CNN
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December 31, 1999: Russian President Boris Yeltsin takes to the airwaves to make a surprise announcement, telling his compatriots that he is resigning to take his place as president.
“This country has a strong leader who could become president, and almost all Russians have hopes for the future, so why hang on to power for another six months?” He said this while acknowledging the suffering suffered by Russians. “Why are you interrupting him?”
Its powerful leader was a politically unknown former KGB official named Vladimir Putin. On New Year’s Eve this year, President Putin will address the Russian people, marking a quarter-century as Russia’s first man during a four-year interregnum as president and powerful prime minister.
As 2024 draws to a close, Putin’s grip on power looks more secure than ever. On the battlefield in Ukraine, Russian troops have advanced into the Donbas region and are engaged in a fierce war of attrition. Domestically, Russia’s political landscape has been cleared of competition following the death of Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, Alexei Navalny.
And a month after Mr. Navalny died in a remote prison north of the Arctic Circle, Kremlin leaders set out to seek re-election in a race that would allow them to assert overwhelming power. , fair play is to be condemned.
Putin may be projecting confidence, but new uncertainties are just around the corner. US President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to end Russia’s war with Ukraine. And while the roadmap to a negotiated end to the conflict is far from clear, President Trump has made one thing clear: He wants it to happen soon.
“(This) is one of the things I want to do quickly. President Putin has said he wants to meet with me as soon as possible,” Trump said at a recent event in Arizona. “So we have to wait for this. But we have to end that war.”
No wonder champagne corks were not popped in Moscow after President Trump’s reelection. President Putin is betting everything on the Ukraine war. He put his country’s economy on a war footing. Forged closer alliances with North Korea and Iran to keep the war machine running. And he was placed on the International Criminal Court’s wanted list, all in pursuit of the extremist objective of destroying Ukraine’s viability as a state.
Certainly, Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin have something in common. The 2018 Helsinki summit showed that President Trump, like President Putin, is prepared to shatter long-established norms in foreign policy management, and that President Trump has challenged Putin’s strongman character. His professed admiration has U.S. observers concerned about authoritarian tendencies at home. But President Trump’s mercurial approach to foreign policy means the Kremlin may need to prepare for unpredictable negotiations.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, President Trump’s incoming special envoy for Russia and Ukraine, likened the war to a “cage war” between the two countries that Trump could referee.
“You have two fighters and they both want to tap out, but you need a referee to separate them,” he said on FOX Business. “I think President Donald J. Trump can do that…In fact, I think he has a willingness on both sides to eventually come together and talk.”
How this analogy works in practice is an open question. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has changed his rhetoric in recent weeks, admitting that Ukraine is not capable of regaining all the territory it has lost to Russia. During the question and answer session at the end of the year, President Putin also said, “Politics is the art of compromise.We are ready for negotiations.” We have always said that we are ready to both negotiate and compromise. ”
But beyond platitudes, Putin offers few specifics and spends most of his televised year-end Q&A televising strong positions both to ordinary Russians and the incoming Trump administration. I spent a lot of time on that.
For example, the Kremlin leader wonders whether embarrassing foreign policy setbacks, such as the collapse of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who recently defected to Russia, mean he will take further action, according to NBC’s Keir Simmons. I objected to his question. Negotiate from a position of weakness.
President Putin’s answer was as follows. “We came to Syria 10 years ago to prevent the creation of terrorist enclaves there like we have seen in other countries, such as Afghanistan. We have largely achieved that goal. ”
Despite the fall of the Assad regime, Russia still has some diplomatic influence in the Middle East.
Hannah Notte, Eurasia program director at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Research, a U.S. nonprofit organization, said Russia has “negotiations” on Syria, including a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. He said he still has it.
“Russia’s role in the UN Security Council, with or without a veto, is important for HTS (Syria’s de facto ruler Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) to legitimize the new state. “It’s important in terms of all kinds of processes related to the Syrian government,” she said. “If the United Nations is going to be involved in any kind of process related to the post-Assad political transition, I don’t want it to turn out badly for Russia.”
On the economy, Putin is sticking to positive talking points, even as ordinary Russians feel the pain of soaring food prices and a plummeting ruble. But there’s only so much you can spin. Russia’s overstimulated wartime economy may be approaching a crisis point, Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Berlin-based think tank Carnegie Russia and Eurasia Center, said in a recent analysis. pointed out.
“The pressure is increasing with each passing month,” she wrote. “The Kremlin is approaching a tipping point at which the social contract between state and people will inevitably change. Russians are willing to trade short-term stability and symbolic pride in the idea of a “fortress state” for free. We are increasingly being asked to accept greater equality and a lower quality of life. But even this compromise is becoming unsustainable. ”
President Putin came to power 25 years ago promising strong governance after a decade of collective trauma under Yeltsin. He and his country must face President Trump in new and difficult times.
