Elites have hijacked Russia and conflated the country's interests with their own
Last edited Mon Feb 21, 2022, 04:43 PM - Edit history (2)
ANYWHERE YOU turn in Moscow, it's easy to find members of the Russian elite who wonder why the West thinks that war in Ukraine is the Kremlin’s preferred course of action. Even if the Russian army managed to force Kyiv into a swift and humiliating defeat without too many casualties, the damage to Russia’s national interests would surely outweigh any potential military gains.
The problem is that the same logic was just as true eight years ago when the fateful decisions were made to annex Crimea and to stir conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas region. The fact that Russia has been able to endure the international fallout for all these years helps to explain why the region finds itself again on the brink of war.
When it comes to Ukraine, people in Moscow and the West can be forgiven for assuming that the Kremlin’s policy is informed by a dispassionate strategy derived from endless hours of interagency debate and the weighing of pros and cons. What actually drives the Kremlin are the tough ideas and interests of a small group of longtime lieutenants to President Vladimir Putin, as well as those of the Russian leader himself. Emboldened by perceptions of the West’s terminal decline, no one in this group loses much sleep about the prospect of an open-ended confrontation with America and Europe. In fact, the core members of this group would all be among the main beneficiaries of a deeper schism.
Consider Mr Putin’s war cabinet, which is the locus of most decision-making. It consists of Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Security Council; Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the FSB (the main successor agency of the KGB intelligence service); Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russian Foreign Intelligence Service; and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu. Their average age is 68 years old and they have a lot in common. The collapse of the Soviet Union, which Mr Putin famously described as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, was the defining episode of their adult lives. Four out of five have a KGB background, with three, including the president himself, coming from the ranks of counterintelligence. It is these hardened men, not polished diplomats like Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who run the country’s foreign policy.
https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2022/02/19/alexander-gabuev-writes-from-moscow-on-why-vladimir-putin-and-his-entourage-want-war
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Important article with much more at link, sorry it is a subscription article.
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