I'm Steve Gutterman, the editor of RFE/RL's Russia/Ukraine/Belarus Desk.
Welcome to The Week In Russia, in which I dissect the key developments in Russian politics and society over the previous week and look at what's ahead. To receive The Week In Russia newsletter in your inbox, click here.
Twenty years ago, an important part of President Vladimir Putin's agenda for an oil-fueled Russian resurgence was building ties with the West. His war on Ukraine has destroyed them instead.
Here are some of the key developments in Russia over the past week and some of the takeaways going forward.
Obsession
On a hot August day in 2003, Putin and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi boarded the missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of Russia's Black Sea Fleet that was moored near the site of a summit of the two leaders on Sardinia.
As the local media outlet L'Unione Sarda pointed out last year, the Moskva now lies "at the bottom of the Black Sea, torn apart by two Neptune missiles" -- an unseen symbol of what, for Putin, has gone wrong with the invasion he launched in a bid to subjugate Ukraine.
On a broader level, it's a symbol of the stark and in many ways disastrous path Putin has pulled Russia down over his years in power and the way Moscow's relations with the West, once promising, have become adversarial, confrontational, and increasingly tense, in large part due to what seems to be his obsession with controlling Ukraine.
On one level, the meeting with Berlusconi aboard the Moskva in the Mediterranean 20 years ago was part of a push by Putin, still in his first term, to portray post-Soviet Russia as a resurgent naval power by sending warships to distant locations.
'Language Of Peace'
But it was also part of his effort to build up relations with the West. U.S. ships moved away from the Sardinian mooring to make room for the Moskva, and the NATO-Russia Council, a forum that fostered cooperation and raised Russia's status in relations with the Western alliance to that of an equal partner, at least on paper, had been established in 2002.
Putin "spoke a language of peace" at the meeting, L'Unione Sarda said.
Twenty years later, he speaks a language of war, repeatedly casting the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine as a defensive war against the U.S.-led effort to tear Russia apart and impose its will on the world.
And 20 years later, with Russian-NATO ties in tatters, it is Ukraine that's expected to have its relations with the alliance elevated to the council level -- amid increasing discussion about "when and how" it might join the alliance.
Putin's decision to unleash the large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has clouded Russia's future and cast a shadow over his time in power -- a period that covers close to a quarter-century, since President Boris Yeltsin made him prime minister, and tapped him as his favored successor, in August 1999.
For some, it's tempting to see these developments as inevitable, or at least predictable, pointing to a long Russian history of conquest and colonialism, not to mention oppression at home.
But while there was plenty of tension with the West and some with Ukraine during the Yeltsin era, the future of Russia and its foreign relations was still undetermined in 2003.
"You have sense of a real missed opportunity on the part of the current Russian leadership," Jonathan Elkind, who was the Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian director on the U.S. National Security Council in the later years of Bill Clinton's 1993-2001 presidency, told RFE/RL this week.
Putin has repeatedly blamed the United States for the deterioration of ties, while U.S. officials and others in the West say Putin rejected good-faith efforts to foster increased cooperation and forge better ties.
"My sense is that Mr. Putin has benefited from being able to have an external enemy to blame, and that's played as big or a bigger role than any other factor out there," Elkind said.
Moscow's ties with the United States and Europe had their highs and lows in the years after 2003, but with the exception of a short-lived "reset" under U.S. President Barack Obama it was mostly downhill.
Out The Window
The start of the downturn can arguably be dated to 2004, when Putin laid part of the blame for a series of deadly terrorist attacks in Russia on Washington and the West. He also responded to the Beslan school attack and two nearly simultaneous airliner bombings by rolling back progress on rights and democracy at home, adding to animus in relations with the United States and Europe.
In 2003, those developments had not yet occurred. Three months before the Sardinia visit, Putin hosted world leaders in his hometown for another gathering that reflected both his effort to portray himself and his country as just that -- world leaders -- and his apparent desire to increase cooperation with the West: a celebration marking 300 years since the founding of St. Petersburg.
The symbolism could hardly have been more obvious. For Tsar Peter I, or Peter the Great, the grandiose city he had built with the help of European architects, builders, and engineers was Russia's "window on the West" -- and Putin, three centuries later, was casting a country emerging from decades of Cold War confrontation with the West as part of Europe.
For many years, Putin has also hosted the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, an event that in the past drew Western business leaders and promoted Russia as a key player in the world economy.
This year, no prominent figures from the West were present at the June 14-17 event, and journalists from what the Kremlin deems "unfriendly countries" were barred from attending.
The contrast between this year's forum and those in the past, as well as the 300th anniversary event in St. Petersburg in 2003, is glaring.
Even back then, though, Putin may have focused more on Peter I's legacy of conquest and expansion than on the importance he placed on ties with the West.
Peter conceived St. Petersburg, "put it on its feet and made it great," Putin said during the anniversary ceremonies, asserting that it was built "with an imperial shine and a broad scale" that were "worthy of a city that aspired to worldwide importance."
Since he launched the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin's public comments on the tsar have focused on territorial expansion, not modernization or international cooperation.
In December 2022, hailing Russia's capture of the Ukrainian shores of the Sea of Azov -- the main accomplishment of his forces in the war, and one in which they have razed cities and towns and killed thousands of the Russian speakers he has falsely claimed to be protecting -- Putin said that Peter had sought access to the sea.
Last June, he likened himself to Peter, saying that in an early 18th-century war against Sweden, the tsar had returned lands that were rightfully Russian and strengthened the country, and suggesting he was doing the same today in Ukraine.
Battlefield Report
As Ukraine mounts a long-anticipated counteroffensive, it's unclear whether Russia will maintain control over any of the Ukrainian territory it has seized since 2014, when Russian forces occupied the Crimean Peninsula. And when the war is over or grinds to a standstill, Russia may be weaker, not stronger, than it has been in a long time.
Despite that risk, Putin seems likely to keep his war against Ukraine going for years if he can, analysts say. He will "stick to his selective perception of reality, looking for reasons for and ways to further escalate his addictive crusade against the current world order," Maxim Samorukov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, wrote in an article for Foreign Policy magazine .
In Ukraine, that means a long slog. Putin himself has little to gain from stopping the war anytime soon, especially if the Ukrainian counteroffensive proves successful.
In an interview with RFE/RL's Georgian Service, historian and author Orlando Figes said Putin may end up being seen as less similar to Peter than to Nicholas I, who "went to war against the whole of Europe in order to defend what he saw as the Greater Russia stretching to the Balkans, and indeed in a metaphysical sense to the Holy Lands, where he went to war to bully the Turks into giving the Orthodox the rights over the holy shrines, and that involved what we now know as the Crimean War, which went disastrously badly for him."
Nicholas "lost the Crimean War and went down in late-19th-century history as the worst tsar of all time, really," Figes said. "It looks increasingly like Putin might end up with that destiny rather than any great stature he wants for himself.... I doubt very much at this point [that] he's going to get that."
That's it from me this week. The next edition of The Week In Russia will appear on June 30.
If you want to know more, catch up on my podcast The Week Ahead In Russia, out every Monday, here on our site or wherever you get your podcasts (Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts).
Yours,
Steve Gutterman
