Putin seen as tightening control
Russia steps up anti-U.S. rhetoric ahead of Biden presidency
MOSCOW — As the Kremlin awaits what it fears will be a hostile Biden presidency, President Vladimir Putin is shifting course on two fronts — accelerating a drive to full-blown authoritarian control at home and escalating his defiant rhetoric against the West.
Domestically, a tolerance for opposition and protest has been all but abandoned, while internationally, the Kremlin is taking particularly sharp aim at the United States ahead of the change of administration next month.
Russian-U.S. relations are going “from bad to worse,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Wednesday, adding that Russia doesn’t expect “anything good” from President-elect Joe Biden and suggesting it adopt a policy of “total deterrence” toward Washington, with minimal dialogue.
In addition to signs that Biden will pursue a tough line with Moscow, Putin has seen his popularity slowly decline even as parliamentary elections loom in 2021.
A raft of new, repressive laws sees Russia moving from partial to all-out authoritarianism, said Andrei Kolesnikov, a political analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center.
“There is an open war with civil society,” he said, noting the Kremlin’s concern that Putin — who could legally stay in stay in power until 2036 — may someday face protests like those in Belarus, where the August presidential election was condemned as rigged by the opposition and Western nations.
“This is the same regime, but it is tougher and more intransigent to the demands from society and civil society, and it’s ready to fight,” he said. “They must be ready for anything, and this is something new.”
In recent weeks, Russia has launched a flurry of missile tests, while Putin boasted last week of a “cosmic” rate of change in Russia’s advanced weaponry, vowing to stay ahead of rivals in the development of hypersonic and other advanced weapons.
A blizzard of recent legislation in the State Duma has made it harder to protest, easier to target opposition figures and activists and has given authorities broad scope to brand individuals as “foreign agents,” with five-year jail penalties for failure to meet reporting requirements. The government is also moving to curb foreign internet sites such as Twitter, Facebook and
YouTube.
Under new laws, Putin has immunity from prosecution for life, and information about the financial and personal affairs of millions of members of Russian intelligence bodies, security agencies, the judiciary, law enforcement and regulatory agencies and the military — and their relatives — is classified.
This elite, central to Putin’s power, has been targeted for corruption investigations by Alexei Navalny, Russia’s main opposition figure and Putin’s only political rival. Some of the new laws appear aimed at him and his colleagues at his Anti-Corruption Foundation.
“It’s a captured state. Putin is forever. He will not step down,” said Vladislav Inozemtsev, a political analyst with the Moscow-based Center for Research on Post-Industrial Societies and an associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “If you’re staying another 15 or 20 years in the Kremlin, you should tighten everything, because protests are definitely not declining. And therefore this turn to authoritarianism was absolutely obvious, and it will go further and further.”
Putin maintains his grip by allowing loyalists in the military, intelligence, bureaucracy and law enforcement to guzzle Russia’s resources, Inozemtsev said. “This is a situation where this elite gang owns the country like private property and actually uses it for its enrichment.”
No event in 2020 encapsulated Putin’s alienation from the West as much as the Kremlin-directed poisoning of Navalny, apparently by the application of the deadly Novichok nerve agent to his underwear. The crime, and the government’s lies about the incident, shocked Western leaders and conveyed the new rules of the game in Russia.
“We’re seeing a shift to a more authoritarian stance, and obviously the poisoning of Navalny reflects that with a shift in the ground rules of how this regime works,” said Mark Galeotti, a London-based analyst and director of the Mayak Intelligence consultancy. “For a long time, it was a rather soft authoritarianism. It actually allowed a considerable amount of opposition activity, as long as it didn’t become threatening. I think they have decided to move the boundaries back of what is acceptable opposition activity.
“This is increasingly an aging leadership that feels increasingly beleaguered, increasingly uncertain,” he said.