Kremlin website, 7/21/23 (English translation via Google translate)

The meeting was attended by the Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Chairman of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko, Chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin, Vice-President of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Anton Vaino, Secretary of the Security Council Nikolay Patrushev, Minister of the Interior Vladimir Kolokoltsev, Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu, Director of the Federal Security Service Alexander Bortnikov, Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service Sergey Naryshkin.

* * *

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues.

We have several issues today, one of which is the development of relations with our friends on the African continent, and the Russia-Africa summit will soon be held in Russia. And the issue related to such an important area as the use of information technology, of course, in relation to ensuring the country’s security.

But first, I would like to ask if anyone has any current questions? Yes, please, Sergei Evgenievich.

Sergei Naryshkin: Mr President, colleagues!

According to information coming to the service from several sources, official Warsaw is gradually coming to the realization that no Western assistance to Kyiv is able to support Ukraine for the purposes that were laid down in this assistance. Moreover, there comes the realization that the issue of Ukraine’s defeat is only a matter of time.

In this regard, the Polish leadership is strengthening its intention to control the western territories of Ukraine, the western regions, by deploying its troops there. Such a step, as one of the options, is planned to be formalized as the fulfillment of allied obligations within the framework of the Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian security initiative – this is the so-called Lublin Triangle.

In this regard, we see that it is planned to significantly increase the size of the combined arms Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian brigade, which operates under the auspices of this so-called Lublin triangle.

It seems to us that these rather dangerous plans of the Polish leadership should be closely monitored.

Vladimir Putin: Yes. This is what Mr Medvedev has just said, and it should be discussed in more detail. This information has already appeared in the European, in particular in the French, press.

In this regard, I think it would be appropriate to recall some of the lessons of the history of the twentieth century.

Today it is obvious that the Western curators of the Kyiv regime are clearly disappointed with the results of the so-called counteroffensive, which the current Ukrainian authorities loudly broadcast in previous months. There are no results, at least not yet. Neither the colossal resources that were “pumped” into the Kyiv regime, nor the supply of Western weapons: tanks, artillery, armored vehicles, missiles, nor the dispatch of thousands of foreign mercenaries and advisers who were most actively used in attempts to break through the front of our army help.

At the same time, the command of the special military operation acts professionally. Our soldiers and officers, units and formations fulfill their duty to the Motherland courageously, steadfastly, heroically. At the same time, the whole world sees that the vaunted Western, supposedly invulnerable equipment is on fire, and in terms of its tactical and technical data, it is often even inferior to some Soviet-made weapons.

Yes, of course, Western weapons can still be additionally supplied and thrown into battle. This, of course, causes us some damage and prolongs the conflict. But, first, NATO’s arsenals and stocks of old Soviet weapons in some states are already largely devastated. And secondly, the existing production facilities in the West do not allow to quickly replenish the consumption of reserves of equipment and ammunition. We need additional, and more resources and time.

And most importantly, as a result of suicidal attacks, the formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine suffered huge losses. These are tens of thousands, tens of thousands of people.

And, despite the constant raids, the incessant waves of total mobilization in the cities and villages of Ukraine, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the current regime to drive new recruits to the front. The country’s mobilization resource is being depleted.

People in Ukraine are increasingly asking a question, a legitimate question: for what, for whose selfish interests are their relatives and friends dying? Gradually, slowly, but sobering up.

We see that public opinion is changing in Europe as well. Both Europeans and representatives of the European elites see that the so-called support for Ukraine is, in fact, a dead end, a waste of money and effort, but in fact it serves someone else’s, far from European interests: the interests of the overseas global hegemon, which benefits from the weakening of Europe. He also benefits from the endless prolongation of the Ukrainian conflict.

Judging by what is happening in real life, today’s ruling elites in the United States are doing just that. In any case, they act in this logic. Whether such a policy corresponds to the true, fundamental interests of the American people is a big question, a rhetorical question, of course, let them decide for themselves.

However, now the fire of war is being intensively fomented. In particular, they use the ambitions of the leaders of some Eastern European states, who have long turned hatred of Russia and Russophobia into their main export commodity and an instrument of their domestic policy. And now they want to warm their hands on the Ukrainian tragedy.

In this regard, I would be remiss if I did not comment on what has just been said: the press reports about plans to create a so-called Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian unit. That is, we are not talking about some kind of gathering of mercenaries – there are enough of them there, and they are being destroyed – but about a regular, cobbled-together, equipped military unit that is planned to be used for operations on the territory of Ukraine. Including to supposedly ensure the security of modern Western Ukraine, and in fact, if you call a spade a spade, for the subsequent occupation of these territories. After all, the prospect is obvious: if Polish units enter, for example, Lviv or other territories of Ukraine, then they will remain there. And they will remain forever.

And this, by the way, will not be anything new. Let me remind you that after the defeat of Germany and its allies following the results of the First World War, Polish units occupied Lviv and adjacent lands that then belonged to Austria-Hungary.

Poland, instigated by the West, took advantage of the tragedy of the Civil War in Russia, annexed some historical Russian provinces. Our country, which was then in a difficult situation, was forced to conclude the Treaty of Riga in 1921 and actually recognize the rejection of its territories.

And even earlier, in 1920, Poland seized part of Lithuania – the Vilnius region, the territory around modern Vilnius. It seems that together with the Lithuanians they fought against the so-called “Russian imperialism”, and as soon as the opportunity turned up, they immediately chopped off a piece of land from their neighbors.

Poland, as you know, also took part in the partition of Czechoslovakia as a result of the Munich agreement with Hitler in 1938. Completely occupied Cieszyn Silesia.

In the 20s and 30s of the last century, in the so-called Eastern Kresy of Poland – and this is the territory of Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and part of Lithuania – severe Polonization and assimilation of local residents was carried out, national cultures and Orthodoxy were suppressed.

I would also like to remind you of how such an aggressive policy ended for Poland as a result. It ended with the national tragedy of 1939, when Poland was abandoned by the Western Allies to be devoured by the German war machine and actually lost its independence and statehood, which was restored to a large extent thanks to the Soviet Union. And it was thanks to the Soviet Union, thanks to Stalin’s position, that Poland received significant lands in the West, the lands of Germany. This is exactly right: the western territories of present-day Poland are Stalin’s gift to the Poles.

Have our friends in Warsaw forgotten about it? We will remind.

Today we see that the regime in Kiev is ready to do anything to save its corrupt skin and prolong its existence. They do not care about the people of Ukraine, its sovereignty and national interests.

They will trade in everything: both people and land. By the way, just like their ideological predecessors, the Petliurists, who in 1920 concluded so-called secret conventions with Poland, according to which, in exchange for military support, they gave Poland the lands of Galicia and Western Volhynia. Such traitors are still ready to open the gates for foreign owners and once again sell Ukraine.

As for the Polish leaders, they probably expect to form some kind of coalition under the NATO umbrella and directly intervene in the conflict in Ukraine, in order to then tear off a fatter piece for themselves, to regain for themselves, as they believe, their historical territories – today’s Western Ukraine. It is well known that they also dream of Belarusian lands.

As for the policy of the Ukrainian regime, this is his business. They want, as is usual with traitors, to hand over something, sell it, pay off the owners with something – this, I repeat, is their business in the end. We will not interfere in this.

But as for Belarus, it is part of the Union State, unleashing aggression against Belarus will mean aggression against the Russian Federation. We will respond to this with all the means at our disposal.

The Polish authorities, nurturing their revanchist plans, do not tell the truth to their people either. And the truth is that the West is clearly not enough Ukrainian “cannon fodder”, not enough. Therefore, they plan to use new consumables: the Poles themselves, Lithuanians and further down the list – everyone who is not sorry.

I will say one thing: this is a very dangerous game, and the authors of such plans should think about the consequences.

Sergey Evgenievich, I hope that your service, as well as our other special services, will closely follow the development of events.

Now let’s get down to our main questions.

RT, 7/21/23

Igor Strelkov, a controversial former Donbass militia commander, was detained in Moscow on Friday amid an investigation into allegations of extremism, according to news outlets and family members. The soldier-turned-blogger is also known by his real name, Igor Girkin.

Citing sources, newspaper RBK reported that the Russian Investigative Committee was executing a search order at Strelkov’s home, and that he had been taken into custody.   

Strelkov became the focus of international attention in 2014 while serving as defense minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), which was then unrecognized.  

The role made him the prime suspect in the Dutch investigation into the downing of MH17, which crashed in July 2014, killing all 298 people on board. In November 2022, a Dutch court sentenced Strelkov in absentia to a life term in prison. Moscow rejected the prosecution as politically motivated and claimed it was an attempt to whitewash possible Ukrainian guilt.

Strelkov’s lawyer confirmed his detention, according to RBK. Sources in law enforcement claimed that the arrest was based on a criminal complaint filed by a former member of the Wagner private military company. 

A message posted on Strelkov’s social media, which was signed by his wife, said she had learned about the detention from the concierge of their apartment block. Unidentified friends said Strelkov was suspected of extremism, according to the message.

Other Russian news outlets later confirmed the news about Strelkov’s detention, citing their own sources.

Strelkov is now a popular military blogger, and is a vocal critic of the Russian government and military leadership amid the conflict with Ukraine. He believes Moscow is not going far enough in mobilizing the capacity of the country. 

READ MORE: MH17 verdict ‘politically motivated’ – Russia

Earlier this year, Strelkov was involved in a public feud with Evgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group. Prigozhin challenged Strelkov to go to the front lines and join his forces, although the pair could not reach agreement over which position he would take.

Prigozhin is now viewed as a pariah in Russia after staging a brief mutiny last month. He ordered some of his men to march on Moscow with the stated goal of replacing senior Russian generals. Moscow branded Prigozhin a traitor, but allowed him to leave the country to avoid major bloodshed.

Strelkov has also had tensions with fellow members of his ‘Club of Angry Patriots’ online group over his criticism of Wagner troops.

By Eric Zuesse, RT, 7/14/23

In late June, a former advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Professor Sergei Karaganov, of the National Research University Higher School of Economics, published an article headlined ‘Here’s why Russia has to consider launching a nuclear strike on Western Europe.’ He argued that the time has now come for Moscow to seriously consider the possibility to pre-emptively invade or use atomic weapons against the most hostile European members of NATO:

“When discussing a hypothetical atomic attack on Western Europe, the question arises: how would the US answer? Virtually all experts agree that under no circumstances would the Americans respond to a nuclear attack on their allies with a nuclear attack on our territory. Incidentally, even [President Joe] Biden has said so openly. Russian military experts, however, believe that a massive conventional retaliatory strike could follow. It could be pointed out that this would be followed by even more massive nuclear strikes. And they would finish off Western Europe as a geopolitical entity.”

However, I believe that if Russia so much as even considers this course it would be a catastrophic mistake without first having offered to each and every Western European country a certain type of bilateral mutual non-aggression treaty which would also require – where applicable – that they withdraw from America’s anti-Russia military alliance, NATO. Even if only one member of the bloc broke away, that could spark the end of the organization.

Putin has thus far responded to the West’s aggressive expansion of NATO right up to Russia’s borders by targeting missiles against new member states, and not by offering each of them individually a bilateral treaty-proposal and guarantees for peace, including mutual weapons-inspections. Instead, it seems that a NATO nation cannot quit the anti-Russia bloc and manage its own peaceful relations with Moscow, plus increased trade, and other mutual bilateral benefits. However, by abandoning alliances with the world’s most aggressive nation, the US, and agreeing with Russia directly, a future of peace and mutual economic benefit could prevail across Europe. Putin ought to make this offer now. It might prevent World War Three. The historical background explains why:

I agree with Dr. Karaganov that a fundamental change is needed in Russia’s relations with the other countries of Europe, but I propose that the first step in this regard MUST be the following Russian offer to each one of them:

The offer should be made only privately to each US-allied country. If any government concerned privately says no, Russia should then offer the deal publicly. Public opinion might then force that government – whose prior rejection of the deal would not yet be publicly known – to agree to it. Thus, there would be two chances to obtain an agreement, and this would greatly increase the odds of success in each case.

The substance of the agreement would be as follows:

Russia will announce that its nuclear missiles will be targeted ONLY against the US and its allies, including all NATO member-nations, but not neutral or unaligned nations. In other words, any new NATO member-nation will thereby become a target added to Russia’s list for destruction in any World War III scenario that might transpire between the United States and Russia. Any existing NATO nation that accepts the offered treaty would no longer threaten Russia and would consequently no longer be targeted by Russia.

Furthermore, Moscow should simultaneously announce that if any nation wishes to have an assurance that Russia will never, under any circumstance, invade it, then it will welcome from that nation a request for such an assurance from Russia. Moscow will include in that announcement explicit invitations to all nations which have, at some time, expressed an intention or a possible future intention to join NATO. In this regard, it will also state, in advance, that if ever Russia were to provide to a nation such an assurance and subsequently to violate it, then it would be violating its own tradition of rigidly adhering to international treaties that it has signed. Additionally, it would also thereby be forfeiting to the country it had thereby broken its commitment to and violated, any and all of its rights under international law. Consequently, under the arrangement that is being proposed here, there would be no nation in the entire world that has, or ever did have, so strict an international treaty legal obligation as Russia would be beholden to under this proposed arrangement. It would be much clearer than what the international law-breaking US government ever did or can offer in the NATO treaty or any other. Russia’s record of strictly abiding by its agreements speaks for itself. So does America’s record of violating agreements.

Finally, this proposed arrangement would offer, to all existing members of NATO, a promise that if and when any such existing member-nation will quit that anti-Russia military alliance, Moscow will be happy to – at the moment that this is done – automatically provide to that nation the same legal commitment never to invade that nation, as has just been described here. In other words, the proposed arrangement will offer, to the entire world, a stark and clear choice between peace with Russia or being allied with the most aggressive nation in the world’s history. One that places illegal sanctions, organizes coups, and even invades states that fail to cooperate with its goal to replace the United Nations as being the ultimate arbiter of international laws. A country seeking to be the ultimate arbiter of what it calls “the rules-based international order” in which all of those ‘rules’ come ultimately from whomever rules the US government.

On the other hand, Moscow would be helping to reposition the UN into what had been its original goal: to replace the historic use of force by-and-between rival international empires. This vision was to create a peaceful and democratic international world order, in which a “United Nations” would be a worldwide federation of all nations, in which international laws will be produced by the global legislature of duly authorized (under each individual nation’s own internal laws) representatives, and adjudicated by the global Supreme Court, and enforced by the sole global possessor and user of strategic weaponry – the UN. Additionally, penalties that are ruled by this global Court of international relations should be enforced against the government of any nation that has been ruled by this Court to have violated the rights of any other nation’s government.

In this understanding of the UN’s proper scope of power and of authority, the body would have no authority and no power regarding the constitutions or laws of any nation that apply internally to a given nation, but ONLY to international laws, which pertain exclusively to international relations, and never to a nation’s internal matters. It would make another World War – another war between empires – impossible, by eliminating all empires, and replacing all of them by an international democracy of (an international federation of) nations. Russia, in the proposed arrangement, would be striving to achieve, for the entire planet, what had been once planned for the post-War War Two world.

Link here.

Garland Nixon is a former police investigator and currently a political analyst and interviewer.

By Gordon Hahn, Russian and Eurasian Politics, 7/15/23

There is much confusion and scratching of the head surrounding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seeming ‘weakness’, laxity, or permissiveness in hesitating to arrest two-day mutineer and Wagner PMC chief Yevgenii Prigozhin. Recent reports from Russia indicate that Prigozhin has been back in Russia, despite his supposed exile to Belarus along with some 10,000 Wagner fighters. Initially, in the wake of the mutiny’s dissolution Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman stated to Russian journalists that Prigozhin was to go to Belarus as part of the deal hashed out between Putin and his former associate by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenka. Reports and photographs of a camp or base being erected for the exiled or redeployed Wagner troops in Belarus were published. But now it emerges that Prigozhin and 35 Wagner commanders and staff met with Putin in the Kremlin on June 29th and discussed what had happened and what the future would be for Wagner and perhaps for Prigozhin himself. In the meeting, Putin stressed both legal issues as well as the mutiny’s violation of an ‘agreement’ between himself and Prigozhin.[1]

Some propose that this boils down to some sort of softness in Putin’s personality, at least towards long-time friends and associates. Others conjecture that this is evidence of Putin’s political weakness, declining power, and failing control over his system, the so-called ‘Sistema’. There are at least three other important factors besides more situational ones such as political, military, and business considerations that help explain why Prigozhin and his co-conspirators have not been arrested. As a preface it must be said that we make a mistake if we expect Russian political actors to behave as, say, American, other Western, or even many non-Western politicians might. Russia is a different country than ours, not really significantly better or worse than ours. That said, the three non-situational factors facilitating impunity that I would like to suggest are: (1) the relatively soft form of the Putin system’s authoritarianism; (2) a tendency towards ‘arbitrary’ rule and limited emphasis on following the letter of the law, and (3) a cultural preference for unity or wholeness rather than disunity, pluralism, and conflict.

Putin’s System of Soft Authoritarianism

First, Western publics have been a caricature of Putin’s style of rule and the Russian political system by media, academics, and experts alike. Putin is either portrayed as an all-powerful dictator or a ruthless mafia don. Although there is occasional leaning in this direction and therefore a small element of truth regarding such aspects of Putin’s rule as is the case in all caricatures, they are gravely mistaken simplifications that distort more than they realistically depict matters as is also the case in caricatures.

As I have been arguing for two decades, Putin is a soft-to-medium range authoritarian leader, not a harsh authoritarian no less a totalitarian dictator. Analogies with Stalin or Hitler are completely misplaced and, indeed, downright absurd. Putin’s soft authoritarian Sistema is consistent with several aspects of Russian culture and political culture—sometimes called ‘national character.’ He has been artfully balancing not just between the republican and authoritarian personalist forms of rule for more than two decades. He has been juggling various factions in a country with a conflictive political culture and weak, non-Western legal culture and an aspiration to unity or ‘solidarist wholeness’ or tselostnost’.

In Putin’s once soft now more mid-range authoritarian system, he functions as the main arbiter, balancing between numerous competing political, ideological, clan-based, financial-industrial, class, and ethno-national groups. While he is surely the most powerful player in the system and has numerous institutional, legal, coercive, economic, and media resources at his disposal that others in the system lack, he also shares the control and application of those resources with select groups or sub-groups of the kind noted above as long as they do not threaten his hegemony over the system. Moreover, Putin is an arch-rational actor who carefully weighs issues, decisions regarding them, and those decisions’ potential consequences, intended and unintended. Personal relations with other actors matter to him. He rarely if ever has retaliated harshly against a former close associate. Putin is not a Joseph Stalin, who can send millions to labor camps, arrest high-ranking officials on a whim, or has his close associates and their family members imprisoned or executed.

In treading carefully in the matter of dealing with Prigozhin’s de jure betrayal, Putin is following his pattern, being sure not to provoke panic within the elite, disturb military function and morale, or leave his options open. By its very nature, soft-to-midrange authoritarianism requires taking into account situational factors. Thus, Putin’s restraint is also explained together and as a result of somewhat limited powers that Putin must gauge the political consequences of cracking down harshly on Prigozhin and the other ‘musicians’ of Wagner who participated in the ‘march for justice. They are regarded by Russians and, according to his own words, Putin himself as patriots who have served admirably in the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine. A harsh reaction could cost Putin support among key constituencies of his such as traditionalists and ultra-nationalists.

Putin’s June 29th meeting with Prigozhin and 35 Wagner commanders and management staff was an attempt to look particularly Prigozhin in the eye in order to ascertain whether Putin’s belief that his old associate was not staging a military coup or hoping to incite a revolution from below but rather had let his anger and ambitions get the better of him in response to the Russian high military command’s attempt essentially to corporately raid ‘his’ company. This raises the second explanation: Russian culture’s preference for particularism over strict rule of law.

The Rule of Understandings and the Rule of Law

Russians place high value on personal relations over contractual relationships and legal technicalities. This is part of what is sometimes called the Russian historical pattern of ‘arbitrary rule’ contrasted with the Western pattern of the rule of law and constitutionality—what perhaps Russia’s greatest political philosopher and cultural thinker, Nikolai Berdyaev called the “Western cult of cold justice.” “Pity for the fallen, for the humiliated and offended, compassion are very Russian traits,” he observed.[2] In this way the strict, technical application of the law found in the West is often replaced in Russia by a more social or communal view of justice, where personal relationships with perpetrators and defendants and extenuating circumstances often trump carrying out the letter of the law precisely or even at all. In short, Putin’s Sistema relies less on the rule of law and more on what Russians, including officials, openly refer to ‘understandings’ or ‘ponyatii’. These are informal agreements among and between, leaders, various clans and interests sometimes backed by law, sometimes very much not.

This means that a mutiny such as Prigozhin’s is viewed more as a violation of informal understandings than it is seen through the prism of Russian law or the constitution. Putin stated that there is a Wagner “group” but it “does not exist juridically”, since there is no provision in Russian law for private military companies (which Wagner really was not and thus is beside the point), which he seemed to suggest the State Duma ought to begin work on. Nevertheless, he offered the Wagner commanders to gather the fighters “in one place and continue to serve under their direct commander” (not Prigozhin), without any mention of under what legal aegis it should be allowed to function.[3] In other words Wagner’s activities – ongoing for years – were sanctioned in an extralegal, informal form—an intra-elite ‘ponyatiya’ or understanding. Matters may be couched in strictly legal terms publicly, but behind the scenes the pivotal issue is whether Prigozhin violated an informal understanding and perhaps whether he did so first without justification or in response to his partners’ own violation of the perceived understanding.

Although revolts have not been treated with mercy and pardons by Russian rulers throughout all of Russian history, many, particularly quite recent and serious ones have. Prigozhin’s failed revolt would not be the first in recent decades in which insurrectionists might enjoy impunity. In a much stricter Soviet legal environment several political coup attempts against the great Soviet reformer Mikhail Gorbachev went unpunished during his ‘perestroika’ era: an aborted possible autumn 1987 military coup, the March 1988 Nina Andreyeva affair, the June 1991 ‘constitutional coup’, and finally even the August 1991 Party-state apparat coup against Gorbachev and Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin. After the resulting collapse of the communist Party-state regime and ultimately the Soviet state itself, all of the coup plotters were set free without trial. The same occurred after the October 1993 myatezh or revolt against Yeltsin led by his vice president and former military officer Aleksandr Rutskoi, Supreme Soviet Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov, and many of the Soviets’ deputies.

In the pre-Soviet Russian Imperial era, failed palace coups and revolutions such as the constitutionalists’ plot against Empress-select Anna Ioannovna in 1730 and the 1825 Decembrist revolt – saw very different punishments meted out to the conspirators. In the former, the leaders were constantly harassed and eventually arrested, with the leader Prince Dmitrii Golitsyn imprisoned on apparently trumped up charges many years after the event. Six leaders of the Decembrist uprising were hanged, and thousands were exiled to Siberia. But in both cases, the punishments appalled the aristocracy and much of the narod or simple people alike. The somewhat failed 1905 revolution saw no one punished and led to an eventually aborted regime transformation, suggesting the more recent pattern of impunity. One might recall the case of Vera Zasulich, the pre-revolutionary Socialist Revolutionary, who in 1878 attempted to assassinate the governor of St. Petersburg and was acquitted by a jury won over by the moral sincerity of her political motives and social conscience. Russians, in Berdyaev’s words, are less legalistic than Western people: “(F)or them content is more important than form.”[4] Similarly, there is an element of the religious belief that triumphs over cold ‘eye for an eye’ justice in matters of life and death, which belong to God more properly than to man, and hence the Russians’ historical opposition to the death penalty and, to some extent, punishment in general.[5]

In the West, turns of events such as coups – of which we have few recent examples – are not met with pardons towards the preservation of solidarity but, more often than not, Berdyaev’s ‘cold justice.’ Putting aside the American Civil War in which the southern Confederacy’s leaders were given immunity from prosecution, the recent ‘insurrection’ in the US, 1/6, really a riot provoked by the FBI and the Democrat Party-state, is a case in point of cold justice or the rule of law gone awry. Cold legality can be turned against humanistic principles of republican rule of law. Thus, rather than mercy, pardons, and dropped cases, we have seen an aggressive, over-the-top pursuit of anyone even remotely connected or near the events of the ‘insurrection.’ This aggressive posture, of course, may be driven by the fact that the ‘insurrection’ was a fake organized by the Democrat Party-state itself which infiltrated its FBI and other agents into leadership positions of the small, generally non-violent groups that merely sought to enter the Capitol building, not destroy the U.S.’s constitutional republican regime.

In the US it is unclear whether the tendency to punish insurrectionaries and separatists is a function of its political culture’s lack of a value of wholeness or a function of its strict rational-legal form of government. In Russia, some may argue that it is unclear whether Russia’s tendency to forgive putschists evidences arbitrary justice and particularistic understandings – i.e., a weak rational-legal system or culture – or simple political expediency or arbitrariness. This is a question of the weight of background cultural factors and immediate situational ones. I am concerned here with the former, another of which is Russia’s aspiration to wholeness.

Russian Solidarism and Wholeness

In my most recent book Russian Tselostnost’: Wholeness in Russian Culture, Thought, History, and Politics I argued that there is a Russian aspiration to wholeness that results from religious and other cultural orientations valuing unity and is a reaction against the highly conflictive, schismatic nature of Russian history and politics. I delineated four types of wholeness or tselostnost’ in Russian culture and thought: monism (unity of the divine and material worlds), universalism (world unity), communalism (subnational, social unity), and solidarism (national political unity).[6] In relation to the impunity of mutineers like Prigozhin or other Russian putschists, rebels and the like, the type of wholeness at issue, I contend, is solidarist tselostnost’ or solidarism. I would argue that the strong preference or cultural norm or value of national political solidarity – having evolved out of the Russian struggle to overcome the dangers of internal disunity – could be at play in decisions to pardon or simply release those involved in political mutinies, revolts and such.

Again, situational factors, such as political expediency, may meld with this aspiration to preserve unity. For example, Yeltsin may have released the August 1991 and October 1993 putschists for fear of further splitting society and state and thereby prompting another round of political infighting and coups that might lead to the breakup of the Russian Federation as had happened with its state predecessor, the USSR. Similarly, Gorbachev may have foregone criminal or serious political consequences for the early political plots against his general secretaryship in order to preserve the sacred value of Party unity at a time when he was attempting to implement potentially destabilizing reforms. In the case of Prigozhin, we know that Putin has put a premium on preserving state and social political unity, exemplified by such measures as National Unity Day, the annual May 9th mass Victory Day celebrations, and even his repeated calls for political solidarity and even a kind of historical unity.[7] Thus, in his speech to the Russian people and military officers during and after Prigozhin’s revolt, Putin thanked them for preserving Russia’s solidarity and accused of Prigozhin of treason for undermining her solidarist wholeness. Similarly, in deciding to convene a meeting with Prigozhin and Wagner personnel on June 29th we see Putin laboring to stop up small wholes in the image of unity required by the Russian aspiration to and norm of solidarist tselostnost’ and so reinforce a Russian solidarity thrown into doubt by the myatezh.

It is not enough to analyze recent events or even the intricacies of political systems or a particular leader’s political practice. Cultural factors shaped by centuries of history are at least important in helping to understand foreign politics. Russian politics’s differences with our own are deeply rooted in Russia’s own history, culture and political culture and Western analysts are at a loss to understand her and drive us into conflict with her based on the false assumptions they are deluded by as a result of ignorance of almost all of them regarding Russian history and culture. Ideas, attitudes, beliefs, and aspirations matter perhaps even more than personalities and systems, and the former differ from state to state, people to people.