Back to the new USSR
Vladimir Putin is using trolls, bombs, gold and gems to spread Russia’s tentacles around the world – just as the Soviet Union did in its day. But this time it’s not about ideology. It’s money, reports
When Vladimir Putin last attacked Ukraine, in 2014, Barack Obama dismissed Russia as a ‘‘regional power’’ that was acting out of weakness rather than strength.
In the years since, the Russian president has sought to prove Obama wrong, bolstering his country’s influence across the world in a way that will complicate Western attempts to turn it into a pariah state.
From the Middle East to subSaharan Africa and Latin America, Putin has used a mix of arms shipments and mercenaries, soft loans and energy expertise to acquire friends and allies – while the West has been looking elsewhere.
This has been coupled with a sophisticated disinformation strategy – whether through social media ‘‘troll farms’’ or the RT media outlet – that has bolstered the Kremlin’s agenda in many more countries, including in the UK, the US and across the European Union, and now looks likely to be stepped up as Putin’s present, far bloodier, assault on Ukraine continues.
‘‘Russia has developed an outsized ability to exercise considerable influence abroad,’’ says Kathryn Stoner, a Stanford academic, in her recent book, Russia Resurrected: its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order. In it, she charts how the country, despite having an economy smaller than Italy’s, has managed to spread its tentacles around the world.
The strategy is reminiscent of that pursued by the Soviet Union, which was locked for decades after World War II in a global battle for influence with America, but with one crucial difference: ‘‘It’s not about ideology, just money and mutual convenience,’’ she said.
For host countries, Russia provides an attractive alternative not only to Western partners – which can ask awkward questions about human rights – but also to China, which is accused of ‘‘debt-trap diplomacy’’ that often leaves nations unable to repay their loans.
Weapon sales are crucial to the Kremlin’s approach, says John Parachini, a senior international defence researcher for the Rand Corporation, an American think tank.
‘‘When you sell arms to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America, you are dealing not just with the senior leaders of their military but also with senior leaders of their government,’’ he said, noting that the need to maintain sophisticated weaponry creates a dependency that can last several years.
Such sales can also be a way of enriching those close to Putin – as can the provision of mercenaries: the Wagner Group is believed to be owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a billionaire former convict and hot dog salesman. Nicknamed ‘‘Putin’s cook’’, he is also thought to have run the Internet Research Agency, a St Petersburg-based ‘‘troll factory’’ accused of interfering in the 2016 US presidential election.
‘‘It’s essentially a way for key people affiliated with Putin to turn a profit and extend Russian influence,’’ Parachini added. ‘‘But because it is not the Russian government, Putin also has deniability.’’
Inevitably, the Kremlin’s main focus of attention has been close to home – chiefly on former Soviet states. President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, who for years tried to play Russia off against the West, has been forced into Putin’s arms since 2020 when the Kremlin leader helped him to withstand an international backlash over rigged elections that gave him a sixth term in office.
Kazakhstan, a fellow former Soviet republic, has also become more beholden to the Kremlin after a Russian-led peacekeeping force helped its president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, to defeat an uprising in January.
There have long been proRussian sentiments, too, in Serbia, which has strong religious and cultural ties with its fellow Slavic, Orthodox nation. Hungary, under Viktor Orban, though a member of the EU and Nato, has maintained friendly ties with Putin, in sharp contrast to Poland and most other former Soviet satellites.
In the Middle East, President Bashar al-Assad owes his survival to Putin’s support in his war against Islamist rebels.
Following Russia’s military intervention there in 2015, he has allowed it to use his country as a showcase for its weaponry.
Predictably, when Putin recognised the two breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine, whose protection served as the pretext for his invasion, Assad was swift to follow suit.
With a cynical ability to back both sides in regional disputes, Russia has become close to Iran, with which it has close military and trade links, but also to Iraq. It has established good relations with traditional allies of the West, too, such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
For all its distrust of Islamic fundamentalism, Putin is also edging closer to recognising the Taliban as the government of Afghanistan – a country that was once a Kremlin ally until the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev pulled out its troops in 1989 after a failed decade-long military intervention.
India is a long-time ally, too, and last December signed bilateral defence agreements with Russia. This does not prevent its foe, Pakistan, from getting on well with Putin: its prime minister, Imran Khan, went ahead with a meeting with the Russian leader in the Kremlin as the invasion began.
Russia has cultivated ties elsewhere in the developing world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where many postcolonial leaders looked to Sovietstyle communism as a model for their newly independent states in the 1960s and 1970s.
Now, after the ‘‘lost decade’’ of the 1990s when Russia retreated from the continent, it is back – though, as Stoner argues, its interests are primarily in selling arms and gaining access to oil, diamonds and precious metals.
The Kremlin has also developed more covert forms of influence through the Wagner Group, a secretive military contractor involved in several nations, including Syria, Mozambique, Sudan and the Central African Republic.
Wagner’s latest success has been in Mali, whose ruling junta has secured its services, obliging President Emmanual Macron of France to pull out his forces last month, ending a nine-year operation to fight the jihadist insurgency there. Macron has accused the group – reported to be paid US$10 million a month, partly in gold and gemstones – of ‘‘predatory intentions’’ towards the country.
Halfway across the globe, Russia has re-established links with Cuba, a key ideological and strategic ally during the communist years, which it