WAR OF WORLDVIEWS

Feelings in the confrontation between the West and Russia over events in the Ukraine have been constantly changing and, to all appearances, neither of the opposing factions intends to back down from positions of principle.  At the same time it must be noted that in this game Russian president Vladimir Putin is acting increasingly confident - more so than his Western opponents - just as he did in 2007, when at Munich Security Conference where he strongly criticized the single-superpower model for the first time. It's important to note that the more uncompromising he is, the more stable are Putin's high approval ratings in his own country, despite an economic situation that has severely worsened, heightened inflation, and a drastic devaluation of the national currency. The West meanwhile continues to rack their brains over what seems to them to be Russian society's irrational behaviour. 

Let's try to figure this out. In a situation in which the level of imperialistic thinking in Russia has reached its highest point in the past 25 years, internal support for Putin is a sure thing. That's why the West's plan to destabilize Russia's internal politics, which might lead to the removal of Putin, is not working. This is most of all because the West mistakenly gauged the extent of Russians' tolerance for financial deprivations when it comes to achieving great power status. In this context the West's "appointment" of former inmate oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky as the Putin's main political opponent is a serious blunder. 

Khodorkovsky is seen by most Russians as a symbol of the noveau riche oligarchs of the 1990s who got rich by stealing state property and cheating the people at large. The West's attempt to shake the political boat in Russia, using the murder of Boris Nemtsov, who acted as one of Putin's greatest opponents in recent years. That initiative was doomed to failure, since Nemtsov was in no way a charismatic figure, as many have presented him after his death. Additionally, most everyday Russians associate the image of Nemtsov with the administration in which he was the first vice premier, not only allowing the oligarchs and the West to rob his homeland, but also making a lot of money for himself in the process. Overall for most Russians Khodorkovsky and the late Nemtsov did not truly stand out as positive figures. 

On the other hand, having created certain working relationships with the oligarchs, Putin has subjugated them to his will. This system has convinced the oligarchs that he is the person who guarantees their personal safety and business. But only on the condition that they should not only strive to make themselves richer, but when necessary also give all possible assistance to the state. This plan is proven by Putin's statements at a press conference in December of last year, after which he had a friendly conversation with a major company, which agreed to "scrape some money together" and put a sum of three billion dollars onto the market to prevent a further fall of the rouble. "Three billion - that's from only one company! That's how we get not only 30 billion, but 300 billion, but we shouldn't force them to do it," stressed the Russian president.

 A recent statement by Putin made at an RSPP (Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs) meeting is also not without a certain intrigue. "We get the impression that many attempts will be made to prevent the return of capital to Russia. And this may be due to the limited use of those capitals, which are in foreign jurisdictions. Just keep that in mind," Putin warned. In other words, he let entrepreneurs who had taken enormous amounts of money abroad know that he gives his personal guarantee that their capital will be much more safe and sound in Russia than in any other country, which at any moment and under any pretence could confiscate or block access to that capital. We can assume that it is for that reason that there are no oligarchs in Russia today who would agree to finance a fifth column, no matter how much the West would like that. Since financing NGOs from abroad has become harder, Putin has complicated foreign financial support for the opposition. 

We should also not forget the well-known and age-old Russian slogan: "They're attacking some of ours!", which for Russians is a better rallying cry than any ideological stratagem. The results of a survey from VTsIOM (the All-Russian Centre for the Study of Public Opinion) eloquently prove this - they showed that 73 per cent of those surveyed (a significant jump over the past year) called the United States Russia's main enemy. The Russian president himself did a very good job of informing his fellow citizens that everyone is trying to punish Russia for its refusal to bow down to anyone. In other words, he let it be known that Russia has its own historical code, unlike America's satellites, who submit to the United States (as Putin put it). Hence the Russian leader's current thesis that the current confrontation between the United States and Russia is, essentially, a bitter fight between two worldviews and value systems, taking place on levels that are civilizational, ethno-cultural, and religio-ideological.  That is to say that the pan-Orthodox ideological idea of Moscow as the "Third Rome", born at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, has returned. 

Putin's work in the battle with Washington is to a certain extent made easier by cracks in the West's united front, which can be explained by economic and political motives of individual states. Russia's major economic partners in the European Union (Germany, France, Italy), although forced to toe the Washington line, have a business elite who periodically have serious complaints about it. Even Paris, which today is known for a firmly pro-American position, has in no way decided to firmly and irrevocably refuse to deliver two helicopter carriers to Moscow due to the risk of enormous financial losses. France's allies in and outside of NATO are not willing to take on the financial burden of that contract. German chancellor Angela Merkel came up against serious criticism from the business community and her political opponents after she made a very harsh anti-Russian speech at a G20 summit in Brisbane. This policy led to disagreements in Germany's government, which might lead to the collapse of the big coalition of the Christian Democratic Union, the Christian Social Union, and the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Meanwhile German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a diplomatic heavyweight, has repeatedly made statements that disagree with Merkel's position. Another thing that can be considered an unpleasant surprise for the German chancellor and her team is the criticism of such "old men" of German policy as ex-chancellor Helmut Kohl (father of the united Germany in the late 1980s), Gerhard Schroder, Helmut Schmidt, and former foreign minister (1974-1992) Hans-Dietrich Genscher. A 26-per cent drop in German exports to Russia since the introduction of sanctions by the European Union has increased feelings of protest in the German business community, which have a deep-seated interest in the Russian market.  

In this confrontation the sharp criticism of Western policies toward Russia by such figures as Hungarian prime minister Orban Viktor and Czech president Milos Zeman also play to Putin's advantage. Although Western media have deemed them as mouthpieces bought by the Kremlin, that is hardly the case. Тhey are more likely to be European politicians who oppose Europe's total submission to Washington's political will. In addition two Nobel Peace Prize laureates - former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the final leader of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, who most Russians consider to be a traitor to the interests of his own country - threw the opposition to the Russian president into turmoil with his statements. Kissinger accused the West of improperly estimating Ukraine's significance for Russia and called sanctions a counterproductive measure. To correct this rash step Kissinger placed his hopes on Germany as Europe's most important country. It's worth noting that in the West it was not criticism by Western political heavyweights that brought on particular distress, but rather the position of Mikhail Gorbachev, who came out in defence of Putin, even though until recently he had heavily and repeatedly criticized the Russian leader. In the West this was deemed to be a betrayal of Gorbachev's own democratic principles. 

And, finally, I suggest that the leaders of most Western countries took a very rash step when they refused to go to Moscow to honour the 70th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. Such a step is seen by an absolute majority of Russians as an attempt to take away from Russia what is most sacred to it - the great victory in World War II - an attempt that they cannot allow anyone or forgive anyone for doing. That gives Moscow enormous room to manoeuvre in, giving it the opportunity to accuse the West of sabotaging the battle against Neo-Nazism and nationalist chauvinism. Given these conditions, and despite very strict sanctions and the West's attempts to destabilize Russia's internal politics, Putin will hardly feel any discomfort about staying in power. 

Judging from this, we can assume that we are in store for a long confrontation between "two worlds" with an uncertain finale.