The Russian Challenge

6. Russia’s Toolkit
Keir Giles
We are forced to defend our legitimate interests unilaterally. 170
A shock to the system
The annexation of Crimea in 2014 marked the second
time in six years that Russia had used military force to
seize control of part of a neighbouring country. As with
the example of Georgia in 2008, this provided a lively
demonstration of Moscow’s willingness to resort to
measures against its neighbours which in the 21st century
the rest of Europe finds unthinkable in advance and
unpalatable after the fact.
But states bordering Russia have long been aware that
military force was simply the most direct of a wide range of
tools and levers Moscow employs in its neighbourhood with
hostile intent. Both the tools of influence that were used
in the early 1990s, such as energy cut-offs, and those that
have become evident more recently, such as offensive cyber
activity, have been practised, developed and made more
precise in their implementation. 171 Furthermore the last
decade has seen growing assertiveness and confidence in
their deployment.
At each stage, Moscow has been encouraged by weak and
unconvincing responses from the European Union, NATO
and the West 172 – despite expert assessments predicting
precisely this outcome. 173 Finally, Russia learned from the
Georgian ceasefire that in certain circumstances, use of
military force for foreign policy aims will be rewarded.
Seizure of Crimea and intervention in mainland Ukraine,
though dramatic, should therefore not be considered
in isolation. As laid out by James Nixey in Chapter 5
on foreign policy, this does not represent any new
trajectory in Russia’s attitude to its neighbours. Assertive
intervention in Ukraine was simply the latest and most
blatant implementation of Russia’s persistent view of
international relations. Whether Russia’s motivations are
aggressive and imperialist, or founded in genuine notions
of defending key Russian interests from perceived Western
expansionism, is important but not the subject of this
chapter, which reviews instead the levers and instruments
– old and new – that Russia uses in relations with and
against its neighbours.
Plus ça change
Official Russian attitudes towards smaller powers in
Europe have remained consistent since 1991. This is despite
changes of leadership in the Kremlin, wild fluctuations in
Russia’s perceived and actual strength, and the brief period
of optimism in relations with the West as a whole at the
beginning of the last decade, as described in Chapter 2 by
Roderic Lyne. The key difference in 2014 was that with the
assistance of a clear and consistent leadership stance, and a
decade of high oil prices, Russia’s capabilities had developed
to match its intentions more closely. These intentions are
more discernible now simply because they are more likely
to be translated into action while that leadership feels both
relatively strong and, apparently, threatened. Put another
way, Russia’s view of the outside world was not different
before the arrival in power of Vladimir Putin; ‘rather, it
“hibernated” during a period of diminished pressure from
outside and weakness on the inside’. 174
In the early post-Soviet period, this view manifested itself
as an explicit aspiration to reunite the newly independent
republics in some new form. 175 Throughout the 1990s,
senior Russians such as Yevgeny Primakov, in his various
roles as intelligence chief, foreign minister and prime
minister, maintained that efforts by the West to stand in the
way of reintegration of the former Soviet republics were
‘dangerous and should be reconsidered’. 176 This aim was
slowly tempered, but never to the extent of challenging the
implicit assumption that Russia is by right the suzerain of
the ‘near abroad’, and the senior partner in relations further
afield. 177 Routine confrontations with Ukraine over the
extent of the latter’s sovereignty were one inevitable result.
This included discussion of the status of Crimea, despite
Russian assurances that ‘Russia does not dispute the fact
that Crimea is a component part of Ukraine’. 178
Thus in the last seven years, perceived, if not actual,
challenges to Russian security interests have twice led
directly to the use of Russian military force abroad in a
way not seen since the early 1990s. Russian intervention
in Crimea caused widespread surprise in early 2014; but
this was due entirely to collective Western amnesia of a
kind not suffered in Moscow. The immediate aftermath of
170
Vladimir Putin, presidential address to the Federal Assembly, 4 December 2014, available at http://kremlin.ru/news/47173.
171
Jakob Hedenskog and Robert Larsson, Russian Leverage on the CIS and the Baltic States, FOI report FOI-R-2280-SE (Stockholm: Swedish Defence Research Agency
(FOI), June 2007, foi.se/ReportFiles/foir_2280.pdf.
172
‘Russia – Future Directions’, Advanced Research and Assessment Group, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, Shrivenham, 1 October 2008, https://sakpol.files.
wordpress.com/2014/03/20081001-russia_future_directions.pdf.
173
For an easily accessible example, see James Sherr, ‘Russia and the West: A Reassessment’, Shrivenham Papers No. 6, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, 2007.
174
Norbert Eitelhuber, ‘The Russian Bear: Russian Strategic Culture and What It Implies for the West’, Connections, Winter 2009, p. 9.
175
James Sherr, Hard Diplomacy and Soft Coercion: Russia’s Influence Abroad (London: Chatham House, 2013), pp. 49–53.
176
John Goshko, ‘Yeltsin Claims Russian Sphere of Influence, Regional Peacekeeping Role Asserted’, Washington Post, 27 September 1994.
177
See, for instance, Leonid Velekhov: ‘A New “Warsaw Pact”: To Be or Not To Be?’, Segodnya, 21 September 1995, p. 9.
178
‘Speech by A. V. Kozyrev’, Diplomaticheskiy vestnik, No. 5, May 1995, pp. 52–54.
40 | Chatham House