Putin reckons with ‘long-term’ economic isolation from West
Joel Gehrke
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Russia will face international economic sanctions for many years, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who acknowledged the durable “blockade” amid festering frustration among oligarchic subordinates.
“We all understand that the sanctions are here to stay, of course,” Putin told his State Council Presidium on Tuesday. “So along with priority measures to replace imported technologies and products, medium-and long-term reforms are needed, aimed at the strategic goals of the country’s sovereign development.”
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Putin adopted an optimistic outlook, arguing that Russia’s experience replacing Western goods in narrower disputes about sanctions offered a template for resilience in the current crisis. Yet that ebullience has been belied in recent days by leaks from within Putin’s circle of oligarch allies, even as senior Russian officials insist that they can replace Western economic partnerships through a turn to China, even though the partnership has created an international perception of Moscow’s subordination to Beijing.
“The alleged ‘dependence’ and ‘inequality’ of Russian-Chinese relations has been discussed ad nauseum mostly in unfriendly countries for a long time now,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Argumenty i Fakty, a state-owned media outlet, on Tuesday. “We see this as an attempt to cast aspersions on our successes and to drive a wedge into the friendship between Moscow and Beijing … We have developed a relationship of positive interdependence with China in trade and economic ties, and this outcome of our work cannot but satisfy us.”
Not all of Putin’s associates share that placidity. A recording of an apparent conversation between two prominent Russian businessmen, billionaire former politician Farkhad Akhmedov and music producer Iosif Prigozhin, leaked into Ukrainian media and offered a glimpse of the anger and dismay at the way Putin’s government has “f***** us, our children, their future, their destiny,” as Akhmedov apparently put it.
“He has buried the entire Russian nation,” the voice identified as Akhmedov also said. “How are we going to wash this off? This is a war between f****** brothers. There will be fascism there, that’s what’s going to happen … a military dictatorship. You will see. It’s going to end like this.”
Prigozhin — the music producer, not to be confused with the mercenary Russian warlord of the same last name — attributes the problems to the corruption of the rulers. “They’re criminals, to be honest, criminals of the worst kind,” he said. “[Putin] squandered the country away … There won’t be any future for us.”
The producer has struggled to explain away the remarks. “The recording is a symbiosis of spoken phrases, and those that were generated and never uttered,” he told a Russian outlet. “This whole story is extremely unpleasant.”
The leaked audio dovetailed with reports that Russian security services are restricting the right of current and former officials to travel abroad. “No one can go anywhere without individual permission,” a senior Russian government official told the Moscow Times on condition of anonymity. “An iron curtain for those associated with the state is … in place.”
Lavrov complained that European officials have alienated Russia through their hostility to Putin’s attempt to overthrow the Ukrainian government.
“The EU has lost Russia but this is of its own making. The EU countries and EU leaders are openly talking about the need to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, as they put it,” Lavrov said Tuesday. “They are pumping [Ukraine] full of weapons and ammunition, and are sending instructors and mercenaries to Ukraine. This is why we consider the EU to be an unfriendly association.”
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Putin, recalling the experience of retaliatory Russian sanctions on Western food products, insisted that the government will be able to make life inside 21st-century Russia comfortable despite the isolation from Western markets.
“Essential conditions were created for rapid import substitution and for expanding agricultural production. Russian citizens obtained a wide range of Russian-made goods and foodstuffs that also proved to be more environmentally friendly, purer and of higher quality,” the Kremlin chief said Tuesday. “I am confident that we will be able to achieve the same impressive results here. Although this is, of course, a difficult and complicated objective, we will certainly accomplish it.”