Consider This from NPR - Vladimir Putin's Horrible, Terrible, but in the End Pretty Good Year

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

For Russian President Vladimir Putin, 2023 began with his war against Ukraine stagnating. It went on to deliver one of the most public challenges to his leadership, ever. Now as 2023 comes to a close, the man who lead the rebellion against Putin Yevgeny Prighozin is dead. US aid to Ukraine is on the Congressional chopping block, and Putin is getting ready to embark on a fifth campaign for the presidency of Russia. Odds are, he'll win.NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks to Russia correspondent Charles Maynes about Putin's year that was, and how things are looking for 2024.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Friday, June 23, 2023, just six months ago, Yevgeny Prigozhin led what was essentially viewed as a coup attempt against the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin. Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, has vowed to crash what he called an armed mutiny in a televised address. It comes after Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group, said he wanted to oust Russia's military leadership. Prigozhin, one of the Wagner mercenary group, said he wanted to oust Russia's military leadership. Prigozhin, one of Putin's closest, most enduring allies, marshaled the troops of his Wagner group and began marching toward Moscow. In a video released at the time of the rebellion,

Prigozhin claimed the Kremlin's justifications for invading Ukraine were based on falsehoods and said the Ministry of Defense was deceiving the public. For a moment, the world wondered if sentiment was finally turning against Putin. This is Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaking shortly after the rebellion began. It's still a moving picture, and I doubt we've seen the last act. But I think we can say this much. First, we've seen some very serious cracks emerge. Serious cracks or not, just 36 hours after it began, the rebellion was finished. Progozhin packed up his tanks, pulled out of Russian military headquarters.

It looked more like a victory parade than a withdrawal. Locals cheered overnight, taking selfies with retreating Wagner fighters. Within days, Progozhin's private jet was tracked heading to Belarus. Then, dramatic twist, two months to the day after the short-lived rebellion began, Progozhin died in a plane crash. According to Russian state media, a private plane has crashed, killing all 10 people on board. Russian state media is reporting that Yevgeny Progozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, is listed. So this year has seen Putin's leadership challenged in a brazen and public way. But as we ring out 2023, things are looking up for the Russian president. He said as much

during his year-end news conference this month. The peace will come when we reach our goals that you have mentioned. And coming back to the goals, they remain unchanged. Putin speaking there through an interpreter. And because of domestic political disputes here in the U.S. Congress, Putin may now have the time he needs to run out the clock on his war with Ukraine. The battle is for the border. We do that first as a top priority, and we'll take care of these other obligations. That is Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who along with other Republicans has tied

future funding of Ukraine to changes in U.S. border policy. Changes that won't come before the end of this year and likely won't come next year, which gives Putin nothing but time. Time he plans to make part of a fifth term as president. This is an announcement that will surprise no one. Vladimir Putin saying he will run again for president in response to... Consider this. At the beginning of 2023, Russians were openly questioning the wisdom of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and, by extension, his leadership. Could it be that as the year comes to a close, the Russian leader is once again on top?

From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Monday, December 18th. It's Consider This from NPR. In Moscow, at midnight on January 1st, chances are Vladimir Putin will happily say goodbye to 2023 and eagerly welcome 2024. This past year began on a tough note for the Russian president. His war in Ukraine was stagnating. The head of the Wagner mercenary group, his close ally, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was openly criticizing the adjudication of the war, questioning the truth behind the reasons for the invasion. As the year ends, Prigozhin is dead,

and a political battle in the U.S. Congress over border funding could mean that Ukraine has seen the last of the aid it's been getting from the U.S. The EU is funding could mean that Ukraine has seen the last of the aid it's been getting from the U.S. The EU is faltering in its support as well. And Putin, well, he's running for a fifth term. Our man in Moscow is on the line and is going to help us unpack all of this. Hi, Charles. Hey there. Okay, so sketch out a brief arc of what I just described has sounds like a very challenging year for Putin. Where was he as the curtain rose on 2023? Where is he now? Yeah, you know, Putin's mantra from the beginning of the year was everything is going according to plan in Ukraine, even when it clearly wasn't.

I mean, at the time, everywhere you looked, there were setbacks, repeat withdrawals of Russian forces from large parts of Ukrainian territory. We saw infighting among nationalists and the Wagner mercenary force with the Kremlin's top brass, accusing them of incompetence and prosecuting the war. And we saw Putin's popularity drop because of a messy mobilization drive. Okay. So that's how the year began. What about now? Well, you know, you fast forward to today and Putin is now clearly feeling as though Russia has the upper hand in Ukraine and this wider struggle that he sees with the West. He was very confident at this year-end press conference last week insisting Russia would meet its goals in Ukraine. And we saw a very confident Putin yesterday in Moscow as he accepted an endorsement to run for the presidency

by the ruling United Russia Party, again saying Russia would be victorious over those trying to destroy it. Let's listen. So here he says Western elites have unleashed this aggression against Russia, trying to destroy the economy and foment revolution, but that all these efforts would fail as long as Russia remained a sovereign state. And the implied contrast, of course, with countries like Ukraine, which in his view are mere client states of the U.S. Oh. When you say he's very confident now as 2023 ends, why? Is that all down to he thinks the war in Ukraine is going better for him?

Well, on the one hand, there's definitely the war. Russia has clearly learned from mishaps, even if the Kremlin never quite acknowledged them. They certainly have more weapons thanks to partners like Iran and North Korea. And Russian forces are now largely occupying well-fortified defensive positions. So we've seen Ukraine try and really fail to advance in a much-typed summer counteroffensive. Meanwhile, there's also Putin's argument that Western patience for the war in Ukraine would run out. It certainly looks like it these days. And we've seen the U.S. and EU military commitments to Kyiv. And as Putin puts it,

the free stuff for Ukraine is coming to an end. So let me turn you to his presidential campaign. He is running to be reelected to a fifth term in office. Fifth term. He's already run the country for 24 years. But I remember being there for the last election in 2018, covering it with you. There wasn't much suspense then either. Although we did think that at some point, term limits, the constitution, that thing, that would kick in and eventually he would have to groom a successor. Well, that prediction didn't work out so well, did it? You know, Putin's declared candidacy this time was widely expected, as you note, as is his continued hold on the job. These constitutional reforms they passed in 2020

laid the quasi-legal groundwork for Putin to remain in office by effectively restarting his own term count to zero, meaning the Russian leader, currently 71 years old, could remain in office until possibly even 2036. 2036. Wow. 2036. Yeah.

So we're really talking about how to inject intrigue into a process where there's almost none. Are there any other candidates, serious candidates running? Well, Kremlin officials insist themselves that Putin has no real competition, but there will be candidates on the ballot from the major Duma parties. We may also see some lesser-known figures emerge, but many would argue they're all there basically to give the election a veneer of competition or to help legitimize the results. And let's not forget the Kremlin's biggest critic. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny can't run because he's in prison. And now he and his team in exile have called on Russians to use this period of the election to speak out against the war in Ukraine and a growing dictatorship at home. But we'll have to see how that plays out.

Well, yeah, and Navalny, he's not just in prison. He has disappeared from public view. Where are we, 13 days and counting since he's last been heard from? Yeah, it's worrisome, and unfortunately the more optimistic scenario here is that he's disappeared into Russia's opaque prison transfer system and eventually will appear somewhere else in the empire, but we just don't know. Well, put that into context because repression of political rivals is not new in Russia. Is it fair to say this year has seen the scale grow wider, the penalties heavier?

Well, according to a local human rights monitoring group, OVD Info, over 20,000 people have been arrested since the war in Ukraine began. And we've seen these draconian sentences given out to opposition figures, people like Navalny and Vladimir Karamoza, who was given a 25-year prison term for allegedly spreading false information about the Russian military. But what's been more stunning is to see these significant sentences up to 10 years for even the most minor infractions, these minor examples of dissent, like an online post or placing an anti-war sticker in a store. And government critics like Boris Vishnevsky, a liberal lawmaker in St. Petersburg, say these cases are designed to intimidate.

So here Vishnevsky says you don't need to sentence hundreds of thousands of people to prison, you just need to demonstrably and cruelly sentence a few innocent people. And I don't think reporters want to be the story, but I feel obliged also to mention now that we have two American journalists, Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal, their Russia correspondent, and also Khromysheva, a Russian-American journalist with Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, who are in Russian prisons on what certainly appear to be spurious charges related to their work. In fact, in Gershkovich's case, the U.S. government says he's a hostage.

Charles, talk us through what I think for people who don't track Russia closely was perhaps the one moment you just could not take your eyes off what was happening. And that was the Wagner Rebellion. You were in Moscow. Just play out the scene for us. Yeah, you know, we saw this rivalry between Wagner's leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and the top brass unfold throughout the year and really bubble over in late June.

Prigozhin first launched an attack on the city of Rostov-on-Don. He took it over, including the main military headquarters of the Russian army. Then he turned his mercenaries on Moscow, only to turn back the last minute. Putin later offered Prokhorin an amnesty deal in exchange for life in exile in neighboring

Belarus. But then remarkably, or maybe not, two months later, Prokhorin was dead in a mysterious plane crash. I remember interviewing the director of the CIA, Bill Burns, in that window between the rebellion, but while Prokhorhin was still alive and walking this earth. And Burns described Putin as a man who thinks revenge is a dish best served cold, his words. And here we are. So what happened to his mercenaries, to his group? Well, after Prigozhin's demise, there were offers to join the army or other mercenary groups. Some seem to have done that. It silenced some of their criticism for now.

But questions still linger about the future of these men. For example, will the Kremlin honor, you know, Wagner's promised payments to veterans? Because Wagner was always an off-the-books operation. Speak to the economy for a second, Charles. Putin claims that he's beaten all of the sanctions that the West laid on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. Has he? No, but he's managed them more effectively than many predicted, thanks in large part to a skilled economic team. Certainly the sale of oil and gas to India and China has buoyed government coffers. Meanwhile, even as hundreds of Western companies

left Russia in protest over the war, many more stayed. And we saw the emergence of copycat replacement brands who took over established businesses. They're now under new Russian ownership. So, for example, Starbucks is now Starz Coffee. McDonald's was rebranded to a new name, Tasty and That's All, in Russian. And we see other ways that Russia's economy has adapted. For example, I've never seen so many Chinese cars in my life.

And all told, the economy looks pretty good for now anyway. You know, it's set to expand by 3.5 percent, according to the central bank, although independent economists will say that growth is really largely on the back of wartime spending. In other words, weapons. So is it all good news for Putin as he heads into 2024 and perhaps another six years as president? Well, not entirely. You know, beneath this supposed normalcy, this kind of veneer of confidence we see, there's a lot of turmoil bubbling below the surface. For example, we see this intense anger among families of civilians

who were mobilized to fight in Ukraine over a year ago. They're now demanding demobilization. They want their men home. And they've clearly been unhappy with President Putin for not engaging with them in any serious way despite their demands. And let's not forget, tens of thousands of war dead. We don't even know how many here in Russia. Last spring, I was in a small town a few hundred miles from Moscow to cover a trial. And out of curiosity, I went to a local cemetery. Just let me play a little clip of what

I found. Slav Sukhov, born in 1976, died in January of 2023. This is Alexander Poltachev, born in 1996, died in December of 2022. And you know, okay, this is just one cemetery in a small town in Russia, but we know that scenes like this are playing out all across this vast country. NPR's Charles Maines, sharing a year's worth of fascinating reporting there. Charles, thank you. Happy holidays.

Happy holidays. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.