The Russia Conundrum полностью

Through a combination of vote rigging and the repression of independent political activity, including the banning of genuine opposition candidates, Putin has continued to win his Potemkin-style elections. There is anger within Russia and, increasingly, abroad too, at the contempt with which he treats the democratic process. In November 2021, the US House of Representatives bi-partisan Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe – known as the Helsinki Commission – introduced a Congressional Resolution to end US recognition of Putin as the president of Russia, stating that any attempt by him to remain in office after the end of his current term in 2024 would be unconstitutional and illegitimate. In 2020, Putin rewrote the Russian constitution in order to abolish the legal ban on him serving yet another term as president, submitting the change to a plebiscite of voters that the Congressional Committee described as ‘the most manipulated vote in the country’s modern history’. ‘Any attempt by President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin to remain in office beyond the end of his current and final term on May 7, 2024,’ concluded the Commission, ‘shall warrant nonrecognition on the part of the United States.’ It struck a nerve. Putin’s spokesman immediately condemned the resolution as ‘aggressive meddling’ in Russia’s affairs and warned that if Congress were to endorse the Commission’s wording, it would cause ‘a rupture in relations between Russia and the United States’.

PART THREE

EAST AND WEST

CHAPTER 13

ENEMY AT THE GATES

When I came to live in London after my release from Vladimir Putin’s prison camps, I knew I would not be returning to my homeland anytime soon. It made me sad, but I have always been a person who tries to make the best of his situation and minimise futile regrets. I already spoke a little English, but now I decided I must properly master the language of my new host country – something I am still working on. Like all students, I regarded television as an important tool. I watched the BBC news, dramas, thrillers, comedies and anything that could help my spoken English. One programme that caught my attention was the weekly quiz show Have I Got News for You. Some of the jokes between the panellists were hard for me to understand, but they were discussing the events of that week’s news, which gave me the key to what was going on. Having arrived from a country in which criticism of the authorities leads to unfortunate consequences (a similar Russian TV show was banned for mocking Putin), I was glad to see the freedom with which Have I Got News for You poked fun at the people in power. But what really struck me were the programme’s opening titles, in which cartoon figures acted out recent news stories.

About halfway through the titles, they showed an evil-looking Russian man in a fur hat and military greatcoat grinning wildly as he closed down a pipeline carrying gas and oil to the West, followed by a sequence in which Western Europe is plunged into darkness. It was so far removed from the self-image that Russians have of themselves that I jumped out of my chair.

The vast majority of Russians regard their country as peaceful and well-intentioned, a force for goodness and moral behaviour. In their eyes, the villains and aggressors, the real culprits behind the deteriorating global situation, are in the West. It was the West that historically invaded Russian lands; and the Russian people have been constantly told that the West has now pushed NATO military forces eastwards to the Russian frontier.

At his annual news conference in December 2020, Vladimir Putin was asked if he, as president of Russia, bore any responsibility for the dangerous state of East–West relations. Asked if he felt Russia was ‘whiter than white’ in terms of culpability for the ‘new Cold War’, he replied angrily, ‘By comparison with you [the West], yes we are! We are indeed whiter than white. We agreed to release from Soviet domin- ation all those countries that wanted to live and develop independently. We heard your [the West’s] promises that NATO would not advance eastwards to our borders, but you did not keep your promises!’

It can be shocking to discover that the other side has a very different view of us from that which we have of ourselves. It is a feature of the East–West standoff that we have developed distorted images of each other – stereotypical views that categorise others as villains while we ourselves are the ‘good guys’. If we are ever going to break down the psychological barriers between us, we need to overcome these stereotypes, to replace prejudice with open-mindedness and blinkered thinking with greater self-awareness. We need to look at ourselves with the same fierce glare that we shine on ‘the other’.