Putin still craves respect of West after quarter of century in power
After initial friendly overtures and talk of democracy, Vladimir Putin’s rule quickly spiralled into stand-offs with the West and increasing political terrors at home.
President Boris Yeltsin had earned a reputation for the unexpected, from ordering tanks to attack his rebellious parliament to drunkenly directing a military orchestra in Germany. Yet he saved one of his biggest surprises for last.
“I am leaving. I have done all I could,” Mr Yeltsin said, slurring his words in a televised New Year address in 1999, as the world prepared to celebrate the new millennium. Russia’s ailing leader still had half a year of his second term left to run and no one had expected him to stand down early.
“Why cling to power for six more months when the country has a strong leader who can be its president, a man on whom nearly all Russians are pinning their hopes for the future? Why stand in his way?” he said.
Waiting in the wings was Mr Yeltsin’s hand-picked successor, an ex-KGB officer and former FSB security service chief named Vladimir Putin. Although Mr Putin had been prime minister for just four months, his approval ratings had soared after he led Russia’s brutal military campaign in Chechnya, a mainly Muslim southern republic that had sought independence from Moscow.
“The freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, the freedom of the media and property rights, these fundamental principles of a civilised society will be protected by the state,” Mr Putin vowed, as he addressed the nation for the first time as president.
It was a promise that Mr Putin would break repeatedly over the next 25 years as he led Russia into a spiralling stand-off with the West and engulfed his own country in a wave of political terrors not seen since Joseph Stalin’s purges.
For Mikhail Kasyanov, who was Russia’s prime minister from 2000 to 2004, Mr Putin is now unrecognisable from the president whose government he once headed.
“He is now a completely different person in his behaviour, as well as his political attitudes. We were building a democratic state and moving closer to Europe and the western world. But Putin has turned this all upside down,” he said.
“Putin was only pretending to be an adherent of democratic principles. But he remained a KGB agent inside. I only realised this later when he began to change his policies,” said Mr Kasyanov, who lives in exile in Europe and is a vocal critic of the war in Ukraine.
Marat Gelman, a former Kremlin adviser, also said that Mr Putin had undergone a dramatic transformation after securing re-election in 2004.
“No one had any idea back then what he was really like,” Gelman said during Putin’s third term, which began in 2012.
“We only discovered his true nature after he had won a second term of office. It turned out that even those people who thought they knew him didn’t actually know anything about him at all.”
During his early years in power, Mr Putin gave no public indication of the violent obsessions with Ukraine that would eventually lead to the invasion. Yet behind the scenes, there were indications that he was unable to accept Russia’s neighbour as a truly independent country.
During trade and energy talks between Kyiv and Moscow in the early 2000s, Mr Putin expressed annoyance at the respect that Russian government officials were paying to Ukraine, Mr Kasyanov said. “He said to me ‘why are you treating them as equals?’ At the time, we saw it as unfriendliness, at the very least.
“Only later did we understand it was something more. He didn’t consider Ukraine to be an independent or full-fledged state.”
In 2004, protesters in Kyiv forced a rerun of presidential elections that had been marred by voter fraud, bringing Viktor Yushchenko, a pro-western leader, to power. The Orange Revolution, as it became known, made Mr Putin fearful for his own security.
“It brought about a revolution in his consciousness, and he decided that he needed to become the real Putin. That is, a KGB officer for whom human life and human rights are worth nothing. Staying in power became his main goal,” Mr Kasyanov said. Other critics say that Mr Putin was quick to reveal his true colours. Four days after his inauguration in May 2000, masked tax police raided NTV, the country’s biggest independent television station. NTV had angered Russia’s new leader with its uncensored coverage of the war in Chechnya, as well as a satirical show called Kukly (Puppets) that depicted Mr Putin as an evil gnome.
Within a year, NTV had been closed down. Within two years, every television station in Russia was under the Kremlin’s control.
“There’s a reason why Putin began his rule by shutting down independent television channels. He knew that his regime could only be based on lies and on repression. Those are the two pillars of the Putin regime,” Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian opposition politician and former political prisoner, said. His father was a presenter at NTV.
Despite the looming 25th anniversary of Mr Putin’s ascent to power, the Kremlin has shown no sign that it intends to commemorate the date. Mr Putin has also hardly mentioned the occasion, saying only at a press conference this month that he had “saved” Russia from western domination.
In contrast, relations between Russia and the West were friendly during Mr Putin’s first term. His first foreign visit upon becoming president was in April 2000 to London, where Tony Blair hailed him as a reformer, despite Russian atrocities in Chechnya.
After 9/11, Mr Putin was the first world leader to call President Bush. He also made tentative inquiries about Russia joining NATO, according to Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, the alliance’s former secretary-general.
In 2003, he arrived in the UK for the first ceremonial state visit to Britain by a Russian leader since 1874, which came shortly after BP, the British energy giant, had sunk a record $US6.5bn ($10.4bn) into the Russian oil industry.
“Russia has established itself as our partner and our friend,” the Queen said during the visit.
When asked last year about his earlier attitudes towards the West, Mr Putin said that he had been “naive” in his ideas and that he had not fully understood what he claimed was its deep-rooted desire for confrontation with Moscow.
However, Mr Kasyanov said Mr Putin’s shift in rhetoric and policies had in part a far simpler explanation: the Russian leader, he said, had eventually become furious at the West over what he believed was its failure to show him the requisite level of respect.
“The issue of respect for Putin is a matter of principle; it’s really sensitive for him. When western countries criticised him over human rights abuses in Russia, Putin saw this as a lack of respect and decided to raise his importance in the world so that the West would respect him not for his positive deeds, but simply for the fact that he exists and that he has a nuclear button,” he said.
“This is true of the war in Ukraine. He doesn’t particularly need Ukrainian territories, but he needs respect from America.
“He dreams of deciding the fate of the world together with the US president. He needs to be respected personally and for everyone in the world to take into account his opinion, and that of his country. This has always been a part of his character.”
While opposition figures say it is almost impossible to gauge the true depth of support for Mr Putin inside Russia, given that criticism of the war in Ukraine is an offence under draconian laws, there is no doubt that Mr Putin enjoys the backing of a large proportion of the country.
Many of those who oppose his rule have fled, fearing arrest. Yet despite the risks, not everyone has been able to or wants to leave.
“He started to seriously tighten the screws when I had just reached the age of awareness and the all-out war in Ukraine began when I had just finished my studies and was beginning my career,” a woman in central Russia who was born in 2000, the year that Putin came to power, said. She asked for anonymity to be able to speak freely.
“I don’t know any other life, but I would really like to see my country prosperous and happy. I’m tired of being afraid and hating, but this fear is always with me and I hate [Putin and his allies] very much. I don’t know who will succeed him and I don’t know how it will happen, but right now I don’t give a damn. Anyone would be preferable to Putin.”
The Times
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