|
Population |
142,823,000 |
|
Surface area |
17,075,400 km² |
|
Capital |
Moscow (Москва) |
|
GDP, 2011 (Parity of Purchasing Power) |
USD3,015.4 billion, USD19,833 per capita |
|
Currency |
Rouble |
|
Corruption level (Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2012; 100-90 = very clean, 0-9 = highly corrupt) |
28 (ranking: 133) |
|
Current government |
United Russia |
|
Three largest cities |
Moscow (11,551,930), St. Petersburg (5,227,567), Novosibirsk (1,473,737) |
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Baltic Sea coastal regions |
Kaliningrad and Leningrad Oblasts, St. Petersburg |
By Leonid Karabeshkin and Alexander Sergunin
The Russian electoral cycle of 2011-2012 has been completed with United Russia, a pro-Kremlin party, retaining its control over the Parliament and Putin’s ‘second advent’ to the presidential office. To consolidate its power and improve its image – domestically and internationally - the Putin regime has undertaken some electoral reforms and anti-corruption measures. The Kremlin also tries to prevent the country’s slide into a new economic crisis, although it is still reluctant to implement any serious structural reforms. In contrast with early expectations, Russia’s CBSS presidency entailed neither a new Russian strategy for the BSR nor better co-ordination of Moscow’s BSR policies with the EUSBSR. However, the BSR will retain its strategic importance for Russia and a deeper EU-Russia dialogue on regional issues will be in demand.
Government
The current composition of the Parliament has resulted from the 4 December 2011 State Duma election. Four parties are currently represented in the Duma: the official Kremlin party, United Russia (which dominates the chamber), and the so-called ‘systemic’ opposition formed by the Communist Party, Just Russia, and Liberal Democratic Party (238, 92, 64 and 56 seats respectively). As a result of the 2011 elections, the United Russia party has lost both a fourth of its 2007 share of votes and constitutional majority (two-thirds of the seats) but managed to keep an absolute majority that allows it to pass major bills sponsored by the executive branch.
On 4 March 2012, Vladimir Putin was elected as a President for the third time, replacing Dmitry Medvedev, his close political ally, who moved to the position of Prime Minister. The Putin-Medvedev tandem has continued in a different configuration. Similar to the previous administration, this tandem tries to exercise tight control over the federal executive, Parliament, judiciary, most regional leaders, mass media, and much of civil society. In spite of a series of the largest popular protests since the early 1990s during and after the parliamentary and presidential elections of 2011-2012, the Putin administration has managed to discipline the so-called non-systemic political opposition and consolidate its power.
Policies
The March 2012 presidential election completed the electoral cycle that began with the parliamentary elections of 2011. On the domestic front, the Kremlin’s main political purpose was to calm down (where possible) or discipline political opposition and consolidate its power. There were no concessions to the main demands of the protestors that both the Duma and presidential elections should be cancelled and repeated while United Russia and Putin should step down. However, the Kremlin conceded that the electoral system itself should be changed and by early 2012 the necessary legislation had already been introduced into the Duma. For example, along with keeping a party-ticket system, the single-member constituencies would be revived to provide ordinary electors with the opportunity to bring their personal representatives in the legislature. The ‘electoral barrier’ for political parties will be decreased from seven to five percent. The governors will again be directly elected, although the federal centre will have some ability to filter the gubernatorial candidates beforehand. Most of the above changes, however, can only take effect when the next parliamentary elections are held (2016).
After his ‘second advent’, President Putin launched a new anti-corruption campaign with the aim to persuade both domestic and international audiences that he is loyal to the principles of good governance. As a result of this, a number of top-ranked governmental officials from the ministries of defence and interior, as well as from state corporations that were responsible for construction of facilities for the APEC summit in Vladivostok (2012) and forthcoming winter Olympic games in Sochi (2014) were fired, arrested or sued. Many analysts, however, doubt that the rampant corruption can be curbed by these sporadic measures while the whole system of nepotism, ‘state capitalism’ and the lack of a proper civilian control over the bureaucracy (main sources of corruption) remains intact.
Internationally, Putin’s course was a combination of status quo (defensive) policies and assertiveness (where the Kremlin felt its interests were threatened). For example, Moscow tried to further develop its relations with the EU in areas such as trade, investment, Partnership for Modernisation, visa facilitation regime, research, education and culture. At the same time, the Kremlin took a firm stand on issues such as Western criticism of the human rights situation in Russia, ABM system’s deployment in Europe, Syria or Iran. US-Russia relations were heavily damaged by the so-called Magnitsky act (2012), which has introduced certain sanctions against Russian officials involved in human rights violations. Russia responded with the Dima Yakovlev act which not only has introduced similar measures against US officials but also prohibited the adoption of Russian orphans by US citizens. The act subsequently led to further tensions between the two countries.
In February 2013, President Putin signed a new Russian foreign policy concept which is notorious for its introduction of the ‘soft power’ concept. Similar to other ‘great powers’, the document invites Russia to rely on ‘soft power’ instruments (economic, diplomatic, cultural) rather than ‘hard power’ tools (military, economic and political pressure). However, in contrast to the original concept, the Russian version of it is more instrumentalist and pragmatic. It boils down to a sort of foreign policy ‘technology’ that can improve Russia’s international image and secure its positions in the post-Soviet space. It does not come as a surprise that the new concept has met with lukewarm reception and evoked some concerns among international audiences (especially in the post-Soviet countries).
Economic situation and anti-crisis strategies
Similar to many other countries, Russia’s anti-crisis strategy included the following elements: manoeuvring with accumulated financial resources, support for the banking sector, attraction of foreign investment, promotion of innovative sectors of the national economy, and streamlining government spending. As a result of these policies, the Russian economy started to recover in 2010, although it slightly stagnated in 2012.
However, according to some assessments, there are a number of factors that may again send the Russian economy into a new and protracted crisis: the dependence of the economy on energy exports and the dominance of often inefficient state-controlled companies; rising public expenditure (especially in the defence sector); social inequality; severe regional disparities; depopulation and labour shortages (which Russia tries to compensate for by the inflow of migrants from the CIS countries). To prevent a new crisis, deep economic, administrative and social reforms are required, some of which may affect the interests of the pro-Putin clans and eventually destabilise his regime.
Russia and the Baltic Sea Region
The regional actors expected from the Russian CBSS presidency (1 July 2012-30 June 2013) two main innovations: a new Russian Baltic doctrine and Russian proposals on how to better co-ordinate its policies with the EUBSR. These expectations, however, did not materialise. It appeared that Moscow neither developed a new conceptual approach to its BSR policy nor planned to interact with Brussels’ regional strategies.
The programme had two major sections. In the first chapter, the Russian presidency’s main priorities were outlined: co-operation in the field of modernisation and innovation with a focus on clusters of growth; establishment of a network of public-private partnerships (PPP) as a platform for sustainable growth; Promotion of tolerance as a means of combating radicalism and extremism; promotion of people-to-people contacts (visa regime).
The programme, as well as Russia’s BSR policies in general, comes across as a rather paradoxical mixture of general declarations (main priorities) and instrumentalist/technocratic approaches (long-term priorities) that often were not interlinked with each other. For example, Russia pays great attention to BSR modernisation programmes. However, it should be noted that Moscow and Brussels have different philosophies of modernisation. While Russia’s approach is rather instrumentalist and pragmatic (more investment and innovations are needed to develop the regional economy, i.e. interest-driven approach), the EU is also concerned about the rule of law, good governance, anti-corruption and anti-crime measures and human rights (value-based approach).
Despite its ambition to be maximally specific, Russia’s BSR strategy has a number of rather strange lacunae. For example, the aforementioned programme almost lacked descriptions of concrete projects within the SEBA (South-Eastern Baltic Area) aegis. SEBA itself was mentioned only once in passim and this could not but confuse Germany, which launched this programme during its CBSS presidency (2011-2012) and hoped that Moscow would work hard to complete it. The document’s sections on economy and energy were vague and lacked specific details.
As compared both to the initial German plans for SEBA and the Russian presidency’s priorities, the implementation process has brought about rather modest results. Among the most significant projects, the presidency focused on the following:
- Within SEBA, funds have been made available for supporting small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in North-West Russia. Russia and its BSR partners regard support for SMEs as an important priority for successful implementation of modernisation programmes and strengthening the Russian middle class as the main social base for democratic reforms.
- The creation of a tourist cluster around the lake Vyshtynets at the border of the Kaliningrad Region, Poland and Lithuania, aiming at developing a transnational nature park, which will introduce new models of sustainable tourism, environmental education and active participation of the local population. The idea is to make this cluster a role model for the entire BSR.
- In the field of youth co-operation and higher education, efforts have been undertaken to successfully continue the summer camp ‘Baltic Artek’. It focuses on support for the initiatives of talented and creative young people, promoting healthy lifestyles, civic and legal education of youth, and fostering sustainable youth co-operation in the BSR.
- The second phase of the Pskov Eurofaculty project (2012-2015) to develop bachelor and masters programmes in economics, finance and law along the Bologna process education standards has been started. While St. Petersburg-based universities are capable of reforming their curricula according to European standards by themselves, the Russian north-western provincial universities require international support and expertise.
A number of important long-term CBSS priorities, such as democracy promotion and human rights (except children rights) have not been in the focus of the Russian presidency. As far as the Russian presidency’s priority on visa regime liberalisation in the BSR is concerned, it is simply irrelevant for the CBSS format because the Council does not deal with visa issues. Obviously, this point was picked up from the EU-Russian bilateral agenda where it is normally discussed. Finally, under the Russian presidency, no proposals on a better division of labour and co-ordination between the CBSS and other regional initiatives/programmes/institutions, such as EUSBSR, Northern Dimension, HELCOM, BSSSC, UBC and Nordic institutions have been made. Without this institutional setting, Russian BSR policies look isolated and non-contextual. During its CBSS presidency, Moscow tried to represent itself as an emerging ‘soft power’ in the BSR, emphasising that Russia no longer poses any military security threat to the countries of the region. On the contrary, it tried to create an image of a responsible and attractive regional actor that can offer mutually beneficial economic, research, educational and cultural projects to other BSR countries. Whether or not Russia’s new branding and communication policies are efficient remains to be seen in the near future, although concerns regarding Russia’s role as a ‘soft power’ in the BSR have already been expressed.
Outlook
Three major issues will remain as high priorities on Putin’s future agenda: further consolidation of his political power, prevention of a new economic crises and the need to ensure a favourable international environment for Russia’s domestic reforms. Irrespective of the success or failure of these endeavours, the BSR will retain its growing significance for Moscow as more or less the only place where Russia can directly interact with the EU, its most important international partner. This necessitates a further EU-Russia dialogue on co-ordinating (at minimum) and integrating (at maximum) their strategies in the BSR.