The Real Russia. Today. The strange case of Valery Solovey

Thursday, February 17, 2022

• Foreign policy: Russia responds to Washington’s security proposals, expels U.S. deputy ambassador to Moscow
• Domestic dealings: Valery Solovey and the hate speech case, plus prison for the father of a top Navalny aide
• Opinion and analysis: Fyodor Krasheninnikov tells Ukrainians to back off, Sergey Karaganov is ready to take on the world, Bernard Guetta wants Putin to go down in history, Fyodor Lukyanov is concerned about U.S. information dominance, and Nick Trickett warns that Russia’s currency reserves pose a problem or two

Foreign Policy

✍️ The Russian Foreign Ministry’s response to Washington’s security proposals, in a nutshell (3-min read)

On Thursday, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a written response to Washington’s counterproposals on security guarantees in Europe. Unlike the response Moscow received from the U.S. and NATO earlier this month, which wasn’t officially made public (though the full text was leaked to Spanish newspaper El Pais), the Russian Foreign Ministry published its 10-page commentary in full. You can read Meduza’s brief summary of Moscow’s response here.

👋 Russia expels U.S. Deputy Ambassador Bartle Gorman (the U.S. embassy’s spokesperson told RIA Novosti that Washington considers Gorman’s expulsion an “escalatory step” and is weighing a response)

Russia’s domestic dealings

🔍 Known for peddling wild conspiracy theories, Valery Solovey is now wrapped up in a felony hate speech investigation (5-min read)

On Wednesday, law enforcement officers raided the Moscow home of political analyst Valery Solovey. Solovey and his son Pavel were then taken to the Russian Investigative Committee for questioning. As it turns out, Solovey is considered a witness in a criminal investigation into felony hate speech. Solovey and his son were released late Wednesday evening after being questioned. According to unofficial reports, the felony investigation is connected to an anonymous Telegram account called “SVR General” — allegedly, Solovey may have been involved in creating content for this channel, which regularly criticizes the Russian authorities. Meduza recounts how Valery Solovey, a former professor at Moscow’s prestigious MGIMO University, became an extravagant political commentator known for his colorful (and increasingly wild) conspiracy theories.

⚖️ Russian court re-sentences father of top Navalny aide to three years in prison (Ivan Zhdanov’s 67-year-old father Yuri was handed a suspended sentence back in December, but now he’s being sent to prison. Zhdanov junior, who fled Russia last year, believes the case against is father is fabricated and aimed at him.)

Opinion and analysis

😡 (Opinion) Nobody should lecture the Russian people

In an article for Republic, columnist Fyodor Krasheninnikov expresses resentment that some foreigners (as well as a few expats) hold ordinary Russians responsible for failing to stand up to the Putin regime. Krasheninnikov argues that mass civil disobedience became essentially impossible after 2021 when “reality changed” and the Kremlin’s political repressions escalated from targeting opposition leaders and organizers to pursuing anyone remotely involved in demonstrations. Any group of people subjected to such pressure would lose its nerve in the street, insists Krasheninnikov, bristling at Ukrainians who “lecture” Russians and Belarusians about the democratic spirit. “In the conditions of an already formed dictatorship,” he explains, “nothing like the Maidan victory is possible.” Pointing to the recent unrest in Kazakhstan and the subsequent tolerance of continued (albeit smaller) rallies, Krasheninnikov says even the Tokayev administration is kinder to civic activism than the Putin and Lukashenko regimes.

🚀 (Interview) Russia might use its new military superiority to prevent the Big War

In an interview with the magazine Istorik, Council on Foreign and Defense Policy head Sergey Karaganov argues again that Russia is better positioned today to challenge the West than it was in the late Soviet period. The 2008 financial crisis and the rise of China underscore the downfall of “modern capitalism” that has sustained American and European hegemony, says Karaganov, and it’s now clear that victory in the Cold War was “pyrrhic” insofar as it caused fissures in the “collective West.”

Karaganov also expresses enormous optimism on the battlefield, warning that “war is inevitable” without revisions to the current global security architecture. He urges Moscow to “go all the way” in its own periphery, risking a “small war” to prevent a larger, more dangerous conflict. “Because if this isn’t done, the system will collapse in any event,” he says. Citing combat experience in Syria, the modernization of Russia’s armed forces, and “a new generation of Russian strategic hypersonic weapons,” Karaganov argues that Moscow now wields military superiority over the United States. Moscow has also shed the burden of subsidizing “third-world satellites,” freeing itself to develop better than the USSR, all while reducing the share of the national economy that’s devoted to the military. Additionally, having befriended China at last, Russia no longer has to prepare for “war on two fronts.” Psychologically, Russians now wield the “moral” confidence of a nation with a “system that works,” lifting the country above the self-doubts that plagued the USSR.

What is Karaganov’s vision for the brave new world? He insists that Russia has no plans to conquer Ukraine, though he also suggests partitioning parts of the country away to its neighbors. He says the proper approach to today’s geopolitical mayhem is a new “concert of great powers,” modeled on the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars (not another Yalta Conference). At the same time, however, he laments that the leaders of today’s democracies aren’t competent enough to share a table with the Chinese and Russian leaders.

☮️ (Opinion) Putin’s place in the history books is here for the taking

In an article for Republic, French journalist Bernard Guetta says Vladimir Putin’s escalation gambit in Ukraine has failed, but it’s not too late for the Russian president to change course and surprise everyone by resolving the conflict peacefully. Moscow could pressure the separatists in the Donbas to implement their obligations under the Minsk agreements, kickstarting a process that could end years of bloodshed. The move would meet almost universal approval, says Guetta, coming as a relief to Russians who don’t want war and to Americans who do not want to be “dragged back to Europe.”

This policy could even win Putin his much-desired place in the history books. Guetta acknowledges that Moscow can also select various half measures (“cyberattacks and other unlawful provocations”), but this will only delay Putin’s final choice between a disastrous military campaign and what becomes a “political fiasco” of defeat on the world stage if he doesn’t seize the “exit opportunity” available now.

📻 (Opinion) The war in Ukraine is the result of great powers ‘replacing war’

In an op-ed for the state newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, political analyst Fyodor Lukyanov says the current “collision” between Moscow and Washington pits Russian military advantages in Eastern Europe against America’s “almost total domination” of the global information space. Lukyanov argues that both sides are now utilizing these relative strengths in ways designed “to replace war” (unthinkable between nuclear powers), and he says the “severity” of the situation in Ukraine is no surprise, given the nature of Russia’s challenge. At the same time, he also blames Washington’s efforts to shape the media “narrative” for escalating today’s crisis to its current level.

💰 (Opinion) Russia’s currency reserves are a problem

In an article for Riddle, political risk expert Nick Trickett says Russia’s enormous international currency reserves (now more than $630 billion) “is not good in and of itself.” For more than a decade, Russia has had more than enough squirreled away to manage financial crises or external borrowing obligations, explains Trickett, but the policy of taking so much money out of the economy has significantly hurt growth. Because the government plays such a large role in Russia’s economy, lower state spending has “a more pronounced impact on levels of investment and consumption.”

Currency devaluation has helped export manufacturers increase their relative earnings, while import substitution has subjected households to higher costs. Declining income has corresponded to rising private borrowing amid “punishing interest rates.” Rising borrowing and financing costs, says Trickett, could also raise food prices and even jeopardize “necessary investments into communal utilities.” Russia faces these challenges and more — all without confronting “the economic fallout from a major conflict in Ukraine.”