Briefly introduce Andrew Moynihan, who is I think I think if you were a friend as well as a colleague,
I know he currently works which has nice what he is trying to be senior research fellow in Russia and Eurasia Programme.
He's also crucially a visiting research fellow on the change we have to work on at the moment.
And he has worked, as we were discussing over lunch at the United Defence College in Rome, right, some years time.
And he's already a reputation for himself in terms of trying out research on Russia and contrary
to those who think in this sort of policy think tank world that every Russian is about Russia,
he's already known. You will get this offering a refreshing U-turn on a subject you think about, and many of us are frankly completely misunderstood.
Andrew, thank you very much for talking with us.
Thank you, Robert, for that very generous introduction. Yes, I did wonder how many people would turn out today with Russia in the news and so forth.
The drama we've had over the last year or so. And it's a pleasure to see the room full.
Thank you very much for coming on this rather cold day. So I will speak for about 45 minutes or so, perhaps a bit less.
What I would like to do in talking about Russia is to raise a number of different subjects that are related towards the main theme,
which is the idea of Russian grand strategy. One of the things I have noticed over the last year or so.
Well, a bit longer. But but over the last year or so is the separation of of Russia studies on the
one hand and strategic studies and wider political decision making on the other.
It seems to me that the Russia studies often talk about strategy,
but they talk about it in such a way that it is often running against the main themes of discussion in strategy, the strategic discussion itself.
So strategy becomes synonymous with policy. It becomes strategy, and tactics are often used interchangeably in the discussion about Russia.
But at the same time, the strategic studies discussion, the international relations and foreign policy discussion will try to discuss Russia,
but without a great deal of the expertise that is probably necessary for how Russia functions.
Who are the main Russian ists? Who who the main political figures are sorry, the officials and the nature of the system within.
So there is a gap that has tended to split and the split has become ever more,
more evident as we see the discussion more becoming more more partisan during the war last year.
Just to give you an overview of what I am going to say, some thoughts here.
But what I'm going to try to do is to put a foot in both camps today.
I realise this is something of a risk because it probably means creating war on two fronts,
which is not always a good idea because both subjects are quite controversial, both Russia on the one hand on some of the the questions of strategy.
But I do think it's important to bring these two together and at least begin to unpack and examine some of the aspects of Russian strategy,
Russian strategic thinking. In this way, my particular interest really is the creation of power in Russia.
It seems to me there is a, uh, an overly ethnocentric approach on the first point to,
to see Russia to, to mirror our own thoughts onto Russia, to not,
not try to grasp the strategic environment that they themselves see, to over invent Putin as this as this single figure that dominates Russia,
this this idea that he can get anything done that he likes, which on the one hand, is perhaps understandable given his centrality to Russian politics,
but on the other hand overlooks Russian political culture and ignores Russian strategic messaging.
The first of my remarks, therefore, as you will see, are that Russia has significantly different horizons,
histories and interpretations of international affairs. Yes.
Putin is at the centre of a leadership team, a leadership team that is being reflected continuity over the last 15 years but is evolving.
He himself has led a consistent effort to reorganise Russian strategic planning and strategic thinking, which has been broadly in three stages.
But like many others, both in Russian history and indeed elsewhere, including in the West,
he and his leadership team have found strategy extremely difficult.
Mm hmm. A couple of caveats, perhaps, to just to set up my defences before I, uh, before I continue.
I'm not really going to focus much on the Ukraine war. Yes, it's important.
Yes, it may come up in the Q&A and yes, it may indeed reflect, you know, a more specific discussion of Russian military strategy.
Perhaps I want to push a bit deeper into understanding how Russia works,
how Russia functions and how it is trying to evolve its creation of power to deal with the international context.
Second, there are limitations in terms of understanding and knowing about Russian strategic decision making.
It's quite obscure and some of the parts of it are highly classified.
So I will mention, just for the sake of acknowledgement, so that we know it exists.
The the Defence Plan that was submitted by Defence Minister Shoigu and General Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov in January 2013.
It's an important document.
Indeed, it's considered by the Russians to be a system forming document and it is focussed on trying to coordinate the agencies,
49 agencies across Russia. And also to provide a framework for understanding risks and evolving threats to Russia in the foreseeable future.
It is also important to note that this document is a live document that has been associated with the National Defence Centre.
Now I have no evidence to to say that they are actually connected,
but from what we see from the public, the public announcements, often they overlap almost entirely.
The national, the National Defence Centre is the military security institution that coordinates exactly with the defence planner.
So and indeed this may be where we can find military strategy thinking.
I can't go much further on that because I'd say it's highly classified, but it's important to mention, I think.
And finally, strategy. What do I really mean by strategy?
Well, his going to be the risk with with huge strong sitting in front of me.
But I'm going to try and define it anyway. I'm going to aim a grand strategy.
Sorry, sir, here. But this is being the art of creating power, as I suggest.
The obvious part of the relationship of of of political ends with economic, military, political and social means.
Sure. It's easy. The two points of focus being.
This is a sense of process, not not the politics itself.
So I'm looking at the prominence of the formulation of plans on the one side and then the implementation on the other.
So this this dual activity creating the plan and then trying to implement it.
And obviously this has reference to the system and getting the system to function.
Therefore, I I'm looking at the conducting of the orchestra, so to speak,
the coordination and balancing of interests, the dialogue with evolving conditions and context,
and the the the balance between political flexibility on the one hand and in terms of achieving political consensus,
but then tailoring that to something concrete to be actually implemented.
Three three thrusts. Therefore, how is how is Russia evolving?
I think there is a background and evolution I put up here towards mobilisation and evolution I can't quite nail down yet,
which is from the more Soviet form of mobilisation, which is a popular mobilisation,
if you will, to a nation in arms, to a sense of more a nation armed.
There's an important distinction to be made, which I'll try to elucidate.
One of the things that might be interesting to discuss in the Q&A also is how this may compare and contrast to Western strategic planning.
I suspect this is certainly a position of weakness for me, but as I as I try and bring the Russian point in,
we may be able to compare it in contrast with Russian strategic planning, Russia in the West.
How much strategic planning is there actually to 2020 in the West?
How are things done in the same other things done in the same way or not?
Now, I read yesterday or I began to read yesterday General Eliot's book, which I think is very interesting, High Command.
And I'm halfway through it. Halfway through the first chapter, I had to look back on the front just to check.
It was actually about the British and not the Russians,
because there are there are so many similarities between how does clever individuals working there, but the system creates certain problems.
And I thought, this is very interesting, so I look forward to pursuing that. I wasn't sure whether you can you can you see the maps here at the back?
There are four maps. So I wanted to take this through to begin with.
On this first line. This is how we came to see Russia. This one here, top left.
We tend to see Russia is on the edge of Europe. When we look at it from London.
A small fragment on the edge of Europe, really.
And at the same time, we often think that Russian strategic planning is a threat to Europe, undermines the European architecture.
Of course, the Russians tend to see it more like this, that Europe is actually on the fringe of Russia.
Actually, these two ones are the ones I want to bring to your attention to first.
Russia at the centre of the world because that's how you would see the map if you were looking at it in Moscow.
And Europe is important, yes, but nowhere near as important as China and Central Asia and India and also Africa.
This is a particularly important map. But the final one here for this point is, is this map here, which is BRICS.
And this is intended to demonstrate the how Russia sees the world evolving, i.e. the decline of the West and the rise of multipolarity,
the rise of other centres that are are making the world more internationally democratic.
So you see the roles of how China, India, South Africa and Brazil are highlighted in Russian foreign security thinking.
If I've taken you through that, I want to take you into two further maps so that we can begin to see see the world differently from Russia.
This is one I think is fundamentally important. It's the best I could do before the next slide to illustrate the point I wish to make.
Everything looks familiar, except it's very, very different.
The same body of evidence. The point I want to make here is that the Russians, over the last 20 years, particularly the Russians,
have drawn almost systematically and in fact, increasingly systematically a different series of conclusions from the same body of evidence.
When we're talking about post-Cold War Europe. When we talk about the end of the Cold War, how it ended, why it ended, how we talk about the 1990,
how we talk about the energy wars between Gazprom after Naftogaz, Ukraine, and who was responsible for them and why.
When we talk about the role that the West is playing again, it looks similar.
You'll all be familiar with the trend. If I say Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine.
Of course, this will all create certain images in your mind, but that is the Russian trajectory that demonstrates Western intervention,
Western creation of instability and the Western way of war.
So I want with this image to start to pull away, to demonstrate that the view from Moscow is very,
very different to the one in in London and in Brussels.
And the history is the history is inverted not just for for Europe, but also in terms of it in dealing with its neighbours.
To give you one small example,
you could view that the war in 2014 ongoing now in Ukraine as the third Russia Ukraine war since the end of since the end of the Soviet Union,
the first being in 94 and 96 when Ukrainians went to fight alongside the Chechens in Chechnya, Chechen independence.
The second being in 2008, when the Ukrainians provided weapons to the Georgians and personnel who shot at the Russians,
which really, really irritated the Russians a great deal.
And the third in 2014. So even I mean, even on the on the global scale, it things look very different.
But even once you get begin to drill down, you find how history has has made differentiations in terms of perspective and strategic understanding.
This is the preparation, though, for I. Well, I'm not sure how you'll respond to this, but I'm going to go for it anyway.
This is a slide that hopefully develops and builds on that.
Previous slide is a slide taken from a presentation to the previous Russian chief of General Staff, Makarov.
I won't go to the translation, but I'm sure you'll find I have a headache already.
But I wish just to point out several differences in how they perceive security in the environment.
The blue the blue ships, aircraft and figures demonstrate how the US and NATO is encircling Russia.
I suspect that you don't view it in quite the same way.
Some of these parts you'll recognise the red conflicts, the red dots here, or conflicts, areas of actual or likely conflict.
Most of them will recognised, but almost all of them, the causes of which are understood fundamentally differently.
And we are mostly blamed by the Russians for this. And then these are the lists of actually this is another point.
These are these are potential military flashpoints. Is undecided territorial possession.
Which is not really on our end and not really on the nature of threat perception or indeed the UK perception.
Just to put up here, just a couple of the indications again of Russian strategic planning.
The first, a major military threat to the Russian Federation,
the attempts of the West to guarantee its energy security at the cost of economic and political interests of Russia.
The second one, the collapse of fall in strategic balance of forces.
If, therefore, it is possible to say that there are some similarities, I want to emphasise this flip view from Moscow that because if you could say,
as the NATO Secretary General did, previous one did in April last year, that NATO is surrounded by an arc of crisis, of which one part is Russia.
If you look at it from Moscow, you are also surrounded by an arc of crisis.
You are not surrounded by an arc of crisis in the west, east, south and west.
In fact, as you can see, pretty much entirely.
Putin himself said that there are increasing number of hotspots in the world, in Europe, in Southeast Asia,
in Asia, Pacific region, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, in fact, almost everywhere except Antarctica.
Very interesting. The potential challenges to Russia come from a range of different sources, but predominantly from the West.
The overall strategic environment has seemed to becoming, as I mentioned, more multipolar, but therefore increasingly prone to conflict and rivalry.
Where there will be a struggle for regional leadership and influence. Three sets of interrelated problems emerge as a result.
First, the likelihood for a regional conflict for regional dominance is most likely.
This would be a conflict fought by second tier powers, probably, i.e. therefore not the United States and not China.
But a second tier power is one that if you're in Moscow, you're thinking I might well have to be drawn into this.
I might indeed be drawn into this if it is for regional dominance. Indeed.
The other point of this is, is the potential for proxy and third party conflicts,
again, at a regional level in which Russia has no option but to become involved.
Much of what I'm doing here is I'm quoting specifically from a Russian chief of general staff thinking Russian military analysts,
thinking security documentation, published official documents.
The second set of problems is the arms race and the decrease in the strategic balance that I point to here.
Putin himself said most of the world's leading countries are actively upgrading their military arsenals,
investing huge sums in developing advanced weapons. The Russians feel they're in an arms race already.
This for them could be, for instance, the UK ordering two new aircraft carriers.
This also would be investment into high precision weapons that, as Putin says, I quote again,
you are building high precision weapons that have the same effect, more or less as nuclear weapons.
And at the same time, you are trying to negotiate people out of possession of nuclear weapons.
Therefore, you will retain the strategic heights of command.
You're also pushing forward a military ballistic missile defence system that encircles and neutralises Russians.
Russia's strategic balance capabilities. And again, I just want to point to the difference in understanding here when when our American allies say,
well, but we're retaining flexibility to develop in accordance with an evolving threat.
In Moscow, this is interpreted as inconsistency, unpredictability and therefore destabilising.
And the final aspect of this, the interrelation of problems in the environment that Russia is working in,
a context in which environment Russia sees itself, is that the West holds sway but with declining influence.
Therefore, it has considerable strength, but it can't fix problems and indeed it's going around creating new ones.
The most recent examples being Libya, Syria and Ukraine,
where it has enough strength to create that to rip the top off, but not to settle things back down.
Additionally, this is a West that is uncompromising with Russia and this is why I emphasise this point and where will lead to towards mobilisation.
Russian preparation for four colour revolution is that the West threatens Russia with revolution and NATO's expanding to its borders,
destabilising European security. Russian scenario is therefore extremely negative.
The 21st century of instability. Russia is not ready for this and the state recognises it's not ready for this.
Despite improvements since the since the 1990s.
And this is this is the whole point of the strategic planning exercise that will go into and the context for the discussion shortly.
I'd just like to jump ahead to to introduce some of the people that we're actually talking about,
because one of the points I noticed in the Western discussion of Russian Russian strategy, but Russia more broadly is it's held in the abstract.
We talk about Putin. We talk about Putin ology and how Putin has lost his rationale or he's lying.
And actually, therefore, we have Putin ology without Putin because we need to listen to him because he's lying or he's irrational,
both of which is not true. So what I want to do is because strategy is also about the people involved.
I think here are five people, five individuals.
I see some people nodding. So I know that some of you are Russian ists, but you'll recognise the gentleman top left.
I suspect you might recognise gentleman top right.
I've put the names in because when I've been doing this briefing over the last year,
the number of people who can actually recognise the others is next to zero.
This is problematic because these are the people who are who are producing and implementing Russian strategy.
Nikolai Partnership on the left, Sergei Ivanov, Alexei Kudrin and Igor Sechin.
Why is this team important? When Putin was interviewed in 1999, 2000 for the book First Person.
He was asked, who, who do you trust? Whose proposals do you listen to?
Who will be on your team as you set up over the next year? And he said, I think you've probably got him already, haven't you?
But Nikolai Patrushev, Sergei Ivanov, Dimitri Medvedev, Alexei Kudrin and Igor Sechin.
14 years later, the team is partnership of the head of the Security Council,
Medvedev ex-president, now Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, head of the presidential administration.
Alexei Kudrin, chief financial adviser, informal at the moment,
but but effectively formal and ego session lead had not go together or icebreaker, whichever you prefer.
This is the commanding. They control all of the commanding heights of Russian strategic thinking.
I'll come back to them shortly because it's very important.
This is the new group of people, and it would be not surprising if people did not recognise them anyway.
This is effectively mobilisation.
This is the system that is being put into into effect to defibrillate the Russian system, which I'll come to shortly,
which is level warlord in are of truth of sort of and this is these will these people represent different
aspects of this defibrillation that I'm going to go into of the system younger people being brought in.
Managers way the way that the security organs are being brought together and the vertical of power enhanced.
I've jumped ahead deliberately because. Because I want you to keep bearing in mind these people while I'm talking.
Now I'm going to turn more briefly and let's go over relatively quickly the commitment
to strategic planning that we've seen from from Moscow over the last 15 years.
As I mentioned earlier, there are three stages to it. The first 1999 to 2005 strategy 2010 from about 2005 onwards to about 2011.
You see a second stage. This is the stage that is based on the publication in 2009 of a series of documents,
the long term socio economic development plan to state that to 2020, the national security strategy to 2020.
And a cascade of other documents. Already you can see the horizon that is being shaped.
So one is 2020. If you think that was in 26 seven in preparation.
That's two electoral cycles away beyond two electoral cycles in Russia at the same time in this second period.
This second stage, you have an attempt to develop Russian strategic planning legislation.
So the realisation in 2006 that actually we haven't done it, that we've got regional strategic planning, we haven't got federal strategic planning.
So you have the beginning of the process for the Foundation for Strategic Planning, which was finally signed off by Putin and Medvedev in 2009.
This is the basis for the law on strategic planning that was finally signed into into public domain last year.
The third stage is, I think, a particularly important one.
That's the one I want to focus on today. That's from 2012 onwards.
And it builds on this. It's a sense of evolution and continuity from.
From second stage. There's no direct split. It's leading through.
So even though the economic crisis, 28 nine had a very significant impact on stage two, the assumptions,
the basic assumptions and that drive and the continuity is there is based on the May decrees,
these are decrees that Putin himself signed into into force when he was elected back to the Kremlin as president in May 2012.
I'm going to try and turn this technical go.
People have tended to see a big distinction and wanted to see a big distinction between the Putin presidencies and the Medvedev presidencies.
In my mind, this is a mistake. These two men served together, have served together for 20 years.
They were the ones running the strategic overhaul.
There is no great distinction between stage two and stage three because Medvedev and Putin ran them both.
What happened with the May decrees, however,
is that Putin took his election campaign and his articles from that campaign which which created a sense of,
in inverted commas, legitimacy, because they had been backed by popular vote in the election.
Now, it doesn't matter if you believe the official number of 65% or the opposition accepted number of 54% who won the election,
Putin won the election.
We can talk about democracy in the troubles there of but but what I'm trying to get at is that the agenda that Putin took to the population in 2011,
2012 is understood by the leadership team to have been given a legitimating vote by the population.
They are these decrees of 11 decrees, mostly based on domestic development with two or three, depending on how you define it.
On on on military and foreign affairs.
It's a hugely ambitious scope, but it's a sweep from big, broad generalisations that the Foreign Minister will prepare foreign ministry,
prepare a foreign policy concept down to deciding certain details.
But the number of people who will be dying on the roads by 2018, a huge sweep from generality down to detail.
Putin himself has acknowledged his strategic agenda is unprecedented in the challenges that he offers.
It offers as a as a as a as a list of plans, as a list of of of of goals.
But at the same time, regardless of the economic environment or the political environment, this is an agenda that is going to be forced through.
Fine. As I mentioned at the beginning, the strategy is on one hand formulation of plans, but on the other hand, its implementation.
And I would like to take you, therefore, now to the other series of questions,
which is whether this huge agenda which has been set up and planned and created by this leadership team and the Security Council,
of which there are four members here. Security Council, I probably ought to just say, is is the predominant formal organ,
official organ for bringing together ministerial resources and experience, expertise, authority.
It's a Medvedev is the only one on this body, a permanent standing body.
First here who is representing the socioeconomic section.
The rest is security. Foreign Minister Lavrov as you see, but also for a couple of bortnikov to intelligence heads and Sergei Shoigu,
the new the relatively new defence minister. This security this this Security Council is is the hub for decision making.
I should have mentioned that earlier.
But let's turn to the the implementation, because for me, this is where the Russians have faced their real problems.
And this is this is where we need to look more deeply.
First point I want to make is that there is a huge planning burden has been placed on a rather limited bureaucracy.
Therefore, there are significant gaps that open up, not just the ones about the gaps where they can't talk about things in public,
like the role of China and what they want to do about China and actual specific gaps about how to fulfil things.
And the Russian leadership faces the typical problems that you may recognise from looking at other forms of strategy of ministries,
couching documents in very vague terms. Engage here.
Enhance this. Build this. And Putin himself.
I'm going to keep turning back to Putin because Putin understands the flaws in the system very, very well.
And he pointed out, well, these vaguely formulated documents do not provide guidelines for action or concrete objectives.
So he keeps returning the documents to the ministries and beating them up to get on with it.
So if the plans at the top level may decrease, the long term, socio economic development and so on are broadly consistent within themselves.
We already find this this gap in strategic planning between them and the implementers where the plans abroad for consensus,
but not precise enough for implementation. Not precise enough for practical traction.
The second point is the question of bringing resources to to to these to these plans.
The targets set out all sorts of grandiose plans, many of which demand billions and billions of dollars.
I'll keep it in dollars for the time being. But I mean, you already understand that there's a gap opening up.
In that sense, most of the Russian strategic agenda is built on a GDP growth of 4 to 5%.
Anyone know what the Russian GDP growth is right now about?
Minus nought. We've got no precise clue exactly how this is going.
But it looks, despite the ambiguous pictures, that Russia is going to go into recession.
This puts a huge hole in the strategic plan, even though they have billions of dollars of of of strategic capital on which they can draw.
So therefore, they're beginning to to try to address this through how to make the system more efficient.
Because the finance ministry keeps turning up and saying, I'm sorry, but Vladimir, Vladimir,
we just don't have the funds to implement the demands that you're placing orders.
The regional budgets cannot afford the projects that are being forced on them.
And then of course, we have I'll mention it, but you already know. Anyway, the extra added burden of systemic questions such as corruption.
Which is just like an open and open fire hose. The money just flowing out of the out of the budget.
So resources are extremely difficult to do to mix and match towards this.
And then, of course, you have competition between the ministries,
because if the military wants $500 billion for its plan, the housing and utilities need $300 billion for for their plan.
And then we have to develop the Far East as well. Finally, we'll know two more points about implementation.
The question of conducting the orchestra that I mentioned at the beginning,
this unifying this attempt to bring these actors together is extremely difficult in Russia.
I think you can probably say it about most places, but we are talking about Russia.
So the idea that the orchestra is very rarely harmonious.
The agencies, of course, look to their own interests. You have blurred lines of responsibility between ministries,
whether the Ministry of Regional Development and the regional construction actually overlap or interfere.
Whether the WHO is responsible for what in terms of security,
who is in terms of what for for all sorts of different questions regarding the relation to the plans.
And there is also finally the prolonged in this sense of conducting the orchestra, the prolonged tension between defence and security,
budgeting on the one hand and economics on the other, which will return to towards the end.
But as I've mentioned, I leave these people up here. The, the defence and security budget tends to control strategic planning.
The final point to make about the implementation of Russian plans is the limitation of presidential power.
Now, I'm sure you've all heard of the vertical of power in Russia, how Putin commands, what does what happens in Russia.
And he gets things done because he's a KGB hard man.
It's simply not true. It's not true.
I'll give you several examples.
But but throughout the first of the first eight years of Putin's presidency, it's his first two terms also through Medvedev's term.
And now as well, we have the presidential leadership.
In complete frustration with the lack of implementation of their orders.
By 2010, you have the head of the Control Directorate to announcing.
Well, we're delighted because our efforts have led to an increase in implementation of presidential orders by 68%.
That meant that 20% of the presidential instructions were implemented on time.
20% of presidential instructions.
Now since the May decrease of have been signed into force, we have Putin jetting around the country, going to the Far East,
for instance, Far Eastern Development, sitting in a group much like this with with regional authorities and Putin saying.
We agreed this last year. You've implemented 20% of my of the plans.
What happened to the other 80%? And the journalist who was covering it quoted Putin, say, what?
What's going on? Will you do your work or won't you?
But the Putin quote and the journalist's quote was, Yes, Vladimir Vladimirovich, but you're only here for a short time, aren't you?
With the answer being that, well, basically as soon as you clear off to go to promote or or wherever it is, we're done.
Thank you very much. So the implementation of presidential instructions is is is perhaps one of the weakest points here in terms of strategy.
Increasingly, you have parliamentarians talking about about sabotage,
ridiculous to a passive revolution within the bureaucracy, passive resistance, such that the law of strategic planning,
which I mentioned earlier,
increasingly is being shaped towards having legal and criminal responsibility for the failure to implement presidential instructions.
So it will soon become a crime to not do what the president says.
This is because the parliamentarians who are putting through this law say not a
single one of the presidential instructions from me to Greece have been implemented.
Not a single one. It's just creates people.
Right. So if that's therefore where I want to leave that part is that the system does not function.
You have formulation of plan after plan after plan, but a great deal of difficulty in inserting it into into practicality.
So there is a political idea, but not a strategy.
And this is why I think that the Russia is I'm going to use the term defibrillator, because I think that the Russian system recognises the leadership,
recognises this and is attempting to, given the understanding of the international environment to defibrillator system,
to excite it back into some form of life. I did a little bit of research.
My neighbour is a doctor and and she said, well actually the system cannot be dead, of course.
Don't forget, you can't bring someone back to life with defibrillation.
And indeed, defibrillation only works 2% of the time. Just leave that in your and your minds.
Two points for three points I'd like to focus on with this defibrillation.
And hopefully we will move forward to see the people involved. First point is budgetary efficiency and cost cutting costs.
You see increasingly terminology being used about mobilisation budgets,
but emergency budgeting and what you have is a move towards away from state budgets to program budgeting,
to try to rebalance the budget so that you move away from this problem of having not enough here and too much there.
So these become specifically program oriented budgets. You then have assessment for excess use and failure to comply with budgetary law.
So mobilisation is tied up also with punitive measures.
Something like 27,000 officials were sanctioned in 2013 for not knowing budgetary law and for falling foul of it.
And that is not for corruption.
So they're attempting to to to add mobilisation measures to the budget and yet moving forward, they will do shortly ahead.
The second point is this an ongoing rotation of official figures and a subtle
but important change in the structure of political and and and social power.
Now, here we go. The rotation is intended to do two or three or three things, really.
First of all, it involves firing individuals.
Now, this may sound. Well, yes, of course. Someone gets fired for not doing their job properly.
No. In the previous administration.
In fact, in the previous two administrations, neither Putin nor Medvedev like to fire people.
In this administration alone, four have been fired for not doing their instruction, not fulfilling their instructions.
These are ministerial level people, let alone the governors. So quite a rotate, quite a change in how they're doing things.
And the president is administering public denunciations and then people are fired.
Quite unusual, actually.
Second, the point of this reshuffle is to try to create a an invigorated vertical of power whereby you have at the centre the minister responsible.
You then have a presidential plenipotentiary and the Governor for all strategic regions.
So you're reinforcing the vertical of power twice.
That's why I put up people like Hrabowski, Hrabowski and Putin and government.
These two people have been sent out as a team to the Far East to try and get it going.
Both of them are highly experienced managers and carry political weight.
And Augustin is one of the interior, is ex interior ministry and has been moved.
He illustrates the Siberian district. But at the same point is that you're moving economic,
social and political together to try and get things going in certain districts that also involves security.
The rotation of presidential plenipotentiary is, I think, also a very important point.
The third point is to create a series of para institutional organisations.
Again, something quite new. And this is why I have these three things voting for.
And again, I come back to try and illustrate the point here.
Voting is the first entry in a presidential administration responsible for domestic politics.
He's the guy that runs the show for domestic political developments, and he has the core of setting up something called the All-Russian Popular Front.
Not all different. This is an organisation that is in effect power institution.
As I say, it's not beholden to it's not beholden to a ministry, it's not beholden to anything except Putin and society.
And they have been tasked with monitoring governors, monitoring implementation of laws, formulating policy towards plans.
So really, they've become an incredibly an increasingly important part of Russia's Russian society.
Russian political power. Sorry.
So what I'm trying to get at here is this sense of defibrillation is is political and security and with some economic aspects to it as well.
But is social. And I return you to that point about the May decrees being legitimated by society in Putin's mind,
and this attempt to build by Putin a link directly between him and that leadership that I introduced at the beginning.
And society is actually skipping the passive bureaucracy.
I'll just point out that that the not only front, the Popular Front, is not just involved in formulating the plans and preparing Putin's speeches,
such as the Federal Assembly speech, but is also and monitoring the governor's effectiveness.
And in fact, they replace governors. They have them fired by Putin and they move in and replace them.
So almost cuckoo, like actually. But they are also moving towards this anti-corruption campaign.
So one is to procurement. So the government is actually the leadership is actually co-opting some of the opposition's concerns and
drawing itself in because it needs to it needs to address corruption in order to to to sustain the budget.
And finally, the the the own EFF, just because it relates to what happened last year has a very active role in Crimea and social.
Social mobilisation. The UN effort was driving force behind them.
We've missed you. We were together parades in throughout Russia during the the annexation of Crimea and was the
first non-military organised Russian non-military organisation into Crimea after the annexation.
So in many ways, although I mentioned the Security Council being very important,
that first leadership team that I want you to keep in mind, and this group called the not only from the Popular Front.
The two that the two sort of elements of the defibrillator that the leadership is trying to put on to the system to shock it back into life.
Now, I'm probably running a bit out of time now, so I'll, um,
I'll just draw it to draw it to a conclusion by making several points about so sorry that went forward and.
Okay. Well, you can hope you can see that. You can handle that. Okay.
Thank you. This is the main concern. The main thing is that the fundament of what the Russians are up to at the moment,
I think is trying to colour revolution, a colour revolution proof Russia.
This is the photo I took at one of the demonstrations not long ago.
And I draw your attention not not to this part that we recognise, but this part, and that is an orange snake.
Orange being the colour of revolution in Ukraine gripped in the black fist.
That is the predominant concern. Now, of course, we have concerns.
They have concerns about about European security and enlargement of netone and so on.
But NAITO itself is not viewed as a major threat.
What is a major threat is the US, a US led colour revolution launched in Russia over the next 2 to 5 years.
We see increasing mention of this and why is this important?
First, you have the the parliamentary elections in 2016 scheduled for 2016.
Then you have the presidential elections scheduled for 2018. And what we have is this is this view from Moscow that an an opponent,
a threatening opponent has launched wars of human intervention, wars of controlled chaos,
wars of colour, revolution, whichever of those three you wish to call them deliberately to undermine regimes they do not like,
bring them down and then replace them.
And I draw you back to that list of that historical list I mentioned of Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine.
And this is and the Arab Spring, of course, features very, very prominently in this.
And this is what the Russians see the West preparing for them over the next five years.
Now nobody is saying and we can come back to it in the Q&A that there is not a serious problem in European security.
Absolutely there is. But this is not the number one point for the Russians because they don't believe that they started it.
They believe that they were responding to NATO's NATO enlargement and the U.S. involvement.
They believe that they have seen in Ukraine an attempt to create a colour revolution of war by colour revolution and have succeeded.
So it's a preparatory for what they're going to try and launch on to Russia.
I'd be surprised if many people in the room here agreed with that, but that's not my point.
This is, again, they're trying trying to move away to see the strategic horizon from from the Russian the Russian view.
And as a result, the Russians have been trying to create an emergency conditions to defibrillate their system, as I've called it,
to prepare the society for that, whether this be through economic measures,
whether this be through social measures or internal interior security measures.
I don't think personally that the West is trying to launch a colour revolution on Russia.
But let me leave that to one side for a second. Strategy making in Russia is very, very difficult.
This sense of creation of power is very difficult. But the the manual control that they have at the moment,
which is where Putin turns up to power or the Far East and focuses specifically like the White House on you, that's real power creation.
But like a lighthouse, it has to move on and it moves on, moves away, and then it comes down to you.
And in fact, manual control can be understood in this way that the blaze is really hard on you.
Manual control is very tough, very serious. But it only comes round once in a while.
So this this this is that ambiguity I want to come to with that.
But many of the measures that they're implementing to try to defibrillate the system are not, in fact, necessarily working.
For instance, it's unclear that the corruption campaign will necessarily resolve the problem or relieve the burden on the budget.
It is unclear at the moment whether the the rotation will will lead to any greater efficiency in the implementation of instructions.
It is unclear that the that the shift from state state focussed budget to program
focussed budget is actually going to settle in and be more functional and save money.
So we're likely to see a continuation, in my view.
I know it's easy to say continuity, continuity more than change,
but we're likely to see an acceleration of this defibrillator process that, in my view, will move towards mobilisation.
They're already rehearsing mobilisation. We have we have some of the people I put up on on the photos here asking Putin Sheik,
who asked Putin recently to have regional governors, military militarily trained and to rehearse mobilising that region in case of war.
We have the the left, the narrative front, practising societal mobilisation.
We have the Finance Ministry explicitly talking in public about the possibility for mobilisation budgets.
So in my mind, this is this is where we are. This is where we are working towards with the Russians.
And that is why I spoke mostly about strategy and less about mobilisation, because my my work is effectively the hinge of two projects,
one of which I spent a fair amount of time on, as you can probably tell, Hope and the other, which I'm just starting, which is, is Mobilisation one.
For me, that whole strategy is it's very important to the Russian leadership consistent element of strategic planning and thinking.
It's based in a team, but they have this political idea rather than a strategy.
Because of the great difficulty of implementing planning and their efforts to defibrillate
the system are likely to make the system continue to function in the way it does.
But under greater pressure, it won't make it any more.
More pretty, probably not much more effective.
So again, we'll have a with version of the Russian right.
Nicolosi, was that too effective? Not not beautiful, but effective.
Certainly not efficient. And on that note, I'll finish.
Thank you very much for your attention.