Russia hankers after the old world order

Putin mourns the Soviet Union and is aiming to regain superpower status using economic might. Julius Strauss in Moscow reports.

20 November 2004

IT was a moment of vintage Cold War defiance. Addressing the annual congress of Moscow's Red Army, the leader of the world's largest country announced the development of a secret nuclear weapon.

It would give the Kremlin the edge over its rivals. It would be a weapon that "other nuclear powers do not and will not possess".

Such tub-thumping boasts may have been standard fare during the nuclear arms race of the 1960s and 1970s. This announcement, however, was part of an address by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, in Moscow earlier this week.

The pugnacious rhetoric comes amid signs of a tougher line in the Kremlin. It also indicates that a Russia growing in confidence is seeking to re-establish its status as a superpower.

Kremlin insiders say that one of Mr Putin's dreams is to re-establish a Russia-dominated empire on the ashes of the old Soviet Union. He hopes that by harnessing the region's political and economic resources Russia can attain new global prominence.

During the first four years of his rule Mr Putin concentrated on his domestic agenda - gathering the levers of power and reining in the tycoons who virtually ran Russia under Boris Yeltsin.

Only yesterday the government announced that the core asset of Yukos, the beleaguered oil company once owned by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, would be sold next month. Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of Chelsea Football Club, is reported to be facing a £400 million tax bill.

But nearly five years into a maximum eight-year tenure as Russian leader, Mr Putin appears now to be concentrating his energies on international policy.

No one suggests that the Kremlin wants a new Cold War. Even Russian analysts say the announcement of the nuclear breakthrough is more an attempt to impress the domestic audience than international sabre-rattling.

But evidence of Russia's new confidence, and propensity to interfere, can be found throughout the region. In the central Asia republics of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, Mr Putin has countered the deployment of US soldiers with a build up of Russian forces.

In Georgia and Moldova, Mr Putin has stalled on pulling out Russian forces, which Moscow committed to withdrawing in an agreement in 1999. The Kremlin has given no new date. In Abkhazia and South Ossetia, breakaway regions of Georgia, the Russian government is openly abetting rebels.

Moscow is also seeking to rope Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan into a "single economic zone" that it will effectively control. Only the Baltic states, now members of the EU and Nato, seem beyond Moscow's control.

Some Russian analysts argue that the Kremlin's ambitions are natural. Andrei Neshadin, of the Moscow-based Expert Institute, said the area of the former Soviet Union had been "the normal area of Russian interests, economically and militarily, for centuries".

But there are worries elsewhere that the demise of the Soviet Union, which Mr Putin has called "a national tragedy", may have been only the precursor to a new form Russian imperialism.

Dmitry Oreshkin, head of the Merkator think-tank at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said: "Putin's mentality and values remain deeply Soviet. To him the gathering of the Soviet states in his hand is a deep psychological and political need.

"The policy is to play on the imperial ambitions of the Russian people. Many are willing to pay a high price if they can feel like a superpower again."

This time, analysts say, the Russian advance will not be led by political commissars backed up by tanks and planes, but by oil and gas salesman with billions of petro-dollars bartering discounted energy for influence.

Zbigniew Siemiatowski, the former head of Polish intelligence, told a parliamentary inquiry last month: "We are facing a restoration of the Russian empire through economic means."

Not all Russians are in favour of such neo-imperialist aims. Many would prefer to see the country's new wealth spent on ageing infrastructure, improving health care and cutting poverty.

Others argue that America's enormous financial resources mean that trying to compete for global influence only makes Russia look foolish. Mark Ournov, head of the Expertiza think-tank, said: "It's high time Russia became reconciled to the fact that it is no longer a superpower. But imperial thinking dies hard."