Steve Gutterman's Week In Russia

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The Kremlin suffered setbacks along edges of its sphere of influence over the past week: Syrian forces shot down a Russian reconnaissance plane, killing 15 servicemen; a ruling-party win in the Russian Far East was annulled amid evidence of "shocking" fraud; and the Russian Orthodox Church slipped closer to a historic loss of clout in Ukraine.

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

Chess Or Checkers?

The troubles in Syria, Primorye, and Ukraine pose challenges for the Kremlin, and its responses may contain clues about President Vladimir Putin's priorities -- as well as lessons about how he handles problems.

For one thing, the Syria shoot-down shows once again that Putin is highly pragmatic: He picks his battles, seeking to avoid confrontation when it's too much of a risk.

Four years of assertive, often aggressive Russian activity on the world stage have generated debate over whether Putin is a strategist or a tactician, acting or reacting, a chess master thinking several moves ahead or a checkers player just hoping to double-jump an overconfident opponent and cry "King me!"

Either way, his reaction to the downing of a Russian plane -- hit by a missile Moscow provided to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- reinforces the fact that Russia's return to the Middle East comes at a price. And that Putin is ready to pay it.

In a kind of good-cop bad-cop routine, the Russian Defense Ministry raged against Israel, accusing its warplanes of using the Russian Il-20 as cover and threatening to take "commensurate measures in response."

But then Putin weighed in with a much softer line, blaming a "chain of tragic accidental circumstances" and saying "an Israeli plane didn't shoot down our jet" -- a fact that may not have been obvious to some who heard Russian military officials talk about it.

Yellow Light

Sure, he admonished the Israeli military, and warned of measures in response that would be plain for all to see.

But he made clear those measures would be aimed to protect Russian troops, not to avenge the Russian deaths, suggesting he is eager to avoid risking a real rift in ties with Israel.

Putin "needs to exercise caution" to keep hold of the gains Russia and Syria's government have made since Moscow launched air strikes and stepped up its military presence on the ground four years ago, Leonid Bershidsky wrote in a Bloomberg Opinion article.

"This is perhaps the most difficult position for the Russian leader in Syria since 2015," he wrote.

Primorsky Cry?

Still, Putin may be more worried about developments in a more peaceful place that is much further than Syria from Moscow: Russia's Primorsky Krai, or Primorye.

Primorye has always posed a problem for post-Soviet leaders in Moscow. Seven hours ahead and more than 6,400 kilometers east of the capital, its people have complained of being cut off and ignored.

The capital, Vladivostok, has repeatedly been an arena for raucous political battles fought far from the Kremlin between protagonists like "Winnie the Pooh" -- the nickname of a convicted felon who won a 2004 mayoral election after his closest rival "tripped" on a grenade outside his office days before the vote.

Echoes of that restive history have haunted the gubernatorial election this month in Primorye, where Communist Andrei Ishchenko was headed for victory in a September 16 runoff until a last-minute surge put Kremlin-backed United Russia party candidate Andrei Tarasenko ahead – and was quickly followed by allegations of blatant cheating in the vote count.

With speed that surprised some, Russia's elections chief called on regional electoral officials to declare the vote invalid, citing violations on a scale she said "shocked" the authorities -- and they complied less than 24 hours later.

Interesting Times

Russian gubernatorial elections were annulled six times in the 1990s, but this is the first time it has happened since Putin became president in 2000 -- sort of. Following a 2002 runoff in the Krasnoyarsk region, officials voided the result over "numerous legal violations" but reversed the decision after Putin went ahead and appointed ally Aleksandr Khloponin acting governor anyway.

One journalist called the Primorye vote "Russia's most interesting election in years" -- and it's not over yet.

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The Central Election Commission announced that a new election will be held in three months, but the Communists are planning a legal challenge against the decision to void the election. They say their candidate was robbed and that the best solution is to review the results in some 20 districts where they contend that ballot-stuffing and other illegal methods gave Tarasenko the lead at the last minute.

But if the Kremlin wants a new vote, of course, that is what's pretty much certain to happen. And it looks like that's what the Kremlin wants.

In fact, the online publication The Bell suggested there was a method to the mad rush of falsifications that both the Communists and election officials suggested occurred late in the vote count: United Russia and its backers in government may have deliberately set out to torpedo the election once they realized their candidate -- the incumbent, appointed acting governor by Putin in 2017 -- was headed for defeat.

United Russia may win in the end, of course. But even if it does so, and its formal dominance is not dented, the vote may forever be seen as a sign of Kremlin weakness -- an embarrassing show of the machinations required to "manage democracy" in Russia -- and a harbinger of potential trouble to come later in what may be Putin's last term.

Orthodox Conflict

Moscow's involvement in the Syria war is part of Putin's 21st-century effort to restore Russian clout in lands to its south, and its possession of Primorye is the result of tsarist-era expansion to the east. To the west, meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Church – which has close ties to the Kremlin -- is struggling to maintain influence in Ukraine.

It looks like a losing battle.

With the "first among equals" in the Orthodox Christian world apparently edging closer to granting the Ukrainian Orthodox confession that is not loyal to the Russian Orthodox Church ecclesiastical independence, Moscow-based Patriarch Kirill traveled to Istanbul in late August to meet with Patriarch Bartholomew in an apparent last-ditch effort to prevent that from happening.

It did not go well: Kirill didn't even stick around for lunch, reports said. And a week later Bartholomew sent two bishops to Ukraine "within the framework of the preparations for the granting of autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine," strongly suggesting it had already decided to grant independence to the Ukrainian church.

'Friend' To Foe

So far, the Russian Orthodox Church has responded by saying it is suspending participation in all structures chaired or co-chaired by representatives of the Patriarchate of Constantinople -- a step a senior Russian cleric, Metropolitan Ilarion, likened to cutting diplomatic ties.

There's probably plenty more tension to come: Ilarion warned that disputes over church property in Ukraine could lead to "bloodshed."

He may have overstated the threat in order to attract attention, but in any case the developments in Ukraine's religious landscape are part of a rift that has opened wide between Kyiv and Moscow since 2014, when Russia seized Crimea and fomented separatism in eastern Ukrainian regions where the ensuing war has killed more than 10,300 people.

Another sign of the growing divide: On September 17, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree to terminate a 20-year-old Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership treaty with Russia.

One of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies broke the Kremlin taboo on speaking Aleksei Navalny’s name – and vowed to make “mincemeat” out of him in a duel.

Two alleged GRU officers went on TV to explain why they were in Salisbury the day Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned, telling a story that critics said had more holes than the International Space Station.

And Putin stunned Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a proposal to sign a World War II peace treaty before the year is out.

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

'Mincemeat'

The name that shall not be spoken has been spoken – and then some.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been careful to avoid uttering the name of his most prominent critic for the last five years, referring unmistakably to Aleksei Navalny on numerous occasions without actually naming him – and much of the Kremlin administration appears to be in on the omerta, not least its main mouthpiece, Dmitry Peskov.

The taboo was suddenly shattered this week by one of Putin’s oldest and closest allies: Viktor Zolotov, his former bodyguard and now chief of the National Guard – an internal security force dubbed Putin’s personal praetorian guard by commentators – lashed out at Navalny in a remarkable rant posted on both his agency’s YouTube channel and its official website.

Challenging Navalny to a duel in the fighting form of his choice and vowing to quickly pound him into mincemeat – or “a nice juicy steak,” as some translations had it – Zolotov also called the opposition leader and a handful of other Putin critics “rotten, rusty, and decaying” people with “no morals” and “no country, no Fatherland.”

Zolotov wore a high, heavily adorned officer’s cap and the dress of his general’s rank. But the tirade was a gloves-off attack on Putin’s opponents – not just Navalny but also former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and, by extension, all those who have countered Putin or promoted an alternative to the Kremlin’s narrative during his nearly two-decade rule over Russia.

And while Zolotov’s 19th-century talk of a duel and “military honor” may have been meant to put him on the moral high ground, looking down at Navalny through the sight of an ivory-handled pistol, it came across as a menacing mix of real, raw emotion and the halting diction of a nonactor reading from badly organized cue cards.

The tirade was particularly startling because Putin, a longtime former KGB officer, has always sought to portray the fellow siloviki he has brought into top positions as a class above critics like Navalny, using their need to resort to street protests and other methods outside the Kremlin-dominated political system as evidence that they belong on the margins and should stay there, sidelined from discourse between state and society.

Parsing Putin’s Protector

Zolotov did the opposite, commentators said, stooping to take a swipe at Navalny – and in doing so abandoning the mantle of military honor that he was professing to defend. And he did so while the target of his tirade was in jail – held for 30 days over a January protest in a case supporters contend was used to keep him off the streets while Russia held local and regional elections on September 9.

Linguist Maksim Krongaus, who analyzed the six-minute video, said Zolotov shifted swiftly from “the noble language of the past” to “an absolutely – I won’t say gangster context, but a kind of street lingo.”

“In an instant, this high speech falls to the ground,” he told Current Time TV, a Russian-language network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.

Zolotov apparently laid himself open to mockery, and critics on social media quickly moved in for the kill. The video spawned a slew of memes and acerbic responses, many of them challenging him to a one-on-one showdown in everything from breastfeeding and baking to swimming and tic-tac-toe.

Meanwhile, others looked for a motive. Some speculated that Zolotov was on his way out and seeking a way to save face, and some saw evidence of infighting in the ranks of the siloviki.

Putin in the past has publicly criticized security officials who take their closed-door disputes public, and rifts that break out from under the carpet have been seen as signs of his system of rule threatening to unravel.

While that seems far from imminent, Zolotov’s rant undercut Putin's talk of letting the courts, which he claims are independent, settle disputes.

The National Guard chief’s tough, ominous tone seems to suggest that, at least in the understanding of Putin’s former bodyguard and the man responsible for reining in protests, if a showdown between the Kremlin and its opponents does come, it will not be contested in courts or at the ballot box -- it will be fought on the street with firearms, knives, or bare fists.

There has been no public comment from Putin, and his spokesman’s remarks suggested a balancing act.

“Sometimes any possible methods should be employed in opposing shameless libel," Peskov said, but he added that Zolotov’s remarks were not cleared by Putin’s administration in advance.

Peskov also said he did not see Zolotov’s words as constituting a physical threat.

Um, OK. Figurative mincemeat, then.

Russia-watchers also saw evidence of a spat between rival security agencies in the developments surrounding the two men Britain suspects traveled to the English city of Salisbury and smeared a deadly nerve agent on Sergei Skripal’s front door in March, poisoning the former spy and his daughter and deepening the already severe strains in ties between Moscow and the West.

By some accounts, their public exposure in an interview on Russian television was punishment – of both the suspects themselves and the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service -- for bungling a presumed plot to kill Skripal and for being found out.

Your Wish Is My Command

While Putin kept his silence on Zolotov, he spoke out about the Novichok case while hosting an economic forum in Vladivostok, saying that Russian authorities had “found” the two suspects and that there was “nothing criminal” about them. He said that Aleksandr Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov are civilians – not officers of the GRU, as Britain alleges -- and urged them to come forward and tell their side of the story.

“That would be better for everyone,” Putin said.

Sure enough, two men with the same names and seemingly the same faces as those caught on a Gatwick airport security camera sat down just hours later – if the announced timing is accurate -- for a half-hour interview with state-funded TV station RT.

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Suspects In Novichok Poisoning Case Say They Were In Salisbury "As Tourists"

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Before British Prime Minister Theresa May could say that the interview was full of “lies and blatant fabrications,” cybersleuths had spotted innumerable flaws in their explanation of why they were in Salisbury the day Skripal and his daughter were poisoned.

If the suspects’ story left many questions unanswered, here’s another: Does Putin care?

Over the past few years, Russian officials have spun numerous outlandish narratives about issues such as the war in Ukraine, chemical-weapons attacks in Syria, alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and the Novichok affair -- and have not blinked when faced by widespread doubt, dispute, and mockery.

Meanwhile, Putin’s comments about the case were not the only remarks he made in Vladivostok that were seen by some as trolling.

On stage alongside Shinzo Abe, Putin heard the Japanese prime minister suggest that the pace of movement toward a treaty formally ending World War II hostilities between Japan and Russia – which both claim a group of islands occupied by Soviet forces at the end of the war -- was too slow.

Apparently seeing an opening, Putin moved quickly to call Abe’s bluff.

'This Is Called Trolling'

"Shinzo said, 'Let's change our approaches.' Let's! Let's conclude a peace agreement…by the end of the year, without any preconditions," Putin said. ​

Putin’s offer – to end a seemingly intractable 73-year-old dispute in the relative blink of an eye -- was met with applause. But not from Abe.

He may have realized that what sounded like a win-win proposition might actually be a win for only one side, cementing Russia’s control over the islands and leaving Japan with little to show for it.

There was no immediate response from Abe, but he made clear two days later that Tokyo, as before, wants a deal setting out possession of the islands before it will sign a peace pact.

“Of course, Japan’s stance is to resolve the territorial dispute and then conclude a peace treaty,” he said.

Commenting on Ekho Moskvy radio, former Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Kunadze said he did not think Putin’s proposal was made in good faith.

"This is called trolling,” Kunadze said.