We've almost gotten used to the war in Ukraine, but that doesn't necessarily mean the dangers that lie ahead have become smaller or that we know better how to manage them. In fact, in the shadow of the Middle East conflict and favored by the political disputes in the US and in Europe, Russia has managed to strengthen itself militarily, a fact that gives it the opportunity to approach the prospects of the war in a different key. Beyond Ukraine, Moscow is working on three fronts: strengthening the regime by "shaking up" its own elite, establishing governments-in-exile in former Soviet satellites, and promoting a pro-Russian discourse in the West.
The corruption scandal at the top of the Russian Ministry of Defense: a warning for the elites
Judging by the news coming out of Russia, the regime is engaged in a colossal effort to prepare the country and society for a long-lasting and, if the situation demands it, large-scale war. The arrest of Timur Ivanov, the deputy minister of defense, is undoubtedly an important move in the traditional competition between the army and the special services, but viewed from a wider perspective it acquires other, deeper meanings. Corruption at the top of the Russian army has long been a part of Russian military folklore, so whatever Defense office the prosecutors and accountants walked into, it wouldn't be hard for them to find evidence to detain someone. Timur Ivanov was chosen specifically not only because he is close to Serghei Shoigu or because he is one of his "wallets". Ruslav Talikov, another deputy, still in office, fulfills a similar role, and according to "VCK-OGPU", usually informed by "confidential sources", Tatiana Shevtsova, head of the Ministry's financial service and deputy minister, shouldn’t feel very comfortable either.
Ivanov is one in a fairly long series of more or less high-profile corruption cases featuring officers with positions in the Russian intelligence apparatus. More than the military or the bureaucrats at the top, it’s Russia's intelligence officers that are truly connected to the inner reaches of the regime, the foundations of which lie not only in their structures, but especially in the way they see the world and act. Once the ranks of the Chekists with "iron arms and warm hearts" "cleansed", it was the turn of the military. If Putin is truly redoubtable at anything, then surely that is fighting the apparatus with all due arsenal. Therefore, Ivanov's arrest is aimed at having an impact on several levels.
First of all, Ivanov was chosen not because he had a bigger palace than others or because he had more properties abroad. Blinded by the mirage of colossal sums, which he gained through the well-known bureaucratic procedures that can be found in our country as well and the usual connections with the Ministry of Defense, Ivanov and his extended family not only lived a life worthy of Saudi princes, but also displayed it on all possible channels. The trips to the West, his offspring’s apartments in London and Paris, the usual summer vacation on the Cote d'Azur, the luxury cars and the endless parties were all "documented" through increasingly indecent photos and texts. So explicit that, a year ago, the people from the "Alexey Navalnyi" Foundation did not find it very difficult to make a documentary, well garnished with evidence, about Ivanov's business connections and his lifestyle. All the more so that, with the ample contribution of his beloved Svetlana Zaharova-Maniovich-Ivanov, Timur had turned into an important figure among Moscow’s socialites. The countless photos of the two, on yachts, in various exotic places, but especially those in which the two, flanked by the heraldic insignia of Imperial Russia, were sitting on real imperial stilts, certainly irritated not only those stuck in Ukraine’s trenches, but also people in the Kremlin cabinets. The opulent lifestyle and especially his reputation as an admirer of the West, or rather luxury western products, seem to have been fatal to Ivanov.
Engaged in a full process of disciplining society, with hundreds of cases of people sent to prison for the smallest gestures of opposition, the regime needed a resounding case to show that even those at the top obeyed the same rules as "common people". Corruption is only the public side of the Ivanov case. The return to order of Shoigu's military, to whom the developments on the front in Ukraine seem to have given wings, was another expected effect of the spectacular arrest. Not by chance, in the first images of Ivanov in the defendant’s stand, he was still wearing the uniform of a major general, a sign of the fact that no rank is too high for the Tsar's fierce justice.
The Ivanov scandal shows that Putin and his ilk are still living in Stalin's era. Corruption is only the public facet of the scandal and not the most important one. Suspicions of treason are definitely looming over Shoigu's former deputy, and the internal logic of the purges suggests that everything will end with accusations related to a plot. In the end, a whole lot will stand before the judges, and the trial will be a secret one, resulting in a few exemplary sentences. In reality, the regime is giving the elites the real shock treatment.
The Ministry of Defense, amid the war, is the most visible institution, but it is not the only one targeted. Another multi-faceted corruption scandal is in full swing targeting those who have ruled the Moscow Region until 2022. Another, less high-profile but equally important attack is underway on the big entrepreneurs, whom Putin even threatened with nationalization, in the case of behavior likely to harm national interests. The Russian economy, society and political elites are thus placed in full mobilization effort. The goal of the treatment is to establish the new rules of the game, thus making the entire system more sensitive to the Kremlin's commands.
Those who rule Russia do not know where the war in Ukraine will lead, nor have they set a maximum limit for its possible escalation. Mobilizing society, disciplining elites through fear, and bringing much of the economy under state control are meant to give the Kremlin the ability to provide appropriate responses to the full range of challenges it might hypothetically face. Russia is thus preparing for a freezing of the conflict, for its considerable extension, but also for a possible expansion.
The ex-Soviet space, in Putin's sights: The West, threatened with war not to interfere, governments in exile, destabilization. The case of the Republic of Moldova
Moscow is well aware that expanding the war, even at the risk of drawing in NATO, would have limited military effects. The losses caused to Russia through the use of conventional weapons, no matter how overwhelming the superiority of NATO, are from the start limited by the possibility of using nuclear weapons. And there is absolutely no doubt that the Kremlin regime will use it when its stability is threatened. Instead, the political problems that the specter of an imminent expansion of the war could cause for the other camp seem to outweigh the risks to which Moscow is exposed. NATO countries do not enjoy the "privilege" of silenced societies or the levers of an already mobilized economy, not to mention the endless string of elections this year and the fact that two of them are already led by leaders who constantly repeat the Kremlin’s theses. The military aid that Ukraine will receive from the US is not meant to radically alter the war, but rather to balance it. Washington's main concern is that it does not escalate. Ukrainians now have to fight not only for their survival, but also for regaining the attention and sympathy of the West, which is a rather complicated task in the current electoral context. Moscow also knows very well that this is the right time to spread confusion and especially to frighten the Western electorate with the specter of a war it does not want and is not ready for.
That is why Moscow is intensively preparing for the long-term struggle on the ground of ideology and propaganda, perfecting its complex diversionary system that it already uses in most countries. In addition to the famous troll farms, the programs prepared for various populist parties, and the tribunes it offers to marginals and criminals-turned-civic activists, Russia has returned to the traditional practice of "national" governments-in-exile. It already has one for Ukraine, and now it's Moldova's turn. As the historian Octavian Tîcu states, the "Pobeda" Bloc, formed in Moscow around the fugitive Ilan Shor, has not so much the role of an opposition to the PAS government, but mainly that of a pro-Kremlin government in exile. Attracting Shor’s middleperson in the Comrat, Evghenia Guțul, in this toxic political montage, is intended to provoke the Chisinau authorities to take firm measures, which once credible international organizations, such as Amnesty International, can then qualify as violation of human rights.
As long as it cannot directly intervene in Transnistria and Gagauzia, Moscow will only stir up spirits, hoping that the commotion and confusion it creates will bring new opportunities for action. Shor's statements, about how Moldova is becoming a "training ground" for the West or how Poland, another country with weight in the Russian political imagination, aims to turn the "republic" into a camp for African refugees in Europe, show that Russian propaganda relies heavily on the ignorance of the audience to whom it is addressed. Such an "audience", as opposed to those more accustomed to exercising the critical spirit, represents the ideal human material for the disturbances orchestrated by the Kremlin. Moscow has managed before, in 1924, to transform Romania into an international icon of repressive chauvinism, after personalities like Romain Rolland and Thomas Mann or propagandists like Henri Barbusse stood up with all their might to defend the diversionists from Tatarbunary.
People like Sergei Kirienko or Nikolai Patrushev, despite the fact that they display all the external attributes of contemporaneity, think and act in the patterns of the last century, and their main period of inspiration is Stalinism, in all its phases. That is precisely why, in the short term, Moscow does not even try to imagine new scenarios for the Republic of Moldova. It is certain that it uses the new technologies, but the patterns in which it acts are the old ones, because the mentalities of those targeted are of the same nature.
The protocol between Evghenia Guțul and Promzvizbank, a Moscow bank that has been under American sanctions since 2022, represents the beginning of a diversionary montage, which is announced to be explosive. Because it could not let Guțul return to Comrat empty-handed, the Kremlin promised pensioners in Gagauzia that it would pay them a monthly financial supplement, but in the accounts opened at the bank serving the military system, Promzvizbank. The "aid" provided by Moscow, which might be coming from the billion stolen from the Moldovan banking system, in addition to being intended to strengthen the support of Russian-speaking Gagauzians for Putin's policies, is also meant to emphasize the fact that Gagauzia and Transnistria, whose citizens already benefit from such a "supplement", are on the same plane in Russia’s political projections. Moscow is trying to further fracture Moldova, preparing the ground for an uprising in Gagauzia. The aim is to show that Chisinau's rapprochement with the EU and breaking its dependence on Moscow will lead to a new civil war.
The probability that Moscow will achieve the expected effect is directly proportional to the degree of hysteria to which the population here will be brought. Shor's interlocutors from Comrat must ask for the most unreasonable things, tell the most absurd lies and make the most revolting gestures, in order to provoke a sharp reaction from Chisinau. Only in this way, Shor and his supporters from Gagauzia can become the innocent victims of the police "repression" of the "Sandu regime". The hysterical reactions of the "victorious" returned from Moscow, when they were questioned by the policemen at Chisinau Airport, show that any pretext is good for trying to stage provocations. In this context, Moldovan citizens collecting financial benefits from the Kremlin, through the bank of the Russian military-industrial complex, which is under international sanctions, while the Government is negotiating EU accession and preparing a referendum on it, in the midst of a war of Russia on its border, it is a situation that promises a lot of political tension. Chisinau must use the scalpel and speech to cut the Kremlin's Gordian Knot of lies, but firmness and force must be that of the sword.
The Kremlin's plan: to export Putinism as a legitimate political trend and revitalize the war in Ukraine
In the medium and long term, Moscow relies on controlling the intellectual space of the countries it considers part of its "domestic empire." After the publication of "Pobeda", also in Moscow, there followed the launch of a new "non-governmental" organization, which could not be called anything other than "Eurasia". Aimed at fostering "cultural and business relations" between Russia and the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova, the organization bills itself as the "near foreign" equivalent of Russia's Internet Development Institute. Thus, the "strategists" in Moscow intend to remove the funding of various pro-Kremlin initiatives in the mentioned countries from the proximity of the charge of treason, to give them an honorability similar to that of international research projects and cross-border collaboration. Russia has had such international initiatives before, but most of them targeted specific groups of people or poorly masked political stakes invested in various characters. Now, however, the initiative is announced to be somewhat more refined and aims for long-lasting effects, as it aims to "counteract Western cultural influence" on spaces that, due to their structure and recent traditions, are quite permeable to the Kremlin's propaganda messages.
The demonstrative transparency of pro-Kremlin public initiatives in various countries shows that the Presidential Administration has moved to a new phase of the ideological war it is waging in Europe and beyond. One in which Putinism has managed to overcome the "dirty secret" stage, turning into an apparently legitimate political trend. Little by little, through relativization, abstraction, concealment, lies and corruption, the Kremlin has almost managed to remove the war in Ukraine from the space of law and morality and place it in a false cultural context, which is intended to be much wider. The aim is to turn a premeditated murder into a "crime of passion", in which there seem to be no victims and killers, only dramatic circumstances and a tragic shared history. It is in the Kremlin's interest that the war of occupation it is waging in Ukraine be "dissolved" in the issues of uncontrolled migration, discussed in terms of the inherent conflict between tradition and modernity, and reduced to the scale of deceptive geopolitical reasoning. Thus, its goals can be more easily concealed, its crimes overlooked, and the anarchy it tends to spread in the international system seen as an alternative.
