In the aftermath of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, there has been an overdue reckoning with how many historians, foreign policy analysts, politicians, and others underestimated or ignored Vladimir Putin, despite the fact that Russia’s forever-president broadcast his grievances to the world. It is, therefore, critical to understand what drives Mr. Putin today and how he’s holding his regime together.
The regime is held together by violence, according to Catholic University historian Michael Kimmage, referring to the death – widely presumed to have been an assassination – of mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. It is now apparent that Mr. Putin’s ruling clique has survived Mr. Prigozhin’s aborted challenge from June, and remains determined to fight a long war in Ukraine in the face of high casualties and economic sanctions.
In this episode of History As It Happens, Mr. Kimmage, who held the Russia-Ukraine portfolio in the U.S. State Department from 2014-16, discusses what he describes as Mr. Putin’s “mafia state.”
“This is something that’s been a part of Putin’s persona more or less from the beginning. He can at times stylize himself as a kind of Leningrad street tough, and that’s consistent with some elements of Putin’s own background. Putin was also a kind of technocratic modernizer in the beginning as well. But this criminal element has asserted itself more and more over the years,” Mr. Kimmage said.
“First, it was bumping off journalists who said inconvenient things. It moved onto a homicidal way with politicians who were in Putin’s way, to the rise of Prigozhin himself,” Mr. Kimmage added.
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Also discussed in this episode is the unexpected popularity of the war inside Russia after 18 months of combat, how Russia is globalizing its war efforts to survive Western sanctions, and what it would take to get the Kremlin to the negotiating table.
History As It Happens is available at washingtontimes.com or wherever you find your podcasts.
