What Drives Putin. Hint: Not U.S. Elections
In agreeing to the swap that released Evan Gershkovich and others from prisons in Russia, “Putin no doubt has been reading the polls,” Fred Kaplan writes in Slate, “and he may have concluded that Trump is not going to win.” It made sense, then, Kaplan reasoned, for Putin to take the deal now.
Sure, Putin reads the polls. But this is an incorrect interpretation of the swap deal. It is important to understand why, given prevailing misconceptions of what animates Russia’s leader, who has been in power in the Kremlin for nearly a quarter century.
There is a saying in Russia, ‘once a Chekist, always a Chekist.’ Putin is a member of this fraternity, and so, too, is the key to this swap, Vadim Krasikov, an agent of the Federal Security Services, the FSB, which Putin himself once headed. The FSB is the principal successor to the Soviet-era KGB, in which Putin also toiled.
Krasikov was rotting away in a German prison, convicted of murdering, in broad daylight in Berlin, a Chechen exile. It was surely a state-ordered assassination, as is permitted under the law of the Russian Federation, for ‘enemies of the state’ on foreign soil.
In his interview with Tucker Carlson back in February, when Trump was riding high in the polls, and months before Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, Putin signaled that the “patriot” Krasikov was the crucial asset in any swap for Wall Street Journal reporter Gershkovich.
But there could be no such swap without the say so of the Germans who, understandably, were reluctant to let go of Putin’s hit man. Putin’s calculated remark was a signal to Biden, to work on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Biden got the message. Krasikov’s release, in this light, looks almost like a personal favor to America’s outgoing president.
Could Putin have counted on Scholz to make a deal with Trump for Gershkovich’s release? That seems doubtful. Trump is well known for casting scorn on Europe’s leaders, as deadbeat non-contributors to NATO. Putin gets that. He wanted his FSB man back—he reportedly knew Krasikov personally—and if the political credit in the U.S. went to Biden, so be it.
I doubt Putin cared that Trump (initially) fumed that the deal went through. In the Trump presidency, from 2017-2021, U.S. policy towards Russia was not especially to Putin’s liking. The Trump Administration put the kibosh on Putin’s cherished Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany. Trump also backed military aid to Ukrainian forces fighting Kremlin-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
The Chekist in the Kremlin long ago concluded that the West, led by Washington, is Russia’s dire foe. Analysts should stop fixating on his supposed obsession with U.S. election returns. Tsar Alexander III once famously said that Russia’s only real allies were its Army and Navy. And to those two, Putin would add its security services.