Putin sets Russia back decades, puts own future at risk: Exiled economist

PARIS (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has set the Russian economy back by decades and curtailed his own political lifespan with the invasion of Ukraine, a prominent exiled economist said on Wednesday (March 16).

Professor Sergei Guriev, a former Kremlin and Russian government adviser, called the assault on Ukraine a "great miscalculation" by Mr Putin.

The Russia leader gambled that a rapid military operation could shore up his domestic popularity, Prof Guriev told AFP in an interview.

Within a matter of weeks, Mr Putin has "destroyed" the Russian economy and precipitated a crisis unprecedented since the fall of the Soviet Union, added Prof Guriev.

"The last eight years were not great for Russia - it was eight years of stagnation. What we have now is a return to 20, 30 years back in terms of income levels and the structure of the economy," he said.

"Putin has managed to destroy the Russian economy within a matter of weeks."

A former adviser to former Russian president and premier Dmitry Medvedev and former rector of the respected New Economic School in Moscow, Prof Guriev fled Russia in 2013 in fear of arrest. He is now professor of economics at Sciences Po in Paris.

Even if mass censorship and repression are keeping protests in check for now, "the regime has become less stable and less durable", he told AFP.

He said "we are in completely uncharted territory", with sanctions meaning Russia is now decoupled from the globalised economy and in danger of running out of spare parts for manufacturing.

Prof Guriev said Mr Putin had hoped for a scenario similar to the 2014 invasion of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which Russia annexed in a matter of days in a relatively bloodless operation.

But his gamble in this invasion backfired due to the strength of Ukrainian resistance and unity of the West in agreeing on drastic sanctions.

"It has actually shortened the political life of his regime," said Prof Guriev, co-author of the book Spin Dictators, which looks at authoritarian strongmen in the modern world.

He said that even before the invasion the Russian economy was running out of steam, Mr Putin's own popularity slipping and his main opponent Alexei Navalny still posing a threat even from behind bars through social media campaigns.

"The growing fatigue with Mr Putin's regime resulted in this need to do something," he said. "So Mr Putin decided to take this risk and miscalculated."

Asked how long Mr Putin could survive politically, he replied: "It's very hard to predict the durability of non-democratic regimes. Sometimes they finish overnight and sometimes they last for decades."

"Eventually this regime is destined to fall as it offers no future, it destroys the plans and careers and income and investments of tens of millions of people," he said.

"People are unhappy and eventually it will result in the change of the regime."

Prof Guriev has launched a campaign called True Russia along with legendary ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov and detective fiction writer Boris Akunin that aims to gather funds from Russians for Ukrainian refugees.

Prof Guriev said that it was crucial for Europe to join the American embargo on buying Russian oil, saying the current high energy prices could otherwise help Mr Putin bolster his position.

"It is necessary to stop buying Russian oil," he said.

"At these high oil prices, he will amass money to pay his policemen, his soldiers and his mercenaries.

"If the goal of the sanctions is to stop Mr Putin's war, Europe has no choice but to stop buying Russian oil," he said.

Subsequently, the West should talk to China "to bring China on board for this oil embargo".

He argued that Mr Putin was falling victim to the weaknesses of his own system, cut off from real information due to the suppression of media, reliance on "Yes-men" and his own personal suspicion of the Internet.

"He overestimated the power of the Russian military, he underestimated the resolve of the Ukrainians to fight. He underestimated the unity of the West," said Prof Guriev.

"That means he is not well informed. This is not a bug, it is a feature of the system."