The challenger

Vladimir Putin takes on democracy, the West and all-comers

THE drama playing out in the streets of Ukraine in recent weeks has been gripping in its own terms. But its bigger significance for the West lies north-east of Kiev, in Russia. As the tide moves towards a presidential election victory for the opposition leader, Victor Yushchenko, on December 26th, the efforts of Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, to thwart him have looked ever more cack-handed. But they have also depressed those who still hoped that Mr Putin's Russia might move, slowly and tortuously, on to a path leading to political liberalism - and that he might prove an ally not a foe of the West.

As if Russia's intervention in Ukraine were not enough, the Kremlin's anti-western rhetoric has also risen. In an excess of hypocrisy even by Soviet standards, Mr Putin and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, have accused the West of meddling in Ukraine in order to destabilise the region. This week Mr Lavrov attacked the Organisation of Security and Co-operation in Europe, whose monitors declared the Ukrainian election fraudulent three weeks ago. Mr Putin then widened the field of assault by criticising Iraq's interim government and its plans to hold elections next month.

Even as political confrontation with Mr Putin has been building, the Yukos affair, which has been playing out since the arrest last year of the oil company's chief executive and biggest shareholder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has moved towards a denouement. Under pressure from gargantuan tax demands, Yukos is heading for bankruptcy. Its main oil assets are going to fall into the hands of Gazprom, the state-controlled gas company. This confirms that Russia under Mr Putin is no longer - if it ever was - on a clear path towards economic liberalism, either. In short, Ukraine, bellicose noises from the Kremlin and the Yukos saga all make it timely for the West to reappraise the direction in which Mr Putin is taking Russia - and to re-evaluate its policies towards him.

The boss

That Mr Putin is more of an autocrat than a democrat has been clear ever since he became Russia's president in 2000. Yet after the chaos of the Yeltsin years, many hoped that he would at least bring order, a respect for property rights and the rule of law - and that, in time, these might permit the institutions of a liberal democracy to take root. Such hopes led many European leaders to reach out to Mr Putin, and refrain from criticism over matters as the war in Chechnya, human rights or press freedom. In 2001 America's George Bush famously looked into Mr Putin's eyes and got a feel for his soul - and found him straightforward and trustworthy. As recently as last year, Mr Bush declared that freedom and the rule of law prevailed in Russia.

In truth, hopes that political pluralism might emerge in Russia were dashed even before Mr Putin's party swept to a two-thirds majority in Russia's lower house of parliament, the Duma, last December, and before Mr Putin himself was overwhelmingly re-elected in March. His snuffing out of all independent television and most independent newspapers, his hounding of wealthy businessmen (the “oligarchs”) who crossed him, and his rigging of elections all testified to the controlling instincts that one might expect in a former KGB officer. His connivance in the attempt to steal Ukraine's presidential election, his interference in Abkhazia, a Russian-sponsored part of Georgia, and in Moldova, and his support for the dictatorship in Belarus show that he applies these instincts not just in Russia but across the former Soviet Union, the break-up of which he has publicly regretted. Worse, his instinctive response to criticisms of Russian policy in its near-abroad has been to relapse into general hostility to the West. The West, in turn, has become frostier.

Economic illiberalism too

That left the economy as the one remaining area of hope for change. It has grown strongly under Mr Putin, thanks mainly to the good luck of sustained high oil prices, but helped too by sound macroeconomic policies. Foreign investors, forgetting that they were badly burnt by Russia's default in 1998, have flocked back. But the imminent demise of Yukos and the evidence that Mr Putin is more interested in reasserting state control over the economy than in pursuing economic liberalisation are making many pause once again.

This is not to say that Mr Khodorkovsky or the other oligarchs are saints. There was a case for putting right some of the wrong done in the privatisations of the 1990s that created the oligarchs, for instance by imposing a windfall tax on them and their companies. But the attack on Yukos, the best-run and most western-looking of Russian companies, was the worst cure of all: capricious, selective and motivated by politics not the rule of law. Fears that it might presage attacks on other companies seem confirmed by this week's news of an abrupt tax claim on VimpelCom, a telecoms firm.

Worse, it seems increasingly clear that the assault on Yukos was motivated in part by the desire of Mr Putin's associates in the Kremlin to enrich themselves. One of the least appealing features of Mr Putin's Russia has been a rising tide of corruption. Businessmen in Moscow say that, far from Mr Putin's new order helping to squeeze out corruption, it is now more pervasive than in the worst of the Yeltsin years. Corruption lies at the heart of many of Russia's most intractable problems, from the poor state of the army, to the war in Chechnya, to its ineffective policing and counter-terrorism. Mr Putin has admitted that many Russians might fear the police more than they do criminals. But his efforts to tackle corruption have been half-hearted at best - and, because he has fostered more state control and little respect for the rule of law, he has created precisely the conditions in which corruption thrives best. Meanwhile, the pro-business reforms promised for his second term are largely in limbo.

The conclusion is inescapable. Far from being a political and economic reformer who runs an admittedly flawed but still recognisable democracy, Mr Putin has become an obstacle to change who is in charge of an ill-managed autocracy. The question is, what can the West do about it?

The short answer is, not much. However ineffectual Mr Putin's foreign policy looks after Ukraine, his authority at home is unchallenged. Indeed, there is now talk of his finding some way to run for a third term in office. Moreover, compared with the Yeltsin period, when Russia depended on the IMF, the West has few economic or financial levers to pull. Instead, its growing dependence on Russian energy may actually be putting some levers into the Kremlin's hands.

Even so, firm recognition that Mr Putin is going in the wrong direction is much better than meek acquiescence. Western leaders have been encouragingly robust over Ukraine, rebutting Mr Putin's moans of interference. They can do more to help pro-democracy forces in Russia, especially the non-governmental organisations that are increasingly being harassed. They should extend no favours to Russia in its negotiations to join the World Trade Organisation; nor should they indulge Mr Putin as he prepares to preside over the G8 summit in Moscow in 2006. It may not be time to talk of a new cold war - Russia is not the threat that the Soviet Union was. But it is time to see Mr Putin as a challenger, and not a friend.

Editorial feature discusses Russian President Putin who 'takes on democracy, the West and all-comers'. It concludes that Mr Putin is more an autocrat than a democrat.

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