Last year, on August 11, 2015, Andrey Piontkovsky told Kyiv’s Channel 5 that the situation in the Kremlin is now “close to panic” because “the new Western sanctions hits in the first instance the Russian hierarchy” and ordinary Russians are angry about price rises that had been prompted by President Vladimir Putin’s countersanctions.
Paul Goble of the Jamestown Foundation in his analysis noted Mr. Putin’s increasingly erratic and apparently self-destructive actions, including his decisions to burn embargoed food at the border and to block any opposition candidates in regional elections. These signs, analysts said, suggested that Mr. Putin was acting out of fear for his position.
This fear, Mr. Piontkovsky added, is evidenced by the fact that “even [government] propaganda is not supporting the destruction of foodstuffs very actively.” That is because people would be offended. And consequently, as Mr. Putin himself suggested, those around him are increasingly thinking about removing him if they cannot change his direction.
Liliya Shevtsova, who is an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a fellow of the Brookings Institution, also noted (via kasparov.ru) on August 11 that the Kremlin was showing signs of “fear” by its “shift in the Duma elections, its refusal to allow opposition participation in the regional elections, the destruction of the Constitution, the creation of a ‘legal’ basis for arbitrary action, the creation of enemies for putting Russia under martial law and the blackmail of the rest of the world.” Russian commentators, instead of offering an alternative to Mr. Putin, instead explain his actions and encourage people to simply wait him out. Why should anyone be helping his regime “to overcome its fear?” That is more than a simple error, Dr. Shevtsova said, it is a fundamental mistake.
Mr. Goble wrote:
“It is entirely possible that Mr. Putin himself may benefit if people think he is afraid because then, like a cornered rat, there is nothing he might not do. And that, in turn, could lead some both inside Russia and abroad to think about how to make him less afraid. In short, promoting the idea that he is afraid could be yet another way he will seek to advance his interests.
“As an increasingly illegitimate leader of an increasingly outlaw regime, Mr. Putin should be afraid; but if he is, others should not be afraid of that fact. They should recognize that such feelings are the entirely natural outcome of Mr. Putin’s aggression against Georgia, Ukraine and the Russian people, and his threats to Russians and the rest of the world.”
Mr. Piontkovsky now resides in Ukraine after a case was opened against him this year by Russia’s Prosecutor General‘s Office for his “extremist” articles on Russian-Chechen tensions.
Source: “Is Putin now afraid?” by Paul Goble (Window on Eurasia), The Ukrainian Weekly, August 23, 2015.