Inside Putin’s Russia: A turning point in domestic politics?

Dr Joanna Szostek

So, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to this Chatham House webinar on the subject of Putin’s Russia, whether or not we’re facing a turning point in domestic politics. I’d like to remind everyone, as we start, that this event is on the record, so it’s being recorded, as we speak. Please bear that in mind, just when you’re formulating your comments and so on, in the ‘Q&A’ box.

So, we’re talking today about the recent protests in Russia. So, Russia entered the New Year amid a wave of protests against Putin’s treatment of prominent activists and opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, and Russian people have turned out in extraordinary numbers to voice their frustrations at the heavy handedness with which Putin’s dealt with his critics. And so, there are questions now surrounding Putin’s lengthy rule and this webinar is intended to examine the recent anti-Putin feeling in Russia and to provide some context to those protests. So, we’re interested, you know, do these protests simply signify backlash, a fleeting backlash, or are they part of a more widespread and deep-seated dissatisfaction with the regime?

And we have some great speakers with us here today to tackle these questions and these issues. We’re joined by Henry Foy, who’s the Moscow Bureau Chief at the Financial Times and he manages the FT’s coverage from Moscow and has interviewed Mr Putin himself, where the Russian President famously declared that “the liberal idea was obsolete.” We’re also joined by Arkady Moshes, who’s Programme Director for the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood and Russia Research Programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. We’re joined by Dr Denis Krivosheev, who’s currently Deputy Regional Director and Head of Research and Amnesty International’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia Regional Office. And we’re joined by Natalia Antonova, who is a Ukrainian-American Writer and Journalist, currently based in D.C., so it’s very early in the morning for her, but we’re super glad that she’s here to join us.

So, this is quite a brief event. We haven’t got that long to tackle these big issues. Our speakers will each have six to eight minutes to present their thoughts on the general topic, and the time that remains, we’ll have for Q&A. So, those of you in the audience, please don’t hesitate to write your questions in the ‘Q&A’, as I said, bearing in mind, again, that everything is on the record. So, I’m not going to take up more time than is necessary for this introductory part. I think I will hand over to our first speaker, who is Henry Foy.

Henry Foy

Thanks, Joanna. Hi, everyone, to all the audience, thank you so much for tuning in. Look, turning points in Russia, I feel like everyone, sort of, wants to be here when there’s the great turning point, and everyone wants to signify a turning point has been reached. I’m not sure we’re at that kind of scale at the moment, but I would say, and as I have described in the FT, this definitely feels like a third act of Putin’s regime. He’s in his 22nd year of power now.

The first act, which was, sort of, the first decade, certainly until 2008, was all about prosperity. That was, sort of, how he kept his domestic power, how he maintained his legitimacy. Oil prices were very high, there was oil cash sloshing around the Russian economy. Yes, lots of oligarchs and lots of Mr Putin’s friends got very rich, but ordinary Russians got very rich, as well, and compared to the chaos of the 1990s, there was a large groundswell of people who believed that what Mr Putin had done is brought good things to Russia.

The second decade of his second act, if you like, after the financial crisis of 2008, and with oil prices no longer at records highs, it all really became about patriotism, it became about the flag, Great Russia. Of course, the annexation of Crimea, the bogeyman of the West, whether real or imagined. The invasion, well, there’s the propping up of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and, sort of, this idea that Russia was back to being a global important power that could dictate terms to others. Both of those have both been used up, I suppose. There’s no more Crimea to reinvade and even Eastern Ukraine, as we’re seeing at the moment, is something of a headache for him and the Kremlin. It’s no longer the guaranteed vote winner it once was.

The economy, of course, is stagnant and real people here in Russia are feeling it. GDP per capita is 30% smaller today than it was in 2013. That is an extraordinary fall, and real incomes have gone down for six of the past eight years. So, to be brutal, Russian households are far poorer than they were before the invasion of Crimea.

So, what does he have left? He has left repression. The third act of Putin, however long it lasts, will be marked by internal repression. Spending on Police and internal security here has soared. That budget is now larger than healthcare and education spending by the state, combined. You see it in the brand-new Police suits on the streets, on the Riot Police beating protestors. We saw it in January, we see it in the new foreign agent laws that are tightening access to election participation and restricting the work of foreign supported groups here, many of which work in the human rights sector. You see it in the crackdown on internet freedom, the way in which the government used already existing laws to try to stop social media companies spreading information about the recent protests, and, also, new laws that are coming in now to try to restrict their powerful stop. And of course, we see it in the treatment of Alexei Navalny, the way in which he, both pre-poisoning, in the trial and since, in jail, how he’s been handled.

So, basically, if you – they can’t contrive ways to make the people love Putin, they will beat people into fearing the alternative. The bigger question is, and the question that we’re talking about today around the turning point, is whether that will work. My interpretation right now is, yes, it does appear to be working. The Navalny protests petered out relatively quickly, compared to other sustained protests that we’ve seen here in Russia. His team, essentially, backed down and said, “We’ll stop and wait until we get a groundswell of people saying that they’re ready to continue.” And if you compare that even to Belarus, across the border, where the response from the government was stricter, but protests are still continuing today, almost eight months on, that ironically, the economic slowdown here has actually helped the Kremlin. More and more people are on state benefits, more and more people are working for state companies, ‘cause that’s the only job they can get, and what that means, essentially, is that more people are reliant on the government and on Putin for their wages.

Yeah, roughly a quarter of the people, according to independent surveys, think the treatment of Navalny was harsh and that they’re aware of how he was treated. That’s way, way more than the 4% or so that he – his record score on any approval rating surveys, but it’s nowhere near the level you would need to be able to say that there’s a real groundswell of anger here at Putin and ready to oppose him and even to knock him off – out of the Presidency.

The economy, I think, is the key part and that’s why there’s been no second lockdown here for coronavirus. Essentially, the government know they can’t afford it. They know that many, many people are out of work and decrease the salaries of those who keep their jobs. And there is money in the bank for the Kremlin to spend on handouts, whenever they deem it necessary. There’s about $800 billion in a fund that’s ready to be spent. The fact they haven’t spent it yet, to me at least, suggests that the Kremlin believes they’re not at revolution point yet. There is deep-seated anger, and we may see some of that spill over in the September parliamentary elections that are coming up. People talk to us a lot about how upset they are, but in my opinion, we’re not at a level where people are willing to trade the current stability of Putin, despite all the downsides, for the unknown chaos of what might come afterwards.

So, turning point, no, but certainly seeing signs that there is a groundswell and that there is rising levels of anger that at some point could be capitalised into something bigger. Thanks.

Dr Joanna Szostek

Thank you, Henry. That was very well timed and concise. So, next – we’ll take all the questions, sort of, tackle all the questions at the end, but next up, we have Arkady Moshes. If you’d like to have your six to eight minutes.

Dr Arkady Moshes

Yes, thank you very much, and let me start by thanking the Chatham House for the opportunity to join the panel. It’s really nice to be back. Hopefully, it will be possible to go beyond online presentations at some point in future.

I don’t want to rain on anybody’s parade, but I’m afraid I also have to argue that we are not near the turning point, and I will use four points to state my position. One is that I would not overestimate the level of the entire regime sentiment or protest sentiment, or even pro-change sentiment in the country. What we see – and the recent protests in fav – to protect Navalny, are no exception. What we see are relatively weak local protests, those that win, they have local agenda, environmentalist agenda, which the regime does not consider to be too much of a threat for itself.

The political movement is not emerging, and I would say there’s no unity between the individual protests that exists in different parts of the country. And most importantly, there is very little understanding of what for could go and protest. People still – many people don’t like what’s going on in the country. Many people know what they would be protesting against, but what they would be protesting for, that’s another matter, and that’s not happening.

Second, the regime. The regime is not necessarily efficient, but it’s definitely effective, from the point of view of what it wants to achieve, and its primary goal is the perpetuation of its own staying power, and they’ve been doing that rather effectively. They’ve been in power for decades. They have quite a perspective, which encompasses more decades. Why is it so effective? First of all, because it knows how to act preventatively and pre-emptively. It does not react. It sometimes invents the threats and acts against them, but it never misses the threat, and it never misses, let’s say, the chance to do homework after something they don’t anticipate actually happens. Like when two years ago, when they lost several gubernatorial elections, they took care of that, so that in the following round of the gubernatorial elections, there would be no surprises.

The regime has the resources. It has money, we’ve just heard, about $600 of golden currency reserves. That’s enough money for handouts, I fully agree. It has a propaganda resource, which is not functioning equally well for – on – it does not – it’s not effective equal – equally effective, as regards different age cohorts of the people, but the so-called TV generation is still there. It can exercise repressions and, actually, what’s wrong about repressions? We know that since Machiavelli times, when Machiavelli was asked, “Is it better when people love the ruler or fear the ruler?” he said, “If they fear the ruler, because love is too unstable to rely on. When they fear, it’s something much more stable and they will be doing it.” And also, I’m not 100% sure – and of course, I agree that Crimea cannot be reinvented and there will be no other Crimea, but I still think that the regime is still able to achieve a certain degree of foreign policy mobilisation. Let’s see how the Eastern Ukraine war scare will work in that regard, but certain type of this, really, around the flag if that might still be expected.

My third argument is that we should look into the impact of the Belarussian events. We now know that it is possible to be brutal towards any protests, to throw dozens of people in jail, torture and rape men and women there, equally, and get away with it, and get away with it, it’s equally possible, both for the people who give orders and for the people who execute the orders. And in that sense, I would really be paying a lot more attention to the outcome of the Belarussian revolution than people may normally tend to do.

And my final argument is the foreign policy situation. Is not really the one that would be conducive to protests and change and this maybe the most important thing, because Europe is no longer the role model for Russia. Many Russians consider it as weak, ineffective and so on. If you look at the same Levada polls, I think they were published in the autumn, early autumn of 2019 and they looked into the changes that have happened within the previous ten years, and you will see that about a quarter of Russians less, I mean, the quarter of people who in 2008, were of the view that their country was a European country and they, themselves, were Europeans, were no longer of that opinion in 2019. Why did that happen? For many reasons, but one of them is that the EU, basically, abandoned the policy of democracy promotion in Russia, probably in the year around 2006, maybe 2007.

When the Soviet Union was collapsing, the opponents of the regime knew well that the West was on their side, that the West could tell the difference between the good and the evil. Now, the opponents of the regime in Russia, no longer certain about that, because yes, some would expect the West to help Navalny, but many others would not, looking at the Russian money in Londongrad, looking at, I don’t know, the Finnish citizenship over part of the Rotenberg family and so on and so forth. And you can always find European leaders, who are ready to talk about pragmatic interests, about the need to co-operate on China, about the need to co-operate on the Middle East and so on and so forth. All this comes at the expense of the value talk. The majority of Russians can no longer expect that the West will be on their side and this is something which is very deplorable, which is, nevertheless, the fact, and here I will stop. These are my four arguments.

Dr Joanna Szostek

Thank you, Arkady, that was very, very clear, yeah. A good reminder, I guess, of some of the, yeah, the flaws in Western policies. Let’s hand over to Denis next, Denis Krivosheev from Amnesty International.

Dr Denis Krivosheev

Thank you, Joanna. Thank you, Chatham House. I’ll try and answer the question of this webinar through, what is our core business, and for Amnesty, it’s human rights, of course. And there is – it’s a long story, but I’ll need to try and fit it into a short narrative. I agree with the previous two speakers, it’s not a turning point, but I think I’d like to argue a little bit. It’s some sort of important change and I’d like to explain why, but through the experience that I have from my work. And for this, I’ll talk about an important benchmark and then the context.

Now, the benchmark, back in 2012 or 13, Amnesty International was trying to do evaluation of how people perceive our work, our slogans, our campaigns, how they respond, and as part of this, we had a series of focus groups run, I’ll stress, in Moscow only. Now, focus groups, and they were assigned, really, I think, but they are important indication of something, and we had men and women and people from different walks of life together. We just put them in different age bands and tested them against their perception of human rights work and the things we were trying to do. And they were consistently, all groups, sceptical about human rights, cynical about human rights work motivation and patriotic, in the sense that they all felt it was important to say something important about Russia, the government policies and can trust those with the rest of the world and the West, in particular.

Now, why am I – why is this important benchmark? Because the age groups is the important thing. There were some odd people in some groups who try to argue and then they were quickly, sort of, brought on the side of the majority, except for one, the youngest. The group that had 18 to 25 years old had – was absolutely solid in this point. Sceptical about human rights, cynical about what motivates people to work for those and the closest word I have to describe what happened in that group was completely indoctrinated.

Now, when I saw the results of this, I was absolutely feeling absolute dismay. I felt if this is the views, the perceptions, the dynamic of the youngest generation, then Russia has really no hope, no future. Well, certainly not in the terms that I believe in. And this is where I fast forward today and I – oh, however, dismayed I felt about the future, I think the future’s slightly brighter, and I explain why. I will return to Navalny in a moment, but there’s something else related to him.

When Bellingcat and The Insider magazine published their investigation into the poisoning, there was a follow-up investigation, which mentioned three people who were apparently the same – members of the same alleged death squad, were following and who died, and one of them was a Journalist in Kabardino-Balkaria, Timur Kuashev. I remember his death. I guess, in terms of assassination, it wasn’t very clean, because he was supposed to have died of heart attack, but a post-mortem found that he was injected with something in his armpit. That death sent chilling waves across the region.

A friend of mine, a Lawyer, someone who was brave and prominent, left the region ‘cause he worked on the frontline of human rights. He’s someone who received threats of the kind, well, he was told by Officers he was confronting, to “always walk and look back.” They said they would “put a grenade in his underpants,” things like that, and I think he did the right thing to leave the region. Why? Because there were other examples.

There’s another Lawyer in Dagestan, [Omar Saeed Mageniedev – 20:44], who died. He – an armoured personnel carrier once came to the door of his house, they knocked, he came out, he was shot at, killed on the spot, and then another team was called in to document the crime and the officials alleged that he attacked them, he had a gun, and he was trying to run away. That crime was documented not only by the criminal investigation, but by human rights defenders, as well, and I remember vividly the image of this Lawyer lying in the pool of his own blood, in his slippers. So, he came out of his house in slippers, and he was accused, and ultimately, that was the accepted version, he attacked with a gun, tried to run away and was shot in a shootout. And that tells a big story, and the story’s important.

Coming back to Timur Kuashev, who was apparently, allegedly, assassinated by someone who was trying to poison Navalny as well, not clear why he died. One suggestion is that because, as a Journalist, he was covering so-called [inaudible – 21:53] in Kabardino-Balkaria. That’s a case relating to 2005 riots, in the context of which, 58 people were put on trial, two of them died before it was over, years later. And I attended some of it, and I remember sitting in the courtroom, which was specifically built inside a prison for this trial, so it could host – it could have four or five cages, if I remember, with 56 defendants inside them, Prosecutors, dozens of Lawyers, a panel of three Judges and some public. And it was quite boring for most of the time, but there was something I remember very vividly. We were – the Judges were going through some evidence and they were showing – the court was shown video footage of an Investigator questioning one of the suspects, or defendants, who at the time was, by the way, 17-year-old, technically a child. So, it goes, he’s quest – asked some questions, then it’s stopped for a little break and after the break resumes, I can see on the image same young chap, but there are some dark spots on his neck. And at this point, no-one in the whole courtroom, and again, it’s several dozen people, said, “Hang on a minute, what happened there? I can see these are bruises. This young man was choked in-between the questioning.”

And it tells a story of something that just – it’s a system that just carries on, despite any level of abhorrent, unspeakable horror that happens. People get killed – even in the context of that particular trial, I learnt of new ways of torture. I thought I had – I would never learn something new there. Well, I did, of – and health warning, for those listening, an eyelid pulled down and an – a screwdriver put in the eye to damage the eye nerve and cause excruciating pain, which is difficult to document. Things like that happening in broad daylight in North Caucasus all the time.

But of course, Amnesty comes back from the region, bringing these stories of horror, but for most people in Russia, I guess, and this is where I’ll paraphrase Prime Minister Chamberlain, “These are republics far away, of which we know little or nothing.” And this is where Navalny’s important. I think his experience, particularly his poisoning, is something that brought the brutality and cynicism of the region back to people home, outside of that region, and this is, I think, where a big change is beginning to happen. So, there’s a whole system, it’s – Alex – sorry, my son just tried to walk in. A whole system existing, whereby people, I guess the population at large, just feel that they owe loyalty to the government, to the state, to those who represent the state and the criminal justice system, and all sorts of systems are there to overlook crimes and validate them. And I think, in terms of this general acceptance and this overwhelming loyalty of the people, something is important. I think there’s a general acceptance that a kleptocratic regime is sort of okay, but murderous regime isn’t, and that’s where Navalny brings a story back of cruelty, which the regime is capable of, but somehow, didn’t feel to be relevant to people for most of the country. I think this is now a start – starting to come home.

Now, I wouldn’t call it a turning point. It will take a lot more than one Navalny to generate a response similar, even, to Belarus. We can see people trying to exercise their rights and stand for them consistently for a long period of time. Khabarovsk is another something which I think a story in itself and it’s important. So, the regime can be dented, there can be cracks, but it will take a lot more, and I think Belarus, the example that was used already, is quite important. In Russia, there is enough capacity to ignore calls for change and public protest for a long time, if they become much bigger than one isolated location, like Khabarovsk. Again, similar to Belarus, I believe there’s enough capacity to coerce the entire population of vio – fear and violence, but now we’ve seen that cracks are possible, dents are possible and once they build up, something big will happen. It’s just a question of how long this will take, and probably quite long, and I’ll stop there. Thank you.

Dr Joanna Szostek

Thank you, Denis, yeah, great points, and who knows if changes are going to, yeah, happen slowly, or when it might finally become a turning point. We’ve got lots to discuss, I think, in the Q&A, and that’s just an opportunity to remind everyone listening that the forum for Q&A is open, you know. A couple of questions have already been posted. We’ll turn to our last speaker just now, but please do, as Natalia speaks, yeah, raise your questions in the ‘Q&A’. And I’m told you can, sort of, like questions and upvote them, so that the, you know, the questions that interest the most people will be raised first. So, yeah, thank you, Denis and a reminder to everybody to please post your questions, in the available space.

So, now we move to our final speaker and it’s still early in the States, but slightly less earlier than it was before, so, Natalia, hand over to you.

Natalia Antonova

Hi, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak to all of you guys. I am going to be very unoriginal and I’m not going to disagree and I’m going to say that it’s not a turning point. I wish we weren’t all in such broad agreement, but it’s just one of those things. I think we all know what’s up. So, we’re going to have to agree with each other on that one. I mean, obviously, I’d like to remind people that Putin is still, you know, a flesh and blood man, he’s not made of bronze, you – no matter how he tries to present himself, he’s a person. He’s been in charge for a very long time and, you know, there will be a handover at some point, or you know, he’ll go – he might have health problems, I don’t know. For anybody watching, I don’t have any special insight into his state of being, but it’s true that there will eventually be some kind of change, but it’s likely to not be enacted by people like Navalny at this point.

It’ll – what is it going to look like? I don’t know. I think it’s very telling that when we speak about any kind of post-Putin period, we immediately think of chaos, and that is a very big indictment of the system that he’s built, of course, because you want to have a system that can, you know, be dynamic and flexible and not brittle and, kind of, you know, fall apart around your ears the minute the top guy is gone. But that’s not what this is. I think that, for whatever reason, there is a very, very strong possibility that there will be chaos post-Putin. I think a lot of people know this.

In Russia, you know, a lot of people who don’t like Putin, nevertheless, would rather, and it’s the dreaded word in our discourse, but yeah, they would rather have some kind of stability. They want their buses to come on time. I don’t know, it’s just like, you know, we have to – thinking about the situation in human terms, we have to understand that there is lots of reasons why people who have a conscience and people who understand that what happened to Navalny, for example, is terrible and brutal, still don’t want any massive change, right, because they don’t believe that the system can be changed without significant, what’s the word I’m looking for, you know, consequences, I guess. And again, that’s something we should all keep in mind, you know, that Putin’s a human being, Russians are human beings and there is considerable fear about what might happen in any kind of post-Putin situation and there’s fear that whoever replaces him is going to be worse, and I hear that all the time, and that’s something that we all have to consider. Whether those fears are founded are not, I think that that’s, like, a different topic for debate, but it’s something that we should keep in mind.

And I would also like to point out that, you know, one of the ways that you can establish a functioning and stable democracy is that you have to have mechanisms for it, right? It doesn’t just happen randomly. It doesn’t just arise out of the rubble, as it were. You have to have societal mechanisms, you have to have people who are willing to work together and share power and so on, and you know, at this point, you have some power sharing going on in Russia, in the sense that there’s different clans that, kind of, work against each other, or for each other, around Putin’s thrown. Different interests that, kind of, butt heads. There’s different security agencies that butt heads. You have the rivalries between the GRU and the FSB and so on. So, there is some power sharing going on, but it’s not democratic power sharing.

And one of the things that people ask me a lot, especially now, I live in D.C. now and people here ask me all the time, “Well, why do Russians put up with this, Natalia? What is really going on?” And I tell them, “Well, there’s no mechanisms for them to really do anything about it. There’s no effective mechanisms that they feel safe working with.” I mean, part of the – I think the really crushing and sad reality of modern Russia is how infantilising this authoritarianism is. I mean, I think authoritarianism in general is very infantilising, right? Because for me, working there, and I was there for a very long and very interesting seven years, for me, it was, you know, finding out in a tweet that my entire life is going to get upended because the Kremlin’s doing this, you know. You find out – basically, your entire life can be overturned when the Kremlin tweets something. That’s how it is you know. Authoritarianism, it penetrates down into almost every aspect of your life.

You wake up one day and people decide, “Okay, you’re not getting any more foreign cheese, sorry, no more cheese.” And there was – I remember just being a supermarket with my child, who was much younger and has – he has a parmesan addiction. I don’t know what that’s about, but he still has it today. And when I heard the news, I was like, uh-oh, I’d better go stock up on his parmesan now. I show up, the cheese shelves are empty. Everybody else had the same idea as I did. They just went and got this cheese, and my son is there throwing a fit. I’m just standing next to these empty shelves and just took a picture of it and was – posted it to Twitter and said, “Oh,” like, “look what’s going on here,” and people criticising me, they were really mad. They were saying, “Oh, it’s – you’re faking this.”

But it’s true, it’s like – and you know, not being able to eat parmesan is, you know, very different from being tortured in prison with a screwdriver, right? But at the same time, it’s all, kind of, part of, like, the same little – you know, they’re all these little links in a chain here, and what it creates, ultimately, what this entire scenario creates, is a society that is, in some ways, you know, very immature, not because the people are immature. You know, I think Russians are the consummate survivors and I respect them, you know, just for staying sane on a daily basis, very much, you know. I couldn’t do it for that long. I did it for seven years, and was like, okay, that’s it, I’m out. But we have to understand that, again, for a turning point to occur for good change to happen, you have to have some kind of, you know, a foundation, and the foundation currently is just missing, it’s just not there. And obviously, it’s not the ordinary Russian’s fault and it’s a complicated issue, but unfortunately, it’s just the way it is right now.

When we talk about turning points with regard to Russia, I’m always thinking something disturbing, you know. Is civil war going to break out? You know, I think about it in those terms, because for a positive change to occur, you need a foundation, and the foundation is not really there at this time. I would like to, very much, you know, agree with Denis, that there are some brighter spots on the horizon.

I don’t know, I recently got into Russian TikTok, which is the, you know – again, you know, I’m old, so I mostly watch it just, you know, for entertainment, but also just to see what people who are 20-years-old, or 18, whatever, are up to in Russia. And you can see that this generation that really grew up knowing no other leader than Putin, I think that they are perhaps – I mean, I think as – maybe less cynical and less depressed than my generation is. You know, I was born – you know, I was, like, the last of the Soviets, right? I was born in 1984. I remember the Soviet Union collapsing and I moved to the – and after the collapse, you know, we moved from the Ukraine to the States, because it was awful, and I think that people like me, especially, we carry a lot of pessimism and a lot of fear, you know, for a very normal reason. You know, if you had a country collapse around your ears, you are going to retain those memories and you’re going to remember some things that will make you fearful of the future.

I think with this new generation, they are, at least for now and let’s hope this holds, they’re just much more positive than we are, honestly, and I admire that. I admire positivity. I think that it’s going to take a long time, again, as Denis said, I completely agree with him. Sorry to be so agreeable today, but that’s just how it is. I think it’s going to take a long time, but I do see bright spots on the horizon, absolutely, and I have a lot of belief in young people in Russia. I have a lot of belief in the Russian arts.

You know, I used to – I did quite a lot of theatre when I worked in Moscow and the theatre community, and just the arts in general, you have some of the best people. You know, they’re not in government. A lot of them could be in government. And I’ve seen people, kind of, abandon possible careers in the Russian Government and go and do something interesting and fun and just to get away from the – from this machine, you know, that is, of course, controlling almost every aspect of your life, once again.

But I do think that, you know, in terms of, like, there’s a lot of thinking and avant-garde ideas that are still happening in Russia. They’re just not happening on the government level. They’re happening in small theatres. They’re happening on TikTok, again. They’re – you know, even Russian fashion labels, you know, like, some of the most environmentally friendly and cool people I know today in Russia are people who just, like, have a fashion label and they start out just, “Oh, I want to design clothes, I’m going to go do this.” And then they get into environmentalism, because of course, fashion has a huge impact on nature, right? And all of a sudden, it transforms them and their way into workers’ rights now and way into the environment and opposing climate change and other – you know, so it’s really, you know, it’s fabulous what’s happening on those levels and it’s very saddening that it’s not happening in the government. But if you’re going to look for bright spots, you know, here they are.

I didn’t want to be very dour and negative today, so I’m going to say there are bright spots, but again, to sum that up, I think that unfortunately, we’re not there yet and it’s going to take a long time for positive change, for a real turning point to occur in Russia. And thank you, I think I’m done now.

Dr Joanna Szostek

Thank you so much, Natalia, and thank you to all the panellists. I have never chaired a panel before, I think, that managed so well to say so much in precisely the amount of time that they were allocated. So, yeah, thank you for that.

I was asked, in my capacity of Chair, to, sort of, yeah, have an opening question and before we go to the Q&A and I can see that the Q&A’s starting to pick up, so thank you very much to the audience members, as well, who are taking part there. I will get to those in just one moment. But since we have this – we seem to have this consensus that the turning point is not happening yet, although we’re seeing some generational change, we’re seeing some changes in public opinion, I guess my question to anyone who would like to pick it up is, you know, would public opinion on its own ever really lead to a genuine turning point in Russian politics, or is the – is the state sufficiently strong that, really, for turning points, we need to be focused on people closer to the centre of power? You know, there were, sort of, these hopes about Navalny, that he represented a genuine opposition candidate, with, sort of, prospects that could really challenge Putin and his circle, but if – even Navalny with his – you know, seems to be a, you know, a leader who comes across very well to certain demographic groups, but isn’t enough to really, I guess, shift fundamentals in Russian politics, is it – yeah, can public opinion ever lead to it on its own, really lead to a turning point, or is that not the place to watch?

Dr Arkady Moshes

May I say…

Henry Foy

It’s alright.

Dr Arkady Moshes

…just a couple of words? I mean, public opinion is important and that’s exactly why the government spends so much effort to make sure that the public opinion does not, and is not turning against him, against the government, against the regime. I think sometimes, maybe it’s in the past already, but at least in the past, people were too simplistic, talking about the internet generation and the TV generation and, kind of, making an assumption that sooner or later, the internet generation, just because it is bigger, it would change – it would really – it changed the equation. That didn’t happen, but that didn’t happen, first, because – or not first, but at least, one reason why it’s not important, it says, “Because the young generation is actually, numerically, very small in Russia.” That’s the matter of demographics. So, even if tho – the views are quite different from the views of the older generation, if they vote, they cannot outvote the older generation. Plus, they don’t come to the polling stations, in most cases, because they think they cannot make any difference, they’re coming or not coming. But also, because the government, as I said, spends too much effort to make sure it has huge segments of public opinion on its side. Thank you.

Dr Joanna Szostek

Thank you, Arkady. Henry, as well, wanted to chip in.

Henry Foy

Yeah, no, I mean, I agree, broadly, with that idea. I mean, also, to the point even if the entire youth came out to vote, I’m not their votes would all be counted and that’s something else we should bear in mind. And a couple of points. The first would be that when you go out to these protests in Moscow, or elsewhere, as I have, for Alexei Navalny, it’s something that I think sometimes is missing in the Western perception of these reports, whether they read them in newspapers, or they watch TV programmes that feature them, is that people aren’t on the streets demanding that Navalny be President. They’re not on the streets saying that Putin’s had too much time and now it’s time for President Navalny and he’s going to change the way the country’s run.

People are out there mainly because Navalny’s number one job and the job that he is best at, by far, is an anti-corruption campaigner. He’s a fantastic investigator. He’s got a brilliant team of people, most of which are not in Russia, actually, which is also something that’s not always understood, and he unpicks, forensically, money trails, links between companies, favours, etc., to completely shatter this illusion that Putin is building this Russia for the Russian people. That is what really upsets people. That’s what brings hundreds of thousands of people out to protest, because they see their salaries decreasing, as I said, for six of the last eight years. They see that the economy is 30% smaller than it was eight years ago, and then they see all of Putin’s friends being incredibly rich and giving that money back to the government. They’re not out there campaigning for Navalny to be President and Navalny’s biggest mistake, I think, is to believe that he could replace Putin.

That’s not what should be achieved here, because back to your point, the way that this state changes is through what happens in the Kremlin. I, personally, believe that the turning point will be when Putin either dies of natural causes, is ousted from power, either through his life or through some mechanism, or he stands down. That is when the system changes. The way in which that can be effected by people is if the elites around him, as Natalia mentioned, start to realise that there is a groundswell of popular opinion for people other than Putin. Putin has done an incredible job over the last 21/22 years, of making sure that no party, group of people around him, is too strong, compared to the others, so that they’re all fighting with each other.

That’s starting to shift, and we’ve seen in the last four/five years, the power of the siloviki, the so-called security and more reactionary nationalist group around him, most of whom are drawn from the former security services of the KGB, or from the FSB, its successor. They are gaining extraordinary amounts of power and, essentially, starting to dictate policy that Putin responds to. There’s the elements of that and examples of that. Now, that is a danger, because it means the so-called liberals and the other – the bureaucratic groups and, also, the oligarchs, start to feel that they’re under pressure and maybe have to take some risks.

Now, I don’t think that’s at a level where we’re going to see Putin ousted or anything like that, but for me, that is how this turning point is reached. It’s not through the people coming behind a Navalny or a different figure, to oust Putin. It’s the elites around Putin realising that there might be a better horse to back and if they want to keep their billions of dollars and keep their ill-gotten gains and keep control of the state-run companies, they’ve got to back a different horse, ‘cause Putin’s done.

Dr Joanna Szostek

Thank you. Thank you for that, and interesting question about who some of those other horses might potentially be, in the future. But I’ll turn now to the Q&A. So, the top question in the Q&A at the moment is from Samantha de Bendern, and apologies if I didn’t quite pronounce that correctly. But we have a question about COVID, which I guess is still very much on everybody’s minds, and “Can we mention that there’s not been a second lockdown to prioritise the economy? What is the COVID situation now in Russia? How does that situation compare to elsewhere, for example, Brazil, and there’s – you know, where there’s growing anger at Bolsonaro’s policies, and that’s led to military resignations? Is there any room for comparison between Russia and perhaps Brazil? Could the pandemic situation upset the status quo?” And that’s a question to all panellists.

Henry Foy

I mean, I’m here in Moscow. I can briefly talk about how the situation is, but – the situation, really, since July, has been that Russia’s pretending COVID doesn’t exist. Moscow is completely open. You can go to the theatre, you can go to the cinema, you can go for dinner, nobody wears masks on the streets. You have to wear masks on public transport. But effectively, the numbers are still quite high, but coming down dramatically, and the number of deaths is far fewer than in comparable countries, per thousand people infected. Now, of course, there’s large questions over the quality of that data, not just in what the government is telling us, but also, how they’re getting their data from the regions.

But to the point about a lockdown, basically, we’re not seeing the surge in cases that you would normally expect from a second wave, I believe because the first wave was so deep, many people have acquired natural immunity. The vaccination programme has been really massively underperformed expectations. Far fewer people in Russia are getting vaccinated than in other European countries, for example. But it – I don’t think people in Russia are blaming the government for any more COVID. In fact, I think they’re actually blaming the government for the restrictions, and so, the government made the populist, if you like, decision to lift those restrictions, so that people could get back on with their lives and continue to earn money. Not disregarding their health, but betting that any full – any impact upon their health wouldn’t be blamed upon the Kremlin.

Dr Joanna Szostek

Thank you. Would any of the other panellists like to come in?

Dr Arkady Moshes

Yeah, I may say a couple of words. I don’t expect much of the political impact, because people, basically, believe that the government did well. In many – I mean, again, sometimes it’s a result of propaganda. They hear that the economy didn’t go down that much, and they are supposed to believe it. But they saw a lot of things. They saw certain – but they saw that the Russian authorities did not panic that much. They believe that the Russian authorities behaved reasonably, that it’s a disaster which had to be faced the way it was faced. The richer municipalities and cities did well. I mean, sitting here in Finland, I can tell you that instead of – here, in the West, we hear – we, all the time, hear about the talk that our hospitals will soon be full, soon be full, soon be full, soon be full.

In Russia, they were opening new hospitals, military, non-military, in buildings not necessarily, maybe, fit to serve as hospitals, but they did it. Again, propaganda augmented and amplified the message, but this was done and at the same time, there was no lockdown, except for the one a year ago. So, people kept a necessary degree of freedom. So, they think that the government did well and, yes, the government made a choice between the number of deaths, maybe, and the economy, but also, it, kind of, it worked from the point of view of the public opinion, generally, so, no impact. I cannot compare it with Brazil, because I don’t know much about Brazil.

Natalia Antonova

And can I just add something about the pandemic data, right? It’s very clear that it’s not reliable data. We actually don’t know how many people are dying of COVID in Russia right now, and it’s – some of it, you know – a lot of it is not a shadowy conspiracy, you know, as Henry is pointing out. Like, the way that they’re reporting this, a lot of the times it’s just inefficient and disorganised and they’re not getting the right set of data. Obviously, there’s also local interests that want to show the Kremlin, “Oh, hey, in our region we’re actually doing great,” you know, “don’t punish us. We’ve got this pandemic under control.” That does play into it, but it’s not a conspiracy for the most part.

But also, the thing is, is that even without this data, people just don’t care. You know, I talk to my Russian friends all the time, you know, talking to them about how lockdown went in D.C. and so on, and they really just, you know – it’s not – it’s just, it’s a different view of pandemics and illness and death in general. They’re like, “Well, you know, we have this virus, and a lot of mostly old people are going to die and that’s really sad, but that’s life, this is what happens.” So, it’s just a very different attitude and yes, people go to the theatre and go to the movies and, you know, as an American, you sit back and wonder, oh God, like, what are they doing? But to them, it just, it’s a different mindset, in a way, and it’s absolutely a success for the Kremlin.

And also, I think the only real failure is, of course, the vaccine rollout, because Sputnik is very popular abroad, but Russians don’t want to take it. And I think that part of the reason is just because there’s been so much promotion of disinformation and quackery, in recent years, right? This is not new. Anti-vaccine sentiment in Russia is not new. It’s been a big problem for a long time now. It’s also big in Ukraine and people are scared. I – you know, just chatting to anyone, mentioning that “Oh, I went and got the Pfizer vaccine.” They’re like, “Oh, my God, you went and got it. But what about A, B and C, what about side effects? What about this, what about that?” Like, the anti-vax sentiment has, kind of, been growing separate from all these other issues in Russia for years. It’s now come into play and you can see how, like, encouraging paranoia and disinformation can work against you there, because you have this great vaccine that you’ve rolled out to fanfare and publicity and I think, you know, I think Putin was really excited to have the first vaccine, really, and then your own people don’t want to take it. So, is that, you know, a policy failure? Yeah, in a way it is, but again, it’s not a failure that is going to dent the Kremlin much, it’s just very interesting to observe.

Dr Joanna Szostek

Yeah, thank you, Natalia.

Dr Denis Krivosheev

If I may?

Dr Joanna Szostek

Distrust is certainly a double-edged sword. Denis, did you have…

Dr Denis Krivosheev

Yeah, just a…

Dr Joanna Szostek

…perhaps a quick point, ‘cause then we’ll try to take…

Dr Denis Krivosheev

A quick point and…

Dr Joanna Szostek

…a couple of other questions, as well?

Dr Denis Krivosheev

…something that’s important and answer to this question and the one before. What happened to Russia? It’s com – the regime has completely destroyed systems, which allow to have any level of degree of credibility in any information. The information it presents cannot be trusted and the information that others could produce and ques – challenge, question it, those others have been imprisoned, exiled, eliminated in other ways, they don’t exist, or discredited. And so, there’s – and like, even Brazil, lots of other places, you can’t compare something where there’s complete void of data on which you can rely, and that’s where the regime has shot itself in the foot. And I was going to also use the example of vaccine, that’s probably a success story, but no-one will believe it, ‘cause the – no-one knows, there isn’t anything deliverable or – you know.

And there’s – and the answer to, partly to the first question, public opinion, doesn’t matter, because you can build a public opinion very quickly in any direction you like, so long as you dominate, so long as you have an audience, and this is where I think Navalny’s phenomenon is phenomenal. He managed to build an audience of the size, which is unbelievable, in a country where everything’s dominated by state-run television. So, it’s not public opinion. You can change it, but you need an audience, he has it, or has a considerable one, and that’s the secret to future change.

Dr Joanna Szostek

Thank you, Denis, and apologies for almost cutting you off there. I’m just aware that there are a lot of questions in the ‘Q&A’, and we have only eight minutes to deal with them, unfortunately, but we will do our best. So, the next question here is from Domenic Carratu, and I – if I understand it correctly, it’s a sort of, policy-oriented one. So, you know, “Given that Russia has no real tradition of democratic governments and given the sort of, inclination towards a strong authoritarian government, how is it possible to work with such a,” I quote from the question, “mafia state, bar being strong and cynical in our dealings with them?” I guess this is a sort of, [inaudible – 53:04] kind of question, what, yeah, what to do? Anyone like to tackle that one, on the panel? So, how – I guess how should we work with Russia? What should the approach of Western governments be, is my interpretation of that question, at least?

Dr Arkady Moshes

Let me then, start – try and start answering that question, and again, I think key to everything is what I just said, you know, you build the audience, you lead it, you can feed it information that just, like, is important, you will make change. That’s where the regime is quite impenetrable is in that ability to dominate what people watch here and believe in. Whether the rest of the world can change that, probably not, but I think if it can, the secret to change in Russia lies outside. Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, changes in those countries, successes and different narratives and different end result of political turmoil will, ultimately, be something that will or will not define where Russia goes next.

Henry Foy

Yeah, I just think I’ll just add two small points. The first would be that the best way to deal with Russia is consistency, and you’ve seen, certainly since 2014, large amounts of inconsistency in the way, certainly European powers, have handled Russia. Inconsistency in both the policy positions and the lack of general consensus. You know, and yes, there are 27, formerly 28 EU members, and you’re never going to get them all to say the same thing at the same time, but it doesn’t help if you have certain countries arguing against sanctions, when the entire group is trying to argue for sanctions. All Russia needs to do is get the Prime Minister of Hungary, or the Foreign Ministry of Italy, on a plane, put them on the cameras, in front of – in the Kremlin, and show off to the Russian people that the Europeans don’t have a single message.

The second point is that it is still important for us to remember that Putin and the elite around him are still desperate for Western respect. They are still desperate for a seat at the to table. They are still desperate for the idea that Russia is the number two power in the world after the US. You saw that in the way that when the military pacts broke down with the Trump administration, the INF Trea – deal and others, the thing that really upset Putin was that he was no longer sat at the top table with the US President, deciding global arms pacts. The way in which the pivot towards China has upset Russia is that it’s no longer the chief adversary of the US, and I think that’s another way in which the rest of the world can respond to Russia, if it, indeed wants to, is to play on that need in Moscow to still be seen as a major global player and to present that to its own people.

Dr Joanna Szostek

Thank you. There’s a question here, as well, and I think came quite early, from Michael Harvey, that I’m going to pick up on, because I think it relates to what’s going on in Eastern Ukraine, which is quite topical at the moment. And the question is whether Russ – sorry, Putin’s current domestic problems might be an opportunity for him to follow Henry the IV’s advice to “Busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels.” But I think the point is clear, you know, whether or not you refer to Henry the IV, is this a moment – is the state of public opinion on Russia such that a foreign quarrel might be helpful, convenient, and what can that perhaps tell us, if anything, about what’s going on along the border of – with Ukraine? Any thoughts on that from the panel?

Natalia Antonova

Can I say something? I think that it’s true, to an extent. I think that with regards to Ukraine, especially, when the war first kicked off, I was, you know, still working in Moscow and I remember it was really interesting sentiment that was passed onto me by, you know, someone who was in the government at the time, and the guy said, “Look, you can’t have Ukrainians living better than Russians. Like, if you have your population looking over the border and seeing Ukrainians, kind of, thriving all of a sudden and having, like, a normal democratic system all of a sudden, and you know, not being beset by poverty and corruption, then you know, Russians might start asking questions of their own government, “Well, why can’t we have that?””

But Ukraine, for example, as a country, you know, it’s one of those countries that’s used as an example, and the Russians will tell you all the time. They’re like, “Well, yes, things are difficult here, Putin’s not – maybe not the greatest guy, but at least we’re not living like Ukrainians are.” And the narrative is that the Ukrainians did it all to themselves and they just didn’t want to be part of this wonderful, like, coalition of the willing, as it were, with you know, Daddy Putin and everyone else, and they let Western interests destroy their society and now they’re, like, locked in this permanent war and it’s all their fault. And if only they had listened to us, it would be fine.

So, it’s, kind of, like, the abusive relationship in which what – like, look at what you made me do. Look at what you made me do. This is the sentiment, and it’s working, it’s effective. I know a lot of people who simply, you know, for various reasons, just out of fear that they’re going to see similar violence and unrest in their backyards, as the Ukrainians do, and it’s another example of how propaganda absolutely works. And I think in the beginning it wasn’t, it was very confusing, because Ukrainians and Russians, you know, for all of the turbulent history, they’re like – they didn’t think of each other as these, like, massive, huge enemies, but then, this happened anyway. So, propaganda and absolutely using foreign countries, especially countries in, kind of, Russia’s “sphere of influence,” it does work on the psyche.

Dr Joanna Szostek

Thank you, Natalia. We’re very – almost at the end of our hour, unfortunately, ‘cause we had so many questions and I think we probably could’ve gone for another hour with the Q&A. But I’ll just finish by asking if any of the panellists have any, sort of, final thoughts or comments to make before we wrap up for today, on anything that’s been said so far, really?

Henry Foy

Yeah, I just wanted to jump in on that final point, I mean, just to clarify some things. People in Russia weren’t glued to their TV, watching what was happening to Navalny, before the tensions with the Ukraine started. Sadly, people in Russia don’t all read the FT or watch CNN or read The Guardian. Navalny’s trials and tribulations were given hardly any coverage here in Russia. In fact, there was only really one big Sunday night programme that sought to paint him as a CIA agent. So, this idea that you’re distracting the people by giving them another war in Ukraine is not completely true and same goes with the protests. Those that took part were aware that they took part. Those that lived right in the centre of some of the biggest cities were aware that they took part. Most Russians aren’t aware that they took part. And so, I think that’s something you – we’ve really got to bear in mind when we think about the Kremlin’s calculus, they are not seeing the same Russia. The average Russian is not seeing the same Russia that we are seeing through Western news report and so, therefore, this idea of distracting people is a very different one.

Dr Joanna Szostek

Thank you, Henry, and since we’re right on the hour now, 1 o’clock, I think we’re going to have to call it a day there. But I would like to, very much, thank everyone who’s participated today, panel members, audience members. I’m sorry that we couldn’t continue the conversation longer, because I certainly found it really interesting and really helpful. So, thank you, everybody. Thank you, Chatham House, for hosting us, and hope to – yeah, I wish everybody, and on an afternoon that’s as sunny as it is here, in Glasgow, Scotland, would you believe it? So…

Natalia Antonova

Thank you.

Dr Joanna Szostek

Thank you.

Dr Arkady Moshes

C’est la vie.