03 December 2020
Russia in Winter
Has the Bear gone into hibernation?
By Neil Tidmarsh
The most recent conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh has ended in what looks like defeat for Armenia, with devastating losses inflicted on the Armenian forces and chunks of the disputed territory captured and retained by Azerbaijan. In Libya, the Benghazi / Tobruk government’s Libyan National Army under the command of General Haftar appears to be losing the latest round of the civil war – it was driven out of the al-Watiya airbase and retreated into the desert south of Tripoli earlier this year. In Belarus, an isolated President Lukashenko has failed to quash the tide of ‘freedom and democracy’ protests which have swept the country since the disputed presidential elections this summer and continue to demand his departure, in spite of his regime’s increasingly brutal tactics.
Armenia, the Libyan National Army and President Lukashenko are all clients or allies of Russia. In recent years, Russia has made sure that its clients and allies don’t lose; Assad was facing almost certain defeat before Russia’s intervention in Syria, and Russia’s determined and ruthless support ensured not only survival but also victory. Only Russian military support enabled the pro-Moscow, self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia to win independence from Georgia twelve years ago (and the pro-Moscow, self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk to win independence from Ukraine six years ago). But it looks as if neither Armenia nor the LNA nor President Lukashenko are enjoying that kind of support today; and in Moldova, an ex-Soviet republic and a neighbour and satellite of Russia, last month’s presidential elections saw the pro-Moscow President Igor Dodon defeated by the pro-Western opposition candidate Maia Sandu.
Does this mean that Moscow no longer has the will or the power to shape the world outside its own borders? Is Russia no longer the aggressive, determined and confident force it appeared to be only a year or two ago?
“Everywhere Russia seems to be on the retreat” Roger Boyes wrote in The Times last Wednesday. “The Russian president’s power to influence events at home and abroad looks increasingly weak.” He questions whether “Putin still has the will to rule”. He suggests that the president is isolated by Covid-19 (“living alone and germ-free in a villa outside Moscow defended… by a thick plastic tunnel that sprays visitors with disinfectant” – visitors who have to self-isolate for two weeks before they’re allowed to see him) and preoccupied with anxieties about his own personal future. Putin has had the constitution changed so that he could stand for president again in 2014 and in 2030 to stay in place until 2036 at the age of 84; but if he’s tired now after twenty years in power, how exhausted will he be then? Last week, a law giving ex-presidents and their families immunity from investigation or prosecution was approved by the Russian parliament, so the way is open for him to retire if he chose to; but who would succeed him? Who could he trust not to overturn that law? Succession must be a major concern of his and it appears to remain unresolved.
Meanwhile, Boyes writes, Putin’s “domain is shrinking”. Russia is losing influence and power: its economy is failing because of the slump in oil prices and the ravages of the pandemic; the oligarchs are restive because government inaction means they’re having to dip into their own pockets to off-set the effects of the virus; it’s losing the space-race (now prohibitively expensive as a state enterprise) because the USA has privatised it; and it’s no longer prepared to project hard power to support its clients and allies.
However, a closer look at those recent apparent failures of Russian hard power in Nagorno Karabakh, Libya and Belarus might suggest a different story.
In Libya, there are signs that Moscow is finding Marshal Haftar to be an even more intractable and uncooperative client than Assad. He has walked out of peace talks organised by President Putin in Moscow and has ignored Russia’s call for a cease-fire. Perhaps Moscow has learnt a lesson or two in Syria about handling uncooperative clients. Perhaps the Marshal is on the back-foot and the civil war is in suspension because Russia has put the brakes on until he becomes less intractable or until he can be side-lined (there are rumours that Putin is looking for an alternative leader in Libya and is even considering transferring his patronage to Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of General Gaddafi).
In Armenia, the prime minister – Nikol Pashinyan – is pro-West and has been steering his country towards Europe and away from Russia ever since he was elected two years ago. Could that have been a factor in Moscow’s decision not to support him militarily in the war against Azerbaijan? Moreover, Armenia’s defeat could well be the end of Nikol Pashinyan as prime minister and the end of his pro-Western agenda; violent demonstrations in his capital are already calling for his departure. Instead of brutal hard-power, it looks as if Russia has employed a clever, less costly and more respectable soft power. It joined the international call for a ceasefire over Nagorno Karabakh, brokered the peace negotiations and deployed a peacekeeping force of 2000 Russian troops.
In Belarus, it looks as if President Lukashenko’s weakness is playing into Moscow’s hands; it wouldn’t be in Russia’s interest to strengthen his position. Belarus and Russia are very close – they are part of a union – but Lukashenko has been jockeying for supremacy over various Russian leaders for the last twenty-five years, annoying Moscow by making a bid for presidency of the union or frustrating Russian attempts to turn union into unification and swallow Belarus entire. Moscow can afford to play a waiting game while Belarus implodes. It’ll be able to extract a high price for what little help it might give Lukashenko, while leaving him to do his own dirty work and hoping that the protests will be crushed or exhausted or simply peter out. Mr Lukashenko had a meeting with Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in Minsk this week, after which Mr Lavrov announced that Moscow expects Belarus to follow plans for integration with Russia, even sacrificing its independence if necessary.
This doesn’t look like a failure of power and influence – it looks like a clever defence and extension of power and influence. It doesn’t look like a reluctance to use hard power but a recognition that hard power isn’t always the best weapon, that sometimes a more subtle approach is more efficient and less costly. Adventures in Syria and Ukraine have taught Russia some hard lessons. Direct action there has damaged its economy (war is always expensive, and hard-hitting sanctions have taken a heavy toll) and its international standing (with its expulsion from the G8). But it seems that Russia has learnt those lessons well and is simply proceeding more cautiously and with a lighter touch.
An announcement which followed a meeting between Putin and the head of the colossal state-run oil company Rosneft this week indicated that Russia has not lost any of its ambition or sense of direction and purpose. A huge oil project in its frozen north will be one of the biggest engineering endeavours ever undertaken. Fifteen towns, two airports, a 480 mile pipeline and a port for oil tankers will be built inside the Arctic Circle, on the Taymyr peninsula, 1800 miles north of Moscow. The £83 billion Vostok Oil project – potentially creating 130,000 jobs and a 2% increase in GDP – is part of the Kremlin’s plans to secure the huge resources and the open seaways which will be made available by the melting of the Arctic ice-cap.
Russia’s pivot northwards began twelve years ago with a submarine expedition which planted a Russia flag made out of titanium on the seabed more than two miles beneath the North Pole to claim “The Arctic is Russian”. It has recently launched a nuclear-powered ice-breaker, designed to open up Russia’s Arctic coast as a major new global sea route. It has also re-opened Arctic airbases (unused since the Soviet era) and moved missiles north of the Arctic Circle, which suggests that it hasn’t abandoned hard power and would still be prepared to use it if necessary. Moscow is eager to seize other opportunities offered by climate change; the melting of permafrost in Siberia means that the extraction and transport of that region’s vast mineral resources are now possible.
Reports that the Russian bear has gone into hibernation have been exaggerated. Now that the winters are warming up, the Bear is sure to be as active as ever.
