As Bashar al-Assad fell, the bloggers of the Russian military nation turned to the Kremlin. “Ten years of our presence,” “Two Majors” telegrammed his channel with more than one million subscribers, “dead Russian soldiers, billions of rubles spent and thousands of tons of ammunition, must be compensated in some way.” Some people don’t know what to say, but adipiscing a Vladimir Putin. The crisis in Syria, personally initiated by Putin, seems to be at an end. And it ends ignominiously, like the other ‘geopolitical’ efforts of Kremlin strategists. These acts are not uncommon. Filter Labs, a data analytics company with the cooperation, saw social media sentiment in Syria sink precipitously as Assad fell.
It was a complete contrast Putin’s foolish cry at the annual news conference last week that Russia had suffered no defeat in Syria. Unlike social media, media representatives of the Kremlin have tried to walk the line, but even here there are divisions. “You can be brutal in the international arena for a while – but be careful not to fall for your own delusions,” ran the op-ed in the broadsheet. Kommersantclosed by a retired colonel near the military leadership. He then used Syria as an example of how “in today’s world, victory can only be achieved in a mobile and short-term war. If you win effectively in a matter of days and weeks, but you cannot quickly consolidate your success in military and political affairs, whatever you do, you will eventually lose. Although part of Ukraine he did not mention, Vasily Gatov, a media analyst at the University of Southern California, told me that the message from the general staff to the Kremlin: be realistic about what we can achieve in Ukraine as well.
Assad’s fall is not only a blow to Russia’s interests in the Middle East, but to the essence of Putin’s power, which has always been around the administration’s perception. In its early days, the acute physician Gleb Pavlovsky once explained to me how, when the Kremlin was weak domestically in the 1990s and early 2000s, Russian leaders learned to dominate TV to create ersatz grandeur. The Kremlin could not really control the regional presidents at the time, but it could give the impression that the president controlled everything by being omnipresent in the media. So when Putin took the administration’s perception to the international stage, he tried to tell the story that he was leading a new generation of authoritarian regimes destined to inherit the land. But that image suddenly looks unstable. Now it’s time to apply more pressure before things can be repaired and once again the movie can project its superpower.
Starting in Georgia, where protesters are strongly resisting the pro-Russian government’s decision to end integration with the EU. It is about Georgia drawn from Moscow’s Neocolonial sphere. Greater Russian dominance allows Moscow to strangle transit gas pipelines to Europe and plans for access to Central Asia. The goal of the uprising is to get enough people in the system to leave the ruling party and their de facto ruler, the oligarch. Bidzina Ivanishvili. The complaints are beginning to bear fruit. Some diplomats and officials fail. The West can explain that Georgian leaders are pariahs through political sanctions, business and security officials are involved in crackdowns.
Last week, the UK government got on the right track by striking five officials with asset suits and travel bans. The pro-Russian government must be made to look vulnerable for those below them to abandon the ship in numbers enough. The Kremlin has failed in its attempt to derail using corruption and propaganda Moldova versus the EU in a recent referendum. Georgians deserve to support European aspirations as well.
Meanwhile, in the deep sea, Europe has finally acted against the shadow fleet of Russia, which transports oil around the world and sells it at rates above the limit set by the G7. Ships will now be shut down and boarded if not properly provided for. Eddie Fishman of Columbia University argues that this is the moment that the Kremlin locks down crucial oil revenues secondary sanctions of the things which buy oil at the aforesaid price. That scares Indian and Emirati traders who do business with Russia and in turn will increase the stress on the Russian economy, where business leaders are already complaining the system is unstable. Although the Kremlin claims that everything is fine with the economy, Russians aren’t buying it, complaining that inflation is making their wages feel like nothing.
And although the Kremlin defends Russia and China’s partnership in economic heaven, the situation is more tenuous. Russian businesses say that Chinese banks no longer work with those Russian institutions known to the US. Indeed, the Chinese are worried that the suspects are just offering them to move money – but they have no choice but to play along.
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The Kremlin will be more than aware of these complaints in society, from military bloggers to business people. There are no signs of popular uprisings. I spoke in no fear. But he worries when people don’t do what he commands. The Russian president often recalculates when he sees that he cannot control perceptions and behavior – thus, he abandoned mobilization efforts after the last attempts saw up to a million young Russians fleeing the countryside.
As the West increases its pressure points on Russia, the goal is not some magical regime change. The point is to make the leader so uncertain that he thinks about what he can feel with impunity. For this reason, Putin often attacks, one blow after another in an unexpected succession, develops stories of international influence. Ukraine takes direct action: drone strikes on military production sites in Russia at higher altitudes and shows the killing of a Russian general in the heart of Moscow. But his popular allies can do much more by imparting the art of economic and political warfare.
Joe Biden’s flawed approach was always to wait until after the Russian crisis, and then Putin would recover and be reduced. Can Donald Trump try something bold? Will Putin believe the riot even more than Biden? The paradox would then be that the US believed in the story of Putin’s invulnerability than many Russians. Vladimir Putin’s main “perception agency” is the one that is sought in the White House itself.