Putin’s Syria Strikes

The Real Story Behind Putin’s Syria Strikes

Inside the Kremlin rivalry that radicalized Russia’s strongman.

By  Steven Lee Myers

The roots of Russia’s bold intervention in Syria—which began in earnest on Wednesday with airstrikes against opponents of President Bashar al-Assad’s government near the city of Homs—extend to the beginning of the Arab Spring in early 2011, when Vladimir Putin served as prime minister nominally under his protégé and hand-picked successor, Dmitri Medvedev. Many in Russia and beyond had placed in Medvedev their hopes for a steady, if slow, political transition away from Putin’s authoritarian instincts during his two terms as president. Putin seemed even to have retreated from the day-to-day business of the state, especially in foreign affairs. The uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, however, disturbed Putin profoundly. So did Medvedev’s handling of yet another American-led military operation in the region. Russia’s abstention from the United Nations Security Council vote authorizing the use of military force to stop the slaughter in Libya in 2011 forced Putin’s hand and set the stage for his return to the presidency the next year—and a far more confrontational posture to the United States and Europe, one that resonates in the Russian bombs exploding in Syria today.

***

Only days before his trip to Davos in January 2011 for the annual conference there, Dmitri Medvedev had pushed a new nuclear arms agreement he had negotiated with Barack Obama through the Duma. It was a sign that the “reset” in relations that the Americans had sought with Russia was beginning to bear fruit in the three years in which Medvedev had served, formally at least, as Russia’s most powerful official. While in Switzerland, he pledged to revive the talks to enter the World Trade Organization that his temperamental predecessor, Vladimir Putin, had upended unexpectedly in 2009 after negotiators had nearly cinched the deal. With the election of a new parliament scheduled for the end of the year and the presidential election three months after that, Medvedev increasingly presented a competing path for the future, and the insiders in the Kremlin and the government gravitated either toward his or toward Putin’s.

The first question Medvedev faced at the Davos conference was one he had not addressed in his remarks—and one that would prove decisive. It was about the Arab Spring, which had begun in Tunis in December 2010 and inspired protests that swept through the Arab world, toppling Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and threatening Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya. Medvedev replied not only that he recognized the democratic aspirations of the thousands who had poured into Tunisia’s streets to protest corruption, poverty and lack of political rights, but also that governments had a responsibility to address those grievances. He went on to emphasize the importance of the relationship between governed and government in ways that could have applied equally to Russia, where the will of the people had been managed out of the electoral process. “When governments fail to keep up with social change and fail to meet people’s hopes, disorganization and chaos ensue, sadly,” Medvedev said, apparently warming to the theme. “This is a problem of governments themselves and the responsibility they bear. Even if governments in power find many of the demands made unacceptable they still must remain in dialogue with all the different groups because otherwise they lose their real foundation.”

The protests in the Arab world had galvanized Russia’s beleaguered opposition, at least in the still safe space of the Internet, and Medvedev’s remarks sounded sympathetic to things that Putin feared most. Medvedev, while hardly endorsing protests at home, sounded irresolute. The American vice president, Joseph Biden, even had the audacity to quote him during a speech at Moscow State University in March 2011, in which he declared that Russians should have the same rights as anyone else. “Most Russians want to choose their national and local leaders in competitive elections,” Biden said in what amounted to an endorsement in the undeclared campaign taking shape. “They want to be able to assemble freely, and they want a media to be independent of the state. And they want to live in a country that fights corruption. That’s democracy. They’re the ingredients of democracy. So I urge all of you students here: Don’t compromise on the basic elements of democracy. You need not make that Faustian bargain.”

Behind the scenes, Biden used his visit to press Medvedev to support a United Nations Security Council resolution to authorize a military intervention in Libya, where peaceful protests had turned into an armed insurrection against the country’s dictator, Muammar al-Qaddafi. The United States, its NATO allies, and some Arab nations wanted to establish a “no fly” zone over the country to prevent the bloody suppression of the rebels. Medvedev agreed, persuaded by the humanitarian case for intervention, despite the opposition of the Foreign Ministry and other security officials who saw the prospect of a NATO-led campaign outside its border as an extension of American hegemony to another part of the world. He had drifted dangerously far from Putin’s path, making a confrontation seem inevitable.

Only weeks before, Putin had warned that the uprisings in Libya and other countries would fuel the rise of Islamic extremists allied with al-Qaeda, aided and abetted by shortsighted sympathizers in the West trying to overthrow autocratic leaders. He was not wrong about the rise in extremism, which would later consume Libya and exacerbate a grinding civil war in Syria, a far more important ally of Russia in the Middle East. Putin’s support for the autocratic dictators of Libya and Syria was widely viewed through the prism of Russia’s geopolitical interests, including energy projects and a contract to build a railway linking Libya’s coastal cities (negotiated by Putin’s friend, Vladimir Yakunin), massive arms sales and, in the case of Syria, Russia’s only military base outside the former Soviet Union. In truth, his wariness ran much deeper. There existed a dark association in his mind between aspirations for democracy and the rise of radicalism, between elections and the chaos that would inevitably result. “Let’s take a look back at history, if you don’t mind,” Putin said in Brussels in February. “Where did Khomeini, the mastermind of the Iranian revolution, live? He lived in Paris. And he was supported by most of Western society. And now the West is facing the Iranian nuclear program. I remember our partners calling for fair, democratic elections in the Palestinian territories. Excellent! Those elections were won by Hamas.” Reflexively, instinctively, he imagined the uprising in Libya as simply another step toward a revolution being orchestrated for Moscow.

Perhaps it was because he was younger, perhaps because he never served in the security services, perhaps because of his convivial nature, but Medvedev did not share this bleak distrust of the West, of democracy, of human nature. He had spent the first three years of his presidency wooed by Barack Obama’s administration, and now not only the United States but countries with much closer relations to Russia, including France and Italy, were appealing to him to help prevent a slaughter of civilians in Libya. And so, on his instruction, Russia abstained when the Security Council voted on United Nations Resolution 1973 on March 17, authorizing the use of military force to stop Qaddafi’s forces from moving on the insurgents’ stronghold in eastern Libya.

Medvedev’s decision provoked a revolt among Russia’s diplomats and security officials. Russia’s ambassador to Libya, Vladimir Chamov, sent a cable to the president warning against the loss of an important ally. Medvedev fired him, but the ambassador returned to Moscow and declared publicly that the president was acting against Russia’s interests. When NATO launched its first airstrikes two days later—a far more punishing initial barrage to destroy the country’s air defenses than many expected—Medvedev seemed to many in Russia to be complicit in yet another American-led war.

One of the prime minister’s closest advisers later claimed that Putin had not read the Security Council’s resolution before the vote, deferring to the president and being preoccupied as he was with “economic diplomacy” rather than foreign affairs. Once the bombing started, however, Putin understood its import; the unstated goal of the NATO air war was not merely the protection of civilians caught in the crossfire, but rather the overthrow of Qaddafi’s regime. He believed that Medvedev had been duped. “Putin read through the text of the resolution and saw that some countries could use the rubbery language to act the way they did,” the adviser said. As NATO bombs rained on Libya, Putin spoke out. Touring a weapons factory, he denounced the United Nations resolution as “flawed and inadequate.” “If one reads it, then it immediately becomes clear that it authorizes anyone to take any measures against a sovereign state. All in all, it reminds me of a medieval call to crusade, when someone calls upon others to go somewhere and free someone else.” He compared it to the American wars of the previous decade, the bombings of Serbia, Afghanistan and, under a fabricated pretext, Iraq. “Now it’s Libya’s turn.”

Putin’s spokesman said he had merely expressed a personal opinion, but with Medvedev already facing criticism for the resolution, it was an unmistakable rebuke. Medvedev promptly assembled the Kremlin’s press pool at his dacha outside Moscow to defend Russia’s abstention and, at least obliquely, to criticize Putin. He wore a leather bomber jacket with a fur collar, zipped up tight. Appearing stern and a little uncomfortable, even nervous, he said the Security Council’s action had been justified in light of Libya’s actions. He sounded defensive. Russia’s decision not to veto the resolution had been “a qualified decision” to help find a resolution to the exploding conflict. “Everything that is happening in Libya is a result of the Libyan leadership’s absolutely intolerable behavior and the crimes that they have committed against their own people.” Even as he expressed concern about the extent of the allied bombing campaign (which would continue for eight more months), he warned that Putin’s language would not help end the fighting. “I think we need to be very careful in our choice of words. It is inadmissible to say anything that could lead to a clash of civilizations, talk of ‘crusades’ and so on. This is unacceptable.”

***

As his term wound down, Medvedev redoubled his efforts to make liberalizing reforms in the economy, as if his time were running out. In one instance he decreed that government ministers could no longer serve on the boards of the state corporations that Putin had made a centerpiece of his economic policy. Medvedev himself had served on Gazprom’s board while chief of staff and later deputy prime minister, but the move to bar officials from wearing two hats was an effort to weaken his chief rival in Putin’s camp, Igor Sechin, who had served as deputy prime minister and chairman of Rosneft. (Putin ultimately agreed to the measure, but exempted Gazprom, where Putin’s close ally and former prime minister Viktor Zubkov remained in place.) Medvedev’s desire to remain as president for another term was palpable, though he could not risk openly declaring it. He and Putin may have been fighting a primary of sorts, but the only vote that mattered was Putin’s, and Medvedev knew it.

In May, after three years in office, Medvedev held his first press conference, the event that Putin had used each year to great effect to demonstrate his mastery of politics and government. Medvedev’s was a pale imitation of Putin’s performances, though, and coming so late in his term, it seemed an act of political desperation. He held it at Skolkovo, the still evolving technological center he hoped would one day become a new Silicon Valley. Although he professed allegiance to Putin and praised their mutual commitment to the country’s interests, he said he did not think that relations with NATO “were that bad,” despite the war in Libya, and declared that Ukraine had every right to pursue its integration with Europe, something that Putin had viewed as a cataclysmic threat. In response to a question about replacing regional governors, he seemed to allude to the perpetuity of Putin’s power, saying that leaders should not cling to office for too long, but rather make way for a new generation, as was happening in Tunisia and Egypt. “I think this is important because no one can stay in power forever,” he said. “People who harbor such illusions usually come to a rather bad end, and the world has given us quite a few examples of late.”

As the war in Libya dragged on, however, Medvedev’s handling of the presidency became an open target for criticism in the media, signaled no doubt by Putin’s own moves. In May, Putin announced the creation of a new organization, the All Russia People’s Front, which was intended to expand the political coalition at the heart of his power and to distance him from the “party of swindlers and thieves.” Within days, hundreds of organizations, unions, associations and factories were rushing to join. The sole point of the project was to make Putin, not the country’s sitting president, the “national leader” who would unite them. Medvedev pressed ahead with his proposals to reform the economy, freeing up capital and innovation, but he was losing ground. He met privately with 27 of the country’s leading businessmen—the oligarchs who like everyone else awaited the resolution of the presidential “primary” with growing alarm. He implored them to support his proposals, and by implication his candidacy, or to accept the stagnant status quo. Some of those in attendance interpreted Medvedev’s remarks as an ultimatum for them to choose, but his message was so muddled that the participants could not be sure of his desire—or his ability—to fight to hold office. Afterward, they mocked his appeals, according to one of those who attended: “Have you already decided?”

In June, in an interview with the Financial Times, Medvedev acknowledged for the first time that he wanted to return for a second term, but then he had to admit that it was not his decision alone. “I think that any leader who occupies such a post as president, simply must want to run,” he said. “But another question is whether he is going to decide whether he’s going to run for the presidency or not. So his decision is somewhat different from his willingness to run. So this is my answer.”

If Medvedev wanted to assert real political independence, he did not show it. He could have used any of his appearances or interviews to openly declare his intention to run, perhaps even against Putin himself, presenting a real choice to voters. Instead, he was left awkwardly not answering the question that by the summer of 2011 seemed to have dragged the country into a prolonged political crisis. Unnatural disasters unfolded, like sad symptoms of the country’s paralysis, including the sinking of a ferryboat on the Volga River in July that drowned more than 120 people and the crash of an airplane carrying the players and coaches of one of the country’s professional hockey teams, Lokomotiv Yaroslavl. Medvedev was scheduled days later to hold a conference in the team’s hometown, Yaroslavl, and it seemed a terrible omen.

By then, even senior ministers were afraid to attend these conferences lest it be seen as an endorsement of Medvedev over Putin. Putin’s steely charisma, his absolute determination, his ability to remain above the trials of Russian life, shielded him from blame when tragedies like these struck. Medvedev, though, looked overwhelmed as president. Perhaps by design, public blame for the sinking and the crash flowed toward him.

Putin’s prominence in state media suddenly surged noticeably, an orchestrated campaign that seemed to highlight the personal, even physical, differences between the two men. Putin appeared at the summer camp of the youth group Nashi; he prayed at one of the holiest sites of Russian Orthodoxy; he dove in the Black Sea to the ruins of an ancient Greek city and, behold, surfaced clutching two amphorae. That his spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, later acknowledged that the “discovery” was staged was an unnoticed footnote to the televised image of a man in a tight wetsuit, still fit and very much in his prime.

***

By the time United Russia’s delegates gathered in September for a party congress ahead of parliamentary elections in December, there remained a shivering uncertainty, even bewilderment, as another political transition approached. Even as they drafted their party platform for the elections, then only 10 weeks away, no one—not even the party leaders, or the closest aides of Putin or Medvedev—knew whether a choice had been made or whether the excruciating limbo ahead of the 2012 presidential campaign would continue. Inside the stadium on that Saturday morning, the delegates listened to speeches extolling the stunning transformation of an ideological empire that had rotted and collapsed and now risen again, presided over, it was made clear, by one man: Putin. Boris Gryzlov, the Duma’s speaker, looked like an apparatchik of old, his face stern and pinched as he read the party’s platform, droning on about pledges of prosperity and competence.

Eventually, the lights dimmed and the crowd hushed. From the wings, lit like rock stars, Putin and Medvedev entered the congress, striding side by side, their shoulders swaying in tandem. Putin had a look of utter assuredness, which is what his supporters have said the country always craved, not the shamed visage of a cowering leader of a diminished power. Putin spoke first, adhering to the protocol of political rank. He began by referring to “the most pressing challenges facing our nation,” and then addressed the most acute question on the delegates’ minds with an elaborate tease. He stopped short of revealing what exactly the answer was—just as he had done in the private councils he had held with his various aides in the preceding days. “I am aware that United Russia members, supporters, and the delegates of this conference are expecting the Russian president and prime minister to voice proposals on the country’s power configuration and government structure after the elections,” he said. “I want to tell you directly that we have long since reached an agreement on what we will be doing in the future. That agreement was reached several years ago. However, following this debate as observers, both Mr. Medvedev and I said that it is hardly the most important thing: who will do which job and occupy which position. What’s more important is the quality of work, what results we achieve, and how our people perceive our efforts, what their reaction is to our proposals for the nation’s future development and whether they support us.”

Putin’s words spoke volumes about his understanding of democracy: It is not for society to decide its leaders through some semblance of an electoral campaign, but to ratify those already chosen. He announced that Medvedev would, according to a “tradition” not even a decade old, head the party’s ballot in the parliamentary elections in December and thus “guarantee its anticipated and honest victory.” The applause that followed seemed rote; Putin had not yet clarified the fate of either man in the tandem.

Medvedev then followed him to the dais. “Naturally, it is a pleasure to speak here,” he began, smiling awkwardly. Even after four years in office, he had not yet mastered the art of political speech. “There is a special energy in this room. It is simply charged with emotions.” He praised Russia’s democracy and the “new level of political culture” that it had achieved, but he went on to warn that “excessive formalism and bureaucracy” posed a danger to it. The delegates listened unemotionally; his relevance seemed to dim with each word. “They lead to the stagnation and degradation of the political system,” he said. “And unfortunately, we have already witnessed this in our country’s history.” He outlined an eight-point political agenda, all of which he had promised for nearly four years and not yet delivered: modernizing the economy and industry; ensuring salaries, pensions and health care, all precarious still; fighting corruption; strengthening the judiciary and criminal justice systems; combating illegal immigration while protecting the country’s “interethnic and interreligious peace”; establishing a “modern political system”; building the nation’s police and armed forces; and forging a strong “independent, sensible foreign policy.”

With those words, he accepted Putin’s nomination to head the party’s list, and at last he addressed the agreement Putin had alluded to having reached years before. Medvedev spoke like a man reading his own political obituary; it was, in fact, one of the most bizarre resignation speeches in history. He was articulating and defending his vision for the country, even as he relinquished the post that might have made it achievable.

“I propose we decide on another very important issue which naturally concerns the party and all of our people who follow politics, namely the candidate for the role of president. In light of the proposal that I head the party list, do party work, and, if we perform well in the elections, my willingness to engage in practical work in the government, I think it’s right that the party congress support the candidacy of the current prime minister, Vladimir Putin, in the role of the country’s president.”

***

In the end, perhaps, it was not a surprise. Medvedev’s political stock had been sinking day by day for most of the year. Yet the shock was audible in the cavernous stadium, a collective gasp that soon turned to thunderous applause, wave after wave of it. Putin had succeeded in creating suspense and then releasing it at the moment of his choosing. He stood in front of his seat in the audience, basking in the spotlight, his eyes sparkling though his smile was tight, wry and fleeting. He did not raise his arms in triumph or otherwise act like a candidate offered the chance to seek higher office. He simply nodded knowingly, as if his return to the presidency was preordained.

After Medvedev finished speaking, Putin strode to the dais a second time and delivered a lengthy, richly detailed, policy-laden address that outlined his plans to support veterans and farmers, doctors, teachers, scientists, soldiers. It was the nuts and bolts of governance, what the Russians had come to expect over years of watching him insist upon the right policy, the right decisions, on behalf of the people. He vowed to overcome the nagging hardships of the global economic crisis, the roots of which, he pointedly noted, again, “were not in Russia.” He barely mentioned Medvedev’s nomination to head the party list or his own return to the presidency, which in one sudden moment had become inexorable. “We have already entered a lengthy election cycle. The elections to the State Duma will take place on December 4, to be followed by the formation of its committees and government bodies. The presidential election is scheduled for next spring. I’d like to thank you for your positive response to the proposal for me to stand for president. This is a great honor for me.” He spoke as if he had not decided everything himself.

The agreement was reached several years ago, Putin had explained. Medvedev suggested as much as well, though in fact it had not happened that way. Medvedev had nurtured the hope to return for a second term at least until the beginning of September, when his public demeanor started to suggest that it might not happen. He had only learned the details of Putin’s final decision the night before during a late-night meeting at Novo-Ogaryovo. When the printers printed the ballots for the delegates to use to elevate Medvedev to the head of the party, the space for his name had been left blank, filled in only after the announcement. According to one account, Putin would not even let Medvedev tell his wife until the decision had been made public. If Putin had known all along that he intended to reclaim the presidency, no one else in the government or in his inner circle had been allowed to know, let alone influence the outcome of his deliberations. He made the most momentous decision of his political career with his own counsel alone. One of Medvedev’s loyalists, Arkady Dvorkovich, reacted with anguished sarcasm even as the events at the congress unfolded. In an interview the year before, Dvorkovich had acknowledged that Medvedev’s plans—and really his entire presidency—had faced opposition from “those who thrive on the old system, on budget inefficiency and a resource-based economy.” He never named names, but he clearly referred to those arrayed around Putin. “Now,” he tweeted from the floor of the party’s congress, “it’s time to switch to the sports channel.”

Putin never bothered to explain his reasons for returning to the presidency, to the Kremlin. He could have remained the paramount leader, even with Medvedev serving another term as president. Perhaps there was no reason but the obvious one, though according to his most ardent supporters, he felt that his successor had not been a strong enough leader. In the days and months after the announcement, the same supporters set about demeaning Medvedev for the weaknesses he showed during the war in Georgia and failing to stop NATO’s war in Libya. Even the anecdote about keeping Medvedev from telling his wife was laced with the insinuation that he was hardly man enough to trust his wife not to insist that he run again. These explanations sought to justify Putin’s move, but they did not explain his motive. He never felt he had to. The position was his if he wanted it, which was, in his mind apparently, explanation enough.

***

When protests erupted in Moscow and other cities after the parliamentary elections in December 2011 and Putin’s own reelection in March 2012, it seemed for a time that the revolutionary fervor that had swept the autocracies of the Arab world was spreading north. Putin, restored to the Kremlin for a new six-year term (and the constitutional right to run for another after that), responded forcefully. The police and prosecutors suffocated the protest movement with a wave of arrests and criminal cases. Putin’s Kremlin quickly undid many of the reforms Medvedev’s had pursued. A steady diet of nationalistic rhetoric and policies coincided with increased spending on the military. Russia now blocked resolution after resolution at the United Nations that sought to condemn the escalating conflict in Syria, throwing its diplomatic, economic and military support behind the Assad government. As Libya descended into chaos, and Syria’s civil war created the vacuum that led to the rise of the Islamic State there and in swaths of Iraq, Putin felt vindicated. As he said in his confrontational address to the United Nations on Monday, the interventions by the United States in the region (from Afghanistan in 2001, to Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011) spawned the turmoil whose consequences are now manifested in hundreds of thousands of deaths and the largest tide of refugees since World War II. He was drawing his own line in the sand. Putin, by forcefully intervening in Syria, was declaring that Russia would be the bulwark against a further deterioration. The question now is how long it will endure.