Russia Extends Its Reach to the West
Russia
has breathed new life into the concept of war by other means. Using an
increasingly diverse array of tactics, conventional and otherwise, the
country has deftly wielded its political sway in the former Soviet Union
and Eastern Bloc. But its reach extends well beyond its traditional
sphere of influence to countries such as the United States, France and
Germany. Moscow's dealings with these powers have showcased its hybrid
warfare strategy, combining various techniques to try to create
political chaos and undermine the leading members of the Transatlantic
alliance.
To
get to the countries in the third tier of its hybrid warfare target set
— geographically distant military powers with few crucial economic ties
to Russia — Moscow's options are limited. Political manipulation,
electoral meddling, cyberattacks and information warfare are the only
tools at its disposal, though its involvement in theaters of mutual
interest to Washington, Berlin and Paris, such as Syria, also comes in
handy. Yet given the importance of the United States, Germany and France
in the Transatlantic alliance (and, for the latter two countries, in
the European Union), along with their diverse and sometimes discordant
societies, these tactics can pack a punch.
A Dramatic Display
Russia's
interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, perhaps the most
significant example of its hybrid warfare strategy in the West, is
still wreaking havoc on the United States' political system.
Without the conventional abilities to challenge the United States'
power projection, Russia opted for other ways to try to undermine the
country's geopolitical influence. The Kremlin knew that Hillary Clinton,
as Barack Obama's former secretary of state, would continue — if not
intensify — her predecessor's policies against Russia if she assumed the
presidency. Considering the alternative, Moscow had an interest in
supporting Donald Trump, the less-experienced and more sympathetic
candidate who called to improve ties with Russia and questioned the efficacy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization during his campaign.
And
so, in a breach traced back to Russian intelligence agencies, hackers
accessed Democratic National Committee servers and released thousands of
emails in July 2016 at the height of the presidential race. The
incident is widely interpreted as an effort to aid Trump's campaign in
defeating Clinton and has become the focus of several investigations by
Congress and the FBI. It wasn't the first time a government had tried to influence a foreign election;
the United States itself has meddled in votes abroad. But the hack's
high-profile target, and efficacy, raised global awareness of Moscow's
hybrid warfare tactics to new heights.
Trump's
presidency hasn't transformed the United States' policy toward Russia
as Moscow hoped. Institutional barriers, including those in Congress and
in the military and intelligence establishment, stand in the way of
improved relations between Moscow and Washington. In fact, the United
States has increased its sanctions against Russia since
Trump's election, and Congress imposed additional checks and oversight
to keep the president from removing the measures unilaterally. Even so,
the controversy surrounding the election and Trump's alleged links to
Russia has disrupted and destabilized U.S. politics. Moscow has used
information operations against the Trump administration to intensify
distrust between branches of the U.S. government and create greater
confusion. It has also increased its involvement in theaters of
strategic interest to the United States, including Syria, North Korea
and Afghanistan, to gain leverage in its negotiations with Washington.
And Russia's conventional military capabilities — particularly its vast
nuclear arsenal — will continue to deter the United States from
challenging its forces directly.
After Paris, the Deluge?
France
is no stranger to Russia's intrusions, either. After its success in the
U.S. vote, Moscow set its sights on the French elections in April and
May of this year. Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front, a
right-wing, anti-immigrant party that Moscow had long backed, emerged as a leading contender for
the country's presidency, advancing to face off against centrist
candidate Emmanuel Macron in the run-off vote.
Her victory would have
been a huge boon for Russia in its efforts to undermine Western unity.
Not only did Le Pen campaign to lift the European Union's sanctions
against Moscow, but her pledge to withdraw France from the eurozone
could have endangered the bloc's very existence. Russia provided
political and financial support to Le Pen and her party. Investigations
linked hacking attempts against Macron's campaign website in the lead-up
to the elections back to Moscow. Russian media outlets such as Sputnik,
meanwhile, ramped up their anti-EU propaganda, running articles
reporting that a plurality of people in France believed more countries
would follow the United Kingdom's example and pull out of the
Continental bloc.
Macron won the vote by
a wide margin despite Moscow's best efforts and dashed Russia's hopes
of an existential crisis in the European Union. Following his victory,
the president-elect called Russia out for its attempts to influence the
election and referred to its state-run news outlets as "agents of
influence and propaganda." Nevertheless, Le Pen's strong showing in the
first round of the vote revealed the popularity of the Euroskeptic
movement that Russia has worked hard to craft and promote in France.
Try, Try Again
In
Germany, Moscow will soon have another chance to hone its techniques
for electoral intervention. The country is gearing up for general
elections in September, and Russia likely will throw its weight behind anti-EU groups such as Alternative for Germany (AfD),
much as it did for the National Front. But as was the case in France,
Moscow's attempts to sway the vote in Germany probably won't achieve
their desired result. AfD has a much smaller support base, compared with
the National Front in France. And its popularity is on the decline,
falling below 10 percent in the latest polls.
The
results of the election are unlikely to change Germany's position on
NATO or the European Union. As a result, Russia can be expected to ramp
up its disinformation campaign against the country. Moscow so far has
focused on sowing discord among anti-immigration movements in Germany because of the large number of refugees it
has admitted. Russia's state media outlets, for example, spread a false
story that migrants had raped a Russian teenager in Germany, sparking
protests in the country and prompting German officials to label the
report "fake news."
So
far, the middling results of Russia's bids to influence politics in the
West haven't discouraged the country. The possible gains of extending
its hybrid warfare strategy to Western powers outweigh the risks. And
what its interferences have failed to achieve in policy, Moscow has
tried to make up for in political upheaval.
RUSSIA´S COMMUNISTS PURSUE A RED REVIVAL
As protest increase across Russia, the Communist Party will seize on the growing discontent to boost its popularity.
Though
it lacks opposition leader Alexei Navalny's appeal with young voters,
the Party will continue to position itself as an alternative for youths
who want change, but not necessarily the reforms that Navalny champions.
The
Party's rise, coupled with that of of Navalny and other dissident
factions, will not pose an immediate threat to the Kremlin, but it
represents a trend that the current administration can't afford to
ignore in the long term.
The
cracks are beginning to show in the system that has supported
Russian President Vladimir Putin's government for 17 years. Demographic shifts,
economic stagnation and building pressure from the West have strained the
administration and fueled dissatisfaction among the Russian public. And for
Russia's opposition groups, the growing discontent — and the recent rise of
various protest movements across the country — present an opportunity. Russia's
most prominent opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, has
led the charge, launching an anti-corruption campaign aimed squarely at the
government elite. Navalny has opened 60 regional offices throughout Russia and
plans to run for president against Putin in 2018.
Though
it probably won't allow Navalny's bid
for office, the Kremlin may have other challengers
to worry about. The Communist Party — a political opponent that operates within
the government's system — is starting to make its own plans for the future. The
Russian public has long viewed the Party as a relic of bygone times, the last
trace of the Soviet system that flew the red banner and venerated Vladimir
Lenin and Josef Stalin. Since the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, the Party
has been best known for organizing street protests for elderly retirees who
long for the old days, lending credence to the assumption that the movement
would soon die out. But today, the political conditions may be right for
Russia's Communist Party to stage a comeback.
An Opponent Within the System
In the 1990s, the
Communist Party held the largest number of seats in the Duma, the lower house
of Russia's legislature. When Putin came to power in 1999 and 2000,
however, its political clout
began to wane.
The Party moved into the role of systematic opposition, a classification it
rejects.
Gennady Zyuganov, the Party's leader since 1993, has run for
president repeatedly since 1996. (In fact, he sat out only one election in that
time, when Putin was assured a landslide victory in 2004.) But voters
increasingly regard the party head, who is in his seventies, as a part of
Russia's political system, and, consequently, as a noncredible challenger to
Putin. Zyuganov and his party rarely have moved against the ruling United
Russia and have stayed in lockstep with most of the president's foreign policy
initiatives. Even so, the Kremlin organized an alternative leftist party, Just
Russia, in 2006 to mitigate the threat of a resurging Communist Party. The
scheme paid off in the 2007 parliamentary elections, stalling the political
group's growth.
The Party found itself
in a precarious position in 2011, when the government's blatant interference in
parliamentary elections sparked mass protests across Russia. Though the
Communist Party's position in the Duma had improved dramatically in the wake of
the vote, Zyuganov joined in the demonstrations, which drew support across
partisan lines —
a development the Kremlin found deeply troubling. The tumult forced Putin's
government to offer the protest movements a string of concessions, such as
reinstating direct elections for regional leaders, and took further measures to
bring the Communist Party to heel. In return for yielding to the
administration, the Party received various desirable committee chair posts in
the Duma from United Russia.
Still, the Communists
didn't completely surrender to the will of the ruling party; instead, they
began resisting more quietly — in sharp contrast to the vocal opposition of
Navalny and the liberal dissident factions. The Party has campaigned regionally
to gain influence, a strategy that has worked to its advantage. In 2014
elections, for instance, Communist candidates managed to defeat United Russia
in the strategic city of Novosibirsk and in Oryol province, despite the
Kremlin's rescinding its promise to return to direct votes for regional races.
The following year, the Communist contender beat out the ruling party's
candidate for governor of Irkutsk province. Only one other opposition party
holds a governorship in the country, and United Russia handpicked its candidate
for the post.
In the lead-up to the
2016 legislative elections, the Kremlin put the Communist Party in its sights —
all the more so as United Russia sank in the polls. Putin's government launched
an aggressive campaign to ensure its continued hold on power, tinkering with
election dates to prevent a strong turnout for
alternative parties.
The vote's results showed another dip in support for the Communists.
Now that protests are cropping up across
Russia, though, the Party is
eager to take advantage of the public's dissatisfaction with the long-standing
administration. It was the only party in the Duma to call for an investigation
into the corruption allegations Navalny exposed. In recent months, moreover, it
has shifted the focus of its messaging from increasing state control of the
economy, its traditional theme, to reports of government graft and the lavish
lifestyles of the political elite. The rising star in the Party, Andrei
Klychkov, recently told The Moscow Times, "Stalin died with just one suit
and a pair of boots in his wardrobe; that's why people trusted him." The
Communists also are coming to the defense of other protest groups, such as
those that have demonstrated against plans by municipal leaders to demolish
8,000 Soviet-era buildings in Moscow, a move that would displace some 1 million
residents. Klychkov has repeatedly spoken at the movement's larger rallies.
A Demographic Opportunity
Further brightening its
prospects, the Party now has a rare opportunity to refashion itself, thanks to
Russia's changing demographics. More than one-quarter of the country's people
today were born after the
Soviet Union's collapse and have no experience of life under the Party's rule. To appeal
to the post-Soviet generation, the Communists have been working to cast
themselves as a young movement.
The Party has enlisted an American mixed
martial artist to stump around the country on its behalf and to help open fight
schools for underprivileged youth. Klychkov, a lawyer, is only 26, but already
he has risen through the ranks to occupy one of the Party's primary leadership
roles and is said to be Zyuganov's likely successor.
The Party will test the
electoral waters with Klychkov in next year's Moscow mayoral elections. Though
he likely will lose the vote, the young candidate will increase his public name
recognition in the process. Meanwhile, Sergei Udaltsov, the unofficial leader
of a socialist youth movement, is reportedly considering joining the Communist
Party, having recently been released from prison after serving four years for
his role in the 2011-12 protests.
The Party even has
embraced caricatures of Communism and its past leaders, revamping traditional
Communist iconography and slogans with humor, glamour and enthusiasm. The
party's official artist, for example, created images of Lenin wearing a tight
T-shirt, jeans and sneakers and of Stalin smoking an e-cigarette. He also
created an image of Putin wearing the czar's crown with the words: "What
did we struggle for? What did we fight for?" And as the centennial anniversary of the Russian Revolution approaches, the Communists have been
promoting the achievements that followed it. The Party has capitalized on
Stalin's resurging popularity among Russians, as reported by independent
pollster Levada, portraying the leader as a hero of World War II who launched
the Soviet Union onto the world stage.
These efforts are the
Party's attempt to portray itself not as a group that wants to turn back the
clock but as one that wants to bring to the present what the Soviet period
offered Russia economically. For many struggling Russians, its promises of pensions, as well as
free education and medical services, are a welcome message. The Communist
Party, moreover, is working to position itself as an alternative for young
Russians who are against the corruption of Putin's government but are wary of
the reformist values opposition leaders such as Navalny champion. Its latest
rebrand — a capitalist term it accepts grudgingly — seems to be working:
According to officials in the group, some 40 percent of new Party members are
under the age of 35, and the post-Soviet generation makes up 20 percent of its
570,000 members. Furthermore, the Party claims its youth group is the largest
in the country, while participation in United Russia's youth movements is
dwindling.
Two Contrary Figures Flirt
The Party's future is an
open question. After all, it is still entrenched in Putin's system, though its
recent deviation from the Kremlin's line suggests that it could break with more
of the government's policies in the coming years. The Communists also face
stiff competition as they vie for the support of younger Russians since Navalny
maintains a strong social media presence, and the Putin administration, too, is
redoubling its efforts to win the youth vote.
As the 2018 election
approaches, opposition groups are banding together in their quest to overcome
United Russia. In March, Navalny expressed support for Klychkov's mayoral campaign,
sparking outrage among his liberal supporters. The opposition heavyweight
explained that he believes Klychkov has the best chance to defeat the Kremlin's
incumbent. Klychkov, surprised by the apparently unsolicited endorsement,
replied that he was "excited to hear from [his] political opponents that
people really appreciate" his perspective. The Russian media has compared
the flirtation between the two opposition leaders to the collaboration among
Liberals, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks during the 1917 Russian Revolution — an
indication that the Kremlin is well aware of the threat it faces.
But the cooperation can
only go so far. Beyond agreeing on the need to counter the Putin government,
Klychkov and Navalny diverge in their views of the future. The Communist Party, for example,
advocates stronger state control politically, economically and socially, while
Navalny and his supporters are pushing for less control. Regardless, the
floodgates have opened to opposition and dissent in Russia. The Putin
government still has a fast grip on power for now, but it can't ignore the changing tides
in public sentiment.