Carnegie Moscow Center
Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky’s primary motive is to curry favor with Vladimir Putin. As Putin has shifted gears to a more conservative, anti-Western, and isolationist outlook, scores of his aggressive loyalists have followed the new trend.
Russia will likely succeed in holding sway over Ukraine and turning this country into its buffer zone, but it cannot secure itself from the people’s resentment and resistance.
The seizure of Crimea is Putin’s personal conquest, as well as a dramatic reinforcement of his regime of personal power. For now Putin has succeeded in halting Russia’s social and economic modernization and has pushed Russia to an anti-modernization course.
The Ukrainian crisis has intensified the Kremlin’s crackdown on the Russian media. Nongovernment media simply no longer belong in today’s Russia.
Just as any grand event, the Sochi Olympics will soon be over and Russia will remain with itself. Its prospects are uncertain since the economic growth has dropped and the Kremlin’s policy has shifted toward social conservatism.
The aggravation of the human rights situation in today’s Russia is impossible to deny. What makes things worse is that in Russia the political power is above the law.
The anti-gay campaign may have helped the Kremlin to pit the conservative majority against the excessively modernized trouble-makers. But the wave of negative publicity this campaign is generating has taken a heavy toll on the image of Russia in general, and the Sochi Olympics in particular.
Since the collapse of the Cold War order many countries around the world have engaged in wars and revolutions. The outcomes of these battles no longer fit in the good-or-evil framework. What’s more, in today’s disorderly and erratic world even major nations do not have the authority to make such judgments.
This year’s top three “men of the year” include Pope Francis, Vladimir Putin, and Edward Snowden. But if the “people who made history in 2013” were to be chosen, it should be the actual people—those Ukrainians who have gathered in the Kiev Independence Square.
Nation-building in Ukraine is a formidable task, its divided nation also a hurdle to a democratic development. Still, Ukraine seems to have a better chance of evolving as a democracy than Russia.