Putin friends eng-10-05-2016

PUTIN’S FRIENDS

Center for Army, Conversion and DisarmamentLaboratory for Personality Analysis

2016

Dmitry A. Kozlov

Project is dedicated to the analysis of the possible reactions and correcting the foreign policy of a number of states in the field of

political influence Putin’s Kremlin

kraine is going through one of the most difficult periods in its historical development. The

existential challenge issued by Putin’s regime has already left a permanent scar in the consciousness of everyone who identifies as a Ukrainian. Ukraine of 2014 – 2015 was turned into a trial laboratory for Russian weapons and Russian technologies of influence, becoming a bloody testing ground for Moscow’s mission project to redraw the geopolitical map of the world.

However, it should be noted that the ongoing war is not limited to eastern Ukraine and Syria. It also covers a number of countries where the Kremlin’s attacks are tacit and insidious, often barely noticeable

even for professionals. Considering the dark KGB past of the Kremlin’s master, this type of warfare is a particular favorite of his — and especially dangerous, because of its ability to strongly affect the balance of power. Overall, Moscow uses every opportunity to gain allies and incite them to cooperate. To this end, it makes use of some countries’ power and business structures, as well as some well-known individuals. For a clear example of an arrangement with the Kremlin, consider the disgraceful statement by the former President of France Nicolas Sarkozy after the Paris terror attacks (November 15, 2015), in which he urged towards more closely-knit relations with Russia, and towards creating a coalition

“PUTIN’S FRIENDS,” OR THE NON-MILITARY DIMENSION OF

CONFRONTATION

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Valentyn Badrak,Director of the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies

3“PUTIN’S FRIENDS,” OR THE NON-MILITARY DIMENSION OF CONFRONTATION

“that would include the “Russians.” That is merely one demonstration of the effect of Russian IO/PSYOP technologies (possibly combined with financial leverage), not to mention their efficiency and speed.

In the international arena, the political confrontation between Russia and the West continues to deepen, while the exchange of tough statements in November 2015 is characteristic of the Cold War. The US defense secretary Ashton Carter accused Russia of “nuclear saber-rattling” and endangering world order, challenging its commitment to strategic stability. In its next National Security Strategy, the United Kingdom named Russia a major threat. General Mark Milley, the Chief of Staff of the US Army made a notable statement that “Russia is a greater threat to the USA than ISIS.” “Russia is, by definition, a threat to the United States because of their nuclear capabilities. Other countries have nuclear weapons, but none as many as Russia and none have the capability to destroy — literally destroy — the United States,” the General emphasized, when commenting on the dangers of Russia’s unpredictable policy.

When considering Putin’s prospects, it is important to remember that the stand-off between Russia and the West

currently spans a large number of countries whose positions can have a significant effect on the turn of events. There is no front line here — but at the same time, politicians, diplomats, special services, and even community leaders work to win allies among the official authorities of these many states. Because a state’s position is always a derivative of the views of specific individuals, the Laboratory for Personality Analysis of the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies (CACDS LPA) undertook an analytical project that aims to research and forecast the possible response of countries currently within the sphere of the Kremlin’s political influence.

It bears mentioning that attitudes towards Russia changed sharply after the unexpected downing of the Russian SU-24, and a negative perception of the unpredictable Kremlin currently prevails. The relations between Russia and Turkey entered a dangerous curve, despite earlier economic cooperation and potential projects in the energy sphere (which were a particularly threat to Ukraine).

Nevertheless, that does not stop the Kremlin from using every available resource and opportunity to expand its global influence and

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affect the psychological perception of Russia. This entire political process is highly interesting and merits in-depth studies, on the psychological and personological level. This is why the CACDS

LPA took the first step towards systematizing and creating the background for further deep research into the cause-and-effect relationship in this aspect of rivalry and global struggle for leadership.

Dmitry A. Kozlov

Born in 1986 in Kiev

A graduate from National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture (2012) with a degree in Theory and History of Arts. Worked as research fellow in projects on role of the individual in cultural and historic processes.

Author and columnist.

Expert at the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies (CACDS), head of the Laboratory for Personality Analysis which was

established under the auspices of the CACDS in 2014.

Major areas of research include politico-psychological aspects of personality analysis and related aspects of international politics.

The profiles of individual members of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle were drawn up by Dmitry Kozlov as part of research «Putin’s inner circle» (2015) conducted by the Laboratory for Personality

Analysis. He is also the author of studies on a number of States, which the Kremlin considers as allies in the war against the Western world

(“Putin’s Friends”, 2015) and of States-members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (“Kremlin project “The CSTO”. The results of the

implementation and implications for Ukraine”, 2016).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

he Czech Republic regularly ends up on the list of “Russia’s friends in Europe” — usually

because of the statements and actions of the Czech President Miloš Zeman, even he is far from being the only agent of Moscow’s influence in the country. However, even taking into account the presence of a pro-Russian lobby, all “allies” of the Russian Federation are sooner a media phantom and the manifestation of intra-European tension, rather than real partners of the Kremlin’s master. Thus, the Czech Republic, as well as Hungary, does not really belong on the list of “Putin’s friends” when considered more closely.

The pro-Russian rhetoric of some Czech politics is rather understandable. The Czech Republic’s current political elite has roots in the socialist Czechoslovakia. The Republic’s current president Miloš Zeman was born in 1944 in Kolin. As a child, the future Czech leader had witnessed the consequences of the Nazi occupation, which clearly

added to his dislike of ring-wing views. During his education in the University of Economics in Prague, Zeman sought to join the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. However, after becoming a member in 1968, Zeman was forced to leave the party a mere two years later, because of his public criticism of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the subsequent tightening in the country’s regime.

During these years and until the early 90’s, the future President taught at the University of Economics, worked in several companies, and conducted research. Zeman got involved in politics right before the liberalization and the Velvet Divorce, the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia. Between 1990 and 1992, Zeman was a member of the last convocation of the Parliament of Czechoslovakia. After the dissolution of the country, the future President would step up his political activity and build up the center-left Czech Social Democratic Party, which had formally existed until the 1940’s.

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ČSSD would grow in popularity and eventually become represented in the Parliament.

Zeman’s distinctive temper and quarrelsome disposition were already becoming apparent at that time. Despite the party’s success, Zeman’s political career was a series of ups and downs. Between 1996 and 1998, he chaired the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, but lost his post as the head of the ČSSD in 2001. After the Senate election, which proved unfortunate for his party, Miloš Zeman voluntarily left all his posts, and ran for President in 2003. However, his success was thwarted by disagreements within his own party, and Václav Klaus won the presidential race instead. In 2007, Zeman left ČSSD because of fierce disagreements with the new party leaders, only to form a new political party two years later: the center-left Party of Civic Rights – Zemanovci (Strana Práv Občanů ZEMANOVCI — SPOZ).

It was only ten years later, in 2013, that Zeman would finally fulfill his ambition and become President. Even so, the President’s post in the parliamentary Czech Republic is secondary to that of the Prime Minister. The President acts largely in a representative capacity, which is often the reason behind Zeman’s provocative statements — since everyone, including Zeman

himself, are aware that his words would not be followed by action. There would be no point in listing all of the Czech President’s attacks against Ukraine, nor his statements in support of Putin’s politics, as Zeman’s controversial statements regularly sends shockwaves through the media.

Essentially, the Ukrainian-Russian conflict is not the main reason behind Zeman’s position. Instead, we should consider the President’s personality: forceful, provocative, and close-minded. Zeman shares many personal traits with Vladimir Putin, while his left-wing ideas and affinity with the Czech Communist Party dictate his animosity towards the new Ukraine, with its anti-communist initiatives and lack of left-wing forces in the political sphere. This dislike is furthered by Russian propaganda, which paints Ukrainian politics as dominated by the right-wing radicals detested by Zeman.

Apart from Zeman, there are other more-or-less pro-Russian politicians in the Czech Republic: such as Jiri Vyvadil, head of Friends of Russia in the Czech Republic; or President Václav Klaus’ former press-secretary Peter Hajek, with his Protiproud portal. The ex-President himself, a known Euroskeptic, has also made numerous statements in support of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, even though his rhetoric is usually softer and more flexible compared to that of

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other Czech “friends” of Russia, and is sooner a criticism of the EU and the new Ukrainian government than direct support for Putin.

Jaroslav Foldyna, a social-democratic MP, is another example of a pro-Russian politician. Known for his dislike of right-wing forces, this long-time ally and former party fellow of Miloš Zeman often makes even harsher statement than the President himself. Businesses with interests in the East are also pragmatically pro-Russian. Finally, with 15% of seats in the Parliament, Communists also have a strong influence, and recently blocked the ratification of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement.

Does Ukraine have any way to influence these sentiments? Overall, the anti-Ukrainian position assumed by the small yet loud part of the Czech political elite is easily understood. The problem goes beyond the Russian propaganda, the lobbies, and the omnipresent influence of Gazprom — even through all these factors are present in the Czech Republic and many other European countries. The cause of anti-Ukrainian (yet not necessarily pro-Russian) sentiments among the Czechs is the long-standing image of Ukraine as the supplier of unqualified immigrants. In this aspect, everything depends on the Ukrainian government, whose ability to carry out reforms and lead

Ukraine out of economic distress would immediately improve the attitude towards Ukrainians in the Czech Republic. Czech businessmen who have dealings with Russia are not an immediate concern, since Russia, balancing on the brink of economic collapse and sinking into recession, is becoming less and less attractive of a business partner for the Czechs. Gazprom’s pressure will steadily decrease as fuel prices continue to drop. Even without these inevitable trends, Russia’s positions in the Czech Republic do not present a threat to Ukraine.

The Czech Republic’s center-left ruling coalition, which consists of the Social Democratic Party, ANO 2011, and the Christian and Democratic Union, firmly sticks to a unified pro-Ukrainian position adopted by the EU and the Visegrad Four, as does the Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka. The Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs consistently offers comments on the President’s statements, emphasizing that they reflect strictly his personal opinions. As in Hungary, the economy rules the day, and no one in the Czech Republic wishes to endanger cooperation with Europe for the sake of maintaining relations with a stagnating eastern country. This rational approach is backed up by the results of numerous social polls, which show that most Czechs support

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the European and Euro-Atlantic course. Despite a certain antipathy for Ukraine, most are not sympathetic to Russia, either, believing it to be an aggressive state with a low standard of living. This fear of Russia is common, even among citizens with leftist and Communist views.

All these factors indicate that in order to maintain and develop bilateral relations with the Czech Republic, Ukraine should continue cooperating with the ruling coalition, do more to combat Russian propaganda, and step up its informational and diplomatic effort to promote a positive image of Ukraine in the Czech media space. Overcoming the economic crisis and putting a start to sustainable growth of the Ukrainian economy will also positively contribute to pro-Ukrainian sympathy – not just in the Czech Republic, but in other European countries as well.

The only factor that remains hard to influence is the strong Communist party, whose sentiments are not necessarily pro-Russian, but definitely strongly anti-Ukrainian, because of the new Ukrainian government’s anti-Communist initiatives. A partial solution for that problem would be the emergence of at least one left-wing political force with socialist or social-democratic views in the Ukrainian political field, with a constructive agenda aimed towards the interests of a unified, pro-European Ukraine. For the same reason, more effort should be focused on cooperation with Czech politics and media, to combat the image of Ukraine imposed by Russian propaganda. Otherwise, said image — that of a lair of the victorious ultra-rights — will inevitably continue inspiring animosity in the Czech Republic’s strong left-wing political forces and their voters.

ince the start of Russian aggression in Ukraine, Hungary has been rightfully

considered the main outpost of Russian influence in the EU. The ruling Euroskeptics headed by the Prime Minister Viktor Orbán are regularly issuing provocative statements in support of Putin’s policy and demonstrating their animosity to the European foreign policy in general and the EU’s sanctions in particular. Russia has other allies in Europe, but Hungary can be rightfully considered number one among them (bar the non-EU Serbia). However, is the pro-Russian orientation of Orbán and other Hungarian politics as straightforward as it seems? To answer this question, let us consider Hungarian political strongmen, starting with the European Union’s main enfant terrible, the Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán.

The political career of the current head of the Hungarian

government is rooted in the times of the socialist Hungarian People’s Republic. The future Hungarian leader appeared on the political arena in the late 1980’s, the crisis time for the socialist camp.

Viktor Orbán was born May 31, 1963 in Székesfehérvár. After doing military service between 1981 and 1982, he went to study law in the Budapest University, from which he graduated in 1987, on the eve of the revolutionary events. While working as a sociologist in an institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, Orbán started taking an interest in the progressively livelier political life of the country. In March 1988, he became one of the founding members of the Fidesz party. In 1989, the last year of János Kádár’s communist regime, Viktor Orbán becomes a nationally known after making a speech at the reburial of Imre Nagy and other activists executed in 1958 after the quelling of the anti-Communist uprising.

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Orbán’s call for a free election and removal of Soviet forces from Hungary struck a chord with many of his compatriots.

By 1990, Orbán, now a member of the Parliament, becomes head of Fidesz, transforming the party from a liberal political force to a right-wing conservative one. After waiting out the rebirth of the previous ruling Hungarian Socialist Party, caused by the public’s disappointment in the liberal reforms and a drastic drop in the quality of life, Orbán leads Fidesz to a parliamentary election victory, with 44% of votes. Thus, in 1998, after forming and becoming head of the government, the 35-year Orbán becomes the youngest Prime Minister in Hungary’s modern history.

The rule of Fidesz brought certain improvements: primarily, decreased inflation and budget deficit, and sustainable economic growth achieved through lower taxes and social fees. However, the political changes were much more tangible. Promoting the German government model, where the Prime Minister has the leading role, Orbán carried out a radical reform of the government staff, greatly increasing the importance of the Prime Minister’s office and government, and weakening the Parliament. This received strong

criticisms from the opposition, which perceived saw authoritarian aspirations in the Prime Minister’s actions, and not without cause.

In 2002, Fidesz loses the elections, and Orbán retires from his position to join the opposition to the social-liberal coalition. His conservative and populist rhetoric becomes more and more inclined towards ethno-nationalism. Orbán’s pan-Hungarian statements start stirring unease in the neighboring countries with large Hungarian expat communities – first of all, Slovakia.

In 2010, still reeling from the global economic recession, Hungary votes for Fidesz again, along with their more radical right-wing populism allies, the nationalist party Jobbik. Viktor Orbán becomes Prime Minister again.

Orbán’s “Second Coming” is hallmarked by increased nationalist tendencies and an all-round crackdown. Unwilling to share power with Jobbik, Orbán decides to outdo them in terms of nationalism and thus win a larger share of voters. The first and the most symbolic step on this new course is the change in the name of the state: from “the Hungarian Republic” to “Hungary.” This change aimed to expand the Hungarian community’s orbit

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beyond the country’s population, and to include all Hungarians living abroad. June 4th, the day of the 1920’s Treaty of Trianon, after which Hungary ceded parts of its territory to Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia, is proclaimed the National Unity Day. Constitutional amendments established the dominance of Christianity in the country, which contributed to clericalization of the society and the resulting legal ban on abortions. Monuments to Communist figures were summarily torn down, replaced by images of Miklós Horthy, an ultra-right dictator and an ally of Hitler. The finishing touches of Orbán’s great-power policy included restrictions for the media (a mandatory demand to share the ideas of Hungarian solidarity and identity), and legalization of firearms, which gave a great boost to informal paramilitary groups with largely nationalist and anti-Romani sentiments. With the start of the Ukrainian crisis, Orbán made several loud statements about the need to grant autonomy to Hungarians in Zakarpattia (the Transcarpathian region), and spoke out in support of the annexation of Crimea and of Putin’s policy in Ukraine. The April 2014 parliamentary election showed a drop in Fidesz’ popularity, but did not take the Prime Minister’s seat

away from Orbán. However, at the same election, Orbán’s ideological “partners” in Jobbik were even more popular, which shows that Hungarians may be growing weary of Orbán, but the seeds of his nationalism had landed on fertile soil.

Let us turn our attention to another well-known Euroskeptic, another of Fidesz’ founding fathers — László Kövér, the Speaker of the Hungarian Parliament. This ally of Orbán’s was born in 1959 in Pápa. In the power architecture constructed by Orbán, where the Parliament is weak and pliable, Kövér is a purely technical figure, and any statements made by him can be readily attributed to the all-powerful Prime Minister himself. In October 2014, Kövér caused a media uproar by showering criticisms on the EU and NATO, accusing Brussels of dictatorial ambitions, attacking the sanctions policy, and speaking about the possible departure of Hungary from the EU — which, he believes, is becoming more reminiscent of the USSR. Kövér’s statements were backed by Tamás Deutsch, Hungary’s representative in the European Parliament. Deutsch noted, among others, that “European values are very far from us.” This statement was widely criticized by the opposition parties, who wanted a response from

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Orbán, demanding that he makes it clear whether Hungary’s main partner is Brussels or Moscow.

And yet, Orbán remained silent.

Another one of Orbán’s “talking heads” is János Áder, a Fidesz member elected as the President of Hungary in 2012 through a parliamentary vote. Being a symbolic figure with very little real authority, Áder has frequently acted as a yes-man for Viktor Orbán’s nationalist statements. In 2013, at the celebration of the National Unity Day instituted by the Prime Minister, the President announced that Hungarians cannot come to terms with the Treaty of Trianon. It bears noting that this statement was made during a tour of the President’s Budapest residence, organized for children of Hungarian expat communities, including those from Ukraine.

One does not require much specialized knowledge or expertise to see the parallels between the state model created by Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and a certain country located some 1000 kilometers to the east. A conservative and nationalist rhetoric combined with unbridled populism, authoritarian governance methods, crackdown on the media, and the feeding of revanchist hysteria – all of these are equally present in the regime of

Viktor Orbán and that of Vladimir Putin. Extra similarities come in the form of disregard for law, total corruption, and the cynical pragmatism of the ruling elite. Orbán and Putin are similar in their prioritization of personal gain and cold calculation for any decision, above and beyond any norms of law or moral principles. However, this very same pragmatism also conceals the main hurdle in the way of a Russian-Hungarian union.

The Hungarian ruling clique, Orbán included, are extremely rational. Similarly to the Russian elite, they equate their personal interests and those of the state. This means that Hungarian politics clearly view any real alliance with Moscow as a dead end. Orbán definitely sees the prospects of some collaboration with Russia, particularly in the fuel and energy sector. He also is unwilling to lose his biggest trading partner outside the EU – especially knowing that Putin, after hitting some troubled waters, will readily offer Budapest many favors and preferences in exchange for ostentatious benevolence. However, a closer look will show that Orbán’s “anti-European” rhetoric is purely populist, with zero economical or political foundation. Cold pragmatic logic tells the autocratic Prime Minister that an EU and


NATO member sitting smack in the middle of a united Europe has no alternative attraction poles — at least until some systemic disintegration becomes apparent in the EU. But even in that unlikely scenario, Budapest is much more likely to find a major partner in the financially equipped Washington rather than in the economically beleaguered Moscow. Orbán’s skilled political games put one in mind of the Belarusian President Lukashenko, who is doing similar dances within the Moscow-created Eurasian Economic Union. But, just like Lukashenko, Orbán is tied to the “mothership” by many economic strings, and his talk of anything bigger than situational political maneuvers should not be taken seriously. Further proof of this came during multiple votes for the next set of sanctions against Russia, when Orbán’s “pro-Putin” Hungary would vote in favor of the measures previously denounced by it as “counter-productive.” Meanwhile, statements in support of Putin’s actions in Crimea and eastern

Ukraine are thrown into sharp contrast by the official position of the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs — which does not accept the Crimean referendum as legitimate.

Perhaps, on a personal level, Orbán, being a pragmatic cynic, is drawn to the similarly cynical and pragmatic Putin — but his final choice is never in favor of the second best.

Considering all of the above, it becomes clear that in order to keep Hungary within the EU’s generally pro-Ukrainian foreign policy course, Ukraine must simply raise this issue in Brussels more often. Even without any diplomatic efforts on our behalf, Orbán’s real policy in most key issues will remain anti-Russian. Different scenarios are only possible in case of serious economic trouble in the EU combined with stabilization and/or growth in Russia (while the opposite remains true at this time). This is the only profitable option – and for the ruling leaders of Fidesz, profit remains above all.

It is just good business.

n August 20, 2015, the Prime Minister of Greece Alexis Tsipras resigned, announcing

early elections scheduled for Sep-tember 20. That marked the end of another act of the lingering Greek tragedy, as well as the end of the brief but politically intense rule of the in-flammatory radical left populists of the Syriza party, over whom the os-tentatious Prime Minister, after ar-riving at the painful agreements with the EU, had de facto lost control.

Overall, Tsipras’ brief triumph turned out to be a failed bluff, in al-most every aspect. The road to pow-er is often paved with populism, yet the harsh realities are often quick to bring the winner back to the ground, and the realities of today’s Greece are harsher than ever. But even though Tsipras’ cooperation with Putin’s Russia turned out to be more show than real foreign policy — as did many of his other moves — the ques-tion of Greece’s sympathies remains a certain risk for Ukraine. Recent deci-

sions to provide air corridors for Rus-sian aviation en route to Syria, made after Tsipras’ resignation and despite the US pressure, point to the presence of a powerful Russian lobby and the remaining pro-Russian sympathies among the ruling elite. For Ukraine, Greece’s current foreign policy is a relevant concern: first of all, because of Greece being one of the countries blocking the Ukraine-EU associa-tion agreement, and because of this country’s general animosity towards European unity. There is also another important aspect to consider: Greece, with its colossal, chronic economic troubles and unmanageable debt, can serve as a textbook of sorts for Ukraine, which is at the risk of facing the same challenges for a number of reasons. To avoid repeating the same sad Hellenic story, we should closely consider today’s Greece and its most recent history.

Strong leftist sympathies among the population of Greece are hardly news. The current Greek state has formed after WW2, when Greece,

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newly liberated from the German, Italian, and Bulgarian occupants, immediately sank into a bloody civil conflict between the pro-Communist powers supported by Stalin’s USSR, and the monarchist government’s troops, backed by the USA and Great Britain. The government’s triumph set the course for the country: NATO membership and European integra-tion. However, it was not long before the cradle of democracy abandoned Western values. After the 1967 coup, the country was ruled by a military junta, the so-called Regime of the Colonels. This military dictator-ship was only overthrown in 1974. Following the transitional period dubbed the Metapolitefsi, Greece became a parliamentary republic. In 1981, leftist forces — the social-ist party PASOK — came to power, ready to make up for the long years of being banned and forced under-ground. A course towards the social-ist state was announced.

During the decades that followed the fall of the Regime of the Colonels, socialist and right-wing forces (the New Democracy party) took their turns in the government, but in their attempt to look better than the other before the voters, both essentially pursued the same course – populism. Global eco-nomic growth allowed both left- and right-wing populists to inflate social programs to ridiculous proportions, while Greece’s real economy remained

vulnerable and poorly diversified. The peak of this ephemeral prosperity came around 2004. The global real es-tate bubble was still growing, and with it, Greece’s pensions, benefits, bureau-cracy and corruption. Then, as soon as 2008, the US mortgage credit crunch brought Greece to the brink of disaster and to the endless economic nightmare that is still not over. Thus started the long stand-off between the Greek gov-ernment, the Greek and European bu-reaucracy, the growing debt, the credit and budget problems… New Democ-racy’s right-wing government fell, to be replaced by the lefts, who, in turn, gave way to New Democracy again. Finally, along came Alexis Tsipras’ Syriza.

The future enfant terrible of mod-ern European politics and the leader of the radical left coalition started his political career while still in school. Born in 1974, the year of the military dictatorship’s fall, Tsipras grew up to become a typical representative of the new-wave politicians. Like many others, he was molded by the rejuve-nated social and political landscape that followed the end of the Regime of the Colonels, and plunged head-first into the leftist ideas that became the next big thing after many years of ultra-right authoritarianism.

Greece’s future Prime Minister was the youngest child in the family, growing up with two older siblings and doting parents. Young Alexis spent his childhood in the Ambelok-

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ipi district of Athens, where he grad-uated from a regular local school. Tsipras became interested in politics at a very young age, and avidly read all political newspapers and maga-zines that his father brought home.

In late 1980’s, Tsipras joined the youth chapter of the Communist Par-ty of Greece, and first drew attention to himself in early 1990’s, when he took part in student protests against the education reform. After getting a taste for popularity as a protest activ-ist and street politician, Tsipras was active in the student union during his time in the National Technical University of Athens, where he ma-jored in civil engineering.

After the dissolution of the Communist Party of Greece, Tsipras joined Synaspismos, a movement of radical lefts and “greens,” which would eventually become the foun-dation for Syriza. Starting out as the secretary of the youth chapter of Synaspismos, Tsiprar quickly moved through the party’s ranks, with the help from the Synaspismos leader Alekos Alavanos. In 2006, the young and charismatic radical ran for the Mayor’s office in Athens and, to everyone’s surprise, came in third in that race. In 2008, Alavanos backed Tsipras again, surrendering to him the post of the leader of Sy-naspismos, which Alavanos himself would leave — ironically, because of the disagreements with Tsipras

about Greece’s European perspec-tives. Tsipras, not too saddened by the departure of his sponsor, breezed through the elections in the capital and soon became the leader of his party’s parliamentary faction.

Once comfortable in his role as the party leader, Tsipras showered his opponents with leftist popu-list rhetoric, which quickly gained him popularity and attracted the attention of his leftist European colleagues. Tired of the right-wing government’s austerity measures, Greeks quickly took Tsipras’ critical statements to heart. After a success-ful election in 2012, Tsipras’ party, now called Syriza (the Coalition of the Radical Left), becomes the largest opposition force in Greece. Tsipras, with his great experience in street protests and soapbox rhetoric, never ceases telling people exactly what they wish to hear: he prom-ises an increase in social standards, as well as help for the unemployed and the socially vulnerable, while blaming the prolonged economic crisis on the EU and the IMF. Con-tinuously dodging the questions about the real causes of the reces-sion, Tsipras easily takes advantage of the disappointment in the ranks of voters, who do not see any posi-tive effect of the unpopular neolib-eral reforms. Syriza’s election victo-ry comes easy, but its leader would soon realize that actually running a


debt-ridden state is much more dif-ficult than sweet-talking his voters.

At first glance, Tsipras’ ascent to power did not bode well for Ukraine, in light of the conflict with Russia. Syriza has long cooperated with the Kremlin; the Greek Prime Minister frequently visited Moscow and met with Putin; and one of the radical lefts’ declared goals was the refusal of sanctions against Russia. The Greek Minister for Foreign Affairs, Nikos Kotzias, a close friend of the Russian ultra-nationalist Alexander Dugin, said he did not understand the EU’s position, and was quoted speaking in support of the federalization of Ukraine. His words rang in unison with the statements of other Syriza representatives, who on multiple oc-casions supported Russia and pro-Russian militants in Ukraine, as well as Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Nevertheless, the political sym-pathies of Tsipras and his loyalists turned out to be the same as his campaign rhetoric – a grandiose and desperate bluff. During his short term in office, Tsipras was constantly upping the stakes in his confronta-tion with European institutions, pandering to Moscow, threatening the destruction of the eurozone, and attempting to blackmail the EU, un-derstanding that Greece’s collapse would be a heavy ordeal for the entire European Union. As befits a politician tracing his roots to street

protests, Tsipras won the voters’ sup-port at the referendum, which gave him grounds to keep dropping hints that the people are with him, that his threats are serious, and that he is prepared to go the distance. How-ever, in the end, hiding behind the mask of a radical left was a rational, level-headed politician, who was forced to accept the reality. There is nothing shocking about that. Mem-bers of Tsipras’ circle describe him as a calm and composed person, one who can both listen and keep the di-alogue rolling. The greatest strengths of the Greek Prime Minister are said to be his ability to keep his eye on the prize, and the skill to pick the right team, where everyone’s tasks perfectly match their talents. Far from his public image of a radical madman and dreamer, it is unlikely that a man like this was truly consid-ering pushing Greece into a gamble with an uncertain outcome.

After agreeing to the creditors’ terms, Tsipras lost the support of a part of his electorate and was forced to resign, announcing early elections for his replacement. Thus ended the dream of social fairness and easy solutions for complicated problems, and Syriza, built upon populism, fell apart. The mandate for creating a temporary government went to Van-gelis Meimarakis, Tsipras’ counter-part from the competing right-wing New Democracy.

19THE GREEK TRAGEDY, OR THE PRICE OF POPULISM

Born in 1953 in Athens, Mei-marakis joined New Democracy in 1974, the year when Tsipras was born and the Regime of the Colonels fell. Similarly to his opponent, Mei-marakis was active in student unions during his years in Athens’ Panteion University, and then held multiple positions in New Democracy’s right-wing governments. Meimarakis took over New Democracy after the par-ty’s leader and former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras resigned following the referendum in which the major-ity of Greeks supported Tsipras. At the time, the vote seemed like a pain-ful defeat for New Democracy — but in the end, Tsipras’ bluff resulted in a triumph for the rights. Meimarakis, being a level-headed and composed old-school politician, immediately announced an end to the lefts’ exper-iments with the country, and a return to the policy of compromise and co-operation with European and global financial institutions.

Yet this lull may be short-lived.The rights’ victory at the up-

coming election will be relative. It is most likely that the new govern-ment will be a coalition of New De-mocracy and Syriza, in which the lefts and the rights will have to co-operate. It is possible, while not very probable, that Tsipras will return as Prime Minister, unless, of course, he chooses to remain in the more fa-miliar role of the universally critical

opposition populist. Either way, the uniting factor for Greek politicians right now is the need to accept real-ity – the inevitable cooperation with the EU and international financial organizations, the continued painful transformations, and the Euro-At-lantic course as the single option for the country. However, it is too early to celebrate Greece’s departure from the radical lefts’ pro-Russian rheto-ric and Euroskepticism, because the reasons behind those trends are still present. Besides, the right wing of Greek politicians is also prone to Eu-roskepticism. This applies even to the moderate part of the political spec-trum, let alone such clearly neo-Nazi movements as Nikolaos Michalolia-kos’ “Golden Dawn,” which is rep-resented in both the Greek and the European Parliaments, and openly supported by the Kremlin.

The Hellenic Republic remains a state suffering from systemic eco-nomic problems, blatant corruption, and bureaucracy — which makes its elite psychologically similar to those of Ukraine’s aggressive eastern neighbor. In the end, Tsipras’s actions were guided by simple calculation. After driving the Russian economy, already ailing from the dropping hydrocarbon prices, further into the sanction pit, Putin would never be able to offer the chronically poor Greece anywhere as much as the EU. However, the European refugee crisis


might give a new nudge to Greece’s search for alternative foreign policy landmarks. For the EU, which is already suffering from centrifugal processes and the growing influ-ence of Euroskeptics, this trial may become fatal. For the first time in its history, EU is facing a real threat of disintegration or rebirth into a CIS-like amorphous structure. Should this unfortunate scenario unfold, the powerful Russian lobby will definitely increase its pressure on Greece, acting, among others, via Cyprus. Combined with the elite’s strong pro-Russian sympathies and the growing radicalization of the population, those efforts might push Greece into Putin’s embrace — and

his decreased economic resources might still look more appealing than those of the collapsing Euro-pean Union. Whether this negative scenario will be avoided depends on the European leaders’ ability to tackle the latest challenge without destroying European unity for rea-sons of national ego, as Tsipras had nearly done. In the meantime, re-gardless of the prospects faced by Greece and the EU, Ukraine should draw valuable lessons from the lat-est act of the ongoing Greek tragedy, and learn to keep within its means, despite any discomfort that brings. Otherwise, the price of many years of populism and irresponsibility may turn out too high in the end.

government pursuing a “multi-vector course” is deposed. The new au-thorities declare a turn

of the foreign policy in the western direction. A powerful neighbor, tak-ing advantage of the instability, con-fusion, and the sympathies of a large part of the country’s population, performs a military intervention and annexes a share of the territory…

All of the above can be read as an episode of Ukraine’s contempo-rary history — however, the exact same scenario unfolded in Cyprus. Considering the events of the recent years in Ukraine, Cyprus’ recent his-tory and current situation can be viewed as one of the possible courses of our ongoing conflict with Russia, as well as one of the ways for its sta-bilization. It is particularly important now, when Cyprus, for the first time in decades, appears to have a shot at reunification.

The schism of this island state is rooted in the 1970’s, even through inter-communal conflict was al-

ready brewing in the previous dec-ade, at least since Cyprus declared independence in 1960. Disagree-ments between Turkish and Greek politics, spurred on by both coun-tries, resulted in the creation of radical armed groups — the Greek EOKA and the Turkish TMT — and brought the island to the brink of civil war. Sporadic inter-ethnic clashes started in 1964. The tightly wound spring of this conflict finally gave way when the Greek military junta took a radical step and staged a coup in Cyprus. The moderate Pres-ident Archbishop Makarios III was deposed, to be replaced by Nikos Sampson, the leader of the radical EOKA and an advocate of “enosis,” or reunification with Greece, an idea that was popular among the Greek population. In response to that and under the pretext of protecting the Turkish community, Turkey started a full-scale military intervention, occupying the northern part of the island after brief combat. Direct conflict between the two NATO

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members was avoided through the efforts of the USA and the UK – but Greece temporarily left NATO as protest against the organization’s in-ability to resolve the situation.

In 1983, the territories occupied by Turkey proclaimed themselves as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a state that remains unrec-ognized by everyone but Turkey to this day. Under international law, the Republic of Cyprus retains sover-eignty over its entire territory within the pre-1974 borders. According to the United Nations Security Coun-cil Resolution 541 of November 18, 1983, the Turkish Republic of North-ern Cyprus is an illegal formation, and Turkish troops must be removed from the territory of Cyprus. De fac-to, the conflict has been frozen ever since.

Naturally, several attempts were made to leave this longstanding dead end, but all of them failed. The highest-profile failure was the An-nan Plan, proposed by the UN Sec-retary General at the time, which entailed de facto federalization of the island. At the 2004 referendum, the Turkish population of the un-recognized republic voted their ap-proval of Kofi Annan’s plan – while the Greek population largely voted no. Thus the status quo remained. While this was happening, the di-vided island’s economic model be-came closely intertwined with off-

shore investments, which became an important factor for Cyprus’ for-eign policy.

Another massive influence on the foreign policy of the Republic of Cyprus comes from its nearest neigh-bor and ally, Greece. However, one cannot claim that Cyprus’ political vector fully follows that of Athens — that would mean disregarding the influence of Turkey, which still occu-pies the northern part of the island. After often landing between a rock and a hard place in the past, Cyprus has settled in a tradition of seeking support from major powers capable of influencing Greece and Turkey alike, suppressing their conflict po-tential. Such powers include the UK, a former colonial power that still has several military bases on Cyprus, as well as the USA and Russia.

The Russian lobby in Cyprus is immensely powerful. By the EU’s standards, Russia’s level of influence here is truly unprecedented. The rea-sons behind it are the huge amounts of Russian offshore capitals, as well as by Russian tourism (Russian tour-ists, were a massive contribution to the island republic’s budget, account-ing for up to a quarter of all tourists in Cyprus back in the day). The re-lations between Moscow and Nico-sia reached the highest point during the administration of the previous President of Cyprus, the Communist Dimitris Christofias.

23THE ISLE OF DISCORD. THE BROKEN CYPRUS AS A CASE STUDY FOR UKRAINE

Born in 1946 in the village of Dhikomo in the northern part of Cyprus, Christofias held leftist views from an early age, and joined the youth chapter of the Progressive Party of Working People of Cyprus (AKEL). In his adolescent years, he spent his summer holidays working and was no stranger to hardships. At fourteen, Christofias joined the Pan-cyprian National Organization of Pupils (PEOM). In 1964, he became member of the Progressive Party of Working People of Cyprus (AKEL), the Pancyprian Federation of Labor (PEO), and the United Democratic Youth Organisation (EDON). In 1969, at the 5th Congress of EDON, the future president was elected member of the Central Council.

Between 1969 and 1974, Christo-fias studied in Moscow, and got his Ph.D. in history in the Academy of Social Studies in Moscow. From the 1960’s, he had moved through the ranks of AKEL until becoming the party’s leader in 1988, after the death of his predecessor and mentor Eze-kias Papaioannou.

On June 7, 2001, Christofias was elected Member of the House of Rep-resentatives of Cyprus, and success-fully re-elected six years later. Two years after that, Christofias became President.

The main items of his program were reuniting the island through constructive dialogue, preserving a

neutral foreign policy, and refusing NATO membership. In 2011, Christ-ofias vetoed the Parliament’s resolu-tion to join the Partnership for Peace program. In 2014, no longer Presi-dent, he met with the head of the an-nexed Crimea and recognized it as belonging to the Russian Federation.

Christofias’ rule did not bring reunification, even though his nego-tiations with Mehmet Ali Talat, the president of the unrecognized Turk-ish Republic of Northern Cyprus did warm up the inter-communal rela-tions and contributed to looser ac-cess and trade control at their joint border. Cyprus’ friendly attitude to-wards Moscow also facilitated trade, and by 2008, Cyprus was among the top investors in the Russian econo-my. The amount of investment into Russia from Cyprus (and, more sig-nificantly, through Cyprus) was over USD 40 billion in 2008, out of the USD 200 billion total.

The same year’s banking crisis shoot Cyprus’ economy to its very core, which only increased the Rus-sian influence. Christofias, blamed for the economic collapse, refused to run for office the second time, and was replaced by Nicos Anastasiades in 2013.

Unlike his predecessor, Anasta-siades holds pro-Western views. The current President was born in 1946, the same year as Christofias, in the southern part of Cyprus, studied


law in the University of Athens, and got a postgraduate degree from the University College London. Anasta-siades was first voted into the Parlia-ment of Cyprus in 1981, and has been the leader of DISY (the Democratic Rally) since June 8, 1997. He was the initiator of the resolution to join Partnership for Peace (which was ve-toed by Christofias), and promised to immediately start the process of Cyprus’ accession to NATO if elected President. Today, Cyprus remains the only EU state that is not a mem-ber of the PfP.

After winning the election, Ana-stasiades made some changes to his rhetoric, promising to increase coop-eration with the USA, but “without prejudice towards Russia,” and drop-ping the question of NATO member-ship. Furthermore, in the middle of the EU’s sanction policies and the ongoing Western campaign to iso-late Russia because of its aggression against Ukraine, Anastasiades point-edly maintains friendly relations with Putin. In February 2015, the two presidents met in Moscow. The meeting was followed by a number of loud assurances of cooperation, up to and including Russian military bases on Cyprus. Soon after that, the Cyp-riot President denied these claims, saying that the discussion only con-cerned providing additional capaci-ties for Russian humanitarian opera-tions (read: transfer of supplies and

weapons to Syria) at the Paphos air-port and the port of Limassol. Putin faced a new challenge from his big-gest and most dangerous enemy — the economy.

Mutual trade between Cyprus and Russia started inevitably decreas-ing due to the latter’s sharp economic decline. Numbers of Russian tourists fell as well. Even the possibility of lobbying Russian interests through oligarch’s capitals shrunk somewhat, due to Putin’s “deoffshorization” policy – which, decorative though it may be, shook up the oligarch’s po-sitions in Cyprus. Meanwhile, the island republic is undergoing diffi-cult times. Its economy has been in recession since 2011, and chances for growth remain tenuous even today. Cyprus has been receiving economic aid since 2013 — from the EU, rather than from its Russian “partners” who are not doing too well themselves.

As a result, Cyprus is pursuing a policy typical for Russia’s so-called “friends” in Europe. It slams sanc-tions publicly, while doing noth-ing to hamper their adoption and extension, and does not follow its loud statements by actions. Overall, the role of the Republic of Cyprus in European politics should not be overestimated. It is a clearly pe-ripheral state which is undergoing a grave economic crisis, together with the rest of the EU’s south. Besides, Cyprus’ current focus is indisput-

25THE ISLE OF DISCORD. THE BROKEN CYPRUS AS A CASE STUDY FOR UKRAINE

ably turned to internal issues, and any radical moves can get in the way of the island’s possible reunification, which remains the Cypriot politi-cians’ major focus. That is particu-larly relevant now that the elections in the north of Cyprus have been won by Mustafa Akıncı, who leans in favor of reunification. The possible federative reorganization of Cyprus will clearly contribute to Turkey’s increased influence on the future unified state. Russian-Turkish rela-tions merit their own research, but the two are far from being allies, and a greater pull of Istanbul in Nicosia will hardly increase the Kremlin’s role in Cyprus.

It is obvious that relations with Cyprus are far from being a top pri-ority in Ukraine’s foreign policy, and neither do they need to be. However, considering certain trends in the south of Europe, such as the rule of radical lefts in Greece and the pos-sible ascension to power of similar forces in Spain, there exists a poten-tial for emergence of a Mediterrane-an belt of countries that will oppose Brussels. One of the ways to do so would be by playing the Russian card now and again, therefore weakening the unified (if with caveats) Europe-an position on the Russian-Ukrain-ian conflict. Cyprus may easily end up among these countries, and that

is something we should do our best to prevent.

After all, Ukrainian oligarchs also store their money in Cyprus-based offshore companies, so Ukraine also has certain leverage in this region.

The story of the Cypriot struggle for a reunified state deserves separate mention. Whatever the outcome of this struggle, we must pay attention to the actual process, where no one is chasing after immediate “restoration of territorial integrity” at the cost of national interests — provided the two parts of the once-united country remain at peace with each other and continue cooperating. At the same time, Cyprus is showcasing another risk that is relevant for Ukraine, the gradual devaluing of its sovereignty under the influence of external forc-es and in the light of ongoing inter-nal dissent. Retaining one’s political identity in a divided state influenced by powerful external forces is a chal-lenge, one that Cyprus addressed by creating a favorable investment cli-mate and an economy that allowed it to remain afloat without foreign debt, up until the most recent economic cataclysms. Even now, economically, Cyprus is faring much better than the neighboring Greece.

In this aspect, Ukraine should definitely take a leaf out of Cyprus’ book.

f all geographically Euro-pean countries that were not part of the Soviet Un-ion, Serbia is traditional-

ly considered Russia’s most consistent and loyal ally. Serbia views Russia as its historical ally, and the reasons be-hind that are more than historical. The emergence of Serbia and the Russian Federation as sovereign states took place under similar conditions. The two countries’ leaderships perceive themselves as the “wronged” descend-ants of larger formations — the USSR and Yugoslavia, respectively — where they used to play a dominant cultural, economical, and political role. Serbia and Russia also share their traditional animosity towards the West in gen-eral and NATO in particular. Serbia, whose leaders often positioned their state as an Orthodox Slavic stronghold besieged by the hostile West, would invariably seek support from Russia, a powerful eastern state with a similar flavor of ideology.

Mutual diplomatic curtseys be-tween the two became common-

place. On a lower level, “coopera-tion” manifested in Russia sending its militant units sent to the war-torn Bosnia and Croatia in the nineties — a favor which Serbia returned by re-cently sending its radicals to Donbas, where they actively assisted pro-Rus-sian separatist armed gangs. Howev-er, is the Serbian-Russian alliance as strong as it seems, and does their co-operation extend past nostalgia and symbolic gestures?

After the animosity with the West reached its peak in the late 1990’s, followed by the removal of Milošević several years later, Serbia (still “third Yugoslavia” at the time) became ruled by relatively pro-Western forces. The new President of the federation, Vo-jislav Koštunica, held generally con-servative and nationalist views, simi-larly to Milošević — but the executive power was concentrated in the hands of the Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić, one of the most pro-Western politi-cians in Serbia’s history. Never par-ticularly popular among Serbian politicians, Đinđić preferred to keep

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27SERBIA: THE ROCKY ROAD TO THE EU AS A LESSON FOR UKRAINE

a relatively low profile. He managed Koštunica’s successful presidential campaign, but the two later took op-posing sides, especially after the ex-tradition of the former Serbian lead-er Slobodan Milošević to the Hague Tribunal (done by Đinđić’s decision, which ran contrary to the President’s will). These actions caused uproar in nationalist circles. In February 2003, Koštunica left his post due to the dis-solution of the confederate union of Serbia and Montenegro. A month later, Đinđić was assassinated by a sniper — a nationalist radical, ac-cording to the official version.

The President’s post went to Bo-ris Tadić of the Democratic Party (which Đinđić and Koštunica also represented), who continued a West-bound course for the country.

Tadić was born in 1958 in Sa-rajevo. He studied social psychol-ogy in the University of Belgrade, taught psychology at the First Bel-grade Gymnasium, and was the founder and first Director of the Center for the Development of De-mocracy. Tadić had been a member of the Democratic Party since 1990, and was elected its head in 2004, a year after the assassination of Zoran Đinđić.

After the Bulldozer Revolution and the fall of Milošević, Boris Tadić served in the government of Yugo-slavia as the Minister of Telecommu-nications, between November 2000

and June 2001. In the Council of Ministers of Serbia and Montenegro that came next, he was the Minister of Defense.

Ever since his appearance on the political arena, Tadić has been and remains a strong proponent of Ser-bia’s European integration.

The Prime Minister’s post went to Koštunica, who calls himself a “moderate nationalist,” but also says that “there is no other path except to Europe.” Despite the powerful and influential nationalist opposition, the pro-European government ruled without much incident up until the Kosovo conflict in 2008. Kosovo’s proclaimed independence, recog-nized by the USA and a number of EU countries, resulted in a nation-alist uproar and an acute political crisis. Koštunica, who demanded to sever links with the European Un-ion, was opposed by the majority of the government and resigned. At the next presidential election, Boris Tadić overtook his opponent Tomis-lav Nikolić from the ultra-nationalist Radical Party of Serbia (who also ran against him in 2004), albeit by a small margin, and remained in pow-er. However, it soon became appar-ent that Serbia’s ruling pro-Western forces and their opposition are virtu-ally equal in strength, and the level of support for European integration in Serbia dropped noticeably after the EU’s policy in respect of Kosovo.


Tadić successfully followed a cautious policy where he formally refused to recognize Kosovo’s inde-pendence, while actually maintaining working relations with the adminis-tration in Pristina — but opponents of the pro-Western course viewed his actions as a blatant surrender of Serbia’s national interests. The global recession also struck a blow against Serbia, fanning the flames. Eventu-ally, the growing Euroskepticism re-sulted in the 2012 Presidential victo-ry of Tomislav Nikolić, who had lost the election twice before.

Nikolić was born February 15, 1952 in the Serbian town of Kraguje-vac. Until 1992, the future President worked in construction, and only went into politics during the politi-cal crisis and dissolution of Yugo-slavia. He first became a member of the People’s Radical Party and then, in 1991, moved to the Serbian Radi-cal Party, where he quickly advanced to the post of the first deputy head. In 1992, Nikolić was elected to the Parliament, where he led a group of radical deputies. In 1998, he became the Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia, and in 1999, Deputy Prime Minister of the Federal Republic of Yugosla-via. He ran for President in the early elections of 2000, and earned 5.79% votes, coming in third after Slobodan Milošević and Vojislav Koštunica.

On September 2008, Nikolić re-signed as deputy head of the Serbian

Radical Party because of intraparty disagreements about the Skupština vote on the ratification of the Stabi-lization and Association Agreement, signed between the EU and the Ser-bian government in late April 2008. On October 21 of the same year, Nikolić created and led his own Ser-bian Progressive Party.

Having a radical for President brought expectations of an im-pending cooldown in the relations between Serbia and the EU — per-haps going as far as refusing Euro-pean integration and strengthening the traditionally friendly connec-tions with Moscow. However, as it often happens, reality was not as straightforward, and Nikolić con-tinues pursuing the “two chairs at once” policy typical for the post-Yugoslavia Serbia.

Undoubtedly, the Serbian-Rus-sian relations are more than purely symbolic. Russia holds a lot of influ-ence and a lot of property, including key corporations (especially in the energy sector). It also does every-thing to hamper the process of in-ternational recognition of Kosovo, which remains unacceptable for any Serbian government. Serbia, in turn, refuses to join the EU’s sanc-tions against Moscow, despite the pressure from Brussels. Serbia is the only non-CIS country that has a free trade agreement with Russia. How-ever, these strong bonds are soured


by the fact that the relations between the two countries have not developed much over the decade and a half that followed the fall of Milošević. The reason for that is obvious: Moscow, stuck as a self-imposed backward resource-based economy, simply has nothing else to offer Serbia, or any of its other “friends.” As a result, not only did Tadić’s obviously pro-West-ern administration gave the West a lot of ground to join the EU, but even Nikolić, formally a nationalist, continues the same policy. However, Serbia showcases a process typical for many “second echelon” EU mem-bers — flirting with Moscow to win concessions from the EU. In Serbia’s case, these political games are tightly intertwined with the Kosovo ques-tion, which is the cornerstone of to-day’s Serbia policy, both foreign and domestic.

The Kosovo situation presents a heavy moral and psychological di-lemma to the entire Serbian com-munity, as well as any leader of the country. The forced removal of Ser-bian territory was approved by the EU and the USA, and the majority of the UN members recognized of the self-proclaimed republic. This placed Serbia before an impossibly difficult choice: to denounce its own territo-rial integrity for the sake of potential integration into the European com-munity – or to continue fighting to re-establish control over the rogue

autonomy, at the price of worsening relations with its neighbors and at the risk of economic isolation? For a weak country with a devastated, in-effectual economy, cooperation with the EU is vital, but to officially recog-nize the loss of control over Kosovo is tantamount to political suicide for any Serbian leader. Aware of these risks, all Serbian Presidents — what-ever values they preach — usually try to pass between Scylla and Cha-rybdis without many radical moves. Over time, this policy has resulted in Serbia and Kosovo de facto having relations as two independent states, which irritates a lot of the popula-tion. However, the reward for this difficult choice came in the form of the long-awaited EU candidate status granted to Serbia in 2012.

After Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Serbia, as might have been expected, took a controversial stand. On one hand, with Kosovo in mind, there is an unequivocal support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity. On the other, there are Nikolić’s visits to Moscow, Putin’s return visits to Belgrade, and some opposition to anti-Russia sanctions. Nikolić speaks about Russian military bases and the possible recognition of sovereignty of the Republika Srpska in the neigh-boring Bosnia and Herzegovina. Then he sends Prime Minister Alek-sandar Vučić to Washington, fol-lowed by statements about “lowering


Serbia’s dependence on Russian gas and diversifying their gas sources.”

Essentially, today’s Serbia is try-ing to play the same game as Mar-shall Tito’s Yugoslavia after WW2: becoming a “bridge between East and West.” In practice, this means reaping benefits from all geopoliti-cal players, whose confrontation has aggravated again, forcing them to be generous to all potential allies. The problem with this position is that modern-day Serbia is a pale shadow of Yugoslavia, with none of the lat-ter’s economic power or political gravity. Sooner or later, the Serbian leaders will have to pick one “chair” to sit on.

Some idea of this choice is already in the works. Despite its attempts to exploit the “imperial” nostalgia and pan-Slavic solidarity, Belgrade is drifting further and further towards the West. Europe, despite all of its current problems, can offer Serbia a future, while Putin’s stagnating state clearly has no intention to share its dwindling resources with a weak and ephemeral “ally” that is Serbia. In this, modern-day Russia is rather consistent – its oligarchic neo-feudal top is quick to spew great-power propaganda, but as quick to show the door to Russia’s post-Soviet allies when it comes to money.

Therefore, we do not have to fear a real increase of Russian influ-ence on Serbian policy – first of all,

because today, Russia itself is not in-terested (or cannot afford) such an increase. Nevertheless, Nikolić’s and Vučić’c steps in the Kosovo issue, which many in Serbia interpret as a national humiliation, can be viewed as a form of sacrifice made by Ser-bian leaders in exchange for some generous gestures from the West. If no such gestures are forthcoming in the next few years, Belgrade may try playing the “Slavic brotherhood” card for real this time. Especially see-ing as Serbian political leaders can be as two-faced as Ukrainian ones, and yesterday’s ardent supporters of the European course tomorrow can re-vert into passionate defenders of the “the southern Slavs’ Orthodox for-tress” against “NATO’s bloody dicta-torship.” This would not be the first turnaround like this since the fall of the Communist regime of the Social-ist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

For Ukraine, Serbia is interest-ing predominantly because it com-bines certain elements of modern Russia and Ukraine within one state. On one hand, Serbia is the re-maining centerpiece of a collapsed empire, and had assisted Serbian separatists in neighboring republics of the former Yugoslavia. On the other, it is a state that suffered exter-nal aggression and lost a part of its territory as a result of internal forces and external influences. This second aspect is the more important one for


us today. Serbia’s gradual and pain-ful farewell to the lost territories for the sake of joining a unified Europe could be a projection of the possi-ble future for Ukraine, which lost a part of its territory as a result of the neighboring Russia’s aggression and internal separatist challenges. Watching Serbia and pressured into

observing the Minsk Agreements by the West and by Moscow, Ukrain-ian society and government must ask themselves the question that all Serbian politicians must have been asking themselves for the past fif-teen years: is it worth sacrificing the foundations of national identity to draw closer to Europe?

n October 2015, Rus-sia, amid all the ac-cusation its diplomats threw at the West for

“aiding a coup in Ukraine,” suddenly received a similar blow from an un-expected direction. The government of Montenegro, another “brotherly” Orthodox ex-Yugoslavian republic, accused Russia of attempted organi-zation of a coup.

The Montenegrin government, in the person of the Prime Minister Đukanović, presented the recent un-rest in Podgorica as attempts to pre-vent the republic’s impending NATO membership by efforts of “Moscow proxy” protesters. It is worth noting that the protesters’ ranks did include many citizens with anti-NATO senti-ments, while their financial support by Russia is not outside the realm of probability. However, as it often hap-pens, these accusations may stem from two factors. One being the Montenegrin higher-ups’ inability to “see the forest for the trees,” and the other, a conscious wish to tailor the

reality to fit the trendy, and largely mythical, stereotype of “all-encom-passing Russian influence” — so as to detract the domestic and inter-national attention from a certain troubling fact. Namely, that Milo Đukanović has been in power since the late 1980’s, alternating his runs as President and Prime Minister — not unlike Vladimir Putin.

Technically, Đukanović has been in power for a longer time than Mon-tenegro has been a sovereign state.

Milo Đukanović, a key and mo-mentous figure in contemporary Montenegrin politics, was born Feb-ruary 15, 1962 in Nikšić, a town in the western part of what was then the People’s Republic of Montenegro, part of the Socialist Federal Repub-lic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). In 1986, he earned a diploma in tourist studies from Veljko Vlahović University’s Faculty of Economics in Titograd (today, the University of Montenegro in Podgorica). His fellow students recall that Đukanović, 190 cm tall, was a strong basketball player. As a

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33MONTENEGRO. THE “ETERNAL” PRIME MINISTER ON THE WAY TO NATO

politician, he would retain many of the qualities that made him a good athlete – a direct, even aggressive na-ture, and a steely character.

In 1976, Đukanović, aged four-teen, joined the Yugoslav Commu-nist League, the SFRY’s ruling party, where his father was already an in-fluential member. The future leader’s political career advanced quickly, in part owing to his father’s patronage. By 1986, Đukanović became a presi-dency member of Socialist Youth Al-liance (the Yugoslav version of Pio-neer and Komsomol organization) as well as the president of the Alliance’s Montenegrin branch.

Nicknamed Britva (“Straight Ra-zor”) for his direct and forceful char-acter, Milo rode the wave of demo-cratic processes that swept through the country, and started the so-called “anti-bureaucratic revolution,” aimed to force the “oldies” out of the repub-lic’s government. The power-hungry Đukanović received a lot of support from the new leader of the neighbor-ing Serbia, none other than Slobodan Milošević.

After chairing the presidium of the local Communist Party by the late 1980’s, the 26-year-old Đukanović became a de facto ruler of the republic – formally, holding no important position in the govern-ment, but with his people on all key posts. In 1990, Yugoslavia moved to a multi-party system, but Đukanović’s

Communist party earned an easy victory at the first free elections. In 1991, Đukanović, aged 29, became the head of the Montenegrin govern-ment and the youngest Prime Minis-ter in Europe.

A year later, going along with the anti-Communist transforma-tions, Đukanović renamed his party the Democratic Party of Socialists of Montenegro, and won another election. Enjoying his close rela-tions with the Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milošević and the Monte-negrin President Momir Bulatović, Đukanović would remain Prime Minister until 1998.

During these years, the future fer-vent supporter of NATO and Monte-negrin sovereignty spoke out against the dissolution of the federation, and supported the sending of the Mon-tenegrin military contingent, as part of Yugoslavian troops, to Croatia, which was striving for separation. At the time, the Western press often quoted Đukanović as saying he had a passionate hatred for chess: a fairly transparent allusion to the Croatian coat of arms, dominated by a red and white checkered shield.

Continuing to reap the benefits of his alliance with Slobodan Milošević, Đukanović ran for President in the 1997 election and won, despite losing the first round to Bulatović. After be-coming President, Đukanović con-tinued supporting a “united and in-


divisible Yugoslavia.” In 1999, he said that “Montenegro is not Slovenia. We are an integral part of Yugoslavia and choose to remain that way.”

However, Đukanović would change his tack when his Belgrade ally was deposed by the pro-Western Vojislav Koštunica and Zoran Đinđić. Failing to come to an understanding with the new leaders of the neighbor-ing Yugoslav republic, Đukanović changed course and headed towards Montenegrin sovereignty. In 2002, Milo left the Presidential post, only to become Prime Minister again.

After gradually loosening the union state to a state of shaky con-federacy, Đukanović held a refer-endum in 2006, and Montenegro became independent. The shift of the public opinion in favor of in-dependence was furthered by the paradoxical support of Đukanović’s loyal ally Svetozar Marović. Being President of the confederacy at the time, Marović publicly supported Montenegro’s independence, essen-tially calling for dissolution of the state he presided over.

In 2006, the opposition show-ered Đukanović with criticism when the near-eternal leader tried to be-come Minister of Defense. In re-sponse, Đukanović announced his retirement from politics, despite his party’s victory in the parliamentary elections. The former Prime Min-ister indeed would spend the fol-

lowing few years as a businessman, while his fellow party member Željko Šturanović chaired the government. According to the media and the op-ponents of the eternal leader of Mon-tenegro, Đukanović’s “business” has been and remains directly connected to organized crime gangs, based in Montenegro and smuggling Balkan tobacco to Italy.

Milo’s “retirement” did not last long, and he became Prime Minister again in 2008. In 2010, he went on a “sabbatical” again, handing over his post to another DPS member, Igor Lukšić. In 2012, despite loud protests against the permanent rule of DPS (which formally lasted since 1992, and in reality, goes as far back as 1948) and of Đukanović personally, “Britva” took back the already-famil-iar government post for the fourth time.

Clearly, Đukanović must not be underestimated. He is an autocratic Prime Minister with strong criminal connection and a long trail of cor-ruption scandals, who is not par-ticularly burdened with ideas and values of European or Euro-Atlantic solidarity. His country’s right-wing culture (typical for all Balkan states) is reminiscent of the post-Soviet political field – and in this familiar ocean of corruption, nepotism, brib-ery, and unscrupulous opportunism, Milo Đukanović is an experienced and dangerous fish. Cold and cyni-


cal calculation is the main motive behind any and all of his actions, and that makes him similar to the Rus-sian higher-ups. However, as is the case with Putin’s other “allies,” such calculation may play not in favor of Russia, but against it.

For Montenegro, surrounded by NATO countries, Alliance member-ship is largely an obvious and inevita-ble step. Podgorica frequently speaks of NATO as of “the best guarantee for our crucially important inves-tors.” If one wished, one could follow the lead of Russian media and view this statement as rife with political and economic blackmail – invest-ments in exchange for membership. One could also see similar senti-ments in the NATO leaders’ attitude towards Đukanović, who seem un-bothered by the latter’s endless rule and frequent crime-related scandals. But this is the exact Realpolitik that the Kremlin loves so much, and one at which the Kremlin is also losing due to Russia’s economic weakness and stagnation that make even the currently-troubled EU look like the better option. To confirm this, the media recently spoke about a leaked offer made by Moscow: investments in exchange for a Russian military base in Montenegro. Đukanović re-jected that offer, because the West can always offer more.

For NATO, today’s Montenegro is a great opportunity to deliver a ge-

opolitical slap to Putin. While wary that further expansion into post-Soviet space may provoke the para-noid Kremlin into further aggres-sion, NATO still does not wish to show weakness. And the best show of strength — done in Moscow’s best traditions, in fact — would be to grant membership to a state that Russia considers as “brotherly” and “pro-Russian” as the neighboring Serbia.

Of course, the Kremlin can also play at this game. Taking advan-tage of the real discontent among the Montenegrin population, who are unhappy with Đukanović’s pro-longed semi-dictatorial rule, and relying on the largely Serbian anti-NATO opposition, Moscow can at-tempt to remove the “inconvenient” government currently ruling out of Podgorica. In that case, the Kremlin would find the best partner in An-drija Mandić, head of the influential New Serbian Democracy opposition party, popular with the vast (31%) Serbian minority.

Mandić was born in January 1965 in Šavnik, west Montenegro, and graduated from the Metallur-gic-Technical Faculty of the same University of Montenegro as his rul-ing opponent. Unlike Đukanović, during the last years of the SFRY Mandić became one of the most influential social-democratic and liberal activists, opposing the domi-


nant Communist party and then its successor, the DPS.

In the years that followed, Mandić took part in various po-litical projects geared towards the Serbian population, which did not achieve much. On the other hand, his metallurgical business was a success. A curious fact: before be-coming the owner of the largest alu-minum producers in the republic, Mandić owned a bar where his fu-ture opponent Đukanović was a reg-ular. In the future, the Western me-dia would often dub the “aluminum baron” Đukanović’s “godfather,” one who funded the latter and many other influential Montenegrin poli-ticians during the chaotic 1990’s.

By 2015, Mandić, who had pre-viously maneuvered between na-tionalism and the Belgrade’s pro-Western policy with limited success, finally decided on a political plat-form. His New Serb Democracy joined political battle with slogans that called for Serbian-Montenegrin unionism, urged to turn Montene-gro onto an anti-Western course, and opposed the “assimilation of Serbs.” Using the discontent of the Serbian population caused by the very fact of Montenegro’s inde-pendence and by the generally pro-Western course of the ruling party (particularly their recognition of Kosovo), NSD took the protest to the streets.

One does not need to search for “Moscow’s hand” in the Podgorica protests. After all, the republic’s citi-zens (and not just the Serbian pop-ulation) have plenty of reasons for discontent. The rule of one political power for almost 70 years, the “eter-nal” Prime Minister shrouded in ru-mors of strong criminal connections, and the vague economic situation — those things alone are enough to create social upheaval. Whereas for Đukanović and his colleagues, blam-ing foreign forces for organizing the protests is also natural, especially considering the current geopolitical situation.

Even so, it would be out of char-acter for Moscow to refrain from fanning the flames. In this aspect, the suspicions of the Montenegrin leaders are a good illustration of the saying that goes: just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t af-ter you.

Time will show how successful the Montenegrin opposition will be, along with its potential supporters in the Kremlin. However, the greatest irony of the situation lies in the fact that even the possible victory of “Pu-tin’s friends” with their anti-NATO and pan-Slavic rhetoric is unlikely to cause radical changes in Monte-negro’s foreign policy. Similar “allies” of Russia and “decisive anti-West forces” are in power in the neighbor-ing Serbia — who is not in a hurry to


provide any real assistance to Mos-cow. Similar forces also came to pow-er in Greece, to the same result. Plus, the Montenegrin opposition has the same values as the current govern-ment — values centered around ma-terial valuables. Should these forces, as equally corrupt and criminalized as the current administration, come to power, they will act within their familiar system of coordinates – one

which, as usual, will not accommo-date Putin.

The reason for that is simple. Unless Russia’s leader has some eco-nomic “secret weapon” to help him turn around the depressing trends of the Russian economy (which is un-likely), Putin will soon have to face the harsh fact: geopolitics is a game best suited for those with deeper pockets.

rom the very start of Russian aggres-sion against Ukraine, Ukrainian, Russian, and

Western media often mention the so-called “Finlandization” as a possible way to end the crisis and restore peace between all warring sides. What does this term truly mean, and can “Fin-landization” indeed be a geopolitical panacea for Ukraine?

After two Soviet-Finnish wars, Finland as a country was on the brink of extinction. The young Finn-ish state was at great risk of being crushed among the growing con-frontation between the two world military and political blocs: either swallowed by Moscow or turned into a dependent western border state. However, the Finns chose another way — which was dubbed “Finlandi-zation.”

This term described a special model of interstate relations, where the weaker state makes a number of concessions to its more powerful neighbors, while retaining its sover-

eignty and not becoming a puppet protectorate. During the Cold War, Finland had to balance between the Soviet Union (whose ability to eas-ily strip away Finland’s independence called for special relations) and the West (to which Finland was tightly connected culturally and economi-cally). According to the doctrine of the Prime Minister Juho Paasikivi, Finland signed an agreement with the USSR in 1948, which, essentially, preserved the state’s democratic free-doms at the cost of certain restric-tions to its foreign policy. In practice, this meant that Finland would refuse NATO membership and remain free from the future Warsaw Pact. As a re-sult, Finland became a neutral coun-try with a market economy and rela-tive political freedom, and landed in the “gray area” between two opposed military and political systems. Since then, an extended model of Finland’s experience has been applied to states that are forced to agree to certain re-striction of foreign policy choices for the sake of preserving their statehood.

FINLAND. WHY “FINLANDIZATION” IS NOT POSSIBLE FOR UKRAINE

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39FINLAND. WHY “FINLANDIZATION” IS NOT POSSIBLE FOR UKRAINE

However, the advocates of “Fin-landization” of Ukraine tend to focus on the Suomi experience during the Cold War, ignoring today’s Finland’s trend to gradually overcome the fear of Moscow and step away from a policy of complacency. As is often the case with modern Russia, Russia itself is mostly to blame for this.

In the fall of 2014, the Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb ex-plained his country’s political course as follows: “Finland chose its team back in 1995, and that is Team EU. Because of this, we cannot be the in-termediary between the EU and Rus-sia.” Back then, Stubb also supported sanctions against Russia and showed solidarity with the EU’s position on the Ukrainian-Russian conflict. However, the Finnish establishment’s stance has several nuances. For in-stance, in February 2015, President Sauli Niinistö said that while sanc-tion pressure should remain unified, Russia must not be isolated. Another sign of Finland’s persisting “spe-cial position” was the delay with the tightening of sanctions in the fall of 2014, following Ilovaisk. At the time, after an urgent meeting of ambas-sadors, Helsinki withdrew its pro-tests — yet certain disagreements on the Russian question remain among the Finnish leadership.

The coalition cabinet of Juha Sipilä continues the policy of Alex-ander Stubb’s government. The new

coalition government, which came to power after the parliamentary elections in April, includes the Cen-tre Party of Finland, the True Finns, and the National Coalition Party (while Stubb became the Minister of Finance). Even before being elected, Sipilä noted that his Centre Party of Finland supports the EU’s anti-Russia sanctions, but Finland must preserve good neighboring relations with Russia. His political opponent, Stubb (then Prime Minister), who had made similar statements in the past, noted that the Centre Party is being too accommodating to Russia. However, those words of the center-right leader should be attributed to election rhetoric. In reality, all Finn-ish politics continue the “Finlandiza-tion” policy, which remains popular among the population. However, so-cial polls show certain ongoing shifts in the Finnish public perception of the country’s course.

According to the report pub-lished by the Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA in March 2015, 83% of surveyed Finns believe Rus-sia to be unstable and unpredictable. One out of two Finns believes that Russia represents a military threat — that ratio is 20% higher than in 2005. 26% of surveyed Finns think that Finland should join NATO, while 43% still speak against it. However, in 2012, only 14% of Finns supported NATO membership, and 65% were


against it. In his first days as Prime Minister, Juha Sipilä said, “Our gov-ernment’s attitude towards NATO remains unchanged. This means that Finland is not planning to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, leaving this choice to future genera-tions.” However, should Moscow’s aggressive trends continue, even the current generation of Finns may re-consider the country’s foreign policy.

On one hand, Finland remains somewhat dependent on Russia — but progressively less so, due both to Russia’s economic downturn and the gradual decrease of Helsinki’s energy dependence. There is a traditionally strong Russian energy lobby present in Suomi. Even though Finland is ac-tively developing renewable energy sources, it is still dependent on fuel imports, including oil, gas, coal, and electricity. According to the data of the Embassy of Finland in Ukraine, two thirds of Finland’s energy im-ports come from Russia, who also covers all of Finland’s demand for natural gas. The website of Gazprom Export says that the company sup-plied 3.11 billion cubic meters of gas to Finland in 2014, under contract with the Finnish company Gasum Oy. Russia is also the main supplier of coal, oil, and petroleum products. In 2013, 88% and 86% of Finland’s coal and oil supplies, respectively, came from Russia. During the past decade and a half, the share of Rus-

sian oil in Finnish imports greatly increased – from 43% in 2000 to 86% in 2013. Finland also remains an im-portant export market for Russian electricity.

Helsinki and Moscow also con-tinue cooperating on the construc-tion of the Hanhikivi-1 nuclear pow-er plant in Northern Ostrobothnia, which will use the Russian VVER-1200 reactor. This project was sup-ported by Stubb’s government, and Sipilä’s cabinet is following the same course. Just this summer, the Finn-ish Prime Minister again underlined that mutual sanctions between Rus-sia and the West will not endanger the nuclear power plant construction project in Pyhäjoki.

The two countries’ economies are also tightly intertwined in other industries, reinforced by long-stand-ing personal contacts in Putin’s close circle, which had formed back in his days as a municipal official in St. Pe-tersburg. The businessmen in Putin’s circle with interests in Finland are Dmitry Timchenko, Dmytry Gore-lov, Boris and Arkady Rotenberg (plus, Rotenberg and Tymchenko are Finnish citizens).

Moscow’s strong influence on Helsinki also shows in its key de-cision-making vis-à-vis Ukraine. A particularly telling situation oc-curred in the summer of 2015, when Finland denied entry to Ser-gey Naryshkin, the Speaker of the


Russian State Duma (included in the sanctions list) when he intend-ed to attend the annual session of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. However, following Russia’s protest and threats to block timber sup-plies to Finland (13% of Finnish timber imports come from Russia), the Finnish government issued a number of statements, attributing their decision to the pressure from Brussels and criticizing the EU’s policy for souring the relationship between Finland and its Russian “partners.”

An equally high-profile story revolved around Gennadiy Tim-chenko, owner of Volga Group, Putin’s friend and business partner, and a dual citizen of Russia and Finland. The EU’s sanctions ap-plied to Timchenko’s companies, while in March 2014, the USA in-stituted personal sanctions against the Russian oligarch. At the time, the Finnish authorities issued no public response. However, when a year later, the United States im-posed additional sanctions, and the list now included Kai Paananen, Timchenko’s partner and head of SET Group, Helsinki turned to Washington with a loud demand for an explanation.

All these are signs that the Finnish leaders pursue a cautious policy, understanding who they are forced to deal with and reluctant

to provoke further conflict with a progressively more aggressive neighbor. At the same time, Fin-land is also working on a “Plan B.”

The end of the USSR offered Helsinki a wide window of oppor-tunity, as Moscow was too preoc-cupied with its own state collapse to care about Finland. But even if Russia is no longer a superpower, it remains a major player on the global chessboard, even in difficult times. Thus, in 1991, Finland ter-minated the Agreement of Friend-ship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance with the USSR, only to immediately sign a new one. The crucial defense-related clause was paragraph four, under which Mos-cow and Helsinki both promised to not grant use of their territory for the purposes of armed aggression against the other party, and to not provide military aid to the aggres-sor.

In 1995, Finland joined the EU, essentially putting an end to its neutral status. Finland’s foreign policy would now partially depend on the decisions made in Brus-sels, and Helsinki approved the participation of the Finnish mili-tary contingent in the prospective European military forces. Finland also stepped up its cooperation with NATO: in 1994, it joined the Partnership for Peace program, and in May 1997, became a partner


country in the Euro-Atlantic Part-nership Council. Finnish peace-keeping contingents were sent to Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. NATO officers believe that the Finnish army meets the Alliance standards. However, Finland never took the final step into NATO, and the Finnish parliament repeatedly confirmed its non-aligned status. Back then, in the post-bloc world, many came to consider military al-liances an anachronism.

Russian aggression against Ukraine changed everything and sent a shock through the Finn-ish society and political leaders. While overall sticking with the rhetoric typical for the “Finlandi-zation” policy, the government in Helsinki turned towards increas-ing their state’s defensive capabili-ties. Even though Finland is ready to preserve good relations with Moscow, the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine and the Baltic region are worrying for Helsinki. Those wor-ries are made worse by the fact that the neo-imperialist ideas of Rus-sian nationalists, whose influence in the Kremlin skyrocketed after the annexation of Crimea, usually imply that Moscow is entitled to directly interfere with the affairs of any state that used to be a part of Russia at some point in history. Finland, having been a province of the Russian Empire until 1917,

is understandably discomfited by such views. The Finnish political rhetoric remains very cautious, but one can easily read between the lines. For example, Timo Soini, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the head of the True Finns party, said that in the view of the tensions be-tween Russia and the West, as well as Russia’s increased military capa-bilities, Finland must increase its defenses appropriately. He added that “this should not be interpreted as a militarization against Russia, but a necessary increase in our de-fense capacity.”

Today, Finns consider the pros-pect of a Russian military invasion to be unlikely — but a short time ago, Ukrainians used to believe the same. The increasingly frequent violation of the Finnish airspace by Russian military planes only adds to the Finnish establishment’s wor-ries. In March 2015, Carl Haglund, Minister of Defense at the time, said that if a conflict should break out between NATO and Russia, he would find it “hard to imagine that Russia would respect Finland’s mil-itary neutrality enough to stay off its territory.” As a result, Helsinki began a military reform, creating rapid deployment forces. The Finn-ish government is also stepping up military cooperation with the Baltic and Scandinavian states. In April 2012, the Ministers for Defense of


Sweden, Norway, Finland, Den-mark, and Iceland signed a declara-tion on cooperation and closer de-fense ties, to safeguard against the potential Russian threat.

As a result, Finland, while still reaping every possible benefit from the political course selected in mid-20th century, is drifting fur-ther west when it comes to defense initiatives. The Finnish govern-ment understands that no matter what course they take, Finland’s economic cooperation with Russia will weaken in the strategic per-spective, because the Kremlin’s cor-rupt kleptocrats are unable to build even a marginally efficient mod-ern economy, and can’t stop Russia from transforming into a backward petro-state. Finnish leaders also understand that the Kremlin’s ag-gressiveness will grow as Russia’s economic decline continues: Mos-cow knows that a strong army is its only bargaining chip, and will use it more and more often to sup-port pro-government sentiments among the public. This means that a new proverbial Mannerheim Line should be created — in the form of deeper cooperation with NATO.

In the light of the above, the advocates of “Finlandization” in Ukraine should take several factors into consideration. Even when one approaches geopolitical issues with a perfectly level head, sober calcu-

lation, and zero emotion, the prob-ability of this course for today’s Ukraine still appears low. During the Cold War, Finns succeeded in turning their limited freedom into a great chance for impressive eco-nomic development, welfare, and national self-respect. Finland’s loyalty quickly yielded results: the Soviet army left the leased Hanko peninsula 40 years earlier than planned, and USSR respected Fin-land’s territorial integrity. How-ever, it is obvious that today’s elite of Putin’s agonizing Russia lack the former Soviet leaders’ ability to choose economic benefits over the chance to plant a red banner over Helsinki. Post-WW2 Soviet Un-ion had real accomplishments that could be used to placate the society. Putin’s Russia has nothing except a military fist. With its actions, the Kremlin is only pushing Ukraine further towards the structures that Kremlin itself does not wish to see any closer to its borders.

Another regrettable fact that must be admitted is the qualita-tive difference between the Finn-ish and Ukrainian political elites. Buying a window of opportunity with political concessions and us-ing it to build a powerful modern economy would definitely be a for-ward-looking move. However, at this time, Ukraine’s political land-scape and the progress of reforms


remains disappointing — so we must understand that if some new, more reasonable Russian leadership granted Ukraine such a “window,” it is doubtful that Ukraine’s current politicians would be able to make good use of it. The matter of surviv-ing and preserving the state is on the

agenda today, and there is simply not enough time for the Ukrainian ruling class to evolve and improve. Thus, Ukraine must find a different path, one that involves increasing its own defense capabilities and finding an “umbrella” in the Euro-Atlantic security framework.

he conflict between Russia and Turkey, which flared up after the incident with the

Russian SU-24 plane, continues spi-raling and unfolding, still far from its “saturation point.” The story of the downed bomber aircraft has already been covered in detail, and merits no further analysis here. However, in the light of a sudden quarrel between two states that were close to calling each other allies, it would be interest-ing to consider the development of the modern Turkish state, which has a number of curious parallels with Putin’s Russia.

Mustafa Kemal’s “reboot” of Tur-key after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire was founded on a strategy of breakthrough modernization, meant to build a modern and developed secular state on the ruins of a back-ward Islamic autocracy. In this wish to leave the past behind and take a leap towards a bright future, Kemal-isms were similar to the Bolsheviks who came to power in Russia at

the same time and provided a huge amount of support to Atatürk. How-ever, the reasons that spurred endless wars between Russia and Turkey in the past did not simply disappear. As time passed, the two states ended up on opposite sides of ideological barricades again. Turkey became a NATO member, but the ideological climate bequeathed by Kemal re-mained unchanged: a firmly secular state, with the army as its guarantee.

However, the early 2000’s brought a threat to the secular tradi-tion, which had prevailed for almost a century. Not unlike Russia, where Orthodox-chauvinist “spiritual ten-ets” suddenly grew much stronger, Turkey saw a return of “political Is-lam” and something resembling Ot-toman revanchism. And, not unlike Putin, Recep Erdoğan, the propo-nent of these policies, has goals that are far from the noble motives he de-clares, such as fighting for traditional values.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was born in 1954, in Kasımpaşa, a poor neigh-

TURKEY: A MIRROR FOR PUTIN

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borhood of Istanbul. Later, his father, a coast guard, moved the family to the eastern part of Turkey, only to come back to Istanbul when Erdoğan turned 13. As a teenager, he made money by selling lemonade and pas-tries on the city’s dangerous streets. This could be his earliest similarly with Putin, who is about the same age as Erdoğan and often speaks of “Petersburg’s backstreets” as his greatest school of life.

In 1965, Erdoğan graduated from the Piyale Paşa primary school, and in 1973, from the Istanbul İmam Hatip school. Until 1980, he worked for Istanbul transport companies. After the military coup, all political parties were forbidden, and Recep, head of the Beyoğlu youth branch of the Islamist National Salvation Party, lost his job. Following that, he worked for private companies in middle management roles, and grad-uated from the economics and com-mercial studies department of the Marmara University in 1981.

Erdoğan returned to politics in 1983, the year that saw the creation of the Welfare Party, with views simi-lar to those of the National Salvation Party. Erdoğan’s political views were strongly affected by Necmettin Erba-kan, the founder of “political Islam.” In 1984, the future Prime Minister and President became the Beyoğlu district chair of the party; in 1985, he chaired its Istanbul city branch

and became member of the party’s presidency. While leading the party organization in Istanbul, Erdoğan actively involved local citizens in the party’s political work. However, his parliamentary election run in 1986 was unsuccessful, as was the local election in Beyoğlu in 1989. Erdoğan had much more success at the 1991 parliamentary election, but still failed to become a deputy.

In March 1994, Erdoğan was elected Mayor of Istanbul in a local election. In this position, he gained a lot of popularity, being rather suc-cessful in making the city greener, solving a number of issues related to garbage disposal, water supply, and certain social issues. All the while, he continued supporting the Islamic policy of Necmettin Erbakan, leader of the Welfare Party and head of the Turkish government in 1996-1997. He also promoted some Islamic ideas in his own policy: for instance, restricting alcohol consumption in Istanbul.

In 1997, Erbakan’s government was forced into retirement, and the Welfare Party was banned soon after that. In 1998, Erdoğan was convicted for publicly reciting Islamist poetry at a rally in Siirt in December 1997, and left the mayoral office. Paradoxi-cally, the poem recited by him was not banned – but in fact, included in a textbook approved by the Ministry of Education of Turkey. Erdoğan was

47TURKEY: A MIRROR FOR PUTIN

sentenced to ten months in prison, but was released early, after serving four months, from March to July 1999.

In 1999, Erdoğan became head of the reformist wing of the Virtue Party, created in place of the banned Welfare Party. In July 2001, the Vir-tue Party was banned as well, and in August of the same year, Erdoğan be-came one of the founders of the Jus-tice and Development Party, and was elected its chair. In November 2002, the Justice and Development Party won the majority of seats in the Par-liament, allowing it to form a single-party government. Erdoğan’s party became the first party in 16 years able to make legal reforms indepen-dently of other political parties.

Despite being the leader of the party, Erdoğan still could not be member of the Parliament or the gov-ernment, due to his previous convic-tion. As a result, his ally Abdullah Gül became Prime Minister. However, as soon as spring 2003, the Parliament made appropriate changes to the leg-islation, and on March 9, Erdoğan won a seat in the Parliament to repre-sent Siirt (with 85% votes). Two days later, on March 11, the President of Turkey Ahmed Necdet Sezer appoint-ed him Prime Minister. Thus, the bulk of power over Turkey became concen-trated in Erdoğan’s hands.

Overall, Erdoğan’s rule was remi-niscent of the Putin era that started

in Russia at the same time. On one hand, it was characterized by grow-ing public prosperity and political stabilization; on the other, by shrink-ing civil liberties, authoritarian ten-dencies, and political stagnation. Despite presenting himself as an Is-lamist, Erdoğan, from his first days as Prime Minister, stated that he had no intentions to depart from the sec-ular principles that formed the basis of Turkey’s modern state structures. Among Erdoğan’s most important achievements as Prime Minister is the 2004-2005 currency reform that helped lower the inflation. Transfor-mations effected by Erdoğan during those years were considered a “silent revolution” by the Turkish society. Nevertheless, in mid-2000’s, EU rep-resentatives drew attention to the in-fringement of the freedom of speech in Turkey. Namely, Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code criminalizes “insults to Turkishness.” Among the people persecuted under this article were the Nobel Prize laureate writer Orhan Pamuk, and the journalist Hrant Dink, who was subsequently assassinated.

In terms of foreign policy, Erdoğan’s government, in which Abdullah Gül was the Minister of Foreign Affairs until 2007, followed a course towards European integra-tion and worked towards resolving the matter of Cyprus, which was split into two states – one Turkish and


one Greek. In 2004, Erdoğan was the first head of the Turkish government to pay a visit to Greece since 1988. In all matters concerning the US policy in the region, the position of Erdoğan’s Turkey remained ambigu-ous. Even though Turkey always pre-sented itself as one of the key allies of America in the Middle East, many elements of its government’s foreign policy course were aimed at becom-ing independent of the USA. Specifi-cally, in March 2003, Turkey denied entry to the US troops preparing for the war in Iraq, thus preventing crea-tion of a second northern front. That greatly improved Turkey’s relations with other countries in the Middle East, including Iran and Syria.

At the same time, Turkey was de-veloping relations with Putin’s Rus-sia, which followed a similar course. The two “backstreet politicians” with authoritarian tendencies, a love for machismo, and low-life habits defi-nitely had a lot in common. A cer-tain thaw in their relations (recover-ing from the cooldown in the 1990’s, when Turkey provided certain finan-cial assistance and publicity to sepa-ratists in Chechnya, and was general-ly disdainful of Yeltsin’s weak Russia) was inevitable.

Trade between Turkey and Russia started growing by leaps and bounds. Economic relations were further im-proved with the help of Russian tour-ists, who flooded Turkey’s resorts af-

ter the visa-free travel agreement was signed by the two countries in 2011. By that time, Russia became the sec-ond most important trade partner of the Republic of Turkey. The annexa-tion of Crimea and Putin’s aggression in the east of Ukraine did not impair Russia’s relations with Turkey, a long-time occupier of the north of Crimea, or with Erdoğan, who refuses to take international law seriously.

Erdoğan’s government also made some effort to address the problem of Kurdish separatism in southeast-ern Turkey. Even though in 2002, Prime Minister Erdoğan denied the very existence of the Kurd problem, he had long been pursuing a policy aimed at pacifying the Kurdish pop-ulation, expanding their political and cultural freedoms, and paying special attention to the economy of Kurdish regions. In 2005, he even ad-mitted that Turkey’s previous policy in respect of the Kurdish people was erroneous.

Nevertheless, Erdoğan’s govern-ment was still viewed as Islamic. In 2007, the opposition boycotted Ab-dullah Gül’s candidacy at the presi-dential elections, which resulted in a new political crisis. An early par-liamentary election was held in July of the same year. The Justice and Development Party won a signifi-cant majority again, allowing them to nominate Gül as their presidential candidate.


Bit by bit, Erdoğan would stop pretending to be liberal. Similarly to Putin’s regime, the Turkish autocrat’s system was gradually shifting further right, showing more and more signs of a nationalist dictatorship.

Starting from the second half of 2007, the government’s policy in the Kurdish issues was tightened again. Erdoğan refused to increase the amount of education in Kurd-ish language. In late 2007, the Turk-ish army started military operations against the guerilla warfare by the Kurdistan’s Working Party, in Tur-key as well as Iraq. Some analysts viewed these operations as Erdoğan’s concession to Turkey’s “secularist” generals, opposed to the “Islamist” government. Alongside these devel-opments, Erdoğan announced new investments into the economy of the Kurdish regions, in March 2008.

In January 2009, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Erdoğan became involved in a conflict, after being was interrupted by a corre-spondent of The Washington Post and discussion moderator, while re-sponding to the speech by the Presi-dent of Israel Shimon Peres about the military conflict in the Gaza Strip. Erdoğan refused to participate in the forum any further, and stormed out of the conference. Upon his return to Turkey, he was met by a cheering crowd of Turkish citizens who came to the Istanbul airport to voice their

approval of the Prime Minister’s stance.

In 2013, Erdoğan had to survive a grave political “earthquake” – large-scale protests that spanned the en-tire country. These demonstrations started as an environmental protest against the demolition of one of Is-tanbul’s parks, and quickly became political in nature. The protesters’ main demand was Erdoğan’s resigna-tion, because of Turkey’s “creeping Islamization” and gradual move to-wards totalitarianism. Those trends were greatly unpopular among the largely secular urban middle class and youth.

For Erdoğan, these protests be-came what the Bolotnaya Square protests were for Putin – a reason to finally bid farewell to the “creative class” and seek support from pro-vincial masses, largely consisting of religious and nationalist supporters of “strongman governance.” The pro-tests were squashed, and the coun-try’s regime became harsher still. Similarly to Russia, the turn towards nationalism was aggravated by ad-ditional economic problems brought about by the global recession. The “political Islam” was supplemented by pan-Ottoman propaganda and the general aggrandizement of the coun-try’s Ottoman past (an analog to the “Russian world”). Some signs of such ideological turns had been apparent even earlier. For instance, in 2010,


the current Prime Minister and then Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey Ahmet Davutoğlu, during his visit to Sarajevo, gave an interview to a local Islamic newspaper, talking, among other things, about the “successful Ottoman history of the Balkans” and the need to “renew it.” He was even more specific in saying, “We will make the Balkans, Caucasus, and the Middle East, together with Turkey, the center of global politics of the future. That is the goal of Turkey’s foreign policy, and we will achieve it.” After 2013, state propaganda be-came even more saturated with ideas of imperial restoration.

In part, Turkey’s deep involve-ment in the Syrian civil war was caused by the post-Ottoman syn-drome of Turkey’s leaders, their inability to view their neighbors, formerly parts of the empire, as full-fledged states (another “genetic” sim-ilarity with the Kremlin). By the time Russian operations started in Syria, Turkey was already deeply involved in this complex conflict. Erdoğan’s goals in Syria are to oppose Kurds, who created their own state in the fractured Syria, and to pursue a wider conflict with Iran and the re-mainder of the Syrian state led by al-Assad — but there is more. Just like Putin, Erdoğan likes to offset his less successful economic policy by pre-senting the Turkish society with vir-tual victories, which feed nationalist

hysteria and increase his popularity. Turkey’s endless conflict with the Kurds and frequent terrorist attacks are similar to Russia’s Chechnya situ-ation. There is also a Turkish version of the Donbas conflict unfolding in the borderland areas of northern Syria. These regions are controlled by armed groups of Syrian Turkmens – essentially, ethnic Turks whom Erdoğan calls “brothers” and often threatens to “protect” (bringing to mind Putin’s speeches about his “fel-low compatriots”). These groups are receiving weapons and funding from Turkey, while the conflict zone has become a useful place for Erdoğan to dump radical Islamist “hotheads.” His scheme was working rather wel — until another “backstreet poli-tician” wandered into the region.

That was when Putin was faced with his own reflection.

In a situation where pro-Turkey formations in Syria came under in-creasing pressure from the Russians, Erdoğan essentially became hostage to his own long-standing image of a brave and stalwart Father of the Nation, unforgiving towards his en-emies. Whatever political rationale caused the Russian bomber plane to be shot down, it had to be secondary to the considerations of the Presi-dent’s personal prestige. When taken against any other party, these actions could have turned out very favorable for Erdoğan.


However, the plane was Russian, and now Erdoğan is opposing a poli-tician that is perfectly similar to him, ready to spend colossal amounts of funds and plunge his country into poverty and bloody conflicts just to show the world his own unwill-ingness, or inability, to back down. The bearer of “spiritual tenets” from “Petersburg’s backstreets” cannot ig-nore the gauntlet thrown down by Erdoğan. Putin now needs a similar media splash, commensurate with the hit taken by his ego. Plus, these political spin goals coincide with real politics – creating an air defense um-brella over the borderland regions of Syria will make life easier for the Rus-sian and Syrian armies in the area.

This conflict is still unfold-ing. The West’s reactions indicate worry and irritation at the actions of two autocratic regional bullies, ready to drag into their popularity games other powerful players with NATO obligations to Turkey. Per-haps, certain political or economic perks will be offered to placate an enraged Putin, so as to make up for the media effect of the Turkish slap. The question remains — can a per-son like Putin, even with a generous compensation on the table, tolerate

a challenge that threatens to disap-point his subjects and shake his im-age as the invincible Father of the Nation?

The sad news for both Russia and Turkey is that they really do have common interests and a foundation for a strong union. The cornerstones of their past opposition – Caucasus and the Balkans – have long changed their political configuration and no longer present an arena for a direct conflict of interests. Yet, people still living by the rules of Istanbul’s fish-ing neighborhoods and those of St. Petersburg’s back streets readily dis-card all rules of politics, economics, and common sense, instead creating an elaborate virtual reality in their respective states.

In this situation, Ukraine should stay sharp, and not give too much heed to those who predict that the Kremlin’s pressure will lessen in the light of this new and potentially ex-pensive conflict. Experience shows that the less political success Moscow sees, the more aggressive it tends to get. If Putin fails to properly retali-ate against Erdoğan, he will need another loud victory – and there is no guarantee he will not seek it in Ukraine.

fter the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled the land of the pyramids for four

decades, it seemed that Egypt was on the brink of a breakthrough to a new, bright future. The first democratic election in many years, public enthusiasm, support from the West… Yet a short while later, the country found itself on the brink of disaster, instead. The civil conflict that had resulted in the fall of the previous dictator was threatening to tear the country apart, and the newly elected President Mursi only aggravated the situation, quickly earning public displeasure by his dictatorial habits and attempts at a creeping Islamization of the society.

That was when the military came into play.

Today, Egypt still has not fully recovered from the recent dramatic events, including the revolution of 2011, the subsequent instability, and the military coup of 2013, which resulted in the rule of the current

President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, former Minister of Defense.

The future field marshal and President was born in 1954, in Gamaleya, a poor neighborhood of Cairo. In 1977, he graduated from the Egyptian Military Academy and served in mechanized infantry. After that, el-Sisi had a brief spell as Egypt’s military attaché in Saudi Arabia. In 1987, he attended the General Command and Staff Course in the Egyptian Command and Staff College, and five years later, a similar course in the Joint Command and Staff College in the UK. In 2003, el-Sisi took a war course in the Higher War College, Nasser Military Academy. Between 2005 and 2006, he earned a master’s degree in strategic sciences in the United States Army War College in Pennsylvania. El-Sisi’s thesis, dedicated to democracy in the Middle East, was viewed as an apologia of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, while also containing fragments of the Islamist state construction concept. In 2008, el-Sis was

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53FIELD MARSHALL’S EL-SISI’S EGYPT. THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS BETWEEN MOSCOW AND WASHINGTON

appointed Staff Commander of the Northern Military Region of Egypt, and then Deputy Director of Military Intelligence and Reconnaissance. That was the post he held when the revolutionary events started unfolding.

Seeing how the wind lay, el-Sisi made a report to the Minister of Defense Mohamed Tantawi in April 2010, pointing out the possibility of a swift popular revolution against Mubarak’s regime, and speaking in favor of the army being “on the side of the people.” In February 2011, the General became the youngest member of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. After Mubarak’s resignation, the Supreme Council took over the state governance functions. On August 12, 2012, el-Sisi was appointed head of the Council, becoming the head of the Armed Forces and the Minister of Defense and Military Production of Egypt. Taking advantage of the public discontent, he deposed the newly elected President Mohammed Mursi, thus attaining absolute power in the country. Subsequently, he would legitimize his rule by running in an election.

Unlike the neighboring countries, such as Lybia and Syria, which gradually descended into chaos after the Arab Spring, the new Egyptian authorities managed to keep the situation under control,

suppress the Islamist resistance, and prevent civil war. After the state power was restored — autocratic, as before — el-Sisi decided to reconsider some aspects of Egypt’s foreign policy. Cooperation with the USA, which had supported the deposed President Mursi and the banned Muslim Brotherhood’s party, would not be possible on the previous scale. Plus, Washington blocked supplies of weapons and military aid to Egypt — both things that Egypt required, considering its internal threats and the aggravating situations in neighboring states. So el-Sisi, predictably, turned his attention to Russia, Egypt’s another long-standing partner.

Cairo and Moscow go a long way back. Their closest cooperation took place was during the rule of Gamal Abdel Nasser, someone whom the current leader of Egypt strives to emulate.

The similarities between the current Field Marshall and the Colonel who ruled Egypt in 1956-1970 are obvious even to a cursory glance. Both are military. Both, essentially, are followers of the pan-Arabism ideology. Nasser was trying to create a joint Egyptian-Syrian state (UAR). El-Sisi, in his quest for Arab unity, turns not to the civil war-torn Syria, but to Saudi Arabia, a state he knows well from his service in Riyadh, and with which


he is planning to create an Arab equivalent of NATO. Both declared that they refused democracy in order to “consolidate the society.” Finally, not unlike Nasser with his Aswan Dam project, el-Sisi also has a “magic wand” with which to try and captivate his people: a proposed expansion of the Suez Canal, a “construction project of the century” that can resolve many problems at once. Like Nasser, el-Sisi desperately needs funding to make his ambitious plans reality, and if the former was denied loans from the West because of his nationalization of the Suez Channel, el-Sisi is facing a similar problem because of Egypt’s high foreign debt. Now it would seem that he, like his role model, is turning to Moscow for support.

At first, Egypt’s current situation seems very close to the times of Nasser. However, several crucial differences make a full-fledged union between Russia and Egypt highly unlikely.

First of all, the Middle East has changed a lot in the past decades. The emergence of powerful regional players — Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia — changed the balance of power in the region. It is Saudi Arabia that el-Sisi looks to in his aspirations for an Arab coalition – but despite a certain cooldown in the relations with Washington, Saudi Arabia is keeping in line with the US Middle

East policy. Saudi Arabia’s attitude towards Russia has worsened back in the USSR times, when the Soviets’ thoughtless support of Communist forces in the region caused a lot of irritation among the Arab elite, and the confrontation between the USSR and the USA stopped bringing profits. Another consideration for a predominantly Sunni Egypt is the fact that the forces currently fighting Bashar al-Assad’s pro-Russian regime in Syria are also largely Sunni.

Russia has also changed. Putin’s regime does not play the Soviet “friendship of nations” game, beyond supporting several burdensome yet geopolitically important puppet enclaves in neighboring post-Soviet republics. Moscow is not particularly bothered by the state of democracy in the countries it lends money to – but it also has none of the ideologically motivated Soviet generosity. Plus, the resources of Putin’s Russia, on its way to economic stagnation, are a far cry from those of the Soviet Union. Cooperation in the defense sphere makes no sense, either, since the Egyptian army, ever since the Anwar Sadat times, has been using American weapons and training its officers in the USA — so re-creating armed forces with Moscow’s help would be absurd. Besides, el-Sisi himself was trained in the West, as per tradition for the Egyptian military elite.

55FIELD MARSHALL’S EL-SISI’S EGYPT. THE LAND OF THE PYRAMIDS BETWEEN MOSCOW AND WASHINGTON

Upon closer examination, el-Sisi’s “about-turn” towards Moscow turns out to be a theatrical gesture, typical for many “friends” of Russia. Anti-American sentiments are generally strong among the population of Egypt because of Washington’s long-time support of Israel. Russia, on the other hand, is considered an opponent of the USA, so any curtseys in its direction are bound to win popular support. Another factor is prestige: by meeting with Putin, el-Sisi appears to be a part of the higher league of world politics. Both politicians share an autocratic style of governance – but that is only enough to earn mutual personal sympathy. Finally, the most efficient hurdle in the way of a union between Moscow and Cairo is money. Egypt is deeply in debt, and its situation only got worse during the years of instability after the overthrow of Mubarak’s administration. And the West knows how to use the financial leash both artfully and effectively.

For Putin, all contacts with Egypt were also mainly for the sake of his image. After being ostracized because of his aggression against Ukraine, he was desperate for allies, even ones as ephemeral as Field Marshall el-Sisi.

However, there is still a risk that Russia’s influence in the region may be restored, at least partially. Local autocratic states that survived the Arab Spring are rather irritated

by the consequences of the US policy, which had unwittingly contributed to the current chaos in Lybia, Iraq, and Syria. Plus, the USA is consciously and strategically withdrawing from the region, as part of Obama’s course to remove the USA from complex and expensive conflicts with vague outcomes. As the influence of their traditional ally in the region weakens, local leaders are pressed to look for alternatives. Voids don’t last in geopolitics, and this has already become apparent from Russia’s increased activity in Syria. Iran, finally free of sanctions, is also increasing its pressure on the neighbors, acting together with the Kremlin and assisting pro-government forces in Syria with funds, weapons, and “volunteers.”

Admittedly, Ukraine has little power to influence these processes. Nevertheless, it is baffling to see that our country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and politicians of every rank are summarily ignoring the eastern vector of our foreign policy. Neither the President’s congratulations on Revolution Day, Egypt’s public holiday, nor the general phrases about strengthening the military and technical cooperation between Ukraine and Egypt, count as real political activity. While Russian officials of Shoygu’s and Ivanov’s caliber are frequent flyers to Cairo, and the Kremlin’s master himself


has met with Egypt’s leader many times, not a single Ukrainian delegation has visited Egypt since Yanukovych has been deposed. The hard work of Russian diplomats has already resulted in Egypt’s support of the Russian air force operation in Syria — despite the earlier widespread opinion that Egypt’s and Russia’s allegiances in Syria do not coincide because of the Sunni composition of ISIS and other anti-Assad groups.

In fact, if we take a wider view of this issue, we can say the same about

all of the Middle East and Asia as a whole. Ukraine’s foreign policy is concentrated entirely on the EU and the USA. Without prejudice to the western vector of our foreign policy, the government should definitely step up their efforts in other directions, especially the Middle East. If the current refugee crisis in the EU is any indication, the crisis in the Middle East will not be contained within its region. At the risk of sounding dramatic, that is exactly where, to a large degree, the future of the world is being decided right now.

ot too long ago, Russia, despite some bumps in the road, was a recognized and

reasonably respected partner of the West, while the Ayatollah regime in Tehran was a sanction-ridden political outcast, the core of the “axis of evil.” Mere years later, the situation became almost perfectly opposite. For its aggression against Ukraine, Russia became ostracized and subjected to political pressure (albeit full isolation is not on the books), while Iran became free of its restrictions, restoring a large part of its position in international politics.

Despite their vastly different directions, these two countries found themselves in almost the same place at one point in time. While they had enough economic leverage to avoid becoming truly isolated outcasts like North Korea, both are rightfully considered suspicious and aggressive autocracies, apt to reject international law and play by their own rules. Even without a common

interest in Syria, two states like these were bound to become closer, and the Middle East situation that landed Moscow and Tehran in the same boat only served to strengthen their situational alliance. However, does this alliance have potential to be a strong and long-term one?

After a theocratic regime was established in Tehran after the 1979 revolution, Iran spent many years in international isolation. The West was outraged by the sudden change of the Shah’s secular monarchy into an obscurant Islamic dictatorship. The Soviet Union was also hostile towards the new administration, due to the latter’s attitude towards the Marxist Tudeh Party of Iran, which took part in the revolution, but did not get its piece of the political pie from Islamists, and was subsequently persecuted, instead. For the new Iranian government, the situation was further aggravated by the traditional animosity of the powerful neighbors – Saudi Arabia and Iraq, who viewed Iran as their

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regional rival, regardless of the government’s ideology. Soon, the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein started a long and bloody war against Iran, receiving some support from the West and the regional neighbors. However, Iran’s regime survived these calamities and grew stronger.

Since then, liberalization of the radical Islamic regime in Tehran has been a bumpy ride. Now and again, the rhetoric would become less intense, and a certain thaw would set in inside the country – only to be followed by another reactionary period of furious isolationism. In one such period in the early 2000’s, during the rule of the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran stepped up its nuclear program, nearly resulting in military confrontation with the USA and their allies. After Ahmadinejad’s resignation in 2013, the Presidential post went to the more liberally-inclined Hassan Rouhani.

Hassan Rouhani, the new President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, was born November 12, 1948 in the town of Sorkheh, Semnan province. After graduating from the seminary in Qom and the legal department of the Tehran University, Rouhani obtained a Ph.D. in legal studies from the University of Glasgow in 1972. During his younger years, Rouhani was a strong supporter of Shia clergy. He traveled

around the country campaigning against the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, for which he was arrested numerous times, and even banned from public speaking. According to some media reports, in 1977 Rouhani used the title “Imam” to refer to the Ayatollah Khomeini for the first time. Fearing for his life, he took the advice of the Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti and the Ayatollah Morteza Motahhari and left the country for a while. While abroad, he made public speeches in front of Iranian students. In Paris, Rouhani joined Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, the future leader of the Islamic revolution. After the Islamic revolution’s victory, Rouhani returned to Iran.

Rouhani held leading posts in the command of Iran’s armed forces during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988, was a member of the Parliament between 1980 and 2000, and the First Deputy Speaker of Iran’s Parliament in 1992-2000. Between 1989 and 2005, he was Head of the Supreme National Security Council and the head of Iran’s delegation at the nuclear program negotiations. Rouhani is the head of the Center for Strategic Research (since 1992), member of the Expediency Discernment (since 1991), member of the Supreme National Security Council (since 1999), and the candidate from the Combatant Clergy Association.

59IRAN. A NEW PIECE ON THE CHESSBOARD

Rouhani, like the rest of the «founding fathers» of the Islamic Republic, originally held quite radical views, but relaxed his stance somewhat as time passed. In view of the economic trouble caused by many years of sanctions and confrontation with almost the entire world, Rouhani built his campaign around criticism of more conservative politicians, and bold (by Iran’s standards) promises to improve the country’s relationship with the West and relax domestic policies.

Many doubted Rouhani’s sincerity, as well as his real capacity to influence the policy in the country. The trouble was that a large part of real power in post-revolution Iran was concentrated in the hands of religious leaders elected for life by the clergy (the «Supreme Leaders»), and not secular officials. Supreme Leaders and Presidents would often alternate posts, demonstrating the unbreakable unity between secular and religious authority. After the death of the all-powerful and legendary Ayatoallah Khomeini, Iran’s Supreme Leader’s post went to Khomeini’s ally and associate, Ali Khamenei.

Ali Khamenei was born July 17, 1939 in Mashhad, the second of eight children in the family. After graduating from the Mashhad Shia religious seminary, Khamenei

moved to Najaf in 1957, and then, in 1958, to Qom, where he met Ayatollah Borujerdi and Ruhollah Khomeini. Strongly impressed by the latter’s radical views, Ali started actively campaigning against the Shah. In 1964, when Khomeini was exiled from Iran, Ali was arrested by Shah’s service SAVAK in Birjand, but was soon released and returned to Mashhad. Khamenei would get arrested five more times between 1963 and 1975, spending a total of several months behind bars.

After the victory of the Islamic revolution in 1979, Khamenei was appointed Tehran’s Friday prayers Imam (de facto, the weekly nationwide political information broadcast). For a brief period of time, Khamenei was Deputy Minister of Defense and supervisor of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. During the Iran-Iraq war, Khamenei visited the front multiple times, acting as a representative of the defense commission of the Parliament.

On June 27, 1981, the radical left guerilla organization Mujaheddin-e Khalq, which had started an armed opposition against the new Iranian regime, made an assassination attempt against Ali Khamenei. A bomb, concealed inside a tape recorder, was detonated next to him at a press conference. Khamenei survived, but lost the use of his right arm.


At the early presidential election in October 1981, Khamenei got 95% votes and became the first member of the clergy to become President. Originally, Khomeini believed that only someone with secular education could be President of the new Iran — but Khamenei’s popularity and military skill made the Ayatollah change his mind. The Prime Minister’s post went to Mir-Hossein Mousavi, whose grandmother was sister to Ali Khamenei’s father. By the Ayatollah’s approval, Khamenei became the Secretary General of the ruling Islamic Republic Party.

Shortly after being elected as President, Khamenei demonstrated the depth of his conservative views. Repressions swept through Iran, targeting counter-revolutionary forces and intended to serve as retaliation against guerilla and terrorist activity, which were particularly active in the western provinces. Khamenei called for eliminating «deviations from course, liberalism, and pro-Americanism.» Thousands of members of the anti-Islamic opposition were executed by revolutionary courts. Repressions continued until 1982, when the revolutionary courts were dissolved by the government.

Khamenei had remained the leader of Iran throughout most of the course of the Iran-Iraq war. During his rule, the Islamic Revolutionary

Guard evolved from a militia into an elite guard corps, winning Ali deep respect from the military. In 1985, Ali Khamenei won the presidential election again, with 85% votes.

After Khomeini’s death, the Supreme Leader’s post went to Khamenei. Ever since that time, Ali has maintained his conservative rhetoric, proclaiming the unwavering strength of the clerical regime and Iran’s foreign policy principles — first of all, anti-Americanism and refusal to recognize Israel. However, this traditionalist façade hides a more reasonable and forward-thinking politician. This is obvious from Khamenei’s silent approval of Rouhani’s reformist policy, as well as his patronage of science (Ali was one of the first Islamic clerics to approve research into stem cells and therapeutic cloning, which was a high-risk move in an environment dominated by militant clergy).

Iran’s leaders’ continued efforts to create an image of Iran as a reasonable state capable of negotiations and to shake the long-standing label as a pariah state and sponsor of terrorism suddenly received strong support due to the sharp aggravation in the Middle East after the Arab Spring. The failure of Gaddafi’s Jamahiriya in Lybia, the collapse of Iraq after the removal of US troops, the instability in Egypt, and the bloody conflict in Syria


showed to the world forces whose collective image is ISIS — Islamists so radical that even countries previously considered candidates for the «world’s greatest evil» title suddenly became politically acceptable partners for the West. The deficit of stable states in the region only contributed to the West’s wish to establish a constructive relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In principle, the clerical rule in Tehran was never the main hurdle in the way of dialogue. After all, Saudi Arabia, with an equally obscurant regime, does not inspire animosity in the West and is considered the USA’s main ally and support in the region. The issue revolved around Tehran’s wish to cooperate — primarily, as relates to Iran’s nuclear program. As soon as Iran demonstrated its willingness to find common ground, the West, relieved, lifted the economic blockade, which had actually done little to transform Iran’s regime, not unlike similar measures taken by the USA against Cuba (in fact, the sanctions contributed to some mobilization of the society, united by anti-West sentiments).

The return of the partially-forgotten player of Middle Eastern politics changed the balance of power in the region. At first glance, the change was not in favor of the USA and the West in general. Iran has been traditionally viewed as an

antagonist by Washington’s allies in Doha and Riyadh, and its rise caused some irritability in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Iraq, previously an enemy of the Islamic Republic, fell within Tehran’s sphere of influence after the removal of US troops. Iran’s support of Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite regime came as an expected move, reasons behind it being the two countries’ religious proximity and strategic considerations, as well as Syria’s leader’s potential supply of weapons and ammunition for pro-Iran forces in Lebanon.

Thus, the coalition of war-torn countries accepting aid from the strengthened Iran started quickly gaining ground in the region. That was when Moscow chose to blunder into the Syrian gambit.

The primary motivation behind Moscow’s intervention into the Syrian conflict was internal – another «small victorious war» to outshine the economic decline. Russia’s second priority was to, quite literally, force its way back into international politics, from which Putin had been excluded after his aggression against Ukraine. This effort was partially successful.

Russia’s actual interests in the Middle East were at the end of the list of reasons behind this decision —– otherwise, Russia would have intervened much earlier, when the chances to turn the tide in Bashar al-


Assad’s favor were much higher. But, one way or another, Russia went to the Middle East, and the theocrats in Tehran started coordinating their efforts with it, as might have been predicted.

It is true that Iran’s and Russia’s interests in Syria overlap greatly. Besides, Iran is prepared to go much farther than Russia to achieve its goals, as confirmed by IRGC’s participation in the ground operations of pro-governmental forces. For Tehran’s, al-Assad’s defeat is unacceptable, as it would almost invariably result in a state of chaos similar to Libya, or the rule of a hostile Sunni regime allied with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Iran’s other opponents. Russia’s goals are on a much smaller scale: to guarantee their continued military presence and secure Russia’s interests in the region. The current overlap of these goals is what fuels the alliance between Russia and Iran – right up to the point when the Syrian conflict is officially over, and the shape of post-war Syria becomes apparent.

However, a close look at the relations between Moscow and Tehran shows that, bar Syria, there aren’t and cannot be any «spiritual tenets» between the two states. Moreover, outside of Syria, this alliance does not really exist even today.

First of all, the perception of Russia by Iran’s leaders is colored by

the complicated history of the two countries. In the past, the Persian state and the Russian Empire were involved in countless wars, in most of which Iran ended up on the losing side. More recently, their relationship was complicated by Russia’s vague position on the sanctions against Iran — when, despite their cooperation in defense and energy, Putin did not oppose the West’s pressure on Iran, clearly not wishing to acquire a strong competitor in the supply of hydrocarbons. Those actions did not go forgotten in Tehran, despite Rouhani-Khomeini’s administration’s pointedly favorable attitude towards Moscow. Now, as Iran is returning to global hydrocarbon trade, it will head for the European market first. Today, this market is divided between Russia and Saudi, which will be forced to make some way for the new arrival.

Equally unpleasantly for Putin, Iran is driving down global oil prices. Used to the hardships brought about by the economic blockade, Iran will weather low export incomes, satisfied by the blow that cheap oil will cause to Saudi Arabia. Not unlike Riyadh, whose low-balling prices damage shale oil production in the USA, Tehran does not aim to directly damage Moscow, but causes it damage nevertheless. The first item


on Iran’s agenda is its own survival in the elaborate tapestry of Middle Eastern politics, and the Kremlin’s troubles are of little consequence to it.

As a result, we see a situation very typical for Russia’s «allies,» where a country’s situational cooperation with the Kremlin does not translate to a joint global strategy between the two. The reason behind it lies in the Kremlin’s perception of geopolitics as a game where anything goes. While cynical calculation often prevails even in the western world, USA and EU still share some values, without which an alliance is impossible. Meanwhile, the Russian government’s values, which are limited to personal gain, may be shared by several similarly authoritarian states, but preclude any

possibility of a genuine partnership. After all, what partnerships can there be on a battlefield where anything goes? As a result, some of Washington’s opponents may be strengthened and some of its allies weakened — but the Kremlin will gain little from that. Governments that like to speculate on «traditional values» to remain in power may understand Putin and pat him on the shoulder, but will remain indifferent towards his actual fate.

All of this indicates that Moscow’s chosen line of behavior —namely, occasional situational alliances and stubborn political self-interest – dooms Russia to be a lone fighter on a battlefield that requires vast internal resources. Meanwhile, Putin’s resources are dwindling with every passing day.

raditionally, the CIS countries are nomi-nally divided into two camps: pro-Western

and pro-Russian. In this classifica-tion, Moscow’s allies include Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and, to a degree, Tajikistan — that is, Russia’s partners in the recently-cre-ated Eurasian Economic Union and members of the semi-virtual CSTO defense bloc. Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia are traditionally considered pro-Western. While work was un-derway to create GUAM (originally, GUUAM), Azerbaijan was also in-cluded in the category of pro-West-ern aligned states. However, a closer look at this Transcaucasian republic shows that Baku is actually closer to a third group of post-Soviet states, which also includes Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — states that are playing their own game, trying to win maximum gain from the stand-off between the East and the West.

Similarly to other Transcaucasian republics, the genesis of the modern

Azerbaijan statehood is closely tied to the events and war of the late 1980’s. The armed conflict between Azerbai-jan and Armenia, and the Karabakh separatists supported by the latter, started even before the collapse of the USSR, creating an unprecedent-ed situation: an armed confrontation between two Soviet republics. With-out going too deep in the roots and development of the conflict, it is still worth pointing out that the govern-ment in Moscow was ineffective in managing it. During the last years of its existence, the Soviet Union went from the attempts to separate the warring sides and freeze the conflict to supporting Azerbaijan — perhaps to preserve the republic’s territorial integrity and prevent a precedent where the borders of a Soviet repub-lic would be altered.

The first President of independ-ent Azerbaijan was a party estab-lishment figure Ayaz Mutalibov. Af-ter Mutalibov, Acting Presidents of Azerbaijan were Yagub Mammadov (1992) and Isa Gambar (1993). Soon

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thereafter, the society was sufficiently radicalized by the war and the drop-ping standard of living, and a coup took place, bringing to power Abul-faz Elchibey, the leader of the na-tionalist of Azerbaijan Popular Front Party. However, his cabinet also failed to tackle the tough challeng-es faced by the country, and could not prevent an economic crash and military failures. By summer 1993, a grave political crisis came to a head, resulting in an armed coup led by Colonel Suret Huseynov in Gandja. Due to the animosity between Rus-sia and Azerbaijan’s administration at the time, Russian troops stationed in Gandja supported the insurgents and prevented the government from squashing the mutiny. After leaving the city, Russian units left behind their weapons and equipment, which Huseynov’s forces took up and head-ed for the capital.

Exhausted by the political merry-go-round and the endless Karabakh conflict, Azerbaijan hovered on the brink of civil war. In an attempt to prevent total chaos, Elchibey handed the reins over to the a popular and authoritarian Heydar Aliyev. former Soviet functionary.

By that time, Aliyev had already spent a few years as the de facto ruler of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Re-public, an Azerbaijan enclave stuck between territories controlled by Armenia and Iran, a state that was,

in reality, independent of Baku. Be-fore then, Aliyev had led Azerbaijan as a Soviet republic, ruling in the style of a typical Transcaucasian au-tocratic «boss» — making full use of nepotism, corruption, repression, and parochialism. These methods, combined with the friendship be-tween Aliyev and Brezhnev, helped the Communist party bureaucrat reach economic growth rates and a standard of living considered high by USSR standards, thus winning popular support. Despite the short-comings of his de facto dictatorship, the bleeding and broke Azerbaijan of 1993 started thinking back fondly to the former ruler.

Under very difficult conditions, a referendum was held in the country, allowing the transfer of power from Elchibey to Aliyev. Almost immedi-ately, Aliyev faced a new challenge — another separatist mutiny. Alikram Hummatov, a Talysh Colonel of the Azerbaijan Army and a deputy Min-ister of Defense, together with the officers of the 704th brigade, pro-claimed the Talysh-Mughan Autono-mous Republic spanning seven re-gions of Azerbaijan. They demanded Aliyev’s resignation and the return to power of Mutalibov, who had fled abroad by that time. However, the mutiny did not meet a lot of support among the people. Hummatov’s re-public was soon dissolved, and the Colonel ended up behind bars.


The crisis with Huseynov, whose forces stood on Baku’s doorstep, was successfully settled through diplo-matic effort, but the situation re-mained grave. A string of defeats in Karabakh was followed by a sudden invasion of Iranian troops, which crossed the border under the pretext of securing several strategic objects and aiding refugees. Aliyev consid-ered turning to Turkey for help, but chose against it, fearing that a war might then break out between Rus-sia, Turkey and Iran, with unknown consequences for Azerbaijan. De-spite Russia’s support of the hostile Armenia, Aliyev chose to turn his country’s foreign policy towards Moscow.

A war with Iran was ultimately avoided, but Aliyev’s hopes of getting help from Russia to settle the Kara-bakh conflict were dashed, largely because Russia itself was engulfed by an acute political crisis of late 1993. The war would only be stopped next year. After getting 98% votes at the elections in October 1993, Aliyev was given free rein for reforming his devastated country. Thus began the period of Azerbaijan’s stabilization and rebirth.

Using methods that had proved themselves back in the Soviet times, Aliyev quickly formed an autocracy of criminal clans, which, despite all its repressiveness and corruption, turned out to be very effective given

the Transcaucasian specifics. Af-ter making the country governable again, the President facilitated the conclusion of the so-called Contract of the Century, an oil development agreement between thirteen com-panies in eight countries. Following its signing, Azerbaijan’s economic growth skyrocketed, thanks to the massive inflow of investment.

In 2003, shortly before the next election, a gravely ill Aliyev took his name off the list and appointed his son Ilham Aliyev as the presidential candidate. Ilham Aliyev became the next President, with 79% of votes. The opposition, refusing to accept the election results, held protests in Baku, which were crushed by the po-lice and internal security. Ever since, Aliyev Jr. has been Azerbaijan’s per-manent leader.

Ilham Aliyev was born Decem-ber 24, 1961 in Baku. The future President’s father was the head of the counter-intelligence department with the Azerbaijan SSR’s KGB. In 1982, Ilham graduated from the Moscow State Institute of Interna-tional Relations, continued his post-graduate studies and stayed on as a lecturer.

When Aliev Sr. was removed from the post of the First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Minis-ters of the USSR and expelled from the Communist Party Politburo, Il-han was also «asked» to leave the


Institute. As Perestroika unfolded, Aliyev Jr. went into private business.

Subsequently, he held top man-agement positions in SOCAR (the Azerbaijani oil monopolist), was elected member of the Parliament, headed the Olympic Committee, and was the First Deputy Head of the rul-ing New Azerbaijan Party (headed by Heydar Aliyev).

Both Azerbaijan and the rest of the world expected the new Presi-dent to liberalize the country’s pol-icy, move towards the West, and implement gradual reforms. Aliyev Jr., viewed as inexperienced and no-where as charismatic as his father, was expected to be only formally in charge of the old political elite. Dur-ing the first few years in power, Il-ham Aliyev was seemingly living up to those expectations, since not one of the prominent figures of his fa-ther’s regime left their post. But later it would turn out that Aliyev Jr. had spent those years secretly strength-ening his staff and preparing to take over the real power in the republic.

The year 2005 marked the turn-ing point. In October, Aliyev an-nounced that an attempted a coup d’état has been prevented, and 12 persons were arrested on accusations of staging said coup, including the Minister for Economic Development Farhad Aliyev, Minister of Finance Fikrat Yusifov, Minister of Healthcare Ali Insanov, President of Azerkimiya

[Chemical] State Concern Fikrat Sadygov, and former President of the Academy of Sciences Eldar Salayev.

Both the opposition and the rul-ing leaders, who thought Heydar Ali-yev’s son to be a spineless figurehead, had drastically miscalculated.

Afterwards, Ilham Aliyev fol-lowed a course towards increased personal autocracy. Many of the po-litical processes in Azerbaijan are reminiscent of those in Putin’s Rus-sia. On one hand, stabilization and eventual stagnation of political life, an illusion of prosperity created by the hydrocarbon-based economic growth (up until recently), milita-rization, and wide popular support ensured by the tight control over the media. On the other hand, large-scale repression of civil freedoms, corruption, and infringement of hu-man rights, including politically mo-tivated arrests and persecution of the government’s opponents, for which Aliyev is receiving repeated criti-cisms from the global community.

All of the above created a nearly totalitarian regime in Azerbaijan. Its foreign policy is dictated, on one hand, by the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (backed by Rus-sia, officially Azerbaijan’s ally, and Armenia, member of the Eurasian Union), which makes impossible a full-fledged pro-Russian allegiance, and on the other, by the cooldown in relations with the West, which


constantly criticizes Aliyev for re-pressing civil freedoms, as well as the similarities between the values of the Russian and the Azerbaijani governments. All these factors, mul-tiplied by the oil superprofits, had resulted in a fairly successful game of multi-vector politics: reaping divi-dends from a stand-off between the large regional players (Russia, USA, and Turkey) without being directly involved in any one of their orbits. Plus a refusal to be integrated into European structures with a simul-taneous decisive «no» to the Krem-lin’s integration projects. At the same time, Azerbaijan has been success-fully developing its own military for a while now, investing massively into defense. This paints a clear picture of an «oil sovereignty» policy not un-like Russia’s.

Even so, the crashing oil prices sent tremors even through the seem-ingly impregnable «Aliyev Model.» With the manat devalued, and no longer able to spend massively on social benefits and defense, Aliyev was forced to become more decisive in his geopolitical choices. Despite publicly stating his non-recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and his support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity (only natural, considering Azerbaijan’s similar problems with Armenian separatists in Karabakh), Aliyev has been leaning strongly to-wards the ideologically similar Putin.

Proof of this can be found in his re-cent statements about ceasing coop-eration with the EU and the refusal to join sanctions against Russia – while curtseying at Moscow. However, this about-turn of Azerbaijan contains a trap for Russia, one that is capable of detonating the entire Transcaucasian region.

It is no secret that Russia is the key arms supplier to the rapidly militarizing Azerbaijan. To the hor-ror and confusion of the neighbor-ing Armenia, which had rejected the prospect of European integration for the sake of an ephemeral alliance with Russia, Moscow continues arm-ing the implacable opponent of Ar-menia’s satellites in Karabakh. Baku frequently threatens to take back the lost territories by force — and the strength of its troops, rearmed with the Kremlin’s help, would allow that. Meanwhile, the Russian military base in Armenia, frequently brought up by Armenia’s advocates of an alliance with Russia, has no formal obligation to interfere in case war breaks out. According to the bilateral agreement, the Gyumri base is only obligated to defend Armenia in case of a foreign invasion to its territory, which does not include the NKR, recognized by neither Yerevan nor Moscow.

Azerbaijan’s trade with Russia grew 6% in 2015, while that with its loyal Armenian EAEU «partners» fell by 21.9%. In 2010-2014, Armenia


increased its arms purchases only by 4%, compared to 2005-2009, while Azerbaijan, by a massive 249%.

There are more examples of Mos-cow’s being strangely disdainful of its ally: for example, while constructing the Iran-Azerbaijan-Russia (Astara-Rasht-Qazvin) railroad is not a prob-lem for Russia, the Russian Railways company has repeatedly declared a similar Iran-Armenia-Russia rail-road unprofitable. Seeing as these two projects are mutually exclusive, the clear preference given to Azer-baijan is causing worries in Yerevan.

Perhaps, acting in spirit of real-politik so beloved by Putin, Russia considers Armenia its satellite and puppet. Russian military contingent is present on Armenia’s territory, and objects key to its economy are con-trolled by Russian capital. Thus, with Armenia firmly on Russia’s «hook,» there is no more need for excessive benevolence. So why not develop re-lations with the ideologically kindred Azerbaijani government – especially since Aliyev, unlike the «friends» in Armenia, has ample financial re-sources, thanks to the oil? As for the «misunderstanding» around the Karabakh conflict that dates back to the 90’s – it can be ignored, and whenever the conflict flares up again, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbai-jan can be summoned for a meeting somewhere in Sochi, where Putin will use carrot-and-stick diplomacy

to settle things down. So far, the sys-tem seems to be working. But what happens next?

Russia, weakening in the grip of economic recession, cannot sustain this dangerous political «love trian-gle» forever. Russia’s opponents in the West and the Armenian opposition to President Sargsyan are very likely to take advantage of the economic tailspin that Armenia found itself in after joining the EAEU, instead of the prosperity and mountains of gold promised by its «partners» in Mos-cow. At the same time, the govern-ment in Baku, shaken up by the last-ing drop in oil prices, may also lose its footing — and Putin, without his former financial might, will not be able to support it. Then the Kremlin will have to reap the consequences of the displeasure of the Caucasian po-litical leaders, whose way of thinking is very similar to his.

There are powerful forces in both Baku and Yerevan that consider war to be a simple solution for internal problems and a good method for societal consolidation. The formally «frozen» Karabakh conflict has been smoldering all these years, occasion-ally flaring up into full-scale combat along the demarcation line, with ar-tillery, aviation, and dozens of casu-alties. Local politicians won’t have to try very hard to properly detonate this tinderbox. But unlike in the 90’s, today such a clash would be imme-


diately drawn into a whirlwind of global conflict, causing an explosion of radical Islamism and a direct or indirect involvement of the neigh-boring Turkey and Iran, with the po-tential to descend into massive and bloody chaos, similar to the situation in Syria. Considering the complicat-ed relations between the main play-ers in the region, stopping this hypo-thetical conflict would be as difficult as putting an end to the slaughter in the Middle East, and the scale of the resulting humanitarian crisis is hard to imagine.

As a result, we see a paradoxi-cal picture: instead of the stand-off between «pro-Russian» and «pro-Western» forces traditional for many regions, both Transcaucasian warring sides are under Moscow’s influence. Yet the Kremlin is un-able to put an end to their conflict, which only grows deeper and hotter.

There are some similarities between the current situation and the very beginning of the Karabakh conflict, when both republics were part of the Soviet Union. Back then, Mos-cow was also powerless to prevent the disaster. Today, the cost of such political games may be immeasur-ably higher, and the world powers whose attention is currently drawn to the Syrian problem should also turn their eye towards the Trans-caucasian region. Easing some of the economic problems that plague both Armenia and Azerbaijan could be, at the very least, a stop-gap solu-tion. Restoring the relative stability of recent past would help avoid the worst-case scenario. Ukraine can also contribute to this process, by developing economic cooperation with Caucasian countries — espe-cially now that we desperately need promising export markets.

n September 3, 2013, President Serzh Sargsy-an declared Armenia’s intention to join the

Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), firmly rejecting the prospects of integration into the EU. The oppo-sition’s voices remained unheard, and overall the strength of protests was low, thanks to the long-term and large-scale government propa-ganda campaign. The Armenian government made tall promises to its citizens: allegedly, the EAEU membership would drive a flood of investment into Armenia and grant local companies access to a 170-mil-lion market. Plus, for many Arme-nian citizens, taking part in Mos-cow’s integration project was only a formal legitimization of the already-existing friendly relations and «fra-ternity» with Russia.

As it often happens, things were a little different in reality. For a number of reasons, and largely, due to a string of the Kremlin’s «wise» decisions, the idea of Russian-Armenian economic

integration has essentially collapsed. For Ukraine, it would be interesting to analyze Armenia’s path to its cur-rent unfortunate reality, especially in view of the numerous voices still advocating a «friendship with Mos-cow,» despite our eastern “brother’s” military and economic aggression. Ultimately, Armenia’s example can be used to construct the model of an alternate reality, showing what Ukraine could be if we were to follow an opposite vector of foreign policy.

If Azerbaijan’s modern state is rooted in its struggle for territorial integrity, for Armenia it is centered around the «reunification» («Miat-sum») with the Karabakh separatists. Unlike the Kremlin’s awkward my-thologems revolving around some old and dusty ideas about the «sacred ancient Korsun,» Armenia’s links to Karabakh run much deeper. That is obvious from a single look at the Armenian government. But let us go back to the beginning.

Armenia declared its independ-ence from the Soviet Union on Au-

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gust 23, 1990, while the Karabakh conflict was growing more acute. Following the August Putsch, a ref-erendum was held to decide the country’s independence. The vote took place, and full independence was proclaimed on September 21, 1991. In October, the first President of independent Armenia was elect-ed - Levon Ter-Petrosyan, a linguist from the now infamous Syrian city of Aleppo. During the Perestroika, Ter-Petrosyan took part in a number of nationalist movements and was placed under arrest for a while for inciting ethnic hatred.

Despite the deep economic cri-sis that followed the collapse of the USSR, Armenia, led by Ter-Petrosy-an, managed to essentially win the Karabakh war, achieving a de facto independence from Azebaijan for most of the Nagorno-Karabakh Au-tonomous Republic, and even oc-cupying some Azerbaijan territories not included in the autonomy (the so-called Lachin corridor between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia). Armenia’ victory resulted in a block-ade from Azerbaijan and Turkey, which continues to this day. The blockade aggravated Armenia’s dif-ficult economic situation, but a suc-cessful «Miatsun» was considered more important, and Ter-Petrosyan was elected for his second term in 1995. Nevertheless, it was the Kara-bakh problem that also became the

reason for his stepping down in 1998, when the two future Presidents of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan (the Prime Minister) and Serzh Sargsyan (the Minister of Interior and Na-tional Security) did not support Ter-Petrosyan’s plan for settling the Na-gorno-Karabakh conflict. The plan entailed demilitarizing the combat zone and returning to Azerbajian a number of towns occupied during 1992-1994.

Robert Kocharyan became Presi-dent of Armenia in 1998. Prior to that, he was the President and an im-portant military figure in the unrec-ognized NKR, which illustrates the degree of interpenetration between the Karabakh and «mainland» Ar-menian governments. After holding a number of posts in Stepanakert back in Soviet times, Kocharyan was the leader of the separatist region un-til 1997, when he moved to Yerevan and became Prime Minister. At the time, the Armenian population held Kocharyan in extremely high regard, viewing him as «the iron fist and the vanquisher of the Azeri.»

Kocharyan immediately started setting up the republic as a crimi-nal autocracy, with active assistance from Vladimir Putin, the ideologi-cally similar newly appointed leader of Russia. In 1999, a terror attack shocked the country, as group of armed men took over the Parlia-ment, declaring a coup, and killing

73ARMENIA. A FRAGILE CALM IN PUTIN’S CAUCASIAN STRONGHOLD

the Prime Minister and a number of prominent politicians. To this day, these terrorists’ true motives remain unclear, but there are significant reasons to suspect the President’s involvement in the attack. Either way, the tragedy was beneficial for Kocharyan, whose personal power only grew from it. In 2008, Kochar-yan gave up the President’s post to Serzh Sargsyan, his close ally back from the party office in Stepanakert.

A veteran of the Karabakh war, Sargsyan used to hold several defense posts (Minister of Interior and Na-tional Security in 1996-1999; Chief of Staff in 1999-2000; Secretary of the National Security Council in 1999-2007; Minister of Defense in 2000-2007). His reputation of a strongman politician was crucial for winning public popularity in the constantly «besieged» Armenia. Sargsyan, es-sentially a representative of the same ruling clan as Kocharyan, continued on the course set by his predecessor. The two formed a tandem not unlike their Kremlin benefactors, the duo of Putin and Medvedev. The oppo-sition’s attempted protest in Yerevan immediately after the 2008 election was forcefully crushed.

Overall, the Armenian regime takes many pages out of their «older Moscow brothers’» book. It is also a feudal kleptocracy that maintains its power through alarmist policies and constant propaganda of the inevita-

ble «destruction of stability» should the opposition come to power. Ar-menia’s main obvious difference from Moscow is the lack of its lead-ership political independence: by gradually assuming control of Arme-nia’s economy and national security, Russia had brought its political elite down to a level close to that of Rus-sia’s subject.

Today, Armenia has no sover-eign political course to speak of, as the eveyr aspect of the republic’s life is tightly controlled by Moscow. In many ways, this scenario was inevi-table, in view of Armenia’s difficult geographic position and its confron-tation with the powerful neighbors. However, the price of Russian pa-tronage may be too high for Armenia in the end.

Combined with the dropping fuel prices, Moscow’s short-sighted and aggressive policy did not just lead the Russian economy into a tail-spin, but also caused a chain reaction in countries with strong economic ties to it. The key sectors of Armenia’s economy have long been bought out by Russian oligarchs, and now the lion’s share of the country’s currency inflows comes from the money sent home by Armenian citizens working in Russia. Understandably, the crisis in Russia turned out very painful for the Transcaucasian republic. Plus, as part of its geopolitical game in the region, Moscow managed to increase


its trade with Azerbaijan while let-ting drop the trade volumes with Armenia. For the Armenian govern-ment, this is doubly tragic because of its recent accession to the EAEU, something that a large portion of the population now views as a fatal error.

The recent protest rallies in Ye-revan were the first sign of public discontent with the current situa-tion. These rallies did not grow into political protests largely because the local opposition is weak, and the West is reluctant to support it (de-spite Moscow’s paranoia, the USA and the EU are not very eager to light the Transcaucasian fuse, wary of the unpredictable consequences). After pacifying the protesters with some illusionary concessions, Sarg-syan achieved an apparent calm. The Kremlin’s elaborate and dangerous game in the Karabakh issue is slip-ping up more often now, but still keeps the situation safe. Neverthe-less, Armenia’s condition continues deteriorating.

Despite the loud talk of «integra-tion,» the EAEU remains primarily a political alliance of post-Soviet au-tocratic rulers who don’t trust each other very much. In Armenia’s case, the situation is made worse by the fact that even if the mythical «unit-ed market» existed, Armenia would have nothing to offer it, given the de-cline of its economy during the rule of Kocharyan and Sargsyan. Another

hurdle is Armenia’s geographic isola-tion from its northern patron. Tran-sit between Russia and Armenia is carried out mainly through Georgia, with which Armenia still has a free trade agreement. However, Georgia recently signed an EU association agreement, so the different integra-tion vectors of the two countries may eventually sever this thread as well.

So far, the day is being saved by Russia’s traditional (but not altru-istic) «bonuses» for its satellites, chiefly in the form of cheap fuel, and the financial and political as-sistance required to extend the op-eration time of Armenia’s vitally important Metsamor Nuclear Pow-er Plant until 2027.

Nevertheless, as Russian patrons fall on some hard times, their gen-erosity also takes a hit. The increase of electricity prices, which caused protests in the capital, came on the back of the already-high utility tar-iffs. Armenia’s electricity prices are twice the average price in the EAEU and the highest in the CIS – despite the many hydroelectric power plants and the mentioned nuclear power plant supplying a country of only three million people. Yet the Russian «brothers» who own Armenia’s en-ergy sector are implacable and have no intention of losing profits even at the risk of an insurgence.

As Russia descends into a grave economic crisis, the opponents of

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Eurasian integration are seeing a number of their earlier demands be-coming reality, in spite of the actual integration. Real trade and coopera-tion with the weakening «colonial power» are dwindling, forcing the Armenian leaders to look for new partners. In the end, the foundation for political loyalty is laid by eco-nomic links, despite the Kremlin’s expectations that Armenia’s loyalty is guaranteed by the Russian mili-tary contingent. However, a mili-tary presence is not an all-cure and not a blank check for absurd and selfish economic moves. After all, there used to be Russian military in Georgia and Azerbaijan as well. And a US military base in Cuba did not

prevent its leaders from severing ties with Washington back in the day.

For now, Armenia, along with the rest of the Transcaucasian re-gion, hovers in delicate balance. But the trends indicate that we may soon witness dramatic events related both to Armenia’s domestic situation and to the Karabakh conflict, frozen yet definitely heating up. Were Moscow to pursue an altruistic, truly sup-portive policy in the region, as per the objective situation and common sense, there would be some hope for the situation. However, in cases when short-term gain has to be scarified for reasons of strategy, we should not hold our breath for Russia’s current leaders to display common sense.

ven a cursory glance at the countries currently considered friends of Putin’s Russia shows

that the idea of friendship does not apply here. Except its relations with Belarus and Kazakhstan (which de-serve separate in-depth analysis), Russia has little more than situation-al alliances — and even those often turn out to be a short-term overlap of interests rather than conscious poli-cy coordination. So why does Rus-sia, which may not be a world power, but definitely a strong regional actor with a lot of military, political and economic potential, have no friends? Perhaps the answer to this question lies in those infamous «values» that the Russian leadership not only lacks, but considers to be nothing but fic-tion and «opiate of the masses,» de-spite its periodic propaganda about morality and other «spiritual tenets.»

A look at the works of the more reasonable brand of Kremlin-related analytics (ignoring the raving nation-alists who prophesize Putin’s soon

victory and «Russian world in the entire world») reveals one common trend: a cynical denial of any inter-national policy norms or rule, except for objective laws of economics and the resulting Darwinist approach to interstate relations. Judging from the actions of Putin and his circle, we can be fairly certain that they share this «predatory» view of the world as an arena, where carnivorous titans bat-tle without any rules or principles, while weak and politically dependent puppet states, border states and pro-tectorates watch from the sidelines.

Putin is not alone in this world-view. Many states are guided by these ideas in their policies. In fact, some elements of this approach can be found in the policies of any global actors, including countries with the highest level of legal culture. More-over, viewing interaction between states and nations as a never-ending battle ungoverned by rules of moral-ity or ideology is hardly a new idea.

The first recorded approach to pol-itics as a confrontation without ethical

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or religious basis is found in the trea-tise History of the Peloponessian War by the ancient Greek historian Thucy-dides, in which he views the conflict from a similar «Darwinist» position. These ideas were further developed in the famous works of Niccolo Machia-velli, and finally crystallized in the 19th century, when Otto von Bismarck set them as the foundation of his new gov-ernmental course. Similarly to the con-cept introduced to political literature by the historian Ludwig von Rochau after the 1848’s string of revolutions, von Bismarck called this approach «real politics» or realpolitik. Realpo-litik in its pure form was prevalent in the second half of the 19th century, but many of its traits are still alive today.

Perhaps the Russian leader be-lieves that understanding these «foundations of political reality» and the base motives that lie at the core of all international processes makes him stronger and more cunning in a fight against similar opponents. However, even if we forego any ar-guments in favor of alternative vi-able models (more on that later) and view the world through Putin’s eyes, we get to a paradoxical conclusion: in the world of real politics, Russia is headed for an inevitable collapse.

If geopolitics is governed by one rule — namely, «anything goes» — then the strongest will inevitably succeed. A state’s strength, on the in-ternational scale, is the sum of many

factors, including economic, social, geographic, and military ones. A shortcoming in one area can be com-pensated by an advantage in another, but not indefinitely. Thus, states with a reasonable balance of these institu-tions find themselves at the forefront of the global «natural selection.» But what do we see in Russia’s case?

Based on all its factors combined, today’s Russia is a typical regional ac-tor, albeit with a number of specifics that set it aside from, for example, Saudi Arabia or Brazil. Behind Rus-sia’s great-power rhetoric lies a re-source economy, which makes it criti-cally dependent on the development of other actors, ones that consume Russian resources. The only industry inherited by Russia from the USSR and not yet run into the ground is the defense sector, whose share of contri-butions to the budget keeps growing as fuel prices drop. The defense sector could drive economic growth — but unlike the military, it had not under-gone any reforms. Thus, the Russian defense industry remains a shadow of its Soviet predecessor, erratic and of-ten insufficiently productive. All oth-er branches of the state economy are in decline, degrading further because of the progressively less effective gov-ernance and growing corruption. That leaves Russia’s army, powerful on a regional level, as its only success-ful institute – which is why it is being used more and more often.


However, a quick look shows that Russia’s neighbors and former Soviet «colleagues» are not doing any bet-ter. The direction of migration, from the post-Soviet periphery into Rus-sia, proves the obvious: Russia still remains the most powerful among all post-Soviet economics. With that in mind, it would seem that it should also be the political magnet for inte-gration projects. But in reality, the at-titude towards Russia in a number of its neighboring states is usually lim-ited to fear and docility. So why are real alliances not working out?

The problem lies exactly in the re-alpolitik so beloved by Putin. Plus, this approach is shared by other leaders of corruption-riddled states, both post-Soviet and elsewhere. In their system of coordinates, friendship is bought and sold, just like everything else. This means that Putin will only have friends if he has something to offer them.

In this respect, the Kremlin’s real-politik finds itself at a dead end again, because there are plenty of players in the world who can offer Russia’s po-tential friends much more. Thus, any «ally» can be bought, which is why Moscow prefers having puppets. This is exactly why Russia joined the Syr-ian conflict four whole years after its start, when al-Assad’s regime came to the brink of collapse, making it more pliable. Similar reasons are behind Russia’s intervention in the Donbas conflict in the summer of 2014, when

the separatists were close to defeat. Prior to that, they appeared strong enough and capable of playing their own game, so Moscow waited until Ukraine showed the Donetsk and Lu-gansk separatist leaders how illusion-ary their independence really was.

However, Putin’s geopolitical op-ponents are not above creating their own puppets and border states — and they have much more resources to spare. Thus, Russia’s puppets must be very closely tied to it, to prevent any temptation to switch sides. Since there are not many regions with such strong ties, the number of Russia’s ephemeral «allies» is correspondingly low. Plus, states with Putin-like authoritarian and kleptocratic regimes are also following realpolitik. In the resulting dog-eat-dog world, a proper alliance is impos-sible in principle, and the only options are to obey the strongest, or become strong yourself. For Putin, this is a grim situation. But is there any window for change in this arena full of lone wolves?

Indeed, there is one — the very values rejected by realpolitik. Not some high-browed humanistic ide-als, but principles for reasonable state governance, interaction between the people and the authorities, controls and counterweights that help a state remain effective without either de-scending into anarchy or tightening the screws of authoritarianism. Those are the values of the Western civiliza-tion, painfully learned over the centu-

79THE LONELY RUSSIA ON THE WAY TO COLLAPSE

ries, which even today remain an ideal that may be unattainable, but one we must all strive for. The collective West is moving towards those ideals, albeit with occasional stumbles and steps back. To a larger degree, this is the backbone of unity for Europe and for states it gave birth to — first of all, the USA. To create a similar low-key yet firm foundation for cooperation, Rus-sia would have to abandon its centu-ries-old flaws and overcome the birth traumas of its statehood, breaking the vicious cycle it has been following for the entire length of its history. That task is not insurmountable. After all, the West had managed the same in the past. But achieving this requires the leaders’ will to drive change and aim for results that go beyond one genera-tion’s lifespan — and, consequently, beyond the self-centered needs of a specific ruling circle.

Everything we know about Putin and the Russian political elite makes any chance of such mindset impossi-ble. Putin and his circle, governed by their own criminal pasts, the unhealthy post-Soviet semblance of business, and the special services machine built on terror and violence, are leading Rus-sia towards another collapse, one that will resemble the Time of Troubles, the Russian Civil War, or, at best, the early post-Soviet times. The chance to avoid this catastrophe is extremely slim, and lies in the minuscule possibility that the Russian leadership will undergo

deep and painful personal evolution.This prospect is not a cause for

celebration. The next collapse of Russia’s statehood will impact all its neighbors, and the consequences can-not be predicted. Plus, history shows that Russia always retains the poten-tial for a quick rebirth. The real ques-tion is, will it be reborn as something other than an even more monstrous formation, one that claims to reject its past but in reality, constructs a regime even more horrendous and blood-thirsty than before? Or can Russia break the vicious cycle be broken and move in a new direction, unfamiliar yet immensely promising both for Russia itself and the rest of the world? That option would be a tremendous gift for humanity as a whole, and es-pecially for Ukraine, which is current-ly trying to break free from its own vi-cious cycle. But even if this optimistic scenario were to transpire, the world would first have to weather the quake caused by the collapse of Putin’s re-gime. Russia’s tragic prospects will not be impacted by whichever lies in store for Ukraine, the collective West, or any other region of the planet. We can only hope that the level of political and social development in the new, post-Putin Russia will one day be-come high enough to imbue its state with powerful civilization magnet-ism. Then, and only then, will Russia, for the first time since the Communist revolution, have real allies again.

CONTENTS

“Putin’s Friends,” or the Non-Military Dimension of Confrontation

About the author

Between West and East: the Reasons, Myths, and Reality of the Czech Republic’s Pro-Russian Sentiments

Viktor Orbán’s Hungary — Putin’s Outpost in Europe or a European Belarus?

The Greek Tragedy, or the Price of Populism

The Isle of Discord. The Broken Cyprus as a Case Study for Ukraine

Serbia: the Rocky Road to the EU as a Lesson for Ukraine

Montenegro. The “Eternal” Prime Minister on the Way to NATO

Finland. Why “Finlandization” is not possible for Ukraine

Turkey: a Mirror for Putin

Field Marshall’s el-Sisi’s Egypt. The Land of the Pyramids Between Moscow and Washington

Iran. A New Piece on the Chessboard

Azerbaijan. Multi-Vector Politics Atop a Smoldering Volcano

Armenia. A Fragile Calm in Putin’s Caucasian Stronghold

The Lonely Russia on the Way to Collapse

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Government & Nonprofit

Putin friends eng-10-05-2016