Russia's Long Game of Ambition and Restraint

Putin’s Georgievsky Hall Address and the Ukrainian ATACMS Attack on a Sevastopol Beach

On 21 June, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin gave an important speech, which, as so often, has been badly under-reported in Western media. That is especially regrettable for two reasons: First, because what Putin had to say concerned two issues that observers and leaders in the West should care about, namely, the ongoing confrontation with what he – plausibly – calls “the collective West” and the way in which Russia’s leaders (and many other Russians as well) see their country’s place in the world.

Second, as it happens, Putin’s statements were soon followed by two violent events that will inevitably lead to Russian responses, namely, on 23 June, the Ukrainian attack with American cluster munition-carrying ATACMS missiles (and, of course, vital American assistance) on Sevastopol in Crimea that ended with at least 4 dead and over 150 injured civilians on a beach and, on the same day, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in the region of Dagestan.

While these are different events, major Russian politicians see them as linked. The speaker of Russia’s parliament (the Duma), Viacheslav Volodin, for instance, has spoken of them in the same breath, calling both “inhuman crimes” and stating that their “master minds” may turn out to be the same.” It takes no guessing at all to understand that Volodin is referring to the West and its intelligence agencies, in particular to the USA, and perhaps the UK as well.

Whether you agree or disagree with this suggestion, what matters at this moment is that we can be certain that it is shared by the Russian leadership – and, again, many Russians outside it as well – more generally: Moscow sees a pattern connecting the attacks on Crimea and in the Caucasus, and, worryingly, it also sees the West as involved in both.