There are periods of acceleration, of pause… But from the outset, the regime which was created in 1999 when Putin became Prime Minister (of President Boris Yeltsin, Editor’s note) was marked by the violence of the attacks in Moscow for which there were strong suspicions of FSB involvement (the Russian secret services, Editor’s note).
The regime’s ability to suppress Russian freedoms is growing with the war in Chechnya. (The murdered Russian journalist, Ed.) Anna Politkovskaïa explained that one should not think that Chechnya was a limited problem and but see this war as a cancer. A tumor that was going to metastasize throughout Russia because all the conscripts who left for Chechnya came back with this culture of war and unlimited violence, and it was precisely the regime’s intention to install this permanent state of war. Those who opposed this war at the time, the representatives of freedom in Russia, are called agents of the West. A psyche of confrontation with the West, of revenge, of refusing to accept the order resulting from the Cold War and of revising the architecture of European security is being built.
Vladimir Putin is at the head of a power and he is developing his own agenda. It is not in permanent reaction to what we do or do not do. The great strategic failure of the European elites has been their inability to listen to the Russian discourse.
