BY JOHN SIMPSON
Deeply disturbing things have
happened during the Putin years in Russia, but his gamble has paid off.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has been busy during
recent years. Here is a partial list of what he has achieved. He has: 1)
recaptured Crimea, the single bit of territory the Russian people most
regretted losing after the Soviet Union collapsed; 2) reduced Ukraine, from
which he grabbed it, to a nervous wreck; 3) put the fear of God into Nato by
giving the impression that he might invade one or more of the Baltic states; 4)
handed Turkey the opportunity to demonstrate its independence from the United
States and Europe by cosying up to him; 5) ditto Israel; 6) saved
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, the
ophthalmologist-turned-barrel-bomber, from a Colonel Gaddafi-style lynching,
and in the process rescued the incomparable ruins of Palmyra;
7) struck up such
a good relationship with Iran that he’s been given the use of a military base
there; and now, 8) Mr Putin is presenting himself as the one man who can bring
peace, not just to Syria but to Israel and the Palestinians as well. Oh yes,
and he may or may not have some dodgy deal going with the man who could, if
things go wrong for Hillary Clinton and the rest of us, be the next US
president.
If there were a Nobel prize for clever footwork,
Putin would thoroughly deserve to get it. Of course, aside from numbers 1) and
6), there is nothing in any way substantial on this list; and if President
Obama, who is an actual Nobel laureate, had had a bit more lead in his pencil
over the past eight years a great deal of it wouldn’t have happened. However,
Putin is a superb opportunist, and he has taken full advantage of the chances
Obama and the rest of us have offered him.
As a result, Putin still gets overwhelming approval
ratings at home, even though the Russian economy contracted by 3.7 per cent
last year. Many Russians admit privately that they’re scared of telling the
pollsters what they really think; yet there’s no doubt that Putin is genuinely
popular. And let’s be fair: under Putin, Russia’s GDP, based on everyday
purchasing power, has almost doubled, while the mortality rate of under-fives
has dropped by half. Not bad.
Deeply disturbing things have happened during the
Putin years in Russia, from the war in Chechnya and the de facto invasion of
Crimea and eastern Ukraine to the murders of, among others, Boris Nemtsov and
Alexander Litvinenko; but whatever else he may be, Vladimir Putin isn’t just
some old Soviet waxwork reborn.
Would that he were. The Kremlin leader we face today
is nimble-minded, gutsy and (Western governments would say) startlingly free of
moral scruples. Deeply personable, too. My sole experience of Putin, face to
face, was pretty fleeting. It was 2008 and he had just stepped down from the
presidency for a single term in order to be able to reclaim it more or less
indefinitely later. I grabbed him just after he’d voted, and found him relaxed
and easy. Ah yes, he said, he watched the BBC a lot in order to improve his
English, and he added something nice about my own reporting.
A couple of years ago I went to one of his marathon
press conferences. These are annual affairs, during which, for four hours or
so, he answers questions from mostly Russian journalists, wittily and without
notes. Some were embarrassing or trivial: what sort of women does he like? How
much does he earn?
He was also asked in detail about Russia’s economic
and energy policies, and challenged (by a Ukrainian journalist) about his
intentions there. Given the opportunity to ask a question, I offered him the
chance to declare that he didn’t want another cold war. He answered at
length but refused to say he didn’t.
I was bowled over by his performance. Which Western
leader would be able to answer questions for four hours without notes, and
without putting a foot wrong? Sure, the Russian media have been disturbingly
muzzled in recent years, but the “presser” went out live across Russia; the
slightest misstatement would have been picked up around the globe.
Because Putin started out as a junior KGB operative in
East Germany, and went on to work in the office of the first post-Soviet mayor
of St Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, where he attracted almost no attention at
all, the president has often been regarded in the West as a grey blur:
Trotsky’s equally mistaken description of the early Stalin. Yet Putin isn’t the
creature of other, more sinister characters from the old Soviet past. Which KGB
manipulator in his right mind would let his puppet loose on the airwaves, with
no script to follow?
No: Vladimir Putin is his own man, and so far his
gamble has worked superbly: he has conned us into thinking that Russia is
a superpower again.
And yet, like many of the best public relations
campaigns, it’s complete rubbish. The IMF estimates that Russia will be only
the world’s 14th biggest economy this year, after Australia, which has just a
sixth of Russia’s population. The US spends nine times as much on its armed
forces as Russia does; the Russian figure is only $10bn a year more than
Britain’s. Leaders such as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israel’s Binyamin
Netanyahu don’t really believe Russia can bring peace to their region; they
just enjoy poking poor old Barack Obama in the eye.
If world affairs were a card game, Putin would have a
hand that at its very best contained, let’s say, three eights. The leaders
sitting across the table mostly have straights and flushes or better; yet
they’re the ones eyeing the piles of chips in front of them and wondering if
they should fold. It would be wrong to praise much of what Vladimir Putin has
done; but if he gave lessons in poker, I’d sign up for his course any day.
John Simpson
(@JohnSimpsonNews) is the BBC’s world affairs editor
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