Protracted Military Putinism: How long it will last and how it will end. Realities and projections

Military Putinism: a stable scenario

For almost all of 2022 and most of 2023, political scientists were fond of discussing potential scenarios for the development of the situation in Russia. The most popular trigger for these thought exercises was Putin's sudden disappearance from the political arena, which, according to the writers, could potentially open a 'window of opportunity' for Russia. However, in the last six months, these scenarios have practically gone out of fashion. And the reason for this is obvious: the feeling of uncertainty has disappeared.

The Putin regime has overcome the period of vulnerability and instability associated with the unforeseen transformation of its blitzkrieg into a protracted conflict, the imposition of broad sanctions, and the social shock experienced by the Russian elites and population from the sudden plunge into war. This period lasted from the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine until the Prigozhin rebellion and the driving back of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the summer of 2023. 

In addition to the relative stabilisation of the military machine, by mid-2023, it also became clear that the effect of sanctions in conditions of high oil prices is limited and stretched over time. In the current regime, it looks like a significant tax on the economy, the burden of which it is currently able to bear. At the same time, the ultra-high export revenues of 2022 and the transition from savings to full utilisation of oil rent in the form of budgetary stimulus had a significant effect. The engine launched by the military economy led to production and income growth in 2023, reassured the elites, and even formed groups of war beneficiaries. The latter, however, hardly outnumber the losers, but are highly visible, while the losers prefer not to advertise their losses, much less their dissatisfaction with them.

In any case, at the moment, it makes sense to consider the stable scenario as the baseline, in which the regime is able to cope with imbalances, survive even a significant deterioration of the economic situation compared to the current one, and effectively manage repression and political risks. There are no critical threats to the regime, either from the front or from the economic and social situation inside Russia. In the stable scenario, this is a long-term military Putinism, the end of which is not in sight today. In other words, repression, economic bravado, hysterical turbo-patriotism, endless national projects, Solovyov-Simonyan, grey schemes, military cemeteries, import substitution, banned performances and books, talks about important matters, and the murders of drinking buddies by 'heroes of the special military operations' due to a sudden outbreak of animosity.

Weaknesses and challenges of the 'second order': economy

In one way or another, the new regime — military Putinism — has reached a stable trajectory and is not facing existential threats or a systemic crisis today. This does not mean that it has no problems. On the contrary, the regime does not appear balanced because of the challenges it is still dealing with and has so far dealt with in a 'business-as-usual' manner. It is experiencing high internal tension and has to rely as much on repression and coercive indoctrination as on 'buying loyalty'.

In the economic sphere, the challenge and point of tension is the unbalanced domestic market amid the militarisation of the economy. It is manifested by a strong inflationary background, which cannot be suppressed even with a refinancing rate of 16% per annum. The growth of lending and incomes is not accompanied by adequate growth in goods on the domestic market, and the increase in output is mainly concentrated in the military-industrial sector.

The flickering effect of sanctions is manifested in current import problems: their inflated cost, instability, absence, or high cost of high-tech equipment and components, which hinders the development of entire industries (for example, LNG). And the prospect of a decrease in export revenues next year is forcing the regime to increase the tax burden (→ Re:Russia: People Instead of Oil).

In the medium term, one of the most important challenges for the regime is that China has not yet embarked on a scenario of systemic economic partnership with Russia, which has isolated itself from the West. This is manifested in the refusal to build the second phase of the ‘Power of Siberia’ gas pipeline and in the refusal to make significant investments in Russia and create a system of reliable mutual settlements. China is seeking to maximise the benefits of Russian dependence, but not to create the conditions for deep economic integration in which Russia's place would be little more than that of a 'raw materials appendage' supplying resources at below-market prices and receiving Chinese imports in return on an almost non-alternative basis. This is and will remain a destabilising economic and political factor, as it creates a sense of uncertainty and 'inferiority' among the elites, and conditions of permanent unpredictability and instability in the economy.

However, like the above-mentioned imbalances, this state of affairs is not in itself a trigger for a crisis capable of overturning the stable scenario.

Weaknesses and challenges of the 'second order': politics

In the political sphere, despite the effectiveness of repression, which has virtually suppressed public resistance to the war within Russia, internal tension is determined by the fact that neither the war itself nor the accompanying official turbo-patriotism are popular among the median voter and elites, who are instead in a state of forced coexistence with them.

A vivid manifestation of this phenomenon of a mobilised-demobilised society has become the new model of supplying manpower to the front. Essentially, it has allowed society to further distance itself and, one might say, definitively shield itself from the war. New contract soldiers with their very high salaries are viewed in society as individuals embarking on risky and generally not very ‘clean’ earnings of their own choice. This circumstance, in particular, supports society's indifference to the high losses on the frontlines ('he knew what he was getting into'). In the public's perception, those fighting are either criminals or those who have gone for promised money, benefits, and privileges, as well as for the right to behave deviantly, disregard the law, and claim a special place in society without any real basis for it.

It is not surprising that any appearance of the topic of the war and of military personnel in civilian life causes tension among those around them and a desire to avoid contact as soon as possible. In this perspective, the total defeat of the 'participants of the special military operation' in the United Russia primaries (which became one of the possible reasons for the dismissal of the party's general council secretary Turchak) does not look like a managerial oversight, but rather a reflection of a more serious collision. In accordance with the highest wish, these candidates were promised to be credited with 25% of the votes they would receive in the voting. However, their results turned out to be so negligible that the promised bonus could not change anything.

And the reason for this is probably not only the disgust shown by rank-and-file party members towards the 'special military operation participants', but also the feeling of a 'systemic threat' from the turbo-patriotic 'new elite' promoted by Putin. The tension between Putin's 'old' elites and the new elites rising ‘in the war' is one potential dividing line in the crowded orbit of Putin's 'loyal soldiers.'

A mobilised-demobilised society sees war and official turbo-patriotism both a managerial folly and a potential threat. Its current conformity is sustained by a complex calculus of costs. It deems the costs of war tolerable for now, certainly lower than the costs of combating the leadership's penchant for war and the party of turbo-patriots. Importantly, these costs are also considered higher than the potential costs of Russia's defeat in the ongoing war started without its participation. The uncertainty of the future in the scenario of ‘Putin’s defeat’ and Russia's defeat alongside him lends additional grounds to this conformity, beyond the fear of repression. This is a kind of 'Stockholm syndrome' of Russian society, at least of its enlightened and bourgeois part.

This not very stable balance, in which a potential conflict simmers between the beneficiaries of war and its companions, is also a cause of constant stress for the regime. It must ensure that the growth of the costs of war is gradual, while the costs of disloyalty remain consistently high. Either way, the regime of military Putinism emerged as an improvisation in response to its own miscalculations in planning for a 'big and swift victorious war'. Therefore, the probability of crises for it in the foreseeable future remains. However, this is a 'second-order' instability that does not threaten the regime in the short or even medium term, unless external factors emerge that disrupt its equilibrium and exacerbate current challenges and imbalances to crisis levels.

Conservative sanctions and 'Putinism after Putin'

The ideology of the 'besieged fortress' and emerging political configurations increase the likelihood that the current political regime will outlive Putin. International sanctions, if the regime is able to adapt to them during the first few years, will serve more as a long-term conservation measure, as the experience of previous sanctions tells us (→ Re:Russia: The Conservation Effect) and as we have also witnessed in a number of other countries (Iran, North Korea, Cuba). 

The absence of alternative foreign policy options and economic manoeuvrability will weaken the potential of modernisation elites, which in another situation could have put forward an alternative development project. In the absence of a radical change in the balance of power in the external environment, the concept of achievable national goals shrinks, and the sanctions themselves become a powerful argument for the regime's mobilisation rhetoric, its aspirations for autarky and closedness, which turn into a sort of national idea ('self-reliance'). Business, the bureaucracy, and the quasi-political class somehow become accustomed to capitalising on this 'idea', confirming their privileged position compared to their compatriots from lower strata, rather than external competitors.

Contrary to the popular expectations in 2022 and early 2023 of an era 'without Putin,' today it can be definitively stated that such conditions of conservation increase the likelihood of the scenario 'Putinism after Putin'. The coalition of 'criminal elites,' implicated in joint responsibility for supporting the war, will seek ways to maintain a status quo that is safe for themselves, even at the cost of significant losses for the economy and overall well-being. The likelihood of agreements between different factions of this coalition in the event of 'Putin's disappearance' increases in such circumstances.

However, it should be noted that all these considerations are based on a stablel scenario, i.e. based on today's trends and assumptions. And such a scenario is always a little deceptive, assuming them to be immutable. Meanwhile, over the past two and a half years, our notions of what is 'possible' and 'probable' have seriously changed. They may significantly change over the next two to three years. Shifts can occur in both domestic and foreign policy, as well as in global markets, which will substantially alter the elites' and the population's perceptions of future scenarios, challenges, and impending forks in the road. However, within the framework of current assumptions, the likelihood of a Putinism scenario that survives Putin has increased somewhat.

The distant horizon and the global context

If we push the horizon out further, we should not forget that in the 'long' historical perspective Russia is neither part of Europe, nor part of Asia. Over the past 400 years, Russia has been more involved in European relations than in Asian ones. From Moscow to Berlin, it's about one and a half thousand kilometres, while to Beijing it's almost six thousand. Two-thirds of the Russian population reside in the European part of the country, and two-thirds of the national production is concentrated here.

Over the past four hundred years of its history, Russia has undergone wide oscillations from pro-European to anti-European orientations, usually lasting several decades. Today's largely artificially provoked radical rupture with the West by Putin is unlikely to be the end of this long history of 'civilisational fluctuations'. Even such a radical attempt to break ties with the West, akin to the Soviet-Stalinist era, did not interrupt this cyclicality; its radicalism and temporary length only led to a more extensive crisis on the way out. 

The current 'break with the West' comes after 30 years of a pro-European drift in Russia. The human capital formed by the era of modernisation from the second half of the 1980s to the second half of the 2010s will not be destroyed quickly (this would require much more extensive elite shake-up and repression) and will seek opportunities for revenge and new realisation. In this sense, the next window of opportunity or another European turn for Russia appears almost inevitable, although predicting it on a timeline today is not easy.

However, if we take a closer look at the timing of anti-European and pro-European cycles in Russian history, we can notice that the former often coincide with periods of crises in the West itself. These include the period of Nicholas’ alienation and 'freezing' (1825-1855) and the Soviet radical rupture, which coincided with Europe's biggest crisis from 1914 to the end of the 1940s. At these moments, Russia isolates itself from the West and begins to see itself as a civilizational alternative to it. Conversely, periods of its pro-European drift coincide with the post-crisis success of the West. At this point, Russia begins to panic about civilizational loneliness and ‘lagging behind’, which at some point leads to a radical political turn towards the West.

The current reversal in Russian politics is also taking place in the context of a global plot to 'challenge' Western leadership by both authoritarian China and the broader 'middle powers' (or the Global South). Simultaneously, there is political confusion in the West in the face of this challenge. The search for an answer to it has thus far led rather to the polarisation of Western public opinion and paralysis of strategic initiative.

More than two years of Western opposition to Putin's aggression in Ukraine have exposed this new balance of power. A survey conducted some time ago by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) in the countries of the Global South showed that their residents, on the one hand, consider Western countries the most comfortable places to live and appreciate the goods they provide, including an atmosphere of tolerance and protection of rights, but at the same time do not believe in the future of these countries, considering their political systems weak and in decline (→ Timothy Garton Ash, Ivan Krastev, Mark Leonard: The World à la carte).

Russia, with its 'Western inferiority' complex, is keenly aware of this trend.The rhetoric of the decline of the West and the rise of a "new force," just like in the 1830s-1840s or the 1930s, becomes the official ideology and fuels the regime's anti-Western rhetoric, proving that anti-Western Russia that is on the right side of history. However, if the current 'crisis of the West' is overcome and the West once again demonstrates its resilience, as it did during past 'European declines', then Russia, focused on its civilizational relevance, will almost certainly react to this shift.

In short, without denying the possible crises of military Putinism in the near future, which should be interpreted as a 'gift of fate,' today we should consider longer-term strategies that are consistent with the stable scenario of a protracted military Putinism, neither downplaying nor exaggerating the resilience of its strength. Its limitations leave enough room for building resistance strategies.