Russian rulers strive to appear strong in face of threat

Russia continues on its downward spiral of the past century.

Reports of Russia’s U.N. ambassador threatening Qatar with annihilation during an argument with the Gulf state’s prime minister over a draft Security Council resolution on Syria that was vetoed by Moscow earlier this month brought to mind Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev.

He banged his shoe on his U.N.-delegate desk in 1960 in New York after notoriously promising Vice President Richard Nixon at a 1959 U.S. exhibit in Moscow to show the United States who’s the boss.

Both then and now, Russian rulers cannot afford to appear soft in the face of a perceived threat.

The difference is that the threat back then was foreign and exaggerated, while the threat now is domestic and quite real, given recent mass protests against rigged parliamentary elections.

Presidential aspirant and current Prme Minister Vladimir Putin wouldn’t join the international condemnation of the atrocious Syrian regime for several reasons.

First, Syria is Russia’s staunch ally in the Middle East. It is a major importer of Russian weapons and home to many a Russian military adviser and a Russian naval base. The traditional kickbacks from weapons sales contracts is nothing the Kremlin would like to part with — not after it wrote off about $10 billion of Syria’s $13 billion debt in 2005 in exchange for Syria’s pledge to maintain Russia as its main arms supplier.

Second, Mr. Putin is trying to impress his home audience of bureaucrats who have been living it up under 12 years of his rule. He is counting on their support to rig the upcoming March presidential elections in his favor.

Third — and most important — the political situation in Russia is less stable than usual after thousands protested the rigged parliamentary elections this year.

Started by younger professionals in Moscow who are fed up with lack of civil rights under Mr. Putin, a public movement to delegate thousands of observers to document government fraud during the upcoming elections has been snowballing.

Mr. Putin wants to make it crystal clear to anyone who’s paying attention — especially in Russia — that he is keeping his options open in case he needs to hammer down civil unrest during or after the March vote, with the expected outcome of 52 percent, which is enough to grant him victory in the first round.

His tactic of intimidation targets the dissidents in Russia who remember the 1991 anti-Gorbachev coup in Moscow when troops sent by Soviet hardliners refused to fire on protesters and took their side, undermining the coup.

Mr. Putin’s message to the dissidents and the troops is clear: He’ll stop at nothing to see through his plan to become president and rule Russia for at least another 12 years — two six-year terms allowed by the constitution.

Mr. Putin simply can’t afford to leave his loot and that of his loyalists unattended, to say nothing about the inevitability of facing the public ire should he lose control.

He is in no hurry to repeat the fate of the late Moammar Gadhafi, having Kremlin-affiliated media use expressions such as “Arab spring” and “Libya option” as scare words.

Like Syrian President Bashar Assad, Mr. Putin does not acknowledge publicly the dissent on the part of his own people, using the media to blame all protests on the “agents of influence” who are “on the U.S. payroll.”

This is a sign of political and military impotence. No wonder the target of Russia’s threats has shrunk from the United States to Qatar.

But even Qatar has nothing to fear. A trusted Western ally, it won’t be passed up for military support like, say, Georgia, a former Soviet province in Russia’s backyard that was overrun by Russian troops three years ago after aspiring to independence from Russia.

As to Syria, it is now up to the U.N. General Assembly to outlaw Assad’s regime, and Russia can do nothing about it.

Mike Sigov, a former Russian journalist in Moscow, is a U.S. citizen and a staff writer for The Blade.

Contact Mike Sigov at: sigov@theblade.com or 419-724-6089.