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Although the overwhelming Crimean vote to join Russia would seem to be a triumph for Vladimir Putin’s invigorated and ever more muscularly nationalist policy in the neighborhood, it actually opens up a wide range of future challenges and problems. Despite enjoying a strong popularity bump at present, he may find that he took Crimea only to lose the Kremlin.
The economic sanctions which will almost certainly follow will begin to bite, first at the elite and then the country as a whole. The small handful of close allies who helped Putin decide to annex Crimea do not, it appears, have extensive assets and interests abroad. Figures like presidential chief of staff Sergei Ivanov and Security Council secretary Nikolai Patrushev have always been interested in power at home more than wealth abroad. That cannot be said about most of the elite, though, and if they start to have assets frozen, visas rejected and family members barred from travelling and studying abroad, their anger at the West will likely be dwarfed by their resentment of the confrontational government which led to this state of affairs.
Should sanctions become broader — as they undoubtedly will if Russia chooses to invade eastern Ukraine — then they will hit an economy that in any case is facing a rocky and uncertain future. The ruble has already slipped in the international markets, and while this has its advantages for the Kremlin, for ordinary Russians it means that highly-prized imported goods are getting more expensive.
At present, according to polls conducted by the Levada group, 79% of Russians support the annexation of Crimea, while 58% are willing to support a wider intervention into Ukraine. However, that data comes on the back of a propaganda campaign that is almost unparalleled in modern times, with allegations of attacks on ethnic Russians, neo-Nazi sympathies in Kyiv and NATO incursions. It is also easy to support an intervention when there seem no real costs. As prices rise and, perhaps, soldiers start coming home in coffins, then this is likely rapidly to change.
The threat of war is also galvanizing a liberal, middle-class opposition that had been in the doldrums. On March 15, anti-war protests in Moscow brought tens of thousands onto the streets, the largest such march for perhaps two years. They may be a small minority at present, but if the prospect of war now helps re-energize and unify the opposition, they may be that much more of a force in the local elections across the country scheduled for September.
Putin’s newly-aggressive foreign policy may suit the nationalists and security interests who now make up his shrinking inner circle of advisers, but if its consequences anger the masses, alienate the elite and strengthen middle-class opposition, it may also shatter his previously unbreakable grip on power.
