Putin the terrible: Expect more chaos and carnage from the 21st century Tsar

In the weeks before Vladimir Putin’s fifth rigged election, Russia’s foreign intelligence agencies flexed their muscles: 

• A plane carrying the UK’s defence secretary had its GPS signal jammed.
• A phone call between senior German military officers talking about sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine was intercepted and published by a Russian propagandist.  
• A Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine was gunned down in Spain.

So what? Expect more of the same, and not just in Europe. Embarking on his 21st year in power and his 17th as president, Putin appears fit, alert, content with the way his war is going and minded to spend the next six years tightening his already formidable grip on Russia.

At home he’s a tyrant. Abroad he’s a warmonger. Everywhere and always he’s a former spy in thrall to the dark arts of intelligence and adept at creating crises wherever they might advance his project for a revived Russian empire. Above all he is a breaker of norms.

Undiplomatic. Russia will use this “extra-diplomatic dexterity”, as Chatham House’s James Nixey puts it, to help gain control of resources and build a narrative of power. Its tradition of “unconventional warfare” is alive and effective, and encompasses

• espionage, especially by a reorganised military intelligence directorate (the GRU);

• neo-colonialism – especially in Africa – often outsourced to ex-Wagner Group operatives now absorbed into the GRU; and
• ideology, enlisting voices from Chechnya and the Russian Orthodox Church to peddle hardline social conservatism to the Middle East and beyond. 

Undemocratic. Last weekend’s election was brazenly rigged (no real opposition, no campaign, no secret voting), but the Kremlin still went to great lengths to give it a veneer of legitimacy. Paradoxically, Sunday’s “Noon against Putin” demonstration in memory of Alexei Navalny and in defence of democracy may have helped the regime in this respect.  

“No matter how manipulated the vote is – it does enable Putin to claim that he has a mandate for prosecuting the war with greater intensity,” Nixey says. 

Uncomfortable. The most serious threat for Putin’s enemies in Russia, apart from mobilisation for the Ukrainian front, is an increasingly central role in Russian life for the FSB. 

Not by chance did Putin, the ex-FSB agent, deliver his main post-election address at an FSB board meeting. He praised its officers for participating in the war, ensuring Russian “security and sovereignty” and repelling “terrorist” attacks (a reference to recent raids by pro-Kyiv Russian units on towns in western Russia). 

Uninhibited. Externally, Putin can be relied on to persist with his demonisation of the “collective West”, which he accuses of encircling and enforcing double standards against Russia. This will involve

• continuing the war in Ukraine;
• destabilising Moldova to Ukraine’s west;
• supporting European far-right parties protesting against military aid to Ukraine; and
• fuelling pro-Russian unrest elsewhere, including in the Balkans and Baltic states. 

No-where is immune. The Paris bed bug scare of 2023 has been traced to Russian social media trolls – and blamed for a slump in bookings for the 2024 Olympics.

Down under. Relations with the West may be frozen, but the winds from the South and East blow warmer as

• India and China congratulate Putin on his “victory”;
• Iran’s President Raisi affirms his willingness to help Russia “stabilise” the South Caucasus; and
• Russia receives ballistic missiles and artillery shells from North Korea, probably in exchange for technological cooperation (which will worry Seoul).

In the absence of real opposition, there is no internal obstacle to Russia becoming an anti-Western hegemon.

What’s more… there are signs (at last) of Europe squaring up to the challenge. Last week France’s Macron refused to rule out French boots on the ground in Ukraine. This week it was Shapps’ turn for the UK.

Brace, brace.

And finally… Russian assets: how and why to seize them The EU’s foreign policy chief has produced a plan to confiscate 90 per cent of revenues from $300 billion of seized Russian assets and use them to buy weapons for Ukraine. It’s legal but it doesn’t go far enough, say Charles Kotuby and Jason McCue. Read the full article on the Tortoise website.

More than 70 countries are holding elections this year, but much of the voting will be neither free nor fair. To track Tortoise’s election coverage, go to the Democracy 2024 page on the Tortoise website.