MOSCOW, 7 September 2004 — Vladimir Putin’s solemn weekend broadcast to the Russian people struck many popular chords and will have satisfied most of his compatriots, but it left unclear what concrete changes in policy will come in the wake of the catastrophe of Beslan.
The president appealed to nostalgic Soviet patriots and Russia’s ancient sense of encirclement when he said the collapse of the USSR left the country “without defenses either to the east or west”. He criticized the mistakes of the security forces, saying: “We could have been more effective if we had acted professionally and at the right moment.”
He conjured up a frightening external threat, indirectly accusing the US of supporting terrorists and trying to disarm Russia as a nuclear power and pull territory away from it. “Some would like to cut a juicy piece of our pie. Others help them,” he said. “Terrorism is just one instrument they use.”
He called for unity as the best form of strength because in the past “we showed ourselves to be weak and the weak get beaten”.
Putin signaled that he intends to re-establish control over security across Russia. But how can he do it? He faces enormous challenges in all areas of domestic, military and foreign policies.
In putting all the blame on international terrorism, the president avoided using the word “Chechnya” at all. The measures he talked about in broad terms — to strengthen Russia’s unity, create a new system of control over the northern Caucasus and set up an effective anti-crisis management system — need to be fleshed out.
The speech also left the suspicion that Putin was exploiting the shock of Beslan to accelerate efforts to create a more authoritarian and centralized form of rule, and using the notion of a terrorist war on Russia to divert attention from rising social and economic tensions.
All the indicators show an increase in the gap between rich and poor, as well as stubbornly high rates of joblessness, particularly in parts of the northern Caucasus. The high world price for oil has given the government a cushion at least to pay wages and pensions on time, unlike a few years ago, but Putin’s neo-liberal economic strategy caused the biggest street protests of his presidency this summer. Other shocks are in store, including a rise in the domestic price of oil and gas, which will hit people’s utility bills. Medicine is being privatized, leaving thousands defenseless. The closure of kindergartens and even schools is hitting families hard in smaller towns, many in the northern Caucasus — precisely the areas where tension can turn to violence.
In central Russia discontent often turns to apathy. In Muslim regions it can lead people to Islamism. The oddest line in the president’s speech was his suggestion that Russians cannot “live in as carefree a manner as before” — as though his compatriots have not endured some of the harshest ordeals in Europe in the last century, including civil war, dictatorship, foreign invasion, and the recent collapse in living standards and security which he himself mentioned.
Putin has few options militarily. The war in Chechnya is going badly, and Russian deaths continue at a rate of 15 a week. The resistance fighters are not as strong as they were during the first Chechen war but the struggle is essentially at a stalemate.
The president has gradually been restoring the power of the KGB, now renamed the FSB. It was weakened under President Yeltsin, but Putin recently put the border guards back under FSB control. Handling terrorism is in the hands of a dozen different ministries and he may create a Russian version of the US Department of Homeland Security, essentially a strengthened FSB.
Other ideas which were already under discussion before the Beslan atrocity were to raise the profile of Russia’s Security Council. Under Igor Ivanov it has little clout and the key discussions on security take place weekly in what is sometimes called “the little Politburo”. It is chaired by Putin and includes all the “power” ministers: defense, interior, foreign affairs, as well as the prosecutor general.
Sergei Ivanov, the defense minister and a friend of the president, who is tipped as his successor, might be appointed to chair the Security Council. Other suggestions are that the job of vice president be re-established.
Putin’s call for strengthening the unity of the country might mean a further boost for the restoration of “vertical” rule. He has already changed Parliament’s upper house, the Federation Council, so that regional governors and legislative leaders no longer sit in it. Now there is talk of the president appointing governors, rather than them being elected. This would bring Russia back toward the Soviet system of hierarchical one-party rule from Moscow. The president’s emphasis on a powerful external threat will cut into his foreign policy options. In the Caucasus, Russia’s bargaining position has weakened over the last year. The new nationalist government in Georgia is unlikely to help seal its frontier with Russia when it is trying to remove the Russian troops from the disputed territory of South Ossetia, which was within Georgia’s borders in Soviet times.
Azerbaijan may be unwilling to help clamp down on its Chechen diaspora while Russia has failed to get Armenian troops out of the large areas of Azerbaijan which they occupy.
The US and Russia are struggling for influence in the southern Caucasus, and Putin will not want any American interference in the northern Caucasus, including Chechnya, as well. His claim that Washington is exploiting the disruption caused by terrorism is a warning that, even though both sides claim to be allies against an invisible international enemy, the rules of the game have strict limits.
