PUTIN FIGHTS TO KEEP POWER
THE increasing unpopularity of Vladimir Putin at home has led to a surge in Russian military aggression abroad, Nato’s former director of policy warned last night.
The Kremlin has ordered Russian forces to adopt their most antagonistic posture since the end of the Cold War.
This has resulted in a rise in tit-for-tat operations as Russia continues to push the boundaries in the Baltic, Arctic, northern seas, Syria and even Libya.
Fabrice Pothier said: “Autocrats need a very high popularity threshold. If it’s below 90 per cent you have a problem. Putin’s popularity is just above 50 per cent in the best case scenario.”
“What we’ve seen over the past 12 months is a destructive foreign policy to show Russians at home that the nationalistic flag is flying around the world.”
British military sources have
noted a spike in Russian activities coinciding with pro-democracy protests in Belarus, following the re-election of beleaguered Putin ally Alexander Lukashenko.
This was in part an attempt to bait the West into giving Putin an excuse to intervene militarily, Pothier said. “Russia has been trying to provoke Nato to give them an excuse to intervene. We’re not biting. Belorussians don’t want to be part of the West. They just want democracy.”
During the past six weeks British and other Nato forces have been harassed in the Baltic, with a marked step-up of cyber attacks in Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, where 14 Nato nations operate to defend Europe’s eastern borders.
Russia began to expand its foreign operations in November last year when it deployed an unprecedented number of submarines from its Northern Fleet.
These include sea trials of its newest Yasen-class submarine, the Kazan, a 13,800-ton nuclear boat that will eventually carry 40 Kailbr-m cruise missiles.
British and Nato submarines are still engaged in perilous “cat and mouse” operations with Russian counterparts in the Northern approaches – the Northern North Sea and Norwegian Sea.
Russia’s Pacific Fleet recently underwent the largest naval exercise since the Cold War, with alarm bells ringing at the spotting of the guided-missile submarine Omsk in the Bering Sea off Alaska – a sign of Russia’s continuing Arctic ambitions.
Last Thursday Britain clocked up the ninth RAF Quick Reaction Alert triggered by Russian aircraft flying near British airspace since January, ary, a figure not ot experienced since 2011.
And next week Operation Caucus 2020 will see 80,000 mainly Russian ground troops ops hold 4,800 drills and 9,000 practical combat training exercise in what Defence Minister Army General Sergei Shoigu described as “the most important event of the Russian Armed Forces’ combat training”. The West is resp responding in kin kind, with so some of the b boldest operations led by the US and Britain outside of sanctioned t Nato o operations. In May Brit Britain sent a Roya Royal Navy Type23 frig frigate to the Arcti Arctic Circle with US warships for exercises in the Barents Sea – the first time the Royal Navy has ventured into the High North since the end of the Cold War.
Now this is being repeated a
CAPTION: kicker ragged (caps up to colon) with words set left to go slongside the second time, with HMS Sutherland heading a Nato task force of US and Norwegian warships which last week entered the Arctic waters of the Barents Sea.
Pothier added: “Putin is trying to show that he matters internationally after failing at home.”
He also said his alleged links to the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny “had the same motive”.
He said: “Even with rigged elections Russian opposition groups are getting encouraging results in local elections, particularly in Siberia.
“Putin needs to create distractions. But we cannot allow Russia to control airspace, territories or maritime boundaries without reacting.”