Will Putin soften following Russia victory?
Channel 4 News International Editor Lindsey Hilsum asks now that Putin has won a third term, will he feel able to soften up a bit?
President-elect Vladimir Putin said it was the wind in his eye not emotion that drew tears when he addressed supporters in central Moscow last night. Weeping doesn’t go with his hardman image. But now that he has won a third term, will he feel able to soften up a bit?
On the face of it, I suspect he will. Expect fine-sounding words about tackling corruption, and answering the middle-class desire for more political freedom.
“The system may try to take over the opposition,” said Maxim Trudolyubov, a writer and analyst who was in London last week addressing a meeting organised by Open Democracy Russia and the Russia Foundation.
“It will adopt the language of the anti-corruption agenda.”
Opposition leaders may be offered jobs (Former finance minister Alexei Kudrin to head a new anti-corruption commission maybe?). The aim will be less to clean up Russian politics and more to co-opt and thus split and quash the new opposition.
Read more: Russian elections ‘clearly skewed’
What about internationally? Kurt Volker, the former US ambassador to Nato believes that the US needs to get tougher. “Even if Putin does settle in for another dozen years, the Russian people need to know that democracies are on their side, and Putin himself needs to know that there are consequences if he persists in his old ways,” he wrote in the Christian Science Monitor.
But confronting Putin hasn’t worked. Hillary Clinton called Russian policies towards Syria “despicable”, but that hasn’t brought Putin any closer to the US point of view.
“As for appeals from Department of State and White House, asking us to put pressure on Assad, we would also like the USA to do something on Palestine-Israel conflict and other issues,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov today, deftly changing the subject and pointing up hypocrisy in the US position.
But there’s another interpretation of events. Mikhail Zygov of Russia’s Rain TV told me last week that Putin’s policy towards Syria was simply a bargaining chip. “The plan is, if we give America Syria, then they will turn a blind eye to what’s happening in Russia,” he said.
“Syria is not that important to Russia – it can be given away.” In other words, if the US and the EU stop criticising Putin, and if US and European non-governmental organisations stop funding pro-democracy groups in Russia, maybe Putin will modify his position on Syria. A Faustian bargain if ever there was one.
Follow Lindsey Hilsum on Twitter @lindseyhilsum