Legacy of Putin’s War on Terror Weighs Heavily on Modern Russia

Executive Summary:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin was propelled into power amid a series of deadly terrorist attacks in Russia in the 1990s. His tactics to combat this “war on terror” are being used today against Ukraine.
• In the 1990s, Russian propaganda and a boost to the economy mobilized the Russian people. Today, a deteriorating economy is worsening the lives of ordinary Russians as the long war continues, a fact that propaganda is not able to alter.
• Attempts to engage Putin in reasonable conversation on ending the war will fail, as he has always lacked essential leadership skills and has maintained a rigidly confrontational mindset.

In September 1999, Moscow and the whole of Russia were shaken by a series of deadly explosions that marked the beginning of a still ongoing era of autocratic degradation under the rule of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The perpetrators of those crimes were never prosecuted beyond reasonable doubt. There is no doubt, however, that the swift exploitation of this shock propelled Putin into power (The Moscow Times, September 18). The Russian polity was instantly reconfigured for waging war against presumed terrorists. The brutal projection of military power, which had roiled Russian society during the First Chechen War (1994–1996), became entirely acceptable in the second one. The effects of this pivotal point in Russian history are visible today as Putin wages his war against Ukraine using the same methods he used then.

The distortion of moral guidelines and the fragmentation of horizontal ties in Russian society has been sustained by propaganda and repression. In the last 32 months, the majority of Russians have been able to internalize and normalize the reality of partaking in the war against Ukraine (see EDM, February 29, August 14; Svoboda.org, September 2). Explosions still come as a shock to some families residing in high-rises in Moscow suburbs, but the atomized society is broadly accustomed to the strict suppression of news about increasingly frequent Ukrainian drone strikes (see EDM, April 18, 24, 25; Meduza, September 15). Concern spiked at the outset of theUkrainian offensive into Kursk oblast, but seven weeks into this unprecedented occupation of Russia’s territory by hostile forces, the alarm has dissipated (see EDM, August 14, 15, September 3; Verstka, September 20).

In the 1990s, Putin was able to boost support among the population for his campaign of subjugation against rebellious Chechnya through the sustained rise of the global oil market, which led to strong growth in Russia’s economy. A combination of public mobilization for the Chechen wars that were perceived as just and the inflow of gas revenues is in sharp contrast with the struggling economy and widespread concerns about the protracted war in Ukraine, which no amount of propaganda can make popular (see EDM, November 27, 2023, August 20, September 10; The Moscow Times, September 19). Official declarations of economic revival in Russia cannot hide the fact that the ideologically driven invasion into Ukraine is detrimental to Russia’s energy industry and damaging to its most profitable exports (see EDM, December 4, 2023; Re: Russia, September 19). The government has been forced to use crude and creative accounting to develop a draft budget published this week, which will appear balanced despite a massive increase in spending to support the war (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, September 18).

The Second Chechen War (1999–2009) was supposed to drive the revival of the Russian Army. In the ensuing decade, modernization of every element of the Armed Forces, from the Borei-class strategic submarines to the Armata main battle tanks, was prioritized in resource allocation (see EDM, May 6, 2020). The war in Ukraine, however, revealed that many of those investments had been wasted, as nuclear submarines remain idle and Armata tanks have never reached the battlefield (TopWar.ru, March 14). The storage of old Soviet weapons is the primary source of compensation for the heavy losses of armor and artillery in the frontal attacks, such as the ongoing battle for Pokrovsk, but in most depots, the numbers of usable vintage tanks and large-caliber guns are dwindling (see EDM, March 14, September 17; Svoboda.org, September 18). Criminalization, rather than the envisaged professionalization, is now a significant method for manning the Russian army, as the only way to maintain its numerical strength undercut by heavy casualties is recruitment from prisons (see EDM, October 31, November 8, 2023; Meduza, September 20). Putin’s latest decree on increasing the total strength of the armed forces by 180,000 people to reach 1.5 million personnel amounts merely to a bureaucratic maneuver aimed at postponing the hard decision on a new round of mobilization (see EDM, September 19; The Insider, September 20).  

Brutal as it was, Putin’s assault on Chechnya in the 1990s fit into the broad context of the US-led global war on terror, and Russia was instrumental in organizing the Northern Distribution Network supporting North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) operations in Afghanistan. In the war in Ukraine, Moscow relies on projecting terror as a means of weakening the Ukrainian will to resist aggression and attempts to spread fear of nuclear war to weaken the Western coalition (see EDM, March 27, October 10, 2023, September 3; Svoboda.org, September 10). Seeking to escape from isolation, Putin is cultivating ties with such rogues as Supreme Leader of North Korea Kim Jong Un. Last week, Sergei Shoigu, in his new role as Secretary of the Russian Security Council, was granted an audience with the North Korean dictator (see EDM, June 24; Lenta.ru, September 14). Another pariah state in Shoigu’s travel schedule was Iran, where he finalized a Russian-Iranian treaty on comprehensive strategic partnership (see EDM, June 20, 2023, February 22,  September 18; Rossiiskaya Gazeta, September 18). Dependency on Iran for the supply of drones and missiles compels Moscow to take sides with various pro-Iranian terrorist groupings, including not only Hezbollah in Lebanon but also the Houthis in Yemen (see EDM, August 8; Carnegie Politika, September 20).

Experience in combating domestic terrorism, which has never been completely eradicated, as the Crocus City Hall attack six months ago proved, reinforces Putin’s obsession with achieving victory (see EDM, March 26, 28; RIA Novosti, September 21). The fixation on the destruction of Ukraine makes all peace plans for Moscow’s war—including China’s proposed position paper on a political settlement to the conflict—irrelevant (Re: Russia, September 18). In Putin’s mind, Ukrainian missile strikes such as the hit on the Toropets artillery arsenal in the Tver region, are considered terrorist attacks. This makes compromises in negotiating an end to the war nearly impossible (The Insider, September 21). Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, however, seeks to take advantage of Russian intransigence to promote his maximalist peace plan, which he will present to the UN General Assembly this week (RBC, September 18).

The lessons Putin learned in the struggle against terrorism in the early 2000s became his template for later struggles. These lessons—about crudely manipulating public opinion, the effectiveness of the brutal application of force, and the negligible value of thousands of human lives—inform his strategy for waging the long war against Ukraine. His mindset is so rigidly confrontational that all attempts to engage him in reasonable conversation on ending the war—whether originating in Beijing or New Delhi—and all hopes for dissuading him from escalating the hostilities—whether cherished in Ankara or Berlin—are in vain. The war on terror wounded Russia, and the war on Ukraine has further traumatized and confused the country. However, healing can start only with Russia’s acceptance of responsibility for the crime of aggression.