A political scientist at the CNRS and CERI, Marie Mendras recently published the remarkable Permanent War: The Kremlin’s Ultimate Strategy (Calmann-Lévy). For L’Express, the Sciences Po professor analyzes the consequences of the prisoner exchange which, according to her, is much more unfavorable to Vladimir Putin than has been presented in recent days. She also puts into context the remarks of the opponent Vladimir Kara-Mourza who, after his release, was quick to dissociate the Russian people and the Russian regime.
Marie Mendras also explains how the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region is only the consequence of the strategic failure of the Russian offensive on Kharkiv. Finally, she believes that Russia’s absence from the 2024 Paris Olympics confirms that the master of the Kremlin has placed himself outside the international system: “That Putin is ahead of Kim Jong-un in the ranking of pariahs is remarkable.”
L’Express: According to you, Putin “paid dearly” the return to Russia of spies, starting with Vadim Krassikov, sentenced to life in Germany. However, the Western media often presented him as the big winner of this prisoner exchange…
Marie Mendras: I was very surprised by these reactions that start from the premise that Putin always wins. For about twenty years, I have tried to explain that Putin and his men very often make mistakes. In 2008, the war in Georgia was presented as a great Russian victory, but in reality, it was the beginning of an escalation that is now putting the regime on its knees. Since 2014 and the annexation of Crimea, it is clear that this Russian regime is increasingly prey to negative passions, and that it is adopting very short-term tactics. In France and Germany, unlike Poland and the Baltic countries, we were already beaten in advance, believing that everything Putin does is successful. But if we project ourselves over the long term, we understand that the regime is less and less powerful if it needs to resort to extreme violence, both at home and abroad. It may not be easy to imagine today, but the war will not last forever, and I am convinced that the dictatorship will not survive a military defeat.
In your opinion, this prisoner exchange demonstrates that Putin is increasingly dependent on his security and intelligence services. Why?
Putin is increasingly dependent on the forces he must rely on to continue this war that he desperately wanted. It is important to remember that when he announced his decision to his security council in the Kremlin on February 21, 2022, including the Minister of Defense, the heads of the intelligence services, these men were in shock. It was obvious that Putin had not had the agreement of those who were going to wage war. He started this conflict without developing any strategy, since he himself had locked himself in an obsession, to strike and annihilate Ukraine in fifteen days. More than a mistake, it was madness.
This war has already cost the lives of about 150,000 Russian fighters, and left at least 250,000 wounded, many more losses than in the Ukrainian army. Putin can sacrifice men without counting because he is a dictator. However, he had to give pledges to the security services, FSB and GRU. [NDLR : service de renseignement militaire]but also in a way to the army. He wanted to release Krasikov, the FSB killer in Berlin, at all costs. The heads of the intelligence services do not want to leave their men imprisoned in the West. This was certainly a request from the FSB, because Putin has nothing to gain strategically from bringing back an FSB killer. This is an internal affair of a regime that is in crisis.
“We need these Russian resistance fighters to live, and to organize resistance in Europe.”
As commentators have pointed out, does this exchange not encourage the “hostage business”, with Russia having in exchange released Westerners it had arrested when they were perfectly innocent, such as Evan Gershkovich, correspondent for the Wall Street Journal ?
But today we are in a total war! If we had had these reactions in 2014, I could have understood. But for two and a half years, Russia has committed thousands of war crimes. Putin himself is under international arrest warrant, as are several officials, suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Putin is waging a merciless war in Ukraine and against all of us, European countries and Western democracies.
For years, Putin has feared the democratic Russian figures who are fighting his dictatorship. He had Boris Nemtsov killed in February 2015. A few months later, Vladimir Kara-Murza suffered his first poisoning in Moscow. On February 16, Putin had Alexei Navalny eliminated. Today, it is clear that the Ukrainians and the Russian resistance are winners in this release of former political prisoners like Kara-Murza or Ilya Yashin, extraordinary figures who are more than ever engaged in a resistance struggle – we can no longer speak of “opposition” in the context of a dictatorship at war. We need these Russian resistance fighters to live, and to organize the resistance in Europe, so that they can have political influence in preparing for the post-war period.
At his press conference, Kara-Murza defended the Russian people, saying that “Russia and Putin are not the same thing.” He also criticized some of the Western sanctions that target Russian citizens, not just the regime’s dignitaries. Do you understand these positions?
Vladimir Kara-Mourza is a brilliant man who knows France, the United Kingdom and the United States very well. He has British nationality through his mother, and he speaks perfect French. But he was locked up for two years in very difficult conditions. Ilya Yashin, Andrei Pivovarov, and the hundreds of other political prisoners still behind bars have also been cut off from reality. But we know very well that the world has changed in the last two years. It reminded me of my first interview with Mikhail Khodorkovsky when he came to France in the spring of 2014, after being “expelled” from Russia in December 2013. He had lived in a camp for ten years. Khodorkovsky saw nothing wrong with the annexation of Crimea, even if he was much more critical of the military aggression in Donbass. A few months later, he understood that he had made a mistake.
Today, in Kara-Murza’s mind, there is the idea that what made Russian democracy fail in the 1990s was the lack of communication with the Russians, on the part of the new political parties and a pro-Western government. Yeltsin had carried out privatizations and economic reforms while the Russians were going through a social and personal crisis, the Soviet system having collapsed. For Kara-Murza and Yashin, one of the goals today is to have the Russian people behind them. This is what Navalny had achieved, who was not only brilliant and committed to the fight for freedom, but who had also, since the early 2010s, set up organizations, first with his foundation for the fight against corruption which had considerable effects, to the point of revealing Putin’s personal enrichment, but also with an opposition movement for free elections which supported candidates in local and regional elections. Navalny had created more than 40 campaign headquarters across the Russian Federation, and he had more than 10 million “followers” on his networks. For Putin, he was therefore the man to take down, because he was very well-known, popular with an increasingly large part of the population, especially young people. Hence his poisoning in August 2020, at the very moment when Putin had bunkered down for fear of Covid-19.
This prisoner exchange was not possible while Navalny was alive. After his sudden death on February 16, negotiations were quickly resumed. Western negotiators then decided that it was necessary to get as many Russian resistance fighters out as possible.
Navalny wanted to have a speech that spoke to the Russians. He did not want to be pinned as an American agent, especially in a Putinist system where disinformation is very widespread. I followed the official Russian sites during this prisoner exchange. Everything was false. We must be aware that a quarter of the population of the Russian Federation “gets its information” exclusively from Russian television. These people live with a phantasmagorical narrative where everyone is at war with them, and where the opponents are foreign agents.
“Russia has completely missed its mark on sport”
How do you analyze the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region?
The Ukrainian army wants to reverse the balance of power on the battlefield. Bringing the war to Russia is essential. And the acceleration of arms deliveries to Ukraine, especially the F-16s, opens a new page. Russian military commanders know that this changes the situation. Indeed, the Russian offensive in the Kharkiv region was not a great success. It caused terrible destruction, but with enormous losses on the Russian side, a bit like the Battle of Bakhmut in the winter of 2022-2023 which cost Wagner’s mercenaries alone 20,000 men, dead or wounded. The Russian army made a mistake, trying to move into a position of strength to play on the defeatism that can grow among Ukraine’s allies. Now, the result of this battle in the Kharkiv region is that the war has spread beyond the border, into the Belgorod region, while the Russian regime was precisely saying that it wanted to ensure security areas. It has thus only extended the battlefield to Russia itself. Today, the Ukrainian offensive in the Kursk region, north of Belgorod, is serving to demonstrate to the Russians that they were wrong. Since they sought to destabilize the border areas, this is the Ukrainian response…
How much of an affront to Putin is Russia’s absence from the 2024 Paris Olympics?
This is a total downgrade. Let us recall that there are 16 North Korean athletes present in Paris. That Putin has passed Kim Jong-un in the ranking of pariahs is remarkable. In the official Russian media, the Olympic Games are barely mentioned. It is a taboo subject. On the other hand, there has been much discussion of the famous “BRIC Games” organized in June, which were a real flop. Only one European country, Serbia, sent athletes to Kazan. So we can clearly see that Russia has completely missed its mark on the sporting front. This only puts Putin further and further away from the world, and from all rules of law. He himself has placed himself outside the international system. The Russian dictatorship is now at its peak. But it is burning all its cartridges…
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