In his fight to change the world order, Mr. Putin wasn’t afraid to destroy the existing one. Russia has staked everything on its size and might, banking on the prospect that attempts to exclude it from the world order will lead to that order’s collapse—or at least that the economic costs will force the West to adapt to Russian needs.
The recognition of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics is a chance for Russia to climb down from the peak of escalation with a concrete result, because retreating empty-handed would have been a ruinous outcome for the Kremlin’s prestige.
Regardless of its desire to contain or punish Russia, the West will find it much easier to deal with a Russia that almost invaded Ukraine than a Russia that actually did so, and the hawks in Russia know this.
In its negotiations with the West, Russia is behaving not like a country preparing to wage war, but like a country that, if necessary, can afford to do so.
The protests in Kazakhstan are social, anti-authoritarian, and anti-nepotism, but they are not anti-Russian. That may change as a result of the authorities receiving military assistance from Moscow, the former imperial capital.
Their motivation is quite simple: Too much light on past repression, the Kremlin fears, could lead Russians to question the government’s present-day activities, including the jailing of opposition politicians, repression of civil society, and harsh new laws against independent media and NGOs.
At the Russian Supreme Court in Moscow, the country’s oldest nongovernmental and best-known human rights organization—Memorial—is fighting for its life. State prosecutors have brought a case to close it down, alleging violations of a controversial law regulating the work of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Russia. But the verdict, which could come as early as Dec. 28, will decide much more than the fate of Memorial, which documents the crimes of the Soviet regime and commemorates the regime’s victims. At stake is an even bigger question: Who in today’s Russia has control over the past?
For now, Biden is the leader who prevented a war, but that’s not to say that the summit will be followed by a rapid de-escalation: not until Moscow sees new steps being taken by Washington on Ukraine. First and foremost, that means progress on implementing the Minsk agreements.
Russia’s military preparations and other actions signal that Moscow has recognized the danger of coexisting with a fortified area on its border, but doesn’t yet know what to do about it.
