Still, Putin had long been suspicious of the West’s intentions toward Ukraine. He knew full well that if he were in charge of Western intelligence he would use all those pleasant and neutral-sounding NGOs to gradually draw Ukraine into the Western camp, and the EU. Membership in NATO could come later. And even without any such malign intent it is still all part of one process. As Fiona Hill, former national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia, put it: “The E.U. operates in a completely different framework, when you pool sovereignty and have the same temperature gauges, the same railway gauges and do lots of other boring things that have a profound impact. Once you do this you don’t come back. Russia looked at places like Estonia and Poland and said we can’t let this happen to Ukraine.”[287]
The fog of war has been particularly thick in Ukraine, and truth as always was the first casualty—it was in fact assassinated. Putin has maintained deniability from the start, employing tricks and tactics that have been called “hybrid warfare,” meaning a newfangled combination of proxies, volunteers, propaganda, and lies. But it’s nothing so new either. In 1921 the British foreign secretary and “arch-Russophobe”[288] Lord Curzon wrote to Georgy Chicherin, the Soviet commissar for foreign affairs: “When the Russian government desire to take some action more than usually repugnant to normal international law and comity, they ordinarily erect some ostensibly independent authority to take action on their behalf…. The process is familiar, and has ceased to beguile.”[289]
Except for its command of English, that letter could have been written today.
Murky as the situation remains, a few things are clear. First, the Crimea will remain part of Russia. The leading opposition figure, the valiant anticorruption muckraker and often-jailed Alexei Navalny, who took 27 percent in his 2013 run for mayor of Moscow, has said he wouldn’t return Crimea if he became president: “Despite the fact that Crimea was seized with egregious violations of all international regulations, the reality is that Crimea is part of Russia” and “will remain part of Russia and will never again in the foreseeable future become part of Ukraine.”[290] Like Putin and Gorbachev, Navalny doesn’t “see any kind of difference at all between Russians and Ukrainians,” a sentiment, that, tellingly, is almost never voiced by Ukrainians.
If the leader of the government and the leader of the opposition are agreed on the status of Crimea, we can be sure that any negotiations contesting Crimea’s status will be a nonstarter. The West will ultimately make a sharper distinction between Crimea and east Ukraine, continuing not to recognize Crimea’s annexation and to apply sanctions to companies in Crimea or doing business with it. If, however, Russia complies sufficiently with the Minsk agreements, and proves a compellingly necessary partner in international affairs like the fight against ISIS, the sanctions imposed in connection with Ukraine will gradually be lifted. Though like China no fan of “splittism,” Russia was glad to see cracks appear in Western unity with the exit of Britain from the European Union. The Russians can ask why the UK’s referendum was legitimate and Crimea’s was not.
Meanwhile the sanctions are still in force. Those sanctions have caused Russia genuine pain, hurting Russian businesses big and small, delaying exploration for oil in the Arctic, pushing millions into poverty, depriving the better-off of their European vacations and French cheeses. Though they offer no immediate emotional satisfaction, sanctions do work, as shown by Iran coming to the negotiating table in 2015. Still, it shouldn’t be forgotten that the sanctions cut both ways. The French had to return the 1.2 billion euros to the Russians for the Mistral assault carriers and also had to pay out some 2.5 million euros a month for their maintenance. By 2016 the Italians had lost upward of $10 billion because of the sanctions.
Russia will be satisfied with some low level of continued turmoil in eastern Ukraine because NATO will not offer membership to countries with frozen conflicts and border disputes. Ideally for Putin the rebels will bite off a bit more territory to create a land bridge to Crimea, which can now only be supplied by sea or air without risk of obstruction. A bridge to link the Russian mainland and Crimea is under discussion with China as the probable contractor, but it will take years and cost billions, a cost that may be offset by the gas and oil deposits off the Crimean shore.
The lasting consequence of the Ukrainian adventure was the revelation that Russia is a Darwinian society that will not play by the West’s rules, because, by its very nature, it cannot.
Breaking with the West over Ukraine, Russia veered in two directions—north to the Arctic and east to China.
PART FIVE
NORTH- AND EASTWARD
…With escalating terrorist threats at home, including in the Chinese heartland, and Uighur militants working with extremist groups like the Pakistani Taliban and the Islamic State, the imperative to stabilize China’s entire western periphery has increased.
8
RUSSIA’S MECCA: THE ARCTIC
The Arctic has always been Russian. We will surrender it to no one.
In late 2015 Dmitri Rogozin, deputy prime minister in charge of space and defense, tweeted the following: “The Arctic is Russia’s Mecca.”[293] A flamboyant type, Rogozin has been known to say what others cannot or dare not. He first gained notoriety when he headed up the faux opposition party Rodina (Motherland), which produced a racist film spot, “Let’s Throw the Garbage out of Moscow,” showing dark-skinned men from the Caucasus leering at pure Russian women and littering the streets with watermelon rinds until a couple of real Russian men walk over to put things right. Rogozin was one of the first seven people to whom Obama’s sanctions were applied. His response: “Tanks don’t need visas.”[294] He speaks four languages and has a Ph.D. in philosophy.
When it comes to the importance of the Arctic for Russia’s future Rogozin is hardly alone in voicing such maximalist sentiments. Addressing the next generation of Russians at a youth camp outside Moscow, Putin said of the country’s future: “Our interests are concentrated in the Arctic. And of course we should pay more attention to … strengthening our position [there].”[295] When serving as president, Dmitri Medvedev frequently said that the Arctic must become a “main resource base”[296] by 2020. The problem now is that after the break with the West over Crimea and Ukraine, the Arctic becomes both more essential to Russia’s future and, without Western investment, equipment, and expertise, much more difficult to exploit.
287
Andrew Higgins, “Upheaval Highlights E.U.’s Past Miscalculations and Future Dangers,”
293
“Norway in Arctic Dispute with Russia over Rogozin Visit,” BBC News, April 20, 2015. Also appears as “The Arctic is a Russian Mecca” in Steve Lee Myers, “Arctic Council Meeting Nears in the Shadow of Tension with Russia,”
295
Adam Taylor, “Putin Thinks of the Past When Talking Ukraine—but the Arctic When He Sees Russia’s Future,”
296
Bruce Panner, “Security Concerns Rising as Arctic Thaw Spurs Race for Oil,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), January 29, 2009.