LAST UPDATE | 24 Feb 2023
Russian President Vladimir Putin spent the lead-in to the first anniversary of his country’s invasion of Ukraine on Friday by making threaten-laden speeches to sometimes large, frenzied crowds of supporters. His critics believe this was done to deflect from his numerous military failures in Ukraine over the past year.
On Tuesday of this week, a day after US President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv, Putin gave a state of the nation address where he stoked up worrisome rhetoric around nuclear arms and slammed the politics of the West from all fronts. Later, in Moscow, Putin told a large crowd that Russia was fighting “for our historical lands, for our people”. Here, Professor of Politics at Dublin City University Donnacha Ó Beacháin looks at Putin’s state of the nation and assesses what this means for Russia in this war…
GIVEN THE KREMLIN-sponsored hype, Putin’s state of the nation address this week was a damp squib.
Rather than presenting a new vision for the future, the Russian president repeated a collection well aired distortions, historical myths, imagined grievances, illusory bogeys, and well-nursed grievances.
The rambling speech contained the now standard meandering diatribes against the West, which was presented as a threat to traditional values, and the promoter of all sorts of pervasions, including child abuse, same-sex marriage, and paedophilia. Even the Anglican Church’s heretical idea to have a gender-neutral God attracted Putin’s ire during his two-hour tirade.
Revealingly, Putin left his audience none the wiser about whether Russia is closer to achieving its goals in Ukraine.
Putin’s core mission has been to regain Russia’s great power status. Ukraine’s quick and decisive defeat was supposed to showcase Russia’s military might and deter other neighbours from defying the Kremlin. But Putin’s gambit has backfired badly.
War can be a great illuminator.
Before Putin’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s military looked impressive. It boasted, for example, the second-largest army in the world.
However, the botched offensive has punctured this inflated image, as Russia emerged as the second most effective army in Ukraine. And being second in a war is the difference between winning and losing.
Putin, a man with no military experience, has micromanaged Russia’s war.
He has also made the fundamental error of believing his own propaganda.
For Putin, Ukrainians are an artificial people and, as a former colonial outpost, Ukraine has no reason to exist separately from Russia.
Ukrainians, however, have refused to stick to the Kremlin script. Russian troops were showered with bullets rather than welcomed with flowers.
On the eve of the invasion, President Zelenskyy warned Russians that “the Ukraine in your news and the Ukraine of real life are two entirely different places”. The Ukraine in Putin’s propaganda does not exist and Russia is paying a heavy price while absorbing this basic fact.
Before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, “realists” such as Henry Kissinger and John Mearsheimer maintained that Russia was a “great power” (one of three, according to Mearsheimer, along with the US and China), whose interests must be respected even if they trampled upon the sovereignty of its neighbours. It followed, therefore, that Ukrainians should be accepted as Russia’s buffer and, indeed, should make territorial concessions to Russia should the Kremlin demand it.
But this war has not, as Putin planned, confirmed Russia’s place at the top table of international affairs. Quite the reverse. Russia has become increasingly isolated on the global stage.
At the United Nations, it can muster only the support of a handful of kindred dictatorships such as Syria, North Korea and Belarus. In the Kremlin’s traditional spheres of influence in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, there is mounting evidence of derision, defiance, and distrust.
Far from being a global political heavyweight, this war underlines Russia’s status as a
resource-rich regional bully – a gas station with tanks. But while the Kremlin has tried to
weaponise energy supplies, the country that depends most on Russian gas is Russia itself.
In what is a classic illustration of the “resource course”, abundant natural assets have inhibited the Kremlin from trying to create a modern diverse economy. The proceeds from selling fossil fuels go directly to the Kremlin’s coffers, liberating Putin from any reliance on domestic or external support.
As a result, it is the regime rather than the average individual that is well-resourced, and when it comes to the quality of life Russia lags far behind. The typical Russian man, for example, lives to just 67 years of age, behind Libya, North Korea, Rwanda, Cambodia, and Bangladesh (in Ireland, the figure is 81).
The Kremlin likes to present itself as a rival to the White House but Russia’s economy is dwarfed by that of the United States, which is more than 13 times greater in magnitude.
Russia’s economic size places it somewhere between Spain and Italy, neither of which are considered superpowers with special rights to dominate their neighbours. In terms of GDP per capita, Russia ranks 57th in the world, behind Kazakhstan.
We hear much talk about a “new Cold War”. Contemporary Russia is, however, not the Soviet Union; it is arguably a greater threat.
The USSR was a status-quo power in Europe but Putin’s Russia is a revisionist state that seeks to annex its neighbours. And whereas the Communist Party provided a mechanism for transition and a power base that outlived individual leaders there are no comparable institutions in Russia today.
Devotion to Stalin reflects a cancer at the heart of Russian society.
Earlier this month, a new statue of the bloody dictator was unveiled in Russia. According to the independent polling agency “Levada Centre”, an astonishing 70% of Russians approve of Stalin’s role in their country’s history while only 19% viewed him negatively. Opinion polls indicate that the sharpest rise in support for Stalin is among the young adults under 30 years of age.
We would worry if Hitler enjoyed such approval ratings in contemporary Germany.
Ultimately, it’s not enough that Russia is defeated in Ukraine – it must change.
Russia has never been a democracy. The last few centuries can be summarised as long periods of authoritarian rule punctuated by brief chaotic transitions from one type of despot to another.
Imperialism has been at the heart of Russia’s self-defined mission and the invasion of Ukraine is but the latest manifestation. Until that cycle of history is broken, Europe will have a Russia problem.
Donnacha Ó Beacháin is Professor of Politics at Dublin City University. For more than two decades he has worked and researched in the post-Soviet region and has been published widely on the subject.
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