The Russia Conundrum

Putin has become trapped by the extremist element of his support base, people he had previously been able to play off against more moderate voices. The extremists are now dictating policy and the Kremlin is terrified that it has lost touch with young Russians who have no truck with scare stories about the West or warnings about the supposed moral degradation of society. A July 2021 poll by the Russian Public Opinion Research Centre, VTsIOM, showed clearly that the under-30s reject the Kremlin’s demonisation of personal freedoms, including the right to same-sex marriage.

The Kremlin’s panicked response has been to try to prevent people accessing ‘undesirable’ news from outside Russia. The vaunted ‘sovereign internet’ project is a Russian version of China’s ‘Great Firewall’, isolating the country from the outside world, scouring social networks for unwelcome material. But it is an unwinnable battle. Putin has neutralised the print media and terrestrial broadcasters, but he is struggling to control information online. He has restricted Facebook and Twitter; he has closed down news websites operating in Russia; but he has not been able completely to block overseas sources and independent Russian sites have continued to operate by moving their operations to Latvia and Lithuania. For those Russians willing to seek out alternatives to the Kremlin’s lies – mostly the young, educated, urban generation – there is information available. They can see for themselves the atrocities that Putin has committed in Ukraine, and the intermingling of Russian and Ukrainian families – tens of millions have relatives over the border – has resulted in an unstoppable wave of damning mobile-phone images flowing into the country.

The result has been the emergence of two populations in Russia – the ‘TV population’, the compliant majority who consume and believe Putin’s propaganda; and the ‘internet population’, a growing minority, who want to make their own minds up. These are the people who staged the public demonstrations against the war in Ukraine, risking arrest and a record that will restrict their future access to employment. Families have been split by arguments between older, pro-Putin parents and independent-minded children. It has caused acrimony, but the subject is at least being discussed and, as more information emerges about the crimes and failures of Putin’s war, the debate will widen.

The experience of Chechnya, where Putin spent years struggling to subdue a defiant nation, demonstrated the impact on public opinion of growing Russian casualties. Mothers of soldiers who perished in the fighting formed pressure groups that the Kremlin found hard to silence, and something similar is happening again now. The Russian constitution states that only professional soldiers will be sent into war zones – conscripts are specifically exempted. But on social media, there are numbers of mothers testifying that their sons have been sent into battle, having been falsely told they were taking part in an exercise. Unlike the geographically and ethnically remote Chechnya, Ukraine is a next-door country populated by fellow Slavs, so the emotional impact will be even more powerful.

CHAPTER 22

A BRIGHTER FUTURE

I firmly believe that Russia is not doomed to remain in thrall to the repressive personalised model of autocracy that has been imposed on her by Vladimir Putin. I am convinced that my homeland can become a normal country, blessed by the benefits of market- oriented liberal democracy. There are some who claim such a transformation is impossible, that it is precluded by history, geography and the mentality of the Russian people. When I was in New York many years ago, I met with a prominent correspondent from the New York Times, whose ancestors had emigrated from Russia at the start of the twentieth century. He told me that Russians are ‘genetically unfit for democracy’, that Russians need a father figure in the form of a strong, autocratic ruler who will both punish them and protect them. But it is not only Americans who have sacrificed themselves in defence of the universal rights proclaimed by the US Declaration of Independence; Russians, too, have fought and died for ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’. And sooner or later, the Russian people will build a true democracy for themselves and for their children.