At the start of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s annual pre-Christmas press conference this month, a journalist asked if 2020 had been altogether bad “or was there something good, too”?
He shrugged and said it had been a year like any other “with pluses and minuses”, but it is ending with a sharp chill in Russia’s relations with the West, several neighbouring states in unexpected crisis, and with Putin’s regime resorting to increasingly extreme measures to neutralise perceived threats to its interests.
It is a sobering end to a year that promised much for Putin. There was to be a perfunctory public vote on constitutional changes allowing him to rule until 2036, followed by a lavish military parade to mark 75 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany; French president Emmanuel Macron had agreed to attend, and Moscow hoped US counterpart Donald Trump and German chancellor Angela Merkel would join him.
Twelve months ago, Moscow had listened approvingly as Macron described Nato as "brain dead" and called for a rapprochement with Russia. Trump, meanwhile, questioned the value of the military alliance and traditional transatlantic ties, and Putin could look forward to the disrupter-in-chief being in the White House for at least one more chaotic year.
The French overtures ended abruptly in August when Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with Novichok in Siberia, and then Putin reportedly told Macron that the anti-corruption campaigner may have taken the nerve agent himself.
Moscow went on to anger Germany – another erstwhile advocate for dialogue with the Kremlin – by suggesting that Navalny may have been poisoned in a Berlin clinic or while being flown there for emergency treatment.
France and Germany said they saw "no other plausible explanation for the poisoning of Mr Navalny than Russian responsibility and involvement" and pushed for EU sanctions that were imposed on six senior Russian officials in October.
Some of the strongest US condemnation of the assassination attempt came not from Trump, who has painstakingly avoided criticism of Putin during his presidency, but from the man who will replace him in the White House next month.
“It is the mark of a Russian regime that is so paranoid that it is unwilling to tolerate any criticism or dissent,” Biden said of the attack.
“The Kremlin no doubt thinks that it can act with impunity. Donald Trump has refused to confront Putin . . . As president, I will do what Donald Trump refuses to do: work with our allies and partners to hold the Putin regime accountable for its crimes.”
This month’s revelation of an unprecedented cyber attack on US government departments and major firms, allegedly by hackers linked to Russian spy agencies, makes responding to Moscow a top priority for Biden’s incoming administration and an early test of its foreign policy mettle.
Biden says that in rejecting Trump's "America first" attitude, he wants to re-invigorate the US-Europe alliance and retake the initiative in world affairs – an approach that will inevitably clash with Russia's claim to pre-eminence in most of the former Soviet Union and its push for influence in the Middle East and Africa.
“America is back, ready to lead the world not retreat from it,” Biden said recently, “to once again sit at the head of the table, ready to confront our adversaries and not reject our allies, ready to stand up for our values”.
Greater cohesion
After four years of drift and division under Trump, the US and EU will now aim to act with far greater cohesion on issues that are sensitive for the Kremlin, ranging from rumbling crises in Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Moldova, to the way Russia treats its own opposition figures, NGOs and journalists.
The size and tenacity of this year’s pro-democracy protests in Belarus will have irked the Kremlin, as will months of rallies in the far eastern city of Khabarovsk over the removal of a governor who beat the ruling United Russia party’s candidate in elections.
Polls show support for United Russia has fallen to about 30 per cent, as the economy slumped and the government faced criticism over its response to the coronavirus crisis, putting pressure on Mr Putin’s allies before next year’s parliamentary elections.
The Kremlin reacted to the success of some opposition politicians in September’s local elections by moving to tighten already repressive restrictions on protests, increase control over social media and expand the scope of a law that labels groups and individuals that receive funding from abroad as “foreign agents”.
Putin’s critics are resilient and much read, however: Navalny’s December 14th video naming the security service officers he blames for his poisoning has been watched more than 17 million times, and investigative journalists continue to expose corruption, including eye-popping cases allegedly involving the president’s inner circle.
After pandemic-related delays, Russia eventually held its Victory Day parade and its leader of 20 years secured a “reset” of his constitutional term limits.
It is not clear whether Putin (68) will use it to stay on when his mandate ends in 2024, or wield power from a new post, or enjoy retirement with lifetime immunity from prosecution under legislation now breezing through parliament.
What is apparent from recent events – and his claim during last week’s press conference that Navalny works with US intelligence – is that Putin will justify an ever-harder crackdown on his Russian critics by portraying them as puppets of a hostile West.
"Taken all together, this signifies an effective ban on the liberal opposition in Russia . . . The authorities are demanding a clear dividing line between those who are with us and those who are against us," wrote political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Moscow Centre.
“Putin’s press conference summed up the main result of this year – having started from constitutional reform and resetting term limits, it is ending with the completion of the fortress for a protracted siege.”
