“Putin’s Russia is now a much more militarized country.” Carolina de Stefano, Professor of Russian History and Politics at Luiss, author of History of Power in Russia. From the tsars to Putin (Morcelliana, 2022), takes stock of the situation in Moscow, one year after the start of the war.
Is Putin’s Russia poorer and more illiberal?
“As shown by the economic measures that Putin spoke about in his speech to the chambers, it is a country with a war economy that needs to make great efforts, concentrate investments, improve technological development and focus everything on the continuation of the conflict. Today, then, Russia is an even more repressive country where no form of opposition is allowed. Even before the war broke out, repression had increased exponentially. All independent media have been shut down, expelled from the country or equated with terrorist organizations.”
Given his recent speeches, is Putin weaker or stronger?
“These are two different speeches. First he spoke to the Federal Assembly, i.e. the political class and the top administration. In the Moscow stadium, on the other hand, he only spoke to the population for two and a half minutes. I wouldn’t say he’s stronger after those speeches, but at least he exposed himself: he hadn’t spoken to Parliament in two years. Various things have been said about his health condition and his inability to give a speech. I would not say that he is stronger, also because his speech was not a triumphant one, but was mainly aimed at justifying, in his opinion, the “inevitability” of the invasion decision and reassuring the country in terms of the state of the economy”.
He compared Biden to Hitler, threatened to kill him. Are speeches of this kind to be taken seriously, or speeches of a madman?
“These are speeches by a tyrant, reflecting the very rapid deterioration in relations between Russia and the West. We must not take it literally, but it is also clear that there is almost no diplomatic dyke left, all the bridges built after the collapse of the USSR, which they have and are crumbling. So there’s a lot of uncertainty about what’s going to happen.”
Are the Russians still on your side more out of conviction or out of fear?
“I think there’s real support for this war, it’s not just fear. There is a group of people who, through propaganda, through cultural issues, are convinced that this war is necessary. Part of the Russian population believes that a genocide took place in Donbass, who really believe that the Ukrainian government that came to power after 2014 was a neo-Nazi government. However, there is also a lot of fear. We know very well that certain things cannot be said, that no hesitation or doubt is allowed. After all, more than a million people who have left the country since the conflict began opposed the regime, or at least the idea of being sent to fight in Ukraine.”
Why was Biden’s Warsaw speech compared to Reagan’s calling on Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall?
“The comparison doesn’t seem appropriate to me considering the two historical periods. Gorbachev is not Putin. In the first case, the American President understood that it was possible to talk to Gorbachev like no previous Soviet leader, and an opening phase began, in which contacts between the two countries intensified and agreements on disarmament and non-proliferation were signed. However, Biden walking through a city in an occupied country is a powerful image for the opposite reason: it marks the return of a Cold War-style confrontation between the West and Russia.
To this day, there is still a possibility that the conflict will spread beyond Ukraine, is the nuclear bomb threat still real or not?
“It’s real. I don’t see it imminent, but it’s a variable to consider as the situation can always get worse. That Putin not only announced the suspension of the implementation of the New Start, but the strategic document of Russian foreign policy of 2012 which, among other things, included the recognition of the superiority of international law over national law, opens up new scenarios.While at the beginning of the war it was almost assumed that Russia was only looking at Ukraine, nothing can be ruled out as the war progresses “More than a nuclear war, actually an escalation of the conflict”.
To where? Moldova, Poland?
“More than NATO countries, I am referring to the former Soviet states, more specifically to the de facto former Soviet states (Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia) where Russian military contingents have been present since the 1990s. An attempt to annex these territories, which Russia has never attempted in the last thirty years and instead offers itself as a mediator of unresolved disputes or as a defender of their independence, cannot be ruled out.
So peace is still a long way off?
“Yes, and in any case a ‘truce’ would not mean peace. The idea of resolving the conflict through agreement in some areas is very far away. For now, forces in the field are holding their positions and engaged in a war of attrition, with little progress in recent months.