Mourners at the Palace Square on Nov. 1 in St. Petersburg, Russia.
For days, unnamed Western intelligence officials and Western heads of state have been implying that a bomb could very well have downed the Russian Metrojet plane carrying 224 Russians to St. Petersburg after a sunny vacation in Sharm el Sheikh. By Friday, French news media were reporting that a “sudden and brutal event” heard on the plane’s black box recordings was the likely culprit. Even the Kremlin, which has been vociferously denying the terrorism connection, canceled all Russian flights to Egypt and began making arrangements to airlift tens of thousands of Russian tourists still in the country.
If the plane was in fact felled by an act of terror — and let’s recall that the local franchise of the Islamic State claimed responsibility almost immediately — the attack seems to send a pretty clear message to Moscow: Welcome to the Middle East. But if this was in fact a terrorist attack avenging President Vladimir V. Putin’s air campaign in Syria, how will Putin react? Will he change his Syria policy in response? How will Russians respond to the sacrifice of hundreds of Russian civilians on the altar of Putin’s geopolitical ambitions?
If one examines the dynamics in Russia today, there seems little reason to expect the Kremlin to change course or face a public backlash.
When he launched Russia’s military campaign in Syria, Putin framed it as, first and foremost, a battle against terrorism and for domestic security. “The only real way to fight terrorism,” he said at the time, “is to act pre-emptively, to fight and destroy fighters and terrorists on territory they have already seized, and not to wait until they come to our house.” A terrorist attack on Russians abroad, if that’s what this was, only underscores the immediacy of that mission: Russians are in the Islamic State’s cross hairs, and we have to take the fight to them. This line of reasoning shouldn’t surprise any American who remembers 9/11.
If anything, Russian civilians becoming victims of Islamic State terror is not an internal problem for the Kremlin, but an external opportunity. “If there’s a terrorist attack in Egypt, that’s a problem of world safety,” says Masha Lipman, an independent political analyst in Moscow. “It’s not just our problem.” That is, after wriggling back into the company of Western powers by helping with the Iran deal and muscling back to at least the illusion of great power status by flying thousands of sorties over Syria, the Kremlin can use the terrorist attack as a way to cozy up to the West: You see? We are all in the same boat, all of us facing the same threat from the Islamic State.
It was the same card Putin played when he was the first world leader to call George W. Bush on 9/11 to offer sympathy. It was a call that intensified a lurching program of U.S.-Russian counterterrorism cooperation, which Washington seemed loath to end even as it imposed sanctions on Moscow in 2014.
Russian news media have been emphasizing — however disingenuously — that the Kremlin and the West have a common enemy in the Islamic State, and that Moscow is in many ways doing what Washington has only been talking about. Now, some in Russia fear that Western taunts of “we told you so” could enrage the Kremlin. “The United States and its allies might do the worst thing imaginable: use the terrorist act as propaganda against Russia’s Syrian campaign and thereby show solidarity with the terrorists,” says Gleb Pavlovsky, a Russian political scientist who served as a Kremlin adviser in the first decade of Putin’s rule. “I’m very afraid that there will be a new branch of the propaganda war where the West will blame the Kremlin for the terrorist act.” And the more the West lectures Russia on the dangers of engaging in the Middle East, Pavlovsky says, the more the Kremlin will respond with anti-Western propaganda.
It is unlikely that Putin will change anything militarily, especially if the West expects him to. Putin is notoriously averse to external pressure and often acts perpendicularly to it. If he responds at all, he responds at his own pace and often when attention and expectations have shifted. “There is a scenario of quick exit from Syria,” says Pavlovsky, “but only after demonstrable results. And it is very unlikely right after this.”
Nor is a public backlash likely. Russian television has covered the catastrophe in great detail, showing grieving relatives and the mass candlelit vigil in front of the St. Petersburg Winter Palace. But don’t expect the vigils to turn into anti-Putin, antiwar demonstrations. Russians are inured to tragedy. It doesn’t move them to action, but to fatalist declarations.
This week, The Times paint a characteristic reaction, quoting a Russian tourist in Egypt:
This week, The Times paint a characteristic reaction, quoting a Russian tourist in Egypt:
They shrug off the risks, exhale cigarette smoke and talk about destiny.
“Russia is dangerous and not safe either,” said Svetlana Golobitz, a pediatrician from St. Petersburg sucking on a cigarette just outside the terminal gate. “You can have an accident driving in a car or walking in the night; this is your fate,” she said. “I like this place, so I want to spend my winter here.”
This is not an unusual Russian reaction, even when it comes to terrorism. Russians are different from Americans in this respect, too: They are, to some extent, used to it. In 1999, several residential buildings in Moscow and buildings in southern Russia were bombed, killing hundreds. Then came Beslan, the theater hostage crisis and a dozen suicide bombings in Moscow.
Russia even knows airborne terror: In 2004, two passenger planes simultaneously fell out of the skies over Russia, brought down by two female suicide bombers. “At some point, probably in the 2000s, we became a country like Israel, where no one is surprised by terrorism,” says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs. “It’s terrible, but it’s part of life. We’ve become like that, it’s a fact of life.” After the Dubrovka theater standoff, in which over 100 hostages died, and after the Beslan school siege, in which nearly 400 people, most of them children, were killed, “after that,” says Lukyanov, “this is nothing.”
Russia even knows airborne terror: In 2004, two passenger planes simultaneously fell out of the skies over Russia, brought down by two female suicide bombers. “At some point, probably in the 2000s, we became a country like Israel, where no one is surprised by terrorism,” says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs. “It’s terrible, but it’s part of life. We’ve become like that, it’s a fact of life.” After the Dubrovka theater standoff, in which over 100 hostages died, and after the Beslan school siege, in which nearly 400 people, most of them children, were killed, “after that,” says Lukyanov, “this is nothing.”
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Russian television, for its part, has denied that the Metrojet liner was brought down by terrorists — which, for Russians, means it wasn’t brought down by terrorists. One comparable example: For a year, Russian television insisted that separatists rebels in eastern Ukraine didn’t down the Malaysian airliner, and today, only 3 percent of Russians hold the rebels responsible. And unlike after a similar tragedy in America, the coverage will slowly dissipate, and so will any potential source of political rage. “If you show grieving relatives day and night and say it could happen to you, maybe, but that’s not going to happen,” explains Lipman. “After Beslan, the coverage was all wrapped up very quickly. It was done very effectively.” She adds: “Different cultures show grief differently. We don’t have this culture to endlessly focus on the tragedy. In America, you do.”
Earlier this week, a group of artists floated caskets down St. Petersburg’s picturesque canals. They were emblazoned with the words “For what?” and “For whom?” It was a powerful gesture, but not one that is likely to sway the minds that need swaying. In Russia, it is not public opinion that shapes government policy; it is the other way around. On Nov. 2, two days after the crash and when there was still no public discussion of terrorism, Putin said that “no one has ever succeeded … in scaring the Russian people.” Four days after the crash, as Lipman notes in her article in The New Yorker, Russian television showed a grand, patriotic rally, 85,000 strong, celebrating Russia’s Day of National Unity. The message is clear: The more you try to terrorize the Russians, the more strongly they’ll band together, the more firmly they will stand shoulder to shoulder, the more resolute they will be in our fight.
It is, again, a sentiment that should be familiar to anyone who was around and sentiment on 9/11.
by Julia Ioffe who is a contributing writer for the New York Times
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