The Plutonium Affair

Why would President Putin decide now to suspend Russia’s participation in an agreement with the US on the disposal of surplus weapons-grade plutonium?

President Putin has resolved to suspend Russia’s participation in an agreement with the US on the disposal of surplus weapons-grade plutonium. Cooperation will resume, however, if Washington agrees to a number of conditions – for instance, the annulment of the Magnitsky Act and the repeal of the Ukraine Freedom Support Act. On top of all that, the US would need to end all its anti-Russian sanctions and compensate Moscow for the losses incurred during the sanctions period, “including losses incurred due to counter-sanctions levied by the Russian government.” Putin, of course, understands that these demands will never be met – that’s the whole point. Unfortunately, nobody can agree exactly what that point is …

Liberal politician Leonid Gozman detects a particular cynicism in the regime’s demand that the Magnitsky Act be repealed – and that it has put this demand virtually at the top of its agenda: “The [Magnitsky] Act isn’t directed against the country as a whole – it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference to the Russian economy – but against a group of mid-level officials whom the Americans hold responsible for the death of Magnitsky. But as far as our leaders are concerned, these are their own people, they’re cut from the same cloth.”

Popular blogger and media expert Anton Nosik, meanwhile, has attempted to fathom how the Kremlin has managed to renounce its former slogans with such ease: “It’s been drilled into TV viewers’ heads over the course of two years plus that sanctions would bring an unprecedented boost to the Russian economy: import substitution, support for domestic producers, massive domestic industrial growth, windfalls for patriotic entrepreneurs. […] And then suddenly it turns out that these sanctions and counter-sanctions have been so enormously detrimental to Russia that the country is prepared to abandon its long-held dreams of radioactive ash in order to patch up the resulting holes.”

Conversely, Tatyana Stanovaya, head of the analytics department of the Centre for Political Technologies, believes it more likely that the real “target audience” of the plutonium bill is to be found beyond Russia’s borders – and that the bill’s promulgation on the eve of the US presidential election is no coincidence: “The whole point of the steps taken by the Kremlin is to do the dirty on Obama just as he approaches the end of his presidency, and perhaps also to allow Donald Trump to make more active use of the ‘Democrat-Russia-policy-has-failed-card.’”

Journalist and political analyst Alexander Morozov believes that no matter who becomes president, Putin will want “to make the new White House administration aware of the fact that, in the event of any further pressure, the Kremlin is ready to destroy the architecture of nuclear deterrence, to unravel the non-proliferation regime, and to create further problems in this domain. Of course, this isn’t ‘nuclear blackmail,’ i.e., a threat to use nuclear weapons. But it’s an entirely unambiguous way of saying that there will be no compromise, and that a military confrontation holds no fear for the Kremlin.”

That’s the expert take on things. But how have Russian netizens reacted to the whole affair? Serious-toned discussions jostle with jokes and derision:

(Oleg) “It now just remains for Putin to issue an ultimatum to Ukraine. His demand? Compensation for the cost of the construction of the Kerch Strait Bridge, for the cost of supplying weapons to Donbas, and for keeping Yanukovych fed, watered and bodyguarded.”

(a user from Vladimir) “But they said sanctions were a GOOD THING for us??? So now it turns out they were LYING???”

(Leonid Volkov, opposition politician) “Putin could have shot himself in the foot by demanding money from Obama. But he managed to restrain himself. Attaboy! Tough as nails.”

(Leon Ronsar) “Vladimir Putin has also demanded compensation from the Netherlands for all those Buk missiles and diesel fuel he got through.”

Naturally, the predominant tone on the federal TV channels has been rather different:

(Mikhail Delyagin, economist) “America’s overstepped the mark. They’ve gone berserk.”

(Konstantin Zatulin, political analyst) “The US uses any pretext to whip up hysteria around Russia. Look, you’re dealing with a nuclear power here. You don’t behave like that with a nuclear power! That’s precisely what the [president’s] decision is all about.”

So what do we think about all this?

Putin’s absurd plutonium bill comes a year after the start of Russia’s operation in Syria. Recent sociological data testifies to the fact that Russians’ interest in this far-off conflict is continuing to wane: a mere 27% of respondents to a VTsIOM poll believe that the situation in Syria is heading towards normalisation (a year ago, the optimists’ camp comprised 48% of respondents).

Putin simply cannot countenance this state of affairs, for his power is becoming ever more dependent on a fully mobilised, thoroughly petrified public The Kremlin will therefore continue to aggravate the situation in Syria, just as it will carry on raising the stakes and exploiting its own unpredictability until it finds new instruments of mobilisation.

The West, for its part, needs to answer a single question in this regard: is it wise for European countries to continue gambling on a policy of appeasement? Or perhaps François Hollande is right, and they should give some serious thought to his proposal of barring Vladimir Putin from all the self-respecting houses of Europe?