The failed disciple #2 – The failing master

Posted on February 21, 2014 by

This is the end of Viktor Yanukovych’s political career. The reason is still the same that I pointed out a month ago: he is a petty tyrant, but more importantly, a bad politician. Following the clashes of the past two days and the sanctions that EU member states have agreed to impose, there is absolutely no end game in Ukraine that would see Yanukovych continue as president. In fact, his resignation seems to be the question of days. Meanwhile, it is almost sure that the Kremlin has already started “casting” the successor of Yanukovych, but even so, there is no guarantee that Russia will be able to keep Ukraine, the jewel of Vladimir Putin’s imperial politics in the long term, without which Putin’s third-term plan, the Eurasian Union makes little sense.

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The failed disciple

Posted on January 23, 2014 by

In the past week, Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych has exposed himself as a petty tyrant by cracking down on opposition protesters in a brutal and dictatorial manner, after having passed undemocratic legislation. Even more importantly, he showed that he was a bad politician, something that may as well lead to his fall – something that would reverse, but at the very least, halt the foreign policy bulldozer of Vladimir Putin too.

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Bumps ahead

Posted on January 6, 2014 by

2013 was clearly the year of Vladimir Putin. After an embarrassing 2011 and a whacky 2012, the Russian president solidified his grip on the domestic political realm, tightened the screws so efficiently that by the end of the year he could afford loosening some of them, and, making use of the weakness of his rivals, he showed unexpected muscles on the global stage. At his press conference in December, the President was bursting with self-confidence. Even more importantly, though, in 2013 everyone got a good picture what Putin’s third – and, I still think, last – term will look like. Why can everything be quite different in 2014?

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A one-legged giant

Posted on December 9, 2013 by

As I am writing this blog entry, there is a tense standoff between protesters and policemen in Kiev, both groups waiting for the ultimatums they have given each other to run out. Sham roundtable talks are in preparation, featuring two failed and one failing president. More than two weeks after the decision of Ukraine to refuse signing the free trade and association agreement with the Union, according to different estimates, still between 500 thousand and 1 million protesters remain at “Euromaidan”. Street scenes are reminiscent of the winter of 2004, and Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. Just like nine years ago, the Russian government and personally Vladimir Putin has a lot to lose. And while Russia seems to have been the stronger player in the past couple of weeks, in fact Putin has a lot more to fear than in 2004. Here’s why.

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A case against Medvedev

Posted on November 27, 2013 by

It started as yet another bill extending the powers of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. It continued with brilliant back-handers from Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. The Prime Minister dryly criticised Putin’s initiative, to which Putin replied with his typical scornful remarks. “I will be forced to remind that there is a set practice for resolving issues before appearing in the mass media. It is well known: if someone doesn’t agree with something, as Kudrin did in his time — he left to join the expert community” – said the President, getting the closest in his third term to dismissing Medvedev, and thus, doing away with the concept of the only nominally existing “tandem“ for good. In February, when most Russia-watchers were writing political obituaries for Medvedev, I argued that keeping the Prime Minister on for a just a while longer served important purposes: the illusion of power distribution, the presence of liberals in the government and thereby a certain balance of power. But another year has passed and Medvedev the Prime Minister may just have exhausted his usefulness.

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Playing with matches

Posted on October 20, 2013 by

The ethnic riots in Biryulyovo last week turned out to be an X-ray of Russian politics as a whole. What became as a simple murder soon became a serious demonstration that triggered a messy and precipitous reaction showcasing the inability of the Russia police to act in such situations. Then we got a glimpse on the shadowy ownership issues of the vegetable warehouse, attacked by protesters, and theories claiming that the protests, or even the murder, had been made up to ensure the expropriation of the warehouse by people close to the present Mayor of Moscow. Then we got a response from the authorities – a deafening silence, that is – and from Alexei Navalny: a reassertion of the shrill nationalism he had displayed many times before. The sheer wave of comments that followed signals that Biryulyovo deserves its own page in the Russian political almanac of 2013.

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An aging octopus

Posted on September 28, 2013 by

Right after the Moscow mayoral election, Vladimir Putin nominated his aide Tatiana Golikova to head the Court of Audit. The Russian and international press did not care much: after all, Navalny and Roizman occupied the headlines. A couple of weeks later, Vladislav Surkov, whose resignation from the government stirred a major scandal in May, prompting Russia-watchers, including me, to draw a series of conclusions, was reappointed to the Presidential Administration. Again, political commentators cared hardly more than to yawn and shrug. If I were to describe the most important change in Russian politics in the course of the past months, I would point at the shift in public discourse from Kremlinology to actual politics. Is this shift, however, justified?

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