to a new account from the Russian authorities, who said the suspect was a student at the college and apparently had acted alone. Eyewitnesses said that after a bomb went off in the cafeteria the suspect stalked around the second floor, opened classroom doors and “just shot everyone he saw.”

Putin, meeting with the Egyptian president in Sochi – less than 500 km southeast of Kerch on the Black Sea coast – called for a moment of silence for the victims and their loved ones. But talk of a presidential visit to the gruesome scene in Kerch, where 21 people died including the attacker, was not borne out.

A day later, before playing some ice hockey and flying to Uzbekistan, Putin made his first major public comments on the bloodbath – by far the deadliest school attack blamed on a student in any of the former republics of the Soviet Union since its collapse in 1991.

The attack was the result of "globalization," he said, and of a lack of positive Internet content that prompts young people to “grab for this surrogate heroism” instead.

“It all started with the well-known tragic events...at schools in the United States,” Putin said, referring to numerous school shootings that have occurred there since the 1990s. School attacks are far less frequent in the former Soviet Union, but several have occurred in Russia in recent years.

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Find Another Way To Beat ‘Em

In other news this week, the saga of the September regional votes that have exposed weaknesses in Putin’s system of control over electoral offices across Russia continued – with a twist.

Almost by definition, a runoff election is a contest between two candidates. But when voters in the Khakasia region finally go to the polls for a twice-postponed second-round election, it will look more like referendum: Electoral officials say the ballot will have one name – that of Communist Party candidate Valentin Konovalov – and the option of voting for him or against him.

The bizarre ballot is the result of a strange series of events that started when incumbent Governor Viktor Zimin came in a not-so-strong second to Konovalov in the initial vote.

Zimin then pulled out of the runoff, citing poor health, and two other candidates bumped up in turn to fill out the ballot also withdrew, sparking speculation that Putin and the ruling United Russia party were fearful of a Communist win in a legitimate-looking election.

Making the vote into a plebiscite on a single candidate – a development that may be unprecedented in a Russian gubernatorial race – opens up the possibility that the Communist could fall short, turning an embarrassing Kremlin defeat into a victory of sorts.

The vote in Khakasia is now scheduled for November 11, but it’s unclear whether that date is final so there is still time for second thoughts – or fourth or fifth thoughts -- on the part of the Communists and the Kremlin. Out of 21 Russian regions that held elections on September 9, Khakasia is one of four in which the Kremlin favorite was forced into a runoff.

In two of those four, Vladimir and Khabarovsk, candidates from Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) have won the runoff. A new election in Primorye -- where authorities threw out the September 16 result after the Communists cried foul when their candidate was overtaken by the Kremlin’s man in the final stages of the count – is to be held in December.

Duel Or Debate…

The result of a different kind of showdown between an ally of Putin and a Kremlin foe may never be known, because it seems unlikely to take place.

Not long after his release following 50 days in jail, opposition politician Aleksei Navalny responded to National Guard chief Viktor Zolotov’s eyebrow-raising challenge to a “duel” in which he warned he would “make mincemeat” out of the anticorruption crusader.

In a video released on October 18, Navalny accepted the challenge and proposed a duel in the form of a debate on state TV, a venue in which the rare coverage he gets is invariably negative. If Zolotov were to agree, the showdown could be a chance for one of Putin’s fiercest critics to engage the president’s former chief bodyguard in a battle of wits in front of an audience of millions.

But Zolotov does not seem eager to take him up on it. On October 19, he told reporters that he would respond later, but said a debate was not what he had in mind so “our approaches differ.”

Or Nuclear War?

Putin, meanwhile, pricked up some ears in Russia and abroad when he spoke of a showdown on a larger scale: a nuclear war.

In the latest in a long series of statements in which he has boasted of new arms that he claims give Russia an edge over potential opponents including the United States, Putin told an audience that Moscow has “run ahead of the competition” in developing “precision hypersonic weapons."

He said that while Russia’s military doctrine does not foresee the use of a preemptive nuclear strike, it would retaliate quickly and forcefully to an incoming nuclear attack.

“The aggressor should know that retribution is unavoidable and he would be annihilated,” Putin said, using language more biblical than technical. “We would go to heaven as martyrs and they would just croak because they wouldn’t even have time to repent."

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