The catastrophic denouement of the school siege in North Ossetia has brought out the best and the worst of Vladimir Putin.
Into the category of “worst” goes the initial day’s resounding silence from the Kremlin, so reminiscent of the non-response to Soviet-era disasters, the enforced resignation of the editor of the liberal newspaper Izvestia, and “provocations” — a poisoning and a trumped-up “hooliganism” charge — against two of Russia’s most fearless reporters.
In the “best” category belongs his subsequent address to the nation, in which he hinted that he would use the disaster to take on institutional resistance to reform in the security services and the military. His decision to support a parliamentary inquiry into Beslan, and to take the risk of a question-and-answer session with a group of foreign journalists was also consistent with his image as a rational risk-taker.
Certainly, our session could have benefited from the presence of Russian journalists. Nonetheless, what our three-and-a-half-hour audience with the Russian president afforded was a unique window on his world, a glimpse of how the landscape in Russia and beyond looks to the man in the Kremlin.
The first overriding impression is his recognition of Russia’s weakness and his willing acceptance that the days of empire —Russian or Soviet — are over. The plus side of this is that Moscow is not about to intervene in support of rebellious, pro-Russian regions of other republics — Transdniester in Moldova, South Ossetia in Georgia — to name but two.
“There are parts of the former Soviet Union,” he said, “that believe that if Russia wants something it will happen. This is a mistaken view of Russia as an imperial power — which we are not.”
The minus side is that Putin sees any effort to change any more borders as a direct threat to Russia’s existence and is preoccupied, to the point of paranoia, with the idea of further break-up. This means that Chechnya, for instance, can have de facto autonomy, but that Russia’s national frontier must run to its south, not its north. The risk here is that the remedy — repression — will be worse than the threat of breakup, and in the end counterproductive.
Back to the positive side, Putin is sanguine about the newly independent states’ right to run their own affairs. He is relaxed, for instance, about Ukraine’s aspirations to join the European Union and only slightly less relaxed about its desire to join NATO. Putin was also clear that he preferred a world with NATO than without. It was, he said, a force for stability and he would not like to “witness its burial”.
But Putin is also looking further into the future. And what he sees is not so much Russian membership of the EU or NATO but a “single European space”, in which EU economic, communications and other standards pertain across the whole area of Eurasia. This sounds suspiciously like the old Soviet idea, championed by Mikhail Gorbachev, of a Common European Home.
It may sound less menacing since the demise of the Soviet Union, but neither may it be quite as innocent as it currently seems.
If Putin accepts that Russia is weak — it has lost so much territory, so many people and can only aspire to a GDP the size of Portugal’s — he also sees it, in his mind’s eye, as a big country, one that is essentially European, but one whose attitudes and outlook are more akin to those of America. Putin finds it easier to deal with the US than with European countries on subjects such as terrorism. He appreciates and understands the black-white tones and sweeping scale of American discourse, which echo his own on Chechnya.
Twelve years ago, soon after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, I had the opportunity to interview, or sit in on interviews with, many of the leaders of the newly independent republics. Some were exhilarated, others appalled by what had happened.
But what struck me most at the time was how they fell into one of two groups. There were those who agonized and philosophized about the historic events of which they were a part — these included Vytautas Landsbergis, who had led Lithuania to independence — and those who acted on instinct and an innate sense of their nation’s interest. The most egregious of these was Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin.
Watching Vladimir Putin at first hand this week, I found him a different kind of Russian leader for different, perhaps more stable times. He is a strategist and a tactician who lays plans, weighs the risks and acts accordingly. This is could be one of the most positive features of his presidency; given certain aspects of his thinking, it could also be one of the most worrying.
