Russia: the pressure on Putin’s regime
In the six weeks since the invasion of Ukraine began, “massive changes” have swept Russia, said Marc Bennetts in The Sunday Times. Sanctions have sent the economy into a tailspin, leading to shortages of medicines and other vital goods; tens of thousands of people have fled the country; and thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed. But any form of opposition to the war requires great courage. Putin has condemned domestic critics as “traitors” and “scumbags”; opposition activists have had abuse and threats daubed on their doors. Harsh new media laws forbid any use of the words “war” or “invasion”, with prison sentences of up to 15 years for those who spread “fake news” about the “special operation” in Ukraine. One Moscow newspaper, Zhyolud, resorted to satire in an effort to avoid breaking the law. “Nothing is happening,” read its front page last week. “Move along. A special operation is under way. No one is impoverished. The rouble is rising. The economy is growing.”
There are signs that Putin’s regime is under considerable pressure, said Tom Ball in The Times. The defence minister Sergei Shoigu – once Putin’s regular companion on Siberian holiday jaunts – recently disappeared from public view for two weeks; it was rumoured that he had suffered a heart attack after a furious confrontation with Putin about the progress of the invasion. General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s general staff, also vanished over the same period, though both later reappeared in a Kremlin video. It has also been reported that General Roman Gavrilov, the deputy head of the national guard – or “Putin’s private army” – had been questioned by FSB security services and dismissed from his post, and that Sergey Beseda, the FSB’s foreign intelligence chief, and his deputy are under house arrest.
Still, nothing is likely to change for the better soon, said Alexander Rodnyansky in the FT. In fact, “strange as it may sound, the future for Russia looks in many ways more horrible than for Ukraine”. Ukraine will, I believe, eventually emerge victorious, while Russia sinks “into an abyss of darkness, aggression and brutality”, with its own “fully functional fictional reality”. Nevertheless, even by the regime’s estimation, one in four Russians oppose Putin’s war. We must not forget about these people. “During the Cold War, while the West battled the Soviet regime it also made a conscious effort to help dissidents inside the USSR, and to provide an alternative to state propaganda.” Now, too, all Russian people must not be turned into “global outcasts”.