Carnegie Moscow Center
The recent reset between Russia and the West is being used by Moscow as a tool for the legitimization and perpetuation of the Russian status-quo and hasn’t prevented the strengthening of repressive policies inside Russia.
Khodorkovsky's conviction illustrates the dead-end road that Russia is on and underscores the personalized nature of Russia’s regime, despite attempts to don a “human face” over the past two years.
Instead of helping Russia to transform itself, the reset between Russia and the West ultimately serves to legitimize the Russian system of personalized power and enable the preservation of the status quo.
If the “reset” in U.S.-Russia relations does not help achieve a genuine movement towards Russia’s political liberalization, then it risks legitimizing the Kremlin's system of personalized power.
The second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev is overtly political and aims not only to justify then-President Vladimir Putin's brand of Russian governance, but also to show that Putin is not ready to step down from power.
To promote political change in Moscow, the West must hold Russia’s elite accountable and provide incentives to help encourage true democratic behavior in Russia.
The Russian government’s poor response to the wildfires will further widen the chasm separating the nation’s authorities from society.
The U.S. administration and politicians in Moscow have sharply divergent views on the ‘reset’ in bilateral relations. Where U.S. officials see dialogue, compromises, and concessions as a means of winning over the other side, the Russian elite considers dialogue to be a sign of weakness.
The Central and East European states integrated into liberal Europe because their ruling elites were able to reach a consensus, and because the European Union readily accepted them. By contrast, Russia has reverted to personalized power.
To the dismay of Russian reformers, a consensus seems to be growing among Western policymakers and intellectuals that Russia is not ready for liberalism and that there are even certain advantages to dealing with the illiberal political order built by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.