Daily Times

Better yet, can anybody trust Putin? Through his rise in the Kremlin during the Yeltsin years, statists, liberals and capitalists all thought he was one of them. The ex-KGB colonel then rode the coattails of Russian oligarchs to the presidency but, once there, disposed of them to consolidate power. Other than proving to be a master political player, the real President Vladimir Putin remains a mystery.
On September 18, IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly confirmed Russia could sell its Su-35 fighter jets to Pakistan along with the four Mi-35M helicopters. This news displeased New Delhi and the Indian premier, Narendra Modi, plans to protest Moscow’s decision at his annual summit with Putin in December. Furthermore, India will again have to redraw its “red line” for Russo-Pak relations, albeit more warily this time. The first instance was June last year when Russia lifted its arms embargo on Pakistan and again in November after the historic defence cooperation pact. India did not think there would be a third time.
As India’s politerati try to wrap their heads around Russia’s latest move, they would do well to focus on Putin himself instead of revisiting Cold War ideals. For, to be fair, long gone are those days when these comrades-in-socialism could dream about a working-class utopia. In the 21st century, both Russia and India have embraced wealth creation with a vigour not seen since the US gold rush.
Putin’s worldview shapes Russia’s fluid conduct towards India and informs his long hold on power. For well over a decade, he has stayed in the Kremlin by fanning the ‘us versus them’ narrative. In this adversarial approach to the west, Putin positions Russia as the sole independent voice in a world filled with US lackeys. For him, Modi’s pro-US policies are steadily moving India towards the them column. Additionally, Putin as a politician defies classification. The last Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, calls him a bigger communist than himself and his United Russia Party’s rule “a bad copy” of the former USSR. Putin, though, openly scorns both the Bolshevik movement and its founder Lenin. He calls communism a backward ideology and a “betrayal of national interests” that humiliated Russia in World War I.
Putin is most definitely a revanchist but not for the Soviet era since he speaks of Russia as a “state civilisation” with ethnic Russians as its “cultural nucleus”. Consequently, Russia’s actions during his reign mirror this nationalism. From South Ossetia to Donetsk to the Crimea, Putin’s interest extends to the Russophone pockets of the near abroad. His Russia appears to be a democracy but is really a ‘tandemocracy’ where Putin has swapped executive powers with Premier Dmitry Medvedev to work around Russia’s election laws.
Putin has three reasons for engaging Pakistan and they are based on his two primary weapons for challenging the west: oil and armaments. First, the US and EU sanctions on Russia for its role in the Ukraine conflict are starting to hurt to the point of a recession. In tandem, sliding oil prices are stalling an economy where energy exports account for 68 percent of annual revenues. Moreover, though India remains Russia’s biggest arms market, it is slowly moving into the US sphere of influence. Under Modi especially, India’s foreign policy is taking on shades of nonalignment and a focus on ‘brand India’ or, to borrow the old baseball maxim, “If you build it (meaning India), they will come.”
The equation then is simple. Putin needs cash and Pakistan wants military hardware. Also, with Russia’s urgent need for revenue streams away from the oil fields, investment in infrastructure is becoming a priority. Luckily for Putin, Pakistan, like Iran, has a significant infrastructural gap, especially in the energy sector, that Russian companies can plug. Strategically too, an alliance with Pakistan makes sense for Putin right now. With the warming of Sino-Russian relations in reaction to the sanctions on Russia and the aggressive US-backed Japanese posturing in the China Sea, Pakistan is a natural ally considering its own growing discontent with Washington. It is a good time to be friends.
If Pakistan keeps it all business with Putin, there will be no problems since there is an obvious convergence on regional security and economics. That said, it should shelve the thought that Russia will ever be the agony aunt of South Asia like the US was after the 1950s. Putin runs his country differently, so if we figure out his honour code and stick to it, everything should move along like clockwork.

The writer is a freelance columnist and audio engineer based in Islamabad