China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Confident Putin looks to challenges ahead for Russia
Where will Russia go? This was the question people asked when watching the annual news conference by Russian President Vladimir Putin at the end of 2018. The event was considered to be important for the international community to evaluate the country’s political, economic and foreign relations achievements in the past year and judge its development in the new year.
In the three-and-a-half-hour news conference, Putin showed his confidence in the recovery of the country’s economic situation.
According to the Russian Ministry of Economic Development, Russia’s economy grew by 1.7 percent in GDP terms in the first 10 months of 2018, while its industrial production grew by 2.9 percent, compared with 2.1 percent in the same period in the previous year.
Putin said Russia’s overall economic growth slowed last year, a fact that experts in the country agreed on.
Sergei Khestanov, associate professor of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, said that although slow GDP growth is a process of growth, it is imperative for the country to take measures to boost GDP growth.
“The national projects are supposed to play a role in resolving this issue but, in addition, administrative pressure (from the government) must be reduced,” Khestanov said.
He said excessive government regulations have already made many people abandon the idea of running their own businesses. So he advised the government to ease control and encourage people to run small and medium-sized businesses, which may help the economy avoid relying heavily on the energy sectors.
Relations with US
Russia was also confronted in the past year with unstable relations with Western powers, especially the United States, and this eventually affected the country in its political decision-making and put it in a difficult economic situation.
Vladimir Frolov, a political analyst at republic.ru, said Russia is not satisfied with the current global order in which the US plays a leading role.
To have Russia play an increasing role in international affairs, the Kremlin has worked very hard on a proposed trip by Putin to Washington and also has invited Trump to Moscow for Russia-US summit talks, Frolov said.
He said the immediate priority of Russia in 2019 is to safeguard the US-Russia nuclear arms control regime, which is under threat by Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty as well as the US president’s skepticism toward extending New START, a nuclear arms reduction treaty between the two countries, beyond 2021.
The INF Treaty was signed on Dec 8, 1987, and took effect on June 1, 1988. It outlawed deployed and nondeployed intermediate range (1,000 to 5,000 kilometers) and shorter range (500 to 1,000 km) ground-based missiles.
Trump said on Oct 20 that the US would quit the INF Treaty because Russia was allegedly in breach of that agreement. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov called it a “dangerous move”.
Putin vowed on Dec 18 that his country would develop such missiles if the US leaves the INF Treaty.
Frolov said Russia might be forced to accept a plan suggested by US National Security Advisor John Bolton for a symbolic nuclear accord that would not limit deployment options.
Meanwhile, the relations between Russia and neighboring Ukraine touched bottom at the end of 2018 when Russia seized three Ukrainian naval ships in waters near Crimea.
Moscow and Kiev blamed each other for the incident. Crimea was incorporated into Russia in March 2014 following a local referendum. Ukraine said the peninsula was annexed.
The Ukrainian Navy said it had informed Russia in advance about the passage of its vessels from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov through the Kerch Strait, and the ships had been hit and disabled as they tried to leave the area.
The Public Relations Center of the Russian Federal Security Service confirmed the incident, saying Russia used weapons against the Ukrainian ships, which it said had illegally entered its waters before being boarded and searched.
“There are many uncertainties about how Russia’s relationship with Ukraine will unfold (this year),” said Andrew Wilson, a professor of Ukrainian Studies at University College London and senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Wilson said the key event to watch for is Ukraine’s presidential election in March. But he doesn’t think a pro-Russia candidate will win the Ukraine presidency, as “that’s not how Ukrainian politics works anymore”.
“But parliamentary elections in October are a different matter, because it is entirely possible that certain Russian-backed parties could come to power,” Wilson said in an interview with the Moscow Times.
Some experts think Turkey will join the game. The country is keen on playing a mediation role to ease new tensions between Russia and Ukraine, fearing that a full-scale war in the Black Sea would jeopardize its own interests in the region.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has offered his country’s mediation. “Here we could take on a mediator role and we have discussed this with both sides,” Erdogan told reporters in December in Istanbul, adding that his country would like to see the Black Sea as a “sea of peace”.
Togrul Ismail, a professor of international relations at Kahramanmaras University in Turkey, said, “Both Russia and Ukraine are in need of the mediation role that Turkey can play as Turkey is offering to ease the situation between these nations who remain at loggerheads.”
Ismail, an expert on Russian affairs, believes that Turkey, which enjoys good political and trade relations with both Moscow and Kiev, is the perfect nation to offer mediation.
“If Turkey is indeed accepted as a mediator and succeeds in easing tensions, this would be an important factor of diplomatic prestige for the country and also for regional stability,” Ismail said.