Russia Analytical Report, May 13-20, 2019

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Russia Analytical Report, May 13-20, 2019
Through support from: Carnegie Corporation of New York
RE: https://www.russiamatters.org/news/r...may-13-20-2019

Russia Analytical Report, May 13-20, 2019
NB: Next week’s Russia Analytical Report will appear on Tuesday, May 28, instead of Monday, May 27, because of the U.S. Memorial Day holiday.

This Week’s Highlights:

- The U.S.-Russian agenda has shrunk to a single issue—avoiding a military clash, writes Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. Relations in the short term are likely to get worse before they get better, according to Trenin.

- U.S.-Russian talks in Sochi last week suggest the Kremlin may believe now is the time to start the 19th-century-style “great power” talks it has wanted the U.S. to engage in, writes FPRI senior fellow Nikolas K. Gvosdev.

- The Iraq war played a part in ending America’s unipolar moment, empowered Russia and China and helped create ISIS, writes Edward Luce of the Financial Times. A war with Iran—which has a proper military and possible allies in the form of Russia and China—would be far riskier.

- Following the release of a video showing the Austrian vice chancellor promising government contracts to an alleged Russian in return for support, observers may call out Russia for exporting corruption and populism, writes Mark Galeotti, a senior associate fellow at RUSI. However, he argues, Russia cannot create the West’s populists, extremists and demagogues—they are a product of the region’s generalized legitimacy crisis.

- Focus groups conducted by the Levada Center show that both critics and apologists of Russia’s current political order are skeptical of change under a Putin successor and largely accepting of that, writes sociologist Denis Volkov. Of possible successors, Dmitry Medvedev’s name is most common.

I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda

Nuclear security:

“Remembering Richard Lugar. Elegy for an American Giant,” Susan E. Rice, Foreign Affairs, 05.15.19: The author, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, writes:

“The giants of the twentieth century are falling in rapid succession, and the United States recently lost another. Sen. Richard G. Lugar … who died last month, was the quintessential public servant—principled, effective, selfless. He was unafraid to do the right thing for his country, even when it was not popular with his party. His skillful legislating, grounded in a willingness to compromise, resulted in an extraordinary record of accomplishments, ranging from preserving the federal school lunch program to fighting HIV/AIDS to strengthening nuclear security. The United States and the world are safer and better off because of Lugar’s work.”

- “Lugar’s greatest achievement was the 1991 Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Act, which he co-authored with Sen. Sam Nunn … The act provided millions of dollars to secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction left behind after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The programs it created have deactivated over 7,600 nuclear warheads and destroyed over 2,600 nuclear missiles and their launchers, along with thousands of tons of chemical and biological weapons. Those results were the product of Lugar’s deft persuasion of his skeptical colleagues that spending American dollars to help a former enemy was in the best interests of U.S. security.”

- “It was in this spirit that, as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Lugar took a freshman senator from the other party and the state next door under his wing. Barack Obama gained a friend and a mentor in Lugar as they traveled to Russia together, visiting sites secured by Nunn-Lugar funds. Obama’s passion for nonproliferation and nuclear security grew under Lugar’s generous tutelage, and later Obama was able to rely on Lugar’s crucial support to ratify New START, the strategic arms reduction treaty that Obama negotiated with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in 2010.”

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

- No significant commentary.

Iran and its nuclear program:

“US Sets Course for Its Next Middle Eastern War of Choice. Dick Cheney’s Heirs Are Laying the Groundwork for an Iran Conflict,” Edward Luce, Financial Times, 05.16.19: The author, the Washington columnist and commentator for the news outlet, writes:

- “Dick Cheney, the former US vice-president, said that if there was a 1 percent threat of something happening, America should act as if it were a certainty. By that yardstick, the chances of a U.S. war with Iran are now flashing red. Any such conflict could induce a geopolitical earthquake to exceed what followed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.”

- “That war unleashed ISIS, empowered Russia and China and left a bitterly divided America roughly $3 trillion worse off. In the first Gulf war in 1991, the U.S. led a broad international coalition. By the second one in 2003, the ‘coalition of the willing’ had shrunk to Britain, Spain, Australia, Poland and a handful of Pacific islands. This time, the U.S. would be fighting without any non-Middle Eastern allies.”

- “In a testimony to Congress last month, [U.S. Secretary of State] Pompeo implied the U.S. could go to war with Iran today under the original 2001 authorization. Indeed, the grounds were the same.”

- “Much like Iraq in 2003, the US is presenting Iran with demands that it knows will be rejected. … The Iraq war helped bring America’s unipolar moment to an end. … A war with Iran would risk far more. … Iran has up to a million [troops] in uniform. … Iran is a Russian ally and a big oil exporter to China.”

- “A U.S.-Iran conflict would provide cover for Russia and China to further their ambitions. Russia could use the distraction to annex eastern Ukraine, or take a chunk of one of the Baltic states, then dare NATO to eject it. China, meanwhile, could present itself as the level-headed alternative to a rogue superpower.”

New Cold War/saber rattling:

- No significant commentary.

NATO-Russia relations:

“Double or Quits: A Russian Approach to North Macedonia and NATO,” Maxim Samorukov, European Leadership Network, 05.14.19: The author, deputy editor of Carnegie.ru, writes:

- “The Kremlin’s attempt to prevent North Macedonia joining NATO created some difficulties but proved to be rather clumsy and damaging to Russia’s own interests. Not only did Russia fall out with [the] Macedonian government, but also irked a historical ally, Greece, who expelled two Russian diplomats over interference in the name dispute.”

- “With the accession appearing to be a done deal, Russia is now likely to lose interest in North Macedonia. Economic cooperation between the two countries is scarce, and political partnership is hardly possible after the acrimonious exchanges surrounding the name deal. Even Macedonian nationalist opposition still insists on a pro-Western course and has no plans to realign with the Kremlin should it come back in power. Russia has already toned down its public pronouncements on Macedonian issues … and has shifted its condemnation from North Macedonia to NATO for pulling Balkan countries into the alliance.”

- “When Montenegro joined NATO in 2017, Russia swiftly switched from fierce national opposition, to largely ignoring domestic angles after their accession. In North Macedonia, the situation is likely to develop in the same way, providing NATO remains committed to the country’s full admission.”

“Russian Malign Influence in Montenegro: The Weaponization and Exploitation of History, Religion and Economics,” Heather A. Conley and Matthew Melino, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), 05.14.19: The authors, senior vice president for Europe, Eurasia and the Arctic and director of the Europe Program at CSIS and a research associate with the CSIS Europe Program, write:

- “Despite the heightened public focus on Montenegro following the 2016 alleged coup plot, the risk of Russian malign influence in Montenegro has not receded following their NATO membership and efforts to join the European Union. If anything, it may be intensifying.”

- “Russia will continue to exploit political tensions following the conclusion of the attempted coup trial, and there is evidence that Russia is amplifying the legitimate political protests in Montenegro against the prime minister and alleged government corruption in the so-called ‘Envelope Affair.’”

- “It bears repeating—everything, from religion, history, information, racial and ethnic tensions, illicit financing and institutional and economic weakness, can be weaponized by Russia to alter the country’s policy orientation. Evidence of this is present in Montenegro. Cultural tools and influence networks from both within … and outside Montenegro … have been deployed, and Montenegro is proving to be one of Russia’s laboratories for malign influence.”

Missile defense:

- No significant commentary.

Nuclear arms control:

- No significant commentary.

Counter-terrorism:

- No significant commentary.

Conflict in Syria:

- No significant commentary.

Cyber security:

- No significant commentary.

Elections interference:

- No significant commentary.

Energy exports from CIS:

- No significant commentary.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

- No significant commentary.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

“The Relationship Between the USA and Russia in the Trump Era,” Dmitri Trenin, InsideOver, 05.14.19: The author, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, writes:

- “As it stands today, the US-Russia agenda has shrunk to just one item: avoiding a direct military collision between the two countries’ militaries, either as a result of an incident … or of an escalation of the simmering conflict in eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile, the relationship continues to deteriorate. In the short term, it will likely get worse before it gets even worse.”

- “Looking ahead, it will all depend on the domestic politics in both countries. … Even if re-elected, Donald Trump is unlikely to be able or even willing to stabilize relations with Russia. A successful Democratic candidate … will probably start with a tough approach toward Russia, but he might have a strategy for dealing with it beyond heaping more and more sanctions on Moscow.”

- “Russia’s election is not scheduled before 2024, and even then the real configuration of power after Putin’s current term expires is not clear. In the longer term, the end of the Putin era will probably usher in a reassessment of policies across the board, and a major realignment of competing elite groups and a degree of restlessness within society at large.”

- “Both countries will be mostly preoccupied with their domestic issues, but they will be using foreign policy as a political tool or resource. It will be a long time before America and
Russia will reach a new normal in their relationship. The most important thing is that they keep their current confrontation cold, just as they managed with the previous one.”

“Russia is Finally Getting the 'Great Power' Talks That It Always Wanted,” Nikolas K. Gvosdev, The National Interest, 05.15.19: The author, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), writes:

- “Let’s dispense with any talk that U.S.-Russia relations are on the verge of any reset. … Russia wants to start the bargaining. What matters most to the United States—and more specifically the Trump administration—and what is on the table?”

- “[The recent talks in] Sochi seems to suggest that the Kremlin may believe … that conditions may finally be in place to start the nineteenth-century-style ‘great power’ talks that Russia has always hoped the United States would finally engage in.”

- “Does the Trump administration want a settlement in Venezuela? What guarantees are on the table for Russian interests and equities? Is a Ukraine-for-Venezuela swap in the realm of possibilities—a ‘you stay in your hemisphere, and we in ours’ bargain? Can Russia bring Iran back to the nuclear negotiating table … so that the Trump administration can claim it is getting a ‘better’ deal than the Obama administration? What’s being offered in terms of suspending or delaying U.S. sanctions? Does Trump want to see greater stability in global energy markets as a way to avoid delivering economic shocks to the U.S. economy already beginning to reel from coping with the uncertainties of the U.S.-China trade war?”

- “Putin’s national security advisor Yuri Ushakov said that the Pompeo-Putin discussions had ‘not yielded any breakthrough, but had been held in a business-like atmosphere.’ The question remains whether that atmosphere will persist, and what business is likely to be transacted.”

“Why Trump and Putin Have Nothing to Discuss. Mueller Wasn’t the Main Problem Between Trump and Putin,” Leonid Bershidsky, Bloomberg, 05.15.19: The author, a columnist and veteran Russia watcher, writes:

- “The investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller was supposed to be the biggest deterrent to President Donald Trump’s oft-stated desire to ‘get along with Russia’ and its President Vladimir Putin.”

- “But now that Trump is as free from the Mueller shadow as he’s ever going to be, U.S.-Russia relations aren’t improving: The two countries still have nothing substantive on which to agree. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Sochi … and his meetings with Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have only confirmed that. This is a new normal that probably can only be changed, for better or for worse, by some momentous event like the dismantling of the Putin regime.”

“The US, Not Russia Is the New Spoiler in the Arctic. Arctic Cooperation Will, However, Weather Cyclone Trump,” Elizabeth Buchanan, The Moscow Times, 05.15.19: The author, a research fellow at The Australian National University, writes:

- “The 11th Ministerial Meeting of the Arctic Council was held on 6-7 May in Rovaniemi, Finland, and we are still in the fall-out zone after U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, went nuclear. The U.S. used the meeting to stoke sentiments on the lawlessness of the Arctic and called out China and Russia’s aggressive agendas. Pompeo moreover urged Arctic states to ‘adapt to this new future’ whilst delivering his speech, leaving Arctic experts unsure whether to laugh or cry.”

- “Russia has come out of the Ministerial Meeting as a good Arctic player and the U.S. is now cast as the spoiler. This is of significant value to Moscow as it counts down to 2021 when Iceland will hand over the Arctic Council chairmanship to Russia. Certainly, being the least disruptive power will pay dividends to Russia in garnering legitimate stewardship of the Arctic Council agenda.”

- “The Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting confirms what we have long suspected—the Trump administration has all but dismantled Obama’s environmental legacy.”

II. Russia’s relations with other countries

Russia’s general foreign policy and relations with “far abroad” countries:

- “Corruption and Populism Are the West's Weaknesses, Not Moscow’s Invention,” Mark Galeotti, The Moscow Times, 05.20.19: The author, a senior associate fellow at the Royal
United Services Institute (RUSI), writes:

- “Austria faces snap elections after a mysterious video was released showing vice chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache of the far-right Freedom Party promising government contracts to an alleged Russian in return for support.”

- “However, comfortable assumptions that this demonstrates that extremism and corruption are somehow malign Russian exports are premature. … Moscow enthusiastically supports populists, extremists and demagogues of both left and right … [but] it cannot simply create them. The Freedom Party in Austria, the Lega and Five Stars in Italy, the Brexit Party, Alternative for Germany and so forth all have their roots in the generalized legitimacy crisis gripping the West, not Russian subterfuge.”

- “By failing to modernize our political systems, by letting constituencies come to feel left out and overlooked, by allowing the narratives of globalization, migration and harmonization to be hijacked and defined by the populists, the mainstream has shaped its enemies, empowered them and handed them to Moscow or any other foreign backers … willing to stroke their egos and back their campaigns.”

- “Likewise, while it has become fashionable in some circles to assert that ‘corruption is the new communism’ … that the world can be divided between the ‘kleptocratic East’ and the ‘liberal West’ and that countries such as Russia seek to ‘export corruption’ … this is evidently also a home-grown problem.”

- “Russian individuals seek to develop contacts and influence Westerners because they are political entrepreneurs, not agents on a mission. This … often works well … However, it can also lead to amateurishness and counter productivity. If that was what was behind this bizarre case, then just as the rise of corruption and populism in the West are blights of our own making, the collapse of an Austrian government that was strikingly favorable for Moscow must count as a terrible own goal for the Kremlin.”

“You Can’t Trust the Far Right,” Alina Polyakova, New York Times, 05.20.19: The author, an expert on far-right parties in Europe, writes:

- “On Sunday, Sebastian Kurz, the chancellor and leader of the center-right Austrian People’s Party, called for snap elections following the resignation of Heinz-Christian Strache, Mr. Kurz’s vice chancellor and the head of the far-right Freedom Party. Days before, a two-year-old video surfaced in German media showing Mr. Strache offering government contracts and a stake in one of Austria’s largest newspapers in exchange for Russian support for his party. It turned out that the footage … was a sting operation. But if its goal was to expose Mr. Strache’s cynical willingness to sell out his country to a foreign power with a well-known record of undermining elections, it worked.”

- “Before the scandal, Austria’s approach to dealing with the far right seemed like a model other center right parties could follow. Now, Austria should serve as a warning call that the far-right parties cannot be ‘civilized’—or trusted.”

China:

“A Russian-Chinese Partnership Is a Threat to US Interests. Can Washington Act Before It’s Too Late?” Andrea Kendall-Taylor and David Shullman, Foreign Affairs, 05.14.19: The authors, the director of the transatlantic security program at the Center for a New American Security and an adjunct senior fellow in the program, write:

- “The conventional wisdom has long held that the Chinese-Russian relationship will remain distant and distrustful—that each country will keep the other at arm’s length. … The conventional wisdom no longer applies. Already, the depth of relations between Beijing and Moscow has exceeded what observers would have expected just a few years ago. Moreover, the two countries acting in concert could inflict significant damage on U.S. interests even if they never form an alliance.”

- “Washington needs to prepare for the possibility that Russia and China’s partnership will only get stronger. There are no easy fixes to this situation.

- “Efforts to split Moscow and Beijing are unlikely to be effective … Still, Washington should seek to stoke tensions between the two and strain the seams in their relationship. … U.S. policymakers will also have to take care not to drive Russia and China together and consider how policies designed to confront one country could inadvertently hinder efforts to confront the other.”

- “In this era of great-power competition, the United States must strengthen its own partnerships—those with allies who share American concerns about an international order reshaped by authoritarians.”

Ukraine:

“Expectations for Kiev-Moscow Relations After Ukraine’s Presidential Election,” Emmanuel Dreyfus, PONARS Eurasia, May 2019: The author, a visiting fellow at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the George Washington University, writes:

- “[T]hree observations can be drawn from the [Ukrainian presidential] election outcomes. First, Zelensky’s victory can partly be interpreted as a political resurgence of the electorate from the southeast that traditionally favored pro-Russian political forces … Second, the recent election showed that the southeast electorate, sidelined in 2014, was the main target of this election … Third, despite declining, the west/southeast political divides still exist, as confirmed by a quick look at the performance of the two candidates in the second round.”

- “The prospects of a renewal in Ukrainian-Russian relations partially following the ‘Georgian model’ are plausible … In addition to the good performances of the ‘pro-Russian’ political parties, which are likely to be repeated in the next parliamentary elections, 57 percent of Ukrainians are positively or very positively inclined toward Russia.”

- “A pragmatically based reset in the Ukraine-Russia relationship could also improve the Donbass conflict resolution process. … [T]he reintegration of Donbass into Ukraine remains a Moscow objective toward that region.”

- “The various factors could pave the way to a new chapter in Russian-Ukrainian relations—one that partially echoes what happened between Moscow and Tbilisi from 2012. Being likely, this movement will be determined by three main parameters: 1) the results of the next parliamentary elections, 2) Kiev’s abilities to implement decisions against domestic non-state actors … and 3) Moscow’s attitude toward Zelensky.”

“Alarm Raised In Ukraine With Return Of Oligarch,” Andrew E. Kramer, New York Times, 05.19.19: The author, a reporter for the news outlet, writes:

- “Before he was elected president of Ukraine last month, Volodymyr Zelensky played a president in a comedy show on television. The owner of that television station, Ihor Kolomoisky, returned on Thursday from self-imposed exile, raising fears that he may now ask the real president to return some favors.”

- “Under the departing president … the Ukrainian government had nationalized a bank co-owned by Mr. Kolomoisky and accused him of siphoning off millions of dollars in fraudulent loans. The Ukrainian government took over the bank, PrivatBank, in the course of a $5.6 billion bailout at a time when lending by the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the United States was propping up the government.”

- “While the bailout was seen as necessary, the extraordinary cost of what the Ukrainian central bank called Mr. Kolomoisky's mismanagement became Exhibit A for Western governments in the risk of financially supporting Ukraine despite widespread corruption.”

- “Mr. Zelensky's campaign was centered on the claim that, beholden to no one, he would be able to clean up Ukraine's chronic corruption. How Mr. Zelensky handles the Ukrainian authorities' protracted dispute with Mr. Kolomoisky is a key test of his election promises … It will also test relations with Western governments, which are not eager to see more aid money vanish into Mr. Kolomoisky's business empire.”

-“While Mr. Kolomoisky has said he would 'not be the shadow leader of the country and the gray cardinal,' he has spoken openly of his hopes that Mr. Zelensky would fire officials at the central bank who were behind the takeover of PrivatBank. And that was before he returned from exile. Reflecting Western alarm … Carl Bildt, a former prime minister of Sweden, posted on Twitter: 'If he's not careful this could be the undoing of Zelensky. Selective re-oligarchisation would be a disaster for Ukraine.'”

“Russia's Covert Tactics Aim to Alienate Ukraine's Western Neighbors: Vandalized Hungarian center in Ukraine is among examples of Kremlin's efforts to inflame tensions between Kiev and its EU allies,” James Marson and Drew Hinshaw, Wall Street Journal, 05.16.19: The authors, deputy bureau chief for the WSJ newswire in Moscow and a senior reporter for the news outlet, write:

“Russia's efforts to keep Ukraine in its orbit have included invasions, targeted assassinations and economic coercion. Less prominently, Moscow has directed a clandestine campaign of vandalism and hate crimes aimed at spoiling Ukraine's relations with its western neighbors, Ukrainian and European officials say.”

- “An ongoing court case in Poland has shone a light on the varied cast of provocateurs that the officials say the Kremlin has employed to try to stir up ethnic passions on territories where it used to call the shots. Two Polish fascists have admitted that they took money from a supporter of Russia's causes to firebomb a Hungarian cultural center in Ukraine.”

- “The attack on the Hungarian cultural center was top news in some Hungarian pro-government media. Hungary's Foreign Ministry demanded a meeting with Ukraine's ambassador to Budapest. Mr. Orbán recorded a Facebook video expressing concern for Hungarians in Ukraine. Hungary continues to block official high-level meetings with Ukraine at NATO, despite criticism from the U.S. that it is furthering a key Kremlin foreign-policy goal by impeding Kiev's integration with the military alliance.”

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

“Political Elite Renewal in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine,” Cristina Gherasimov, Chatham House, 05.16.19: The author, an academy associate in the Chatham House Russia and Eurasia Program, writes:

- “In Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, the legacy of the Soviet past and the challenging transition processes of the 1990s have delayed the emergence of a new generation of reformist leaders who practice the principles and values of good governance.”

- “Since independence, political parties in these countries have failed to push genuine and competent elites to the forefront of politics. Outmoded internal governance still dominates political parties, which continue to pivot around individual charismatic leaders.”

- “This paper identifies four categories of elites active in current domestic politics in these three states: the ‘Old Guard’; those with the potential and capacity to improve governance who become ‘Trojan Horses’ of the Old Guard; the ‘Returned Diaspora’; and ‘Domestic Reformers.’ The latter three all constitute sources of potential elite renewal.”

- “Social uprisings have created political openings for Domestic Reformers and the Returned Diaspora to take part in high-level politics. … Vested interests of the Old Guard, unequal access to financial resources and the limited political experience of newcomers have all damaged the potential for a level political playing field in these countries. These factors hamper the prospects of Domestic Reformers and the Returned Diaspora to become sustainable players in domestic politics.”

III. Russia’s domestic policies

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Who Russians Think Will Succeed Putin in 2024. Studies show that the Russian public doesn't believe they will have a say in the future of their country,” Denis Volkov, The Moscow Times/RBK, 05.17.19: The author, a sociologist at the Levada Center and columnist at the Carnegie Moscow Center, writes:

- “Most Russians think little about the future, possess only a passing knowledge of the political calendar and would have difficulty naming the date of the next presidential election. … In late April, we, at the sociological Levada Center conducted focus groups consisting of Muscovites of differing ages as well as attitudes towards Putin. The pro- and anti-Putin participants mainly discussed two post-election scenarios: 1) the president remains at his post following the next elections, or 2) he steps down and names a successor. Many people in both camps believed that Putin would not step down, but offered divergent explanations as to why.”

- “The Putin supporters felt that the president had more work yet to do, that he was still strong and ‘had no plans to go anywhere.’ They added that no equally ‘charismatic individuals’ capable of replacing Putin had yet appeared on the horizon.”

- “The Putin critics who agreed that he would not relinquish power offered a number of other explanations for this conclusion, including Putin’s love for power and the crucial role he plays in enriching and enabling his close associates. According to this thinking, Putin … would hang onto power ‘until the last.’”

- “Both apologists and skeptics doubted that Putin would leave office early. … [A]pologists and critics of the current political order agree that even after a successor is named, nothing in Russia will change. … In discussions of a possible successor, Dmitry Medvedev’s name comes up most frequently. … The names of other politicians follow Medvedev’s in order of their confidence ratings. First … is Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, whose ratings are second only to Putin’s. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and the communist Pavel Grudinin are mentioned less frequently.”

- “Russians are largely acceptant of either scenario—Putin remaining in power or passing the office to a chosen successor.”

“Who Is Mr. Ivanov: Why Russia’s Middle Class Is Shrinking. The struggling middle class has become critically dependent on the government,” Maxim Trudolyubov, The Russia File, 05.14.19: The author, a senior fellow with the Kennan Institute and editor-at-large with Vedomosti, writes:

- “In the five years since 2014, the share of those in Russia who consider themselves middle class has shrunk from 60 percent to 47 percent. This is according to a study commissioned by the investment arm of Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, on the ‘Ivanov index,’ a measure of consumer confidence. ‘Ivanov,’ a common Russian last name, is used to represent a typical middle-class person in Russia.”

- “In Russia, all income groups, and particularly those associated with the middle class, have become critically dependent on the public sector. Pensions, public transfers and public sector wages account for about half of total incomes in Russia.”
“According to data from the International Labor Organization, public sector employees account for 40 percent of total employment in Russia … It is worth noting that the IMF’s estimate of the Russian state’s share in formal employment is 50 percent, higher than the ILO’s.”

- “The IMF recently corrected its earlier assessment that state-owned companies were responsible for 70 percent of Russia’s GDP and said that such companies were responsible for only 33 percent of GDP. But this does not change the facts on the ground: both Russia’s working population and the country’s pensioners are heavily dependent on the public sector.”

- “One has to be careful in directly linking Russian society’s heavy dependence on public wages and pensions with its political sympathies. It is not that people automatically support those who pay them, though the Kremlin may think so. It is what it is, a dependency. It certainly helps Russia’s political managers mobilize support when they need it. But the sincerity of such support will always remain in question.”

“Modern Russia Is Putin Deciding a Park Use Dispute,” Leonid Bershidsky, Bloomberg/The Moscow Times, 05.20.19: The author, a columnist and veteran Russia watcher, writes:

- “The story of an unbuilt church in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg has all the elements of how Russian society and government work in 2019: angry citizens who think their interests are ignored, regional authorities that ignore them and side instead with the Russian Orthodox Church and its oligarch donors, top-class muscle hired by the oligarchs—and an intervention by President Vladimir Putin, ostensibly on the citizens’ side but likely with an outcome that will favor the other party.”

- “Episodes such as the one in Yekaterinburg show that Putin actively seeks popular support; he doesn’t fully rely on coercion. But the goals of his regime are often incompatible with ordinary people’s simple interests. The pillars of the regime … care nothing about where those people will go with their baby carriages.”

- “Sleight of hand is an ever-present element in Putin’s quest for popular support. But it’s hard to fool all the people all the time, and the ‘defection from support’ … is gradually happening. It’s just that Russia hasn’t passed the point when things will begin to happen quickly.”

“Russia’s ‘Opposition at a Distance’: The Liberal, Anti-Putin and Pro-Western Consortia Outside Russian Borders,” Andrey Makarychev, PONARS Eurasia, May 2019: The author, a visiting professor at the University of Tartu in Estonia, writes:

- “Various Russian opposition groups operate outside of Russia articulating and promoting a normative type of political discourse grounded in values of freedom, democracy and rule of law. These are entities established by Russian oppositional figures and organizations such as the Open Russia Foundation, Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom and the Free Russia Forum. They form patchworks and networks of individual strategies and collective engagements that link critically and independently thinking people within Russia to each other and to Western policymakers.”

- “The ‘opposition at a distance’ is an interesting political phenomenon that agglomerates different policies and strategies. It fosters emigration from Russia to the West, assists people within Russia in a fight for their rights, and exceptionalizes Putin’s regime as the main danger for liberal democracy in the world through its ‘normalization’ of illiberal and dictatorial regimes.”

- “Exiled politicians trying to challenge Putin’s regime from abroad undoubtedly possess strong intellectual and creative capital and good connections in many corridors of power. Their strongest supporters come from political forces in the EU and NATO member states that became convinced, particularly after 2014, that Putin’s regime poses a security threat in Europe, Eurasia and beyond.”