Kiev should be concerned about Putin’s constitution

We now know that Putin can theoretically remain president until 2036 after the non-binding referendum from 1 July. It is less known that Putin will change not only the power relations in Russia but also those with neighbors with his forthcoming constitution.

It starts right away with Russia’s constitution as the successor to the Soviet Union. That makes less sense than it seems. Soviet Russia was indeed the heart of the union until 1992. But half of all Soviet citizens at the time really lived in one of the other fourteen republics.

Why then this claim? And should it give the neighboring countries food for thought?

There is no cause for concern on paper. According to the letter of the text, the division of the estate only extends to present-day Russia. In spirit, however, the new constitution does not stop at this one grammatically innocent sentence. The text expresses a broad desire for the Russian Empire of yesteryear.

Henceforth, Russia defines itself as a state with a millennial history characterized, among other things, by “faith in God”. In itself a remarkable turn for a country that has been secular since 1917. More importantly, this timeline refers to the Christianization of the people of Roes in 988 in Kiev. Russia thus constitutionally establishes that Kiev is and remains the cradle of Russian Orthodoxy, exactly as the Patriarchate in Moscow sees it. How that historical claim relates in theory to the sovereignty of Ukraine can be guessed.

In practice, Ukrainians also have reason to read this passage with suspicion. Last week, Putin once again revealed that the fall of the Soviet empire in 1991 is not a closed matter as far as he is concerned. That Russia then let go of the other Soviet republics, taking “land that was traditionally Russian territory since time immemorial,” was a “present” for which those other peoples have been insufficiently “grateful,” Putin said on TV.

This reasoning is factually incorrect; it was the Russian Parliament that declared itself sovereign over the rest on June 12, 1990 (still an annual public holiday), thus cutting the knife on the union. The reasoning is meanwhile ominous. For despite soothing interpretations from the Kremlin, it appears elsewhere in the Constitution that these are not private soul stirrings of the President.

Thus, the mere thought of other borders (not just separatist acts) becomes unthinkable. The Kremlin welcomed in 2014 that Russians in Crimea were going to secede through a referendum, if Crimean Tatars or Ukrainians soon have the courage to argue for an inverse plebiscite, they will receive a constitutionally legitimate cachot.

Punishment is also lurking elsewhere in Russia. All Russians need to be better disciplined. From childhood. For example, it is now the government’s duty to raise children to be “patriots” and the state to protect all “historical truths”. “Downplaying feats of arms in the defense of the fatherland is inadmissible.”

The new constitution thus reflects the perspective of Putin himself: the Russian president as an imperator who rules a Russian empire that is bigger than it seems.

Eastern Europe expert Hubert Smeets works at the Raam knowledge center in Russia. He writes every other week with the editor of geopolitics Michel Kerres about the overturning world order.