Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.
Russia reasserts itself in Putin charm offensive
By Andrew Hammond
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov continued an intensive period of Russian diplomacy Thursday with a visit to North Korea.
Last month, he and Russian President Vladimir Putin met with a wide range of foreign leaders, including Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe, underlining that a key goal of the newly re-elected Putin is re-energizing relationships across the globe.
Some two decades after first assuming power, Putin has restored Russia's geopolitical prominence, including through gambits such as the annexation of Crimea and the Syria intervention. And this has ― so far ― played well domestically for him, helping him win a new six-year term of office.
Extraordinarily, by the mid-2020s he will have been in office for a longer period at the top than all the Soviet Union's supreme leaders, except Joseph Stalin. This underlines the breadth of his popularity, currently, in much of Russia despite the significant criticism he gets abroad.
Yet, domestic popularity has been mirrored by frostier ties with leaders in multiple key countries, especially in the West. And a key question ― now that Putin has won power till at least 2024 ― is how much weight in coming years he wants to put on rebuilding these relationships.
Early signs are that he recognizes the need to double down on diplomacy, and in the last 10 days he has met not just with Abe, but also French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi. And there are signs of renewed foreign interest in Russia too.
Take the example of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in late May which enjoyed the biggest international lineup since before 2014 ― when Russia was hit with sanctions over Crimea and Ukraine ― with keynote speakers including not just Macron and Abe, but also Chinese Vice President Qishan Wang, and Managing Director and Chairwoman of the IMF Christine Lagarde. According to Russian authorities, some 500 new business agreements worth around $38 billion were signed at the event.
The question of rebuilding Russian's foreign relations is especially pressing with Europe after years of sanctions over Ukraine and Crimea; concerns over Moscow's alleged extensive meddling in a suite of Western elections; plus the recent attempted murder in England of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter which has been widely blamed, internationally, on Moscow.
To this end, Putin met not just with Macron on May 25, but also Merkel last week before, to try in the French president's words, to work “hand-in-hand [to end] one of the most difficult periods of our history”.
While the mood music between Russia and Europe is still tense, there are some signs that there may be a political window of opportunity to partially rebuild relations. In part, this comes in the context of U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, which is opposed by Putin, Macron, Merkel and other European leaders; and this issue therefore provides a new platform for constructive engagement between them.
Outside of Europe, Putin is also cultivating enhanced ties with key Asia-Pacific countries from China to India and Japan. In his meetings with Abe, Putin agreed to foster joint economic activities in the disputed islands off Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido which were seized by the former Soviet Union at the end of World War II. These islands are now controlled by Moscow, but claimed by Tokyo, and both appear to want to see progress toward a peace treaty settlement on this issue.
In the coming years, perhaps the biggest area of continuing Russian foreign policy uncertainty is over U.S. relations. Putin and Trump had hoped for a rapprochement, yet developments in 2017 and 2018, including the pressure the White House is under over the congressional and FBI investigations into alleged collusion with Moscow during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, may have destroyed the potential window of opportunity for this to happen.
Putin said that he has had little contact with Trump and that “we are hostages to internal strife in the United States. I hope that it will end some day and the objective need for the development of Russian-American relationships will prevail.”
However, it is not only domestic U.S. pressures Putin referred to that are complicating ties. There have also been tensions between Moscow and Washington over the Middle East, including after U.S. missile strikes targeted at Syria this year and last year following alleged poison gas attacks committed by the Damascus regime which is propped up by Putin.
Last year, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis and then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson were especially forceful in their criticism of Moscow with the latter saying that “either Russia has been complicit or simply incompetent” in Syria. And the spike in Washington-Moscow tensions then even saw Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev saying the two countries were “one step away from war” and had “totally ruined” relations.
Taken overall, Putin's re-election has seen Moscow doubling down on diplomacy to try to rebuild relationships, especially with Europe. With the proposed U.S.-Russia rapprochement looking increasing uncertain, Putin may now place greater emphasis on Asia too, including Japan, China and India.
Andrew Hammond (andrewkorea@outlook.com) is an Associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.