After months of geopolitical gloating, the old adage, “pride goeth before a fall” is proving to be true in the case of the Russian bear.
A string of bad news has befallen Moscow in the last week. Russia’s strongest ally in the Middle East rebuked Moscow, the New York Times revealed a systematic murder campaign by the Kremlin, and Russia’s latest territorial acquisition became economically depressed.
Russia smugly announced Tuesday that it struck Syrian targets with planes launched from western Iran, which set off alarm bells in the NATO alliance and across the Middle East. Experts feared a significant uptick in Russian air operations in Syria, and a major expansion of its power status in the Middle East.
Here’s a brief round up of Russia’s bad luck.
With Friends Like These
Russia is “kind of show-off and ungentlemanly,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Spokesman Bahram Ghasemi of Russia’s braggadocio. Ghasemi elaborated that Russian use of Iranian bases was “temporary, based on a Russian request,” and that “It is finished, for now.” He closed his comments explaining the Russian motivation saying, “Russians are interested to show they are a superpower to guarantee their share in political future of Syria.”
Murdering the Competition
Domestically, Russia got into hot water when The New York Times revealed a systematic campaign by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin to murder political opponents. The Times highlighted the mysterious deaths of a myriad of Kremlin dissidents, using that of Alexander Perepilichny as an example.
Perepilichny was a Russian oligarch involved in exposing a large Kremlin tax fraud case dropped dead at age 44 in 2012 while jogging. It took three years to discover he had ingested an extremely rare poison called gelsemium, a poison that only grows in the Himalayas and was used by China to carry out assassinations for centuries.
“Too many of these happening to important people. Captains of industry and lawyers are not dying left, right and center like this in the West,” William Browder, an American financier involved in pushing sanctions on Russia through Congress told TheNYT.
Lebensraum & Crimea
Putin has made no secret of his plans to restore the “glory” of the former Soviet Union. In 2005, he said that “the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century.” In 2014, Putin took a step toward his goal and illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine. Russia promised it would bring economic prosperity to Crimea.
Reports now indicate the Crimean economy has plummeted, the power occasionally goes out, prices have soared, and the Russian government doesn’t have enough money to help local people. When Crimea was part of Ukraine, goods were generally affordable.
After Russia’s annexation, Kiev stopped its regular shipments, which caused prices to soar. Russia has yet to integrate Crimea into its supply chain, causing local prices to skyrocket. An examination of official statistics by Euromaidan Press revealed that Crimea’s unemployment rate has risen by 7% since its annexation by Russia.
Putin also promised Crimea it would bring billions more rubles to the peninsula in tourism money, but overlooked the fact that over 67% of Crimean tourists were Ukrainian. After Russian annexation, all tourism from Ukraine ceased. Worse, 70% of all Crimean-bound tourists arrived by train. After Russian annexation, Crimea is completely inaccessible by train and can only be reached by air.
When a Crimean protestor confronted Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev about the low standard of living in May, he replied, “We simply have no money … Bear up.”
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