We Need to Talk About Putin: Why the West Gets Him Wrong полностью

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, for example, was a legend in diplomatic circles, but has largely been sidelined since 2014, and was not even invited to attend the meeting at which the decision to annex Crimea was made. He still sits in his office in the foreign ministry, but even his loyal underlings recognise that he is no longer in Putin’s unofficial ‘kitchen cabinet’ and can only put the best spin on policies originated by others. Showing admirable skills in double-talk, one diplomat put it to me that Lavrov had ‘adopted an essentially reactive model, dealing with such situations as arise in a complex and often unpredictable context’. I interpret that as an admission that Lavrov is no longer riding the elephant in the parade, let alone helping to direct it, but is rather following behind it, shovel in hand, cleaning up the mess it leaves.

On the other hand, consider the case of Vladislav Surkov, who was once the choreographer of Russia’s pantomime politics and is now, in effect, Putin’s proconsul in south-eastern Ukraine. In the 2000s, he essentially set up the current Russian political system, with the avowedly pro-Putin United Russia and the two notional opposition parties, the Communists and the Liberal Democrats (who are actually illiberal ultranationalists), which stage protests and grumble in the media but back the government in important votes. The idea was to create a theatrical-but-fake democracy that would keep the people satisfied, without in any way challenging the Kremlin’s grip on power. In 2008, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev succeeded Putin as president, as the constitution barred him from standing for a third consecutive four-year term. Putin became Medvedev’s prime minister, although it was clear that this was largely a formality, and he was still in charge. When Putin’s predictable return to the presidency was met with mass protests, precisely the kind of thing Surkov’s ‘managed democracy’ was supposed to prevent, his star fell. However, in 2014, after Moscow encouraged a proxy civil war in the Donbas region of south-eastern Ukraine, in order to prevent the country from aligning itself with the West, Surkov appears to have been made Putin’s man there, even though it is officially run by the unrecognised Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. The point is that Surkov has, at various times, been the architect of Russia’s constitutional politics and virtual governor of an occupied region, but this was never reflected in his official job title. Until 2011, he was Putin’s deputy chief of staff, then Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Modernisation until 2013, and since then simply a presidential aide. Yet in many ways, because of the trust Putin places in him, Surkov has more muscle in determining foreign policy than the foreign minister himself.

A dependence on personal relationships and unspoken understandings – ponyatiye in Russian and, interestingly enough, a term also much used in the criminal underworld – has become central to Putin’s style of rule. He (and increasingly often his senior people, too) rarely gives direct instructions, but defines broad objectives and hints as to what he might like to happen. As journalist Mikhail Zygar has put it, ‘They would never say, “Please steal those billions of dollars” or “Please murder those journalists.” They [instead] say, “Do what you have to do. You know your obligations; please fulfil them.”’ So the adhocrats become policy entrepreneurs, seeking and seizing opportunities to develop and implement ideas they think will please the boss, based on hints and guesses. If you get it right you are rewarded, but if you fail the Kremlin can disown you. In many ways, the vital skill in Putin’s Russia has become predicting today what the boss will want tomorrow.