Donald Trump, the man in the mirror Alexandra Prokopenko explains why depoliticized Russian elites may be counting on America’s returned president to save them
Members of Russia’s “ruling stratum” have ceased to be agents of political life and transformed into mere “facilitators of policy,” argues Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center fellow Alexandra Prokopenko, who says she’s now reluctant even to refer to these people as “elites.” In an appearance on a recent episode of Alexander Baunov’s podcast, Prokopenko explained how Vladimir Putin’s consolidation of executive decision-making, the war in Ukraine, and the return of Donald Trump to the White House have shaped attitudes among contemporary Russian “nobles.” Meduza summarizes her remarks.
Alexander Baunov’s premise for asking Alexandra Prokopenko about Russian elites (the interview’s “news peg”) was an exclusive report published last month by Reuters that claimed Putin has grown “increasingly concerned about distortions in Russia's wartime economy” and now “believes key war goals have already been met.” Of course, Reuters got this information from “sources with knowledge of the situation,” not directly from the Russian president. Baunov suggested that the people who supplied this intelligence might have been trying to influence Putin through signals in the foreign media.
Prokopenko said she doesn’t put much stock in this interpretation. The sources are more likely “projecting their own vision of the leader’s worldview — Putin’s worldview — rather than anything real,” she argued. At the same time, she agreed that a loss of access to the president has enormously impacted senior figures in government and business. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine demonstrated the extent of Putin’s autonomous control over the state, but the extreme isolation he adopted during the coronavirus pandemic is what separated Russia’s “nobles” so drastically from Russia’s decision-making. They’re now both literally and figuratively “outside the war room”:
Before COVID, there was a group of people with more or less constant access to the president. They saw him in person and had his ear. In addition to conveying information to Putin, they would pick up on things, discuss matters directly, and then disseminate this knowledge throughout the system. But Putin now mostly spends his time with his security detail.
Even when Putin does hold private meetings, he doesn’t “send any signals about what future awaits Russia or, indeed, the nobles,” added Prokopenko. Under these circumstances, guesswork is the only way to discern the president’s plans.
For Prokopenko, the most intriguing aspect of the Reuters report is the claim that Putin is supposedly satisfied with Russia’s gains in Ukraine to the point of halting the invasion. “I think this is a very important moment that highlights the Russian elite’s fatigue with the war,” she told Baunov, arguing that there’s been little “genuine allegiance” to the “special military operation” in the ideological sense. “Some nobles take very calculated steps, donning camo in an attempt to earn certain privileges, gain more power, and accumulate more political capital, but these efforts aren’t always successful,” said Prokopenko, citing Andrey Turchak, who lost his national political status despite energetic work in occupied Ukraine.
Like the politicians, business leaders are similarly demobilized and at Putin’s mercy. The president has refused to grant Russia’s capitalists their biggest request: a permanent guarantee that the Kremlin won’t ever revisit the privatizations of the 1990s that built their empires. Instead, Vladimir Putin has vowed to protect business owners so long as they act in Russia’s national interests (which he alone determines).
Prokopenko noted one trend that is actually raising the business elite’s mobilization level: the president’s reluctance to intervene in conflicts and perform his role as an arbiter. Regional officials trying to meet federal quotas in the wartime climate have also been more aggressive with factories and offices, further eroding the business elite’s standing. Prokopenko argues that incidents like last year’s violent feud over the online retailer Wildberries suggest that “the capitalists need to relearn how to become political players.”
The intended audience for the Reuters story may even have been Donald Trump, in whom many Russian “nobles” place their hopes for a better future, said Prokopenko. The Russian elite’s optimism about America’s returned president reflects how thoroughly depoliticized they’ve become after a quarter century of Putin, and it’s also rooted in an ideological affinity, especially among Russia’s businessmen who acquired their wealth rapidly in schemes that resemble Trumpian exploits. “Somebody from the outside, cut from the same cloth, will step in and alter the course of events,” Prokopenko told Baunov, paraphrasing Russian elites’ rationalizations for their faith in the U.S. leader. “Somebody like [Nornickel President Vladimir] Potanin can look in the mirror and see himself as a version of Trump.”
Heck, Trump might even negotiate a way back to the West for Russian businesses and capital, making their pivot to Asia less obligatory. “If we reach a deal with Trump, there’s no need to run to China. That’s the multimillion-dollar question for Russian businessmen,” said Prokopenko.
Summary by Kevin Rothrock