Steve Gutterman's Week In Russia

Editor's Note: To receive Steve Gutterman's Week In Russia each week via e-mail, subscribe by clicking here.

A bizarre claim by Russia's top general that the Pentagon is developing a strategy involving air strikes and support for protesters sounds like bad news for Russians themselves, or at least for those in the mood to demonstrate against President Vladimir Putin's government, garbage dumps, or anything at all. Meanwhile, a tabloid sends Putin a warning about "the impermanence of power."

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

'Trojan Horse'

Imagine this: It’s 2022 and Putin’s opinion-poll ratings are lower than ever before, leaving his authority to stay in power by changing the constitution -- or even to secure his future by guiding an anointed successor into the Kremlin -- in doubt.

With Aleksei Navalny leading 200,000 antigovernment protesters in a demonstration on Bolotnaya Square amid rumors that Putin is about to declare an emergency and extend his term by two years, the United States – determined to ensure that he leaves the Kremlin at the end of his term in 2024 – hits a missile-defense facility near Moscow with a “conventional prompt global strike” weapon.

Hard to imagine? Of course it is -- it’s absurd, unthinkable.

But judging by a speech delivered by Russia’s top general on March 2, it’s exactly the kind of scenario that Moscow’s military believes -- or claims to believe (big difference there) – it needs to think about. And prepare for.

“The Pentagon has started developing a completely new strategy of military action, which has already been christened the ‘Trojan Horse,’” said Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Armed Forces General Staff. “Its essence lies in the active use of the ‘fifth column protest potential’ to destabilize the situation along with simultaneous precision strikes on the most important targets.”

Really?

No.

Gerasimov, who made the startling claim in a speech at the Academy of Military Sciences, provided no evidence to support it. It came right after he asserted that “the United States and its allies are developing offensive military actions such as a ‘global strike’ and ‘multidomain battle,’ and are using the technologies of ‘color revolution’ and ‘soft power.’”

The goal, he alleged, is nothing less than “the liquidation of the statehood of undesirable countries.”

Fifth Column Fakery?

In painting a picture of the United States using protesters and military strikes in a two-pronged attack, Gerasimov mixed two assertions that Putin has made repeatedly -- but usually separately.

One is that Washington encourages antigovernment protesters in Russia. Recall his claim that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “gave the signal” to demonstrators in December 2011, when the Bolotnaya protests erupted over claims of fraud in parliamentary elections and at his decision to return to the Kremlin after a stint as prime minister.

The other is that the United States is bent on containing Russia, holding it back, and potentially even pulling it apart – and might try to do so if it gains too much of an edge militarily.

In describing the alleged threat of a future attack in which Washington and the West would use both military hardware and protesters, Gerasimov seems to have based his comments in part on real developments or remarks by U.S. military officials – but to have made the “fifth column” element out of whole cloth.

In a March 4 article about the speech, Bloomberg Opinion columnist Leonid Bershidsky suggested that Gerasimov’s claims were based partly on what Russia has gleaned about “U.S. thinking on conventional prompt global strikes (building weapons that would allow America to strike high-value targets anywhere in the world within an hour).”

Bershidsky traces Gerasimov’s talk of a “Trojan Horse” strategy to recent remarks by the U.S. Air Force chief of staff and a German online magazine article about those remarks. However, he points out, neither the air force official nor the article “said anything about the U.S. using a ‘fifth column’” or fomenting unrest.

We Have Met The Enemy

Whether Russian generals and their commander in chief really believe in the potential threat described by Gerasimov is unclear. Propaganda is part of his job, if you judge by his appearances at the conferences Russia held for several years in which it invited foreign military officials and diplomats to upscale Moscow hotels to be lectured on alleged Western aggression.

But whether they believe it may be beside the point. Either way, it looks like bad news for the people they are supposed to protect.

“What the generals and the Kremlin are really scared of…is ordinary Russians,” Bershidsky wrote.

While Putin and the military hand out warnings to the West with sometimes astonishing regularity, this particular one also came with a word of caution for Russians themselves: Don’t protest. If you do, it probably means you’re aiding and abetting Western efforts to undermine your country.

That, after all, is the very real signal sent by several laws Putin has signed in his years in power, most notably the one that enables the state to stamp a “foreign-agent” brand on NGOs that receive funding from abroad and are deemed – by the state -- to be involved in political activity.

'An Unsubtle Hint'

It’s also the message that Putin delivered, in the final few sentences of his state-of-the nation speech on March 20. After setting out ambitious goals, he said they could only be achieved “in a unified society” whose people share “a common confidence in the authorities.”

As RFE/RL senior correspondent Robert Coalson put it in our annotation of the address, Putin concluded “with an unsubtle hint that dissent is not to be tolerated, that failing to follow the government's leadership is tantamount to fracturing the country and undermining its development.”

Success, Putin said, will be achieved “by any means necessary.”

By coincidence or not, Putin’s emphasis on confidence in the authorities followed a January survey by state pollster VTsIOM that found public trust in Putin was at its lowest in 13 years. The latest VTsOIM poll found that it had dropped again in late February-early March, with 32 percent of respondents naming Putin when asked which politicians they trust to handle important affairs of state.

If those figures don’t worry Putin, he got a wordier warning from an article in the tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets (MK) on March 4, whose headline predicted that the Russian people will not lend the authorities a hand “at the moment of their collapse.”

Citing a century of history, from murdered Tsar Nicholas II and dictator Josef Stalin to Mikhail Gorbachev and Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, it sent the potentially chilling message that the people will lend those in power their silent support – until they don’t.

“At Stalin’s funeral, everyone was crying, seemingly sincerely, but after just three years they calmly accepted the exposure of the 'personality cult' and then the removal of the body of the former chief from the mausoleum” on Red Square, where his corpse had lain along with Lenin’s from 1953 to 1961, the article said.

“Today a mainstream Russian newspaper warns the Kremlin that Russians ‘couldn’t care less about the fate of the authorities when power collapses, which sooner or later it does,’ BBC Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg tweeted.

Or, as author and analyst Mark Galeotti put it in a tweet: “Useful reminder…that even Russians are aware of the impermanence of power + are not willing to indulge any leader forever.”

The Kremlin portrays Putin as a leader who has lifted Russia from its knees. In the MK article, however, Yevgeny Gontmakher argues that it is "the ordinary Russian person" who is “beginning, slowly but surely, to rise up off his knees…and recognize himself no longer as part of the faceless mass of people but as an individual with dignity and personal interests.”

These interests include “doing what one wants,” having the “opportunity to earn a decent living for themselves and their families,” and being able to expect “protection from lawlessness and injustice in court,” it said -- before concluding that “the Russian state that is in place after the current power system will be able to exist as a stable institution only if it serves these interests and not its own.”

Editor's Note: To receive Steve Gutterman's Week In Russia each week via e-mail, subscribe by clicking here.

Thousands of people in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other cities honored the memory of slain Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, and in doing so mourned the loss of a Russia that might have been. Meanwhile, in the Russia that is what it is, state TV elaborated on President Vladimir Putin's saber-rattling warning to the West about missiles.

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

Four Years Later

For days, weeks, and months at a time, the discourse on Russia is often dominated by one person: President Vladimir Putin. In February alone, there was -- among other Putin-centric phenomena – the president’s annual state-of-the-nation speech and an article by a Kremlin aide who predicts Russia will be “Putin’s state” for a century to come.

This past week provided a bit of a respite, with the focus shifting -- at least for some -- to one of the most prominent victims of Putin’s Russia: Boris Nemtsov.

Thousands of people marched in cities across Russia on February 24 to honor the memory of Nemtsov, a vocal Putin critic who was shot dead on a bridge near the Kremlin four years ago. The crowd swelled above 10,000 in Moscow, where many also gathered at a makeshift memorial at the scene of the crime at 11:31 p.m. on February 27.

On posters and in words, many marchers had something to say about Russia under Putin, some chanting slogans against the president and others accusing him of running what rights activist Lev Ponomaryov likened to a “totalitarian regime, with torture and murders” that are not solved or, in some cases, even investigated.

They were not just paying tribute to Nemtsov – they were mourning the loss of a Russia that might have been.

In news stories, Nemtsov is often described simply as “former deputy prime minister.”

Fallen 'Star'

That’s accurate: It’s a post he held for about 17 months, and the highest one he reached in the federal government – though he made his name as governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region in 1991-97. But for anyone who remembers Russia in those days, it falls far short of describing a politician who, had things gone differently, might possibly have become president.

“In the 1990s he was a star,” was how BuzzFeed’s Miriam Elder put it in a story written hours after his killing. “One of the youngest mayors of post-Soviet Russia, he managed to turn Nizhny Novgorod, one of Russia's biggest cities, into a place where the factories ran, the paychecks cleared, and the economy grew despite the poverty and chaos engulfing the country.

“He was that rare thing in those days -- a popular politician,” she wrote.

In two decades, Nemtsov has gone from star to symbol, for some, of what is wrong with Russia under Putin. Along the way, he did his best to point some of the biggest problems out – until he was killed.

Nemtsov was a frequent and fiery speaker at the Bolotnaya protests of 2011-12, leading chants of “Putin’s a thief” at the rallies that erupted after the then-prime minister revealed plans to return to the presidency and the ruling United Russia party won parliamentary elections marred by evidence of widespread fraud.

He also issued a series of reports alleging high-level corruption and portraying Putin and his circle as a voracious bunch intent on staying in power to protect their extravagant wealth.

A report issued in August 2012, a few months into Putin’s third term, countered the president’s portrayal of himself as a “humble servant” of the Russian people who labors like a “galley slave” to improve their lot and keep them safe.

Instead, it described him as a man with wristwatches worth a combined $700,000, a presidential jet with a $75,000 toilet, and access to a fleet of yachts in which the one with a spa pool, waterfall, and wine cellar rated only second-best.

But that report did not make much of a splash. And when Nemtsov was killed, many wondered why, considering that few Russians would have considered him to pose an imminent threat to Putin’s power: He had been out of the government and parliament for years, a prominent victim of what Kremlin critics say was a persistent drive to push liberal opponents to the margins. Plus, in the constellation of the Russian opposition, he had been eclipsed by Aleksei Navalny.

Whodunit?

One fact that attracted attention, though, was that at the time of his assassination, Nemtsov had been drafting a report on Putin’s alleged involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine – where Russia-backed separatists had pushed ahead with a deadly offensive near the town of Debaltseve two weeks earlier, even as Moscow was negotiating the still largely unimplemented cease-fire and political settlement deal known as Minsk 2.

SEE ALSO:

Nemtsov's Report Finally To Be Published

Whether that report was a factor is unclear. One thing that is clear, according to relatives, colleagues, and Western governments, is that the convictions handed down to five men from Chechnya in 2017 for his murder fell far short of solving the crime.

As with previous high-profile killings of Kremlin critics -- including the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006 -- government critics have voiced suspicion that the culprits will never face justice because an honest investigation could lead to figures who are close to Moscow-backed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov or to Putin's inner circle.

“We’ll repeat it for a fifth year: Nemtsov’s murder is a political killing, and Putin bears responsibility,” said Grigory Yavlinsky, another liberal politician who served in the government and in parliament but has long since been sidelined, though less dramatically.

“The person who actually ordered it has still not been found. This is all undoubted evidence of the authoritarian-criminal powers that be in this country. The Nemtsov March shows that hundreds of thousands of Russians see it this way,” Yavlinsky tweeted from the February 24 demonstration in Moscow.

Russia Without Putin?

He may have been exaggerating attendance, and in any case crowds of 10,000 in Moscow and smaller gatherings elsewhere are not necessarily a sign of severe pressure on the Kremlin – as the fact that Putin weathered the protests of 2011-12, which at times drew 100,00 or more, seems to show.

But Putin has gotten a slew of bad news from opinion polls in recent months that have taken some of the Teflon off. Most notable, maybe, was the late January survey showing that for the first time since 2006, more Russians believe the country is on the wrong path than the right one.

Trying to guess what Russia might look like had someone like Nemtsov come to power may be a fool’s game. But it seems even more foolish to think that history had to happen the way it did – that, as then-Deputy Chief of Staff Vyacheslav Volodin told international Russia experts in October 2014, “there is no Russia today if there is no Putin.”

Or, for that matter, that the first decade of Putin’s rule was a “miracle of god,” as Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said in 2012.

Or, as Kremlin aide Vladislav Surkov wrote in a newspaper article last month, that Russia will be “Putin’s state” long, long after he is no longer president.

But it’s Putin’s state for now, and the state TV channels – the first thing he moved to corral when he came to power -- are Putin’s state TV.

Count 'Em

A good example of the way Putin uses those channels to try to hammer messages home, to audiences inside and outside Russia, played out after the February 20 state-of-the-nation speech in which he issued the latest in a series of warnings to the West about weapons he says Russia has been developing or deploying in recent years.

In the speech itself, Putin poked fun at the idea of U.S. “exceptionalism” – one of Russia’s favorite targets in recent years – and suggested Americans would do better to forget about such lofty ideas and focus on whether they can count.

“Probably they can,” he said. “So let them calculate the range and speed of our future arms systems.”

Over nearly two decades in power, Putin has often repeated himself.

He did so several times on the day of the speech, proudly recounting his counting remark at a dinner with top Russian media figures – even before the meal was served, footage suggests.

Several guests nod appreciatively as Putin speaks. Outside the room, some observers seemed less impressed.

“Catching up with Putin's address. It sounds like he just discovered that flight time is shorter if you fly faster and even shorter if the distance is short,” Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project, a Moscow-based NGO focusing on Russia’s nuclear arsenal, remarked on Twitter on February 25. “And someone told him that ‘hypersonic’ means really fast.”

The Pentagon, meanwhile, suggested that Putin’s tough talk may not have the effect he would seem to have intended.

“Every time Putin issues these bombastic threats and touts his new doomsday devices, he should know he only deepens NATO’s resolve to work together to ensure our collective security,” Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon said, according to Reuters.

‘Very Excited’

Regardless of whether U.S. officials were counting ranges and speeds, at least one Russian was: Among Putin’s dinner guests was Dmitry Kiselyov, the head of the state-owned media company Rossia Segodnya and the host of a weekly news show who told Sunday night viewers in March 2014 that Russia is the only country “capable of turning the United States into radioactive ash.”

Last Sunday, Kiselyov was at it again. Four days after Putin’s address, his show listed U.S. facilities it said Moscow would target in retaliation for a nuclear strike, and he asserted – with the help of on-screen visual aids including maps featuring bows of bending light meant to show missile trajectories – that they could reach their targets in five minutes or less.

Putin spent more time on domestic issues than on foreign policy in general or weapons in particular or missiles themselves in his speech. But one Twitter user remarked that in recent appearances, he “looks very excited talking about missiles and new weapons and bored when it concerns [the] economy.”

With good reason, perhaps.

“Russia has a very strong incentive to bring up nuclear issues as often as possible, because when you look at Russia as a nuclear power, it is indisputably a superpower,” Justin Bronk, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), an independent defense and security think tank in Britain, told RFE/RL.

Embed share

'Is This What You Want?' Russia's Bombastic TV Threats

Embed share

The code has been copied to your clipboard.

---

width px height px

---

The URL has been copied to your clipboard

No media source currently available

0:00 0:01:52 0:00

“When you look at Russia on almost any other metric, it is, at best, a regional power with declining demographics, budgets, and huge numbers of problems,” he said.