Inside Putin's Russia
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Transcript Inside Putin’s Russia: A Turning Point in Domestic Politics? Henry Foy Moscow Bureau Chief, Financial Times Dr Arkady Moshes Programme Director, Finnish Institute of International Affairs Dr Denis Krivosheev Deputy Regional Director and Head of Research, Eastern Europe and Central Asia Regional Office, Amnesty International Natalia Antonova Writer and Journalist Chair: Dr Joanna Szostek Associate Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme, Chatham House Event date: 12 April 2021 The views expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the speaker(s) and participants, and do not necessarily reflect the view of Chatham House, its staff, associates or Council. Chatham House is independent and owes no allegiance to any government or to any political body. It does not take institutional positions on policy issues. This document is issued on the understanding that if any extract is used, the author(s)/speaker(s) and Chatham House should be credited, preferably with the date of the publication or details of the event. Where this document refers to or reports statements made by speakers at an event, every effort has been made to provide a fair representation of their views and opinions. The published text of speeches and presentations may differ from delivery. © The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2021. 10 St James’s Square, London SW1Y 4LE T +44 (0)20 7957 5700 F +44 (0)20 7957 5710 www.chathamhouse.org Patron: Her Majesty The Queen Chair: Jim O’Neill Director: Dr Robin Niblett Charity Registration Number: 208223 2 Inside Putin’s Russia: A Turning Point in Domestic Politics? Dr Joanna Szostek So, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to this Chatham House webinar on the subject of Putin’s Russia, whether or not we’re facing a turning point in domestic politics. I’d like to remind everyone, as we start, that this event is on the record, so it’s being recorded, as we speak. Please bear that in mind, just when you’re formulating your comments and so on, in the ‘Q&A’ box. So, we’re talking today about the recent protests in Russia. So, Russia entered the New Year amid a wave of protests against Putin’s treatment of prominent activists and opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, and Russian people have turned out in extraordinary numbers to voice their frustrations at the heavy handedness with which Putin’s dealt with his critics. And so, there are questions now surrounding Putin’s lengthy rule and this webinar is intended to examine the recent anti-Putin feeling in Russia and to provide some context to those protests. So, we’re interested, you know, do these protests simply signify backlash, a fleeting backlash, or are they part of a more widespread and deep-seated dissatisfaction with the regime? And we have some great speakers with us here today to tackle these questions and these issues. We’re joined by Henry Foy, who’s the Moscow Bureau Chief at the Financial Times and he manages the FT’s coverage from Moscow and has interviewed Mr Putin himself, where the Russian President famously declared that “the liberal idea was obsolete.” We’re also joined by Arkady Moshes, who’s Programme Director for the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood and Russia Research Programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. We’re joined by Dr Denis Krivosheev, who’s currently Deputy Regional Director and Head of Research and Amnesty International’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia Regional Office. And we’re joined by Natalia Antonova, who is a Ukrainian-American Writer and Journalist, currently based in D.C., so it’s very early in the morning for her, but we’re super glad that she’s here to join us. So, this is quite a brief event. We haven’t got that long to tackle these big issues. Our speakers will each have six to eight minutes to present their thoughts on the general topic, and the time that remains, we’ll have for Q&A. So, those of you in the audience, please don’t hesitate to write your questions in the ‘Q&A’, as I said, bearing in mind, again, that everything is on the record. So, I’m not going to take up more time than is necessary for this introductory part. I think I will hand over to our first speaker, who is Henry Foy. Henry Foy Thanks, Joanna. Hi, everyone, to all the audience, thank you so much for tuning in. Look, turning points in Russia, I feel like everyone, sort of, wants to be here when there’s the great turning point, and everyone wants to signify a turning point has been reached. I’m not sure we’re at that kind of scale at the moment, but I would say, and as I have described in the FT, this definitely feels like a third act of Putin’s regime. He’s in his 22nd year of power now. The first act, which was, sort of, the first decade, certainly until 2008, was all about prosperity. That was, sort of, how he kept his domestic power, how he maintained his legitimacy. Oil prices were very high, there was oil cash sloshing around the Russian economy. Yes, lots of oligarchs and lots of Mr Putin’s friends got very rich, but ordinary Russians got very rich, as well, and compared to the chaos of the 1990s, there was a large groundswell of people who believed that what Mr Putin had done is brought good things to Russia. 3 Inside Putin’s Russia: A Turning Point in Domestic Politics? The second decade of his second act, if you like, after the financial crisis of 2008, and with oil prices no longer at records highs, it all really became about patriotism, it became about the flag, Great Russia. Of course, the annexation of Crimea, the bogeyman of the West, whether real or imagined. The invasion, well, there’s the propping up of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and, sort of, this idea that Russia was back to being a global important power that could dictate terms to others. Both of those have both been used up, I suppose. There’s no more Crimea to reinvade and even Eastern Ukraine, as we’re seeing at the moment, is something of a headache for him and the Kremlin. It’s no longer the guaranteed vote winner it once was. The economy, of course, is stagnant and real people here in Russia are feeling it. GDP per capita is 30% smaller today than it was in 2013. That is an extraordinary fall, and real incomes have gone down for six of the past eight years. So, to be brutal, Russian households are far poorer than they were before the invasion of Crimea. So, what does he have left? He has left repression. The third act of Putin, however long it lasts, will be marked by internal repression. Spending on Police and internal security here has soared. That budget is now larger than healthcare and education spending by the state, combined. You see it in the brand-new Police suits on the streets, on the Riot Police beating protestors. We saw it in January, we see it in the new foreign agent laws that are tightening access to election participation and restricting the work of foreign supported groups here, many of which work in the human rights sector. You see it in the crackdown on internet freedom, the way in which the government used already existing laws to try to stop social media companies spreading information about the recent protests, and, also, new laws that are coming in now to try to restrict their powerful stop. And of course, we see it in the treatment of Alexei Navalny, the way in which he, both pre-poisoning, in the trial and since, in jail, how he’s been handled. So, basically, if you – they can’t contrive ways to make the people love Putin, they will beat people into fearing the alternative. The bigger question is, and the question that we’re talking about today around the turning point, is whether that will work. My interpretation right now is, yes, it does appear to be working. The Navalny protests petered out relatively quickly, compared to other sustained protests that we’ve seen here in Russia. His team, essentially, backed down and said, “We’ll stop and wait until we get a groundswell of people saying that they’re ready to continue.” And if you compare that even to Belarus, across the border, where the response from the government was stricter, but protests are still continuing today, almost eight months on, that ironically, the economic slowdown here has actually helped the Kremlin. More and more people are on state benefits, more and more people are working for state companies, ‘cause that’s the only job they can get, and what that means, essentially, is that more people are reliant on the government and on Putin for their wages. Yeah, roughly a quarter of the people, according to independent surveys, think the treatment of Navalny was harsh and that they’re aware of how he was treated. That’s way, way more than the 4% or so that he – his record score on any approval rating surveys, but it’s nowhere near the level you would need to be able to say that there’s a real groundswell of anger here at Putin and ready to oppose him and even to knock him off – out of the Presidency. The economy, I think, is the key part and that’s why there’s been no second lockdown here for coronavirus.