Steve Gutterman's Week In Russia

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President Vladimir Putin was a no-show at ceremonies honoring the victims of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's Terror, while rights activists accused Putin's government of abuses of its own, including a sharp increase in the number of political prisoners. Russia's only aircraft carrier was back in the news after a dry dock plunged into the sea, a teenager died in a possible suicide attack on an FSB office, and "the country of Tolstoy" came under fire over the wars in Syria and eastern Ukraine.

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

Just Remember This

Vladimir Putin often sends signals to Russians and the West with his words and actions -- driving a truck across a bridge to Crimea, say, or telling an audience that the aggressors in a nuclear war will "croak" within moments of launching an attack.

This week, as Russians solemnly honored the memory of the victims of Josef Stalin and the Soviet state, Putin sent a pretty clear message by saying and doing nothing at all.

A year after he opened the Wall Of Sorrow on the official Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repression and said that "this horrific past must not be stricken from the national memory," Putin was absent from the all-day ceremony at the Moscow monument on October 30.

He was also a no-show the day before, when thousands of Russians lined up at Lubyanka Square, near the headquarters of the Soviet KGB and the Russian FSB, to read the names and occupations of thousands of long-dead relatives, friends, and citizens -- along with the date when each one was executed by the state in Stalin's Great Terror of 1937-38.

In short, pointed statements, several of them also called for the release of people they say are political prisoners of Putin's government today.

Political Prisoners

Their numbers are rising, according to Memorial, the human rights and historical-documentation group that organizes the Returning the Names ceremony at the Solovetsky Stone every year. Memorial said the number of political prisoners in Russia increased sharply in the past year, rising from at least 117 to at least 195.

Putin, who reached the rank of lieutenant colonel in a 16-year KGB career, headed the FSB for eight months in 1998-99 -- a short step in his swift rise from oblivion to the Kremlin. So he may have little interest in drawing attention to killings carried out, however long ago, by the secret police.

Despite the strong words last year, Putin's public remarks about the "horrible past" have been mixed -- in 2017, Putin said that the "excessive demonization" of Stalin was used as "a way of attacking the Soviet Union and Russia."

Arseny Roginsky, an activist who was chairman of the respected rights group Memorial and died in December 2017, accused the authorities of trying to push the memory of Stalin's abuses "to the distant periphery of the consciousness."

Another factor in Putin's decision to steer clear of the ceremonies could be that as he settles into his fourth term -- with no right to seek reelection in 2024 without changing the constitution -- his focus is less on the past than on the future. Specifically, on whether -- or exactly how -- to stay in power.

Evidence? There were two pieces of that this past week.

Room For Change

At an October 30 ceremony, Putin said that the electoral system was "constantly being perfected" and that such a "complex organism as Russia" must "adapt to the growth of political culture" and other developments.

As is often the case with Putin's remarks, on one level these seemed unremarkable and reasonable -- pallid and perfunctory comments about the need for gradual change.

On another level, though, they could reinforce suspicions -- generated by Constitutional Court head Valery Zorkin's article in the official government gazette in October -- that changes could be made to keep Putin in power, either as president or in some other role.

In another sign that he may be seeking ways increase control over Russia and discourage outbreaks of discontent amid uncertainty about the future, Putin signed the latest in a series of laws Kremlin critics say are intended to rein in street protests and stifle dissent.

It Sank

Meanwhile, the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov – a 305-meter-long metaphor for Russia's assertive behavior on the world stage and the problems that hamper its progress -- was back in the news when the massive floating dry dock being used to stage costly repairs sank, sending a crane crashing down on deck and leaving one worker missing, now feared dead, and four injured.

The Admiral Kuznetsov made waves two years ago when it steamed toward Syria from the Russian Arctic, belching smoke as it circled around Europe and causing NATO countries concern.

As Russia's only aircraft carrier headed back home from the mission, Britain's defense chief called it the "ship of shame" for its role supporting Moscow's military campaign in Syria, which saved President Bashar al-Assad from possible defeat and strengthened his hold on power.

Throughout the throughout the nearly eight-year war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people since it began with a crackdown on protests against Assad's rule, Russia has used its position in global diplomacy and its veto power at in the UN Security Council to protect the Syrian president.

The latest evidence of its success in shielding Assad came at a summit between Putin and the leaders of Germany, France, and Turkey in Istanbul on October 27: A communique said that the leaders called for a committee tasked with creating a new Syrian constitution to convene before year's end, but there was no mention of Assad's fate.

Tolstoy's Country

Asked whether that issue had come up in the talks, Putin said that "no personalities were discussed" because, in his words, that would be counterproductive to the peace process.

Putin also said that Russia reserved the right to help Assad mount an offensive in Idlib Province, Syria's last rebel-held region, where an agreement between Turkey and Russia to establish a demilitarized zone averted a threatened assault by Russian-backed government forces in September.

The day before the summit, the outgoing UN envoy for Syria said that the United Nations was facing a "serious challenge" to its efforts to end the conflict because Assad's government was refusing to let the UN have any formal role in forming the constitutional committee.

Amid renewed fears of violence in Idlib and uncertainty about the fate of the diplomatic efforts to forge peace and a new constitution, the French ambassador to the UN said that "between war and peace in Syria, the key is largely in the country of Tolstoy."

The bearded count's country was also in the spotlight at the UN over its interference in Ukraine, where Russia-backed separatists plan to hold elections in the territory they hold in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk on November 11.

'Sham Elections'

In a vote on October 30, Western states blocked a Russian bid to have a separatist figure in Luhansk brief the Security Council on what the U.S. deputy ambassador called "sham elections staged by Russia."

UN political chief Rosemary DiCarlo said that elections held "outside Ukraine's constitutional and legal framework would be incompatible with the Minsk agreements," referring to a 2015 pact on a cease-fire and steps toward peace.

In a joint statement read out before the Security Council meeting, eight European Union countries called on Russia to "bring its considerable influence to bear to stop the so-called 'elections' from taking place."

That clearly won't happen, and several recent developments have done nothing to improve the already dim-seeming prospects for implementation of the Minsk agreements -- which were supposed to restore Kyiv's full control over its border with Russia by the end of 2015.

The dispute over the Ecumenical Patriarch's decision to bless the creation of a Ukrainian Orthodox Church free of control from the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church has added to strains that have only worsened since Russia seized Crimea and backed the separatists in 2014.

The rift widened further on November 1, when Russia retaliated for sanctions imposed by Kyiv by hitting 322 Ukrainians and 68 companies with punitive measures that include the freezing of any assets or property they hold in Russia.

'Pretty Scary'

Back home, the Kremlin got what observers said should be a serious scare when, according to the authorities, a 17-year-old student at a local technical college was killed and three Federal Security Service (FSB) officers were injured when explosives the teenager brought into an FSB office in the northwestern city of Arkhangelsk detonated.

Media reports said that minutes before the blast on October 31, a member of an anarchist group on Telegram posted about his intentions to attack the FSB building in Arkhangelsk, saying that the FSB "fabricates cases and tortures people."

The source of the post could not be confirmed. But Andrei Soldatov, an author and expert on Russia's security services, wrote on Twitter that it appeared to be "the first suicide attack carried out not by a usual suspect" -- a reference to the fact that such bombings in the past have almost invariably been claimed by or blamed on Islamic militants.

"Pretty scary development for FSB," Soldatov wrote in the tweet.

It came two weeks after the authorities said an 18-year-old student mounted a bomb-and-gun attack on his college on the Russian-controlled Crimean Peninsula, killing 20 of his fellow students and faculty and fatally shooting himself.

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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.