Why is Putin creating a crisis with Ukraine? Because he faces increasing unrest and disapproval at home, writes Russia expert Kathryn Stoner.
has issued an extraordinary list of demands as conditions for drawing down his forces. Among these are guarantees that NATO will never expand to include Ukraine and Georgia. Mr. Putin has also called for “security guarantees” from NATO and for the U.S. to declare that it will never put missiles on or near Russian borders. This past week, Russian officials met with counterparts from the U.S., NATO and Ukraine in discussions aimed at averting an armed conflict.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, his wife Yulia and opposition politician Lyubov Sobol take part in a march in memory of murdered Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov in Moscow, Feb. 29, 2020.In August 2020, the opposition figure and anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, a nerve agent that the Soviet Union once developed as a chemical weapon.
Protestors face off with law enforcement during a rally in support of Navalny in Moscow, Jan. 31, 2021.The country held a national election for parliament in September 2021. The proceedings were so rife with fraud that even the Communist Party of the Russian Federation—until that point the “loyal opposition”—cried foul. But the state had a useful tool at its disposal: a law on “foreign agents” that was enacted in 2012, essentially for use as a bludgeon against domestic opposition groups.
Since then, under the crushing weight of the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr. Putin has seen his ratings fall back to earth, hovering between 59% and 65% as Russian society has been pummeled by wave after wave of infections. Mr. Putin may hope that provoking a diplomatic crisis will win back the popularity he saw when Russians rallied around the flag in 2014.
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