Putin fears losing Crimea most – Ambassador Michael McFaul in interview with Espreso

In 2001, you wrote an interesting book. The book is called "Russia's unfinished revolution. Political change from Gorbachov to Putin". So the change happened, but why was there no revolution?

When I wrote that book in 2001, it had been after 10 or even 15 years, if you count the Gorbachev period of political transformation inside the Soviet Union and then Russia, and some things had been accomplished or so we thought. One was the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the independence of 15 countries including Ukraine, including the Russian Federation, and compared to other collapses of empires, it was relatively peaceful at least until last year. I'll come back to that in a minute.

Second, they had made the transformation mostly from a command economy to a market economy. But in that book, I wrote that the transition from dictatorship to democracy had occurred, but was very fragile. And I worry about that in that book where I go through the different elements where I said democracy in Russia was not consolidated and tragically, we now see, two decades later, that Putin took advantage of those weak democratic institutions. He destroyed them and as of today you have the return of Russian dictatorship. 

I don't think it was a foregone conclusion that that would have happened if Boris Nemtsov, for instance, had become the next president of Russia. And there were plans to anoint him as a successor to Boris Yeltsin. The tradition might have taken a different trajectory, but there's no question in retrospect that those institutions were too weak, they were too fragile, back in 2000, when Putin came into power and that allowed him to destroy them.

Speaking about Putin, you know him quite well. Is Putin of 2000 different from Putin of nowadays?

Yes and no is my answer. It's complicated. Putin in 2000 was always anti-democratic. He was always imperialistic. He lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union. He's from the KGB. He spent his whole life defending the Soviet Empire. But 20 years ago, he was much more pro-market, and he was much more pro-West. With respect to market reforms. He cut the individual income tax and Russia to a flat tax of 13%. He cut corporate taxes, and he respected private property. That's no longer true today. Today, he has reasserted the state's control of the economy and in a very major way, especially after invading your country. 

Second, he was open to engagement with the West. He even talked about Russia joining NATO, by the way. And I want to remind your viewers of that because today, he says, it's all NATO's fault because of it, and he was compelled to invade Ukraine because of NATO expansion. But 20 years ago, he was not afraid of NATO. He wanted to join NATO and even said about Ukraine, in 2002, if Ukraine wants to join NATO, that's their business, not ours. So in those two respects, he has changed his thinking considerably. 

But why did he change?

I think one of the main drivers was that he became more autocratic. He became more fearful of his people, and therefore he needed an outside enemy to justify becoming more autocratic. And that's when he became more anti-Western, anti-Ukrainian. 

And second, he feared democratic expansion, not NATO expansion, but democratic expansion. And that is Serbia in 2000, Georgia in 2003 and most importantly, the Orange Revolution in your country because that was a threat to him in his autocratic ways. And of course, then the Revolution of Dignity in your country, was an even greater threat, not to Russian security. I want to be clear about that. There's been no military threat from the West towards Russia since 1941. You have to go back to when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. But the expansion of democracy was threatening to the way that he ruled inside Russia. And in particular, remember Putin tells his people that Russians need a strong state. Russians don't need Western ways of governance because they're different. I remember I was in a meeting with them when he met with Vice President Biden in 2011, when he went on a long, long time, describing how Russia is not part of Europe, is not part of the West. 

But then he also tells us that Ukrainians are not a separate nation. They're just Russians with accents. It was an accident of history that Ukraine became an independent state. That's another one of his really strange arguments. So if Ukrainians are practicing democracy, that is Slavic people can practice democracy. That is a threat to Vladimir Putin's way of rule and that I think became his obsession about your country first and foremost, but also my country because he had to have an enemy from the outside to legitimize his dictatorship back at home.

Ambassador, you are often called the architect of President Obama's reset policy towards Russia. It was back 10-15 years ago. Did you really think that the attitude, the relations with the Kremlin at that time could be changed?

No, I didn't, I want to be very blunt. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about what we are trying to do. Back in 2009, we sat in the White House and we defined what were our national security interests, the highest priorities. And for some of them, it required working with the Kremlin, at that time president Medvedev, who by the way in 2009, was radically different from the crazy person that he has become today. It's very important to understand that he was very, very different. Let me give you some examples. 

In 2009, the start treaty expired and President Obama decided that the Start Treaty was in America's national interest, and you can't negotiate an Arms Control treaty without the Russians. So he said, we need to negotiate with them and he signed the new Start Treaty in 2010, reducing by 30% of the nuclear weapons in the world.

Number two, he decided that we had to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. And to do so, he wanted to pass multilateral sanctions against Iran, whether that was a good decision or not, but we can debate but that was what Obama wanted to do to get multilateral sanctions we had to get Russia to vote with us which they did in the UN Security Council in 2010.

Number three. We decided we were going to surge our soldiers into Afghanistan and try to defeat terrorism there. And we were also going to try to fight terrorism beyond Afghan borders including in Pakistan. But at the time, 95% of our supplies went through Pakistan. So President Obama had an idea that we needed to diversify our supply routes to have Afghanistan and that meant going through Russia that was called the Northern Distribution Network. We had to negotiate with the Russians about that and by the way we did violate Pakistani sovereignty in 2011 and killed Osama Bin Laden. We could only do that with diversification. 

I think what some people confuse is that we wanted a good relationship with Russia. I never believed that, maybe other people did. I don't even believe it about our allies. I never believed you should define mood music or being positive towards the country as your goal. Your goal should be concrete objectives that advance America's national interests in the case of my country. And I think we did that for a time. It ended, of course, for two reasons. One Putin came back and he was not interested in working with us. And two, there were mass demonstrations against Putin's regime, as you remember in 2011 and 2012, and Putin blamed us and me personally, by the way, for those demonstrations. And as a result of that cooperating on other kinds of issues, like Iran or North Korea, or even Syria where we tried in 2012 and 2013, proved impossible with Vladimir Putin back in the Kremlin.

You know Russians also very well since you lived in Moscow, why do those Russians, according to some estimates 85%-90% of them, support Putin? Is it because they are frightened by him? Or maybe they are disillusioned by his imperialistic ideas, or maybe they are just indifferent or maybe something else?

It's hard to answer your question because it's hard to know what people actually think in autocratic regimes. You can't do real polling in a country like Russia or any dictatorship because people are afraid to tell what they actually believe. They have no incentive to tell what they actually believe. 

Second, however, my impression is that there is solid support for Putin and this horrible barbaric invasion of your country. And I want to tell you, honestly, I'm not surprised by it but I'm disappointed by it. This is not just Putin's war in Ukraine. This is Russians' war in Ukraine, and we need to say that honestly, Putin is not pulling all the triggers. Putin is not kidnapping your children. Putin is not raping your daughters and your mothers. Those are individual Russians that are doing that, and I think it's very important to understand that these are Russians doing the killing and these crimes against humanity, not just Putin alone.

To your other point, however, it is most certainly true that propaganda works and repression works. So there were some brave Russians that protested in the beginning. And now, some of them are serving 25 year prison sentences. Volodya Karamurza, for instance, somebody I know well. Illya Yashin, for instance, are two examples of people that criticize the war and now are in jail and that therefore frightens other Russians from protesting. 

There's a group of Russians that support this war and support these imperial ideas in ways that I would have never guessed that they did when I was living in Russia in the 1990s. The rebirth of Stalinism, the popularity of imperial ideas. That is something that is resulted from 20 years of propaganda from Putin. 

And it's deeply disappointing to me, but there is another segment of Russian society that is just keeping their head down. They're not supportive of the war, they're not against the war. They're just trying to keep out of it and those people will flip in a heartbeat if conditions change, if Putin says to end his war, they'll flip and support the end of the war immediately.

Last week one of the Russian opposition figures, Garry Kasparov, said in an interview to Ukrainian channel that Russians are unfortunately getting used to the war, and they are getting used to supporting this war, supporting President Putin. And of course in some time we will win. Putin will lose, but those Russians who are getting used to the war will remain. Do you think it can be a problem for Ukraine for the Western allies?

Yes, I think it's a big problem, and therefore, I believe the Western world, the Democratic world needs to do much more to make them pay the price of supporting this war. I work with Andriy Yermak in the presidential administration and a working group on international sanctions, and we believe strongly that the Western world, the democratic world needs to increase sanctions, both the quality and the quantity so that people feel the war more directly. In particular, there are way too many components from the West going to make military weapons in Russia, that has to stop. There are way too many Russians that haven't been sanctioned, who work for companies and political parties that support the war, that needs to be expanded. It's way too comfortable for Russians to travel in alleged enemy countries, that has to stop. And the money that was frozen, the 360 bln dollars that was frozen from the Russian Central Bank that needs to be transferred to Ukraine for your reconstruction so that they feel the consequences of this war more directly. So, to me, that is the first step. And then, in the long term, there has to be a defeat of Putin's army in your country. That is necessary for people to finally come to terms with their imperial thinking. 

What can Putin be afraid most of all right now? I mean, what can be the weakest link in Putin's rule?

I think there are a couple of important things I want to say about Putin and his bravery. There's an assumption in the West that Putin is this macho guy, that he can't be cornered. That he needs off-ramps, some say he needs land from Ukraine to end his war. And I want to say that I disagree with that analysis. He is not as erratic as people think. And I think we have some instances of it. When he's been pushed, he did not escalate, he stepped down.

Think about how he dealt with Prigozhin after he led the mutiny inside Russia and he was marching to Moscow. And Putin got on TV and said, we need to crush these traitors, and he had all this tough language. And four hours later he negotiated with Prigozhin, he didn't crush him. The same thing with Erdogan years ago, when Erdogan of Turkey warned Putin to stop flying his planes through Turkish territory on the way to Syria. And finally, he had enough, and he shot one of those planes down. Putin said all kinds of tough things. And you know what, he didn't do anything, he backed down.

Even think about the BRICS Summit in South Africa, and yet Putin is afraid of the International Criminal Court. He was speaking online. He sent Lavrov because he's afraid of being arrested. That is not somebody that is so brave and defying the West, that is somebody that is afraid of the West. And I think we need to understand that better and not be afraid to try to defy and push Putin out. 

Now, to answer your question, I think the thing he fears the most is the loss of Crimea. Threatening Crimea, bringing the war to Crimea, your country, not his. That is the thing that he fears the most because that would undermine his legitimacy for this war back in Russia. 

So the loss of Crimea will be a dead end for him, right?

There are other things, of course, but his inability to hold on to Crimea would be a very threatening consequence for his regime.

Ambassador, one more question about the Chinese government because their attitude towards Russian war in Ukraine is very unclear and very ambiguous at different points of time. Why do you think is it so?

Mr. Putin, Mr. Xi have had a long relationship for a long time. The autocratic alliance against the Democratic world, it's not a formal alliance, of course, it's a partnership. And it's been fueled by antagonism towards the United States, first and foremost.

Having said that, I am very struck at how moderate the support from China has been for Russia. Mr. Xi Jinping has not supported the war. In UN General Assembly votes, there's six or seven countries that support Putin and Russia, and China is not one of them. He abstains. Number two, he has not provided military assistance. He has been careful. There're reports of his avoiding the sanctions, and we need to do more to stop that, but I'm struck by how little he's done. He's never said, even back to 2014, that Putin was just trying to annex Crimea. And I credit your president and your diplomats through smart diplomacy with China to keep them on the sidelines. I would love it if China would support the West and denounce this war. But I think that's unreasonable. Keeping them neutral is a very worthy objective. Ukrainian diplomacy deserves a lot of credit in achieving that goal.

Often I hear voices from the West about the necessity of sitting at the negotiation table with Russians. Does this mean that the West is becoming slightly tired of the war in Ukraine?

We need to unpack what the West is because I think there's a lot of variation, right? Some countries in Europe are much more supportive than others. Here in the US, President Biden and his administration are very supportive of your government and your war effort. And they are not telling President Zelensky to negotiate with the Russians. 

I was not talking about the US.

But it's important that even in the United States there's a growing sentiment of exhaustion criticizing President Biden, saying that we've given too much support. Even here in the US that sentiment is growing and remember, we have a presidential election next year when all Republicans running against President Biden are going to be incentivized to criticize him and the leading Republican figure is Donald Trump who, of course, is much less supportive of financial and military assistance to Ukraine than President Biden. So you've identified something that I am also concerned with.

The response to that is to do faster. More weapons, better weapons, faster. That's the fastest way to end this war. I would say the same about sanctions. More sanctions, better sanctions, faster. That's the way you achieve victory. That's the way you speed up the process of ending the war. Incrementalism guarantees that the war will drag on for much longer. When I hear those criticisms, I say let's do more now to accelerate the end of Putin's barbaric invasion of your country.