Yes, as head of administration for the democratically elected Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, Putin created many networks that could definitely be called mafia, in which lucrative claims were staked and huge fortunes were made – whether by himself and his family remains a mystery despite all the research. After he was hoisted to power by a group of business tycoons and secret service agents, he created a huge system of privileges on this basis. Oligarchs who got in his way, like Khodorkovsky, were punished in exemplary fashion or had to flee abroad. The rest have been relegated to some kind of licensee who could lose everything overnight – or suddenly fall out of the window. There is a hint of terror in the game, but it doesn’t take much more to make them tame – as you have now seen again.
Like the oligarchs, Russian society as a whole seems to be brought into line. Is there really no more opposition in this huge country?
Civil society structures with strong personalities have emerged again and again. But they were systematically prevented from influencing society with a combination of bureaucratic chicanery, legal prosecution, financial ruin and state demagogy. Look at Alexei Navalny, who managed to win 30 percent of the vote in Moscow despite not even being allowed to campaign. Then he was poisoned, returned dead brave and is now effectively serving life in a prison camp where attempts are being made to break him.
Why is this still working?
Russia is a territorially, socially, regionally and culturally extremely fragmented country, in which society has a hard time asserting itself against a central power that monopolizes and controls most of the country’s resources. Hence the ever-renewed tendency to establish an autocratic power that is breathing down the necks of its working people, but manages to incapacitate them over long stretches.
Is Russia also in danger of falling apart politically?
This is the terrifying vision that Putin himself repeatedly conjures up – and of which many are probably actually afraid. It’s just that it’s Putin himself who is driving the country to ruin and, above all, is burning tens of thousands of recruits from the eastern and southern outskirts and from the ethnic minorities in Ukraine.
What happens if Russia loses the Ukraine war? In 1989, the humiliated Soviet forces finally had to withdraw from Afghanistan, and the defeat contributed to the collapse of the USSR.
Yes, it has always been like that in Russia’s history, in the Crimean War of 1856, in the war against Japan in 1904/05 or in Galicia in 1917 or in Afghanistan: Again and again, defeats have triggered major internal movements, even led to revolutions. Russia has lost almost every war in the last few centuries unless the enemy first marched on Moscow, as Napoleon and Hitler did. This is a major reason why Putin cannot afford to retreat, but for any pseudo victory he must always throw more men and materiel into this pointless battle: units of hastily trained soldiers who are little more than cannon fodder. There is a lack of capable instructors and competent officers. His army is just as corrupt as it was in the days of the Tsars – and at least as incompetent.
How do you think the war will continue now?
That remains speculation. What seems most likely to me is that at some point, perhaps in the coming year, exhaustion will set in on both sides and an undeclared or internationally brokered ceasefire will freeze the conflict again near where it started in 2022. For Ukraine, that would be a semi-victory, which could at least further consolidate itself as a state, nation, and community. It would still be a defeat for Putin, because basically he has achieved nothing – and at what price! It would make him even more of a junior partner of Xi Jinping’s China, which has its own, perhaps even more extravagant, global political ambitions. This might be the last chance for Russian society to come to its senses – or else to sink into what I call “North Korean darkness” in my new book.
Mr. Koenen, thank you very much for the interview.
