April 26, 2014

If we want to better understand Russia’s policies towards Ukraine and Crimea we have to be aware of some important motives and incentives behind Vladimir Putin’s actions.
Vladimir Putin received an oligarchic economy as Boris Yeltsin’s legacy, and in the past 14 years built his own system of political domination on this basis, and he is the key and indispensable element in this system. Vladimir Putin connects his perspectives only with the existence of this system and only as its head.
All of Russia’s economic and political elite extracting their huge profits out of the country’s economy and at the expense of the rest of the population of Russia, make their plans accordingly.
The Russian elite realizes that it can get rid of all its riches if Vladimir Putin retreats from power.
Such a threat comes from other countries where from time to time Orange Revolutions or revolutions of other colours sweep off the political regimes similar to that formed under Putin.
The fear of an Orange Revolution phantom has been the main driving force in the evolution of the regime since 2004, when the first such revolution occurred in Ukraine. It was followed by the Arab Spring, and now by a new revolution in Ukraine, which is much more radical. Mass rallies in Moscow in 2011-2012 showed that such scenarios are very real for Russia too.
Therefore, during all these ten years the Kremlin has been developing a programme of preventive measures that would preempt the regime change. This programme included, in the first place, toughening of reprisals against the opposition, draconian laws against the civil society, curbing of civil rights and freedoms, etc.
However, quite soon this policy came into conflict with the Western vector of development, which Russia, despite all its mistakes and jerks, maintained throughout 1990s. Hence, the regime made a sharp ideological turn towards the anti-Western vector and, respectively, confrontation with the West.
The Western vector of development did not satisfy Vladimir Putin, simply because it was incompatible with unlimited power. So the project of a “special Russian civilization” based on fundamentally different values – the “traditional” values – with an explicit allusion to the tsarist autocratic rule was developed in order to justify the uncontrolled power and make it unlimited in time.
Defamation of the West and its values is implemented in the Russian society through an active propaganda against the LGBT community, which is supported by a special law.
Confrontation with the West and the outer world in general has to solve two domestic tasks:
First, it strengthens the support for that part of the Russian society, which was disappointed by pro-Western and highly inefficient reforms of 1990s;
Second, basing on the mass-scale patriotic hysteria caused by the confrontation with the “external enemy” it is much easier to suppress the pro-Western opposition, which, according to the Kremlin, generates the main threat of the Orange Revolution.
If international isolation is the price of a lifelong power, as shown by the experience of North Korea, Cuba and some other countries, then why not pay this price, especially if one can lose the power together with freedom and even live.
Putin and his circle consider Ukraine, Belarus and the Central Asian countries as the sphere of vital interests of their system of domination. The regime of Viktor Yanukovych met these interests. Therefore, its collapse was perceived as a challenge not only to the foreign policy interests, but the entire Putin’s system.
All that happened to Crimea and has been happening now to the Eastern regions of Ukraine, should be regarded as a response to this challenge.
Putin demonstrates with such actions that he can win over Orange Revolution supporters in their own territory, not to mention Russia.
For him, Ukraine is a battlefield where he wants to destroy not only the new Kyiv authorities, but also the West with its “undermining” Orange Revolution project.
He wants to demonstrate to the world who the real master of the post-Soviet space is, while creating an “imperial PR” for himself in Russia, an image of the “gatherer of the Russian lands”. He openly declares that under his leadership Russia will implement the imperial project of reunion of Russians throughout the whole of the former Soviet territory.
The next in turn are not only the Eastern regions of Ukraine but also Transnistria, and then, perhaps, Kazakhstan and Belarus.
What will happen next?
The “imperial project” can not be long-term, as it is fraught with enormous risks. Putin’s system in general has a very small margin of stability, as it is based on extremely unfair distribution of property and national income. Economy is almost entirely dependent on global raw material prices.
Now external challenges associated with illegitimacy of the border are added to these internal sources of instability.
Instead of solving its multiple problems, Russia will spend its oil revenues onto new territories, and without any pay-off: a corrupt state is unable to develop even its old lands, not to mention the new ones.
What should the West do? Sanctions are not a way out of the situation. They are a double-edged. Western countries are unlikely to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of jobs that exist due to the supply of goods and equipment to Russia. In addition, Putin will use sanctions for provoking a new round of anti-Western hysteria and suppression of the opposition.
The main response of the West can be a kind of a Marshall Plan for Ukraine. After the citizens of Russia will see that European integration has led to the improvement of life of Ukrainians, they sooner or later will realize that Putin is leading the country to a deadlock, and there is no real alternative to the European way of development in the modern world.