An Interview with Sergey Glazyev
TNI speaks to Putin's famously blunt adviser.
The National Interest’s publisher, Dimitri K. Simes, recently interviewed Sergey Glazyev, who has a reputation for forthright and blunt speaking and is a close adviser to Russian president Vladimir Putin. Glazyev’s portfolio has included Ukraine and he is an expert in economics. In 2004 he ran for President of Russia. He was placed on the sanctions list by President Obama this March. The interview has been translated from Russian by Milena Tercheva.
Dimitri Simes: President Putin said that Russia was not planning to use force in Ukraine outside of Crimea. Under what conditions do you think Moscow might use force in Ukraine in any way?
Sergey Glazyev: First, I would like to say that Russia did not use force in Crimea; fortunately, there was no need of that because the Crimeans handled the situation themselves. There wasn’t a single death, excluding two women who had fallen victim to radical Islamic protesters during the Simferopol protests before the referendum in Crimea. All work on the proclamation of independence of Crimea, all sessions of the Supreme Council and the referendum itself passed without the use of the Russian armed forces, without even the need for their intervention, without any victims or shots fired, which proves that the Crimean population managed everything on its own.
D. Simes: How about the people murdered by snipers?
S. Glazyev: The tragedy of the sniper murders happened after the referendum, when Crimea was signing the treaty to join Russia. As far as we can tell, these were Right Sector (Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary) snipers who had illegally entered into Crimean territory.
D. Simes: When we talk about the use or non-use of force in the rest of Ukraine, do you envision a scenario under which Russia would send its military into eastern Ukraine? In your opinion, is there anything that could lead to such actions?
S. Glazyev: I cannot give you a definitive answer to this question, because our President still has the authorization given to him by the Council of the Federation in accordance with our Constitution to use the armed forces in Ukraine as a last resort to save people. At the moment, there is no necessity to resort to that, and I am confident the President is not presently planning such actions. I can furthermore tell you that, even in Crimea, about two weeks before the referendum, there were no plans to use the military among the Russian leadership, and even among our Crimean colleagues. The application of Putin to the Council of the Federation to use force was a reaction to two things— the shooting at a delegation of Crimeans coming back from Kiev who were ambushed and shot at by neo-fascist paramilitaries that stopped the five busses of the delegation, shot several people who protested, and stripped and taunted the rest; and to further threats by Maydan activists to Russians and Russian speakers. The paramilitaries burned the busses, and when Crimea learned of this disgrace, there was nothing that could stop its further course towards independence.
Should such events happen in other parts of Ukraine, people would obviously fight for their rights and safety, and call not just on Russia, but also on the international community, for help. This would be a direct consequence of the fact that, at present, neo-fascists in the South-East of Ukraine are committing outrages, resorting to armed violence, to lynch law, to the burning of houses of people they don’t like, and these aren’t just isolated cases. They began with the secret murder of an old woman on whom they put a sign “Jew and communist.” Such murders have now evolved to square gunfire in open daylight. People are being intimidated and shot at with sub-machine guns as arms have now been moved out of the barracks and kept in the suburbs of Ukrainian cities. Among the army forces stationed there are neo-fascists come from Western Ukraine who were readily accepted into the ranks. The situation is inching closer to civil war, and in a civil war, or in mass cases of armed vigilantes shooting people, regardless of whether the perpetrators wear a police or military uniform, it will be not just Russia, but also the international community that would protect people.
D. Simes: Two more questions. The first is about the economic sanctions that the U.S. imposed on Russia. As I understand, Putin said today that Russia is not going to retaliate to the latest round of sanctions. But is there going to be any response to them; perhaps not an economic, but an asymmetric one? Or did Moscow just reach the conclusion that it will not play the game of economic sanctions?
S. Glazyev: We see that the main victims of the sanctions are the countries that imposed them. The only serious repercussion of the U.S. sanctions was the undermining of trust in the United States on the part of Russian business.
Russian business was literally shocked that, in the U.S., irresponsible officials, political activists, and radically-inclined political analysts can work to impose sanctions on foreign banks and corporations. No one here ever imagined that in a country such as the United States, there could be the most egregious violation of civil law and business relations. Russian business could not imagine that any businessman in America can be frivolously deprived of his or her money; that corporations of sovereign countries can be arbitrarily blocked, accounts frozen or transactions canceled. The main consequence of the American sanctions on Russia is the loss of trust in America as a business partner by Russian business. If earlier the U.S. symbolized reliability for doing business, and many people aimed to insure and protect their business by working in the United States, used American banks for their savings, and invested in America, including by buying property, because they thought the U.S. was very reliable. This trust has now evaporated. The sanctions have completely shattered the illusions of Russian businessmen and anyone who had any business relations with the U.S. It turned out that in the U.S., a person could be deprived of all property, even of civil rights, because some State Department appointees took to heart the statements of political analysts and journalists, and could authorize such decisions. We are indeed very shocked.
Now, on the question of EU sanctions. Their imposition was an even stranger initiative opposed practically by all European businesses. But European politicians pressured by journalists who have created a myth of some Russian threat to Europe in Ukraine are ready to adopt sanctions that would victimize first and foremost their own countries. For instance, if we assume that they would adopt sanctions against Russia similar to those against Iran, according to our calculations, this would cost the EU 1 trillion euro. The sanctions would disproportionately affect the Baltic republics: for example, the potential losses for Estonia are estimated at the size of Estonia’s annual GDP; Latvia and Lithuania would incur losses the size of half of their annual respective GDPs; Germany would incur a loss of 200 billion euro. More than anyone else, the sanctions would punish Ukraine, for whose good, ostensibly, they are being adopted, according to all those political analysts and journalists. Considering Ukraine depends on Russia more than the other European countries, it would take the hardest hit. So we are very skeptical when looking at the hysteria coming from European Union politicians demanding sanctions against Russia, especially those from the Baltic republics that would end up in the worst economic pain.
D. Simes: And how much will Russia suffer? In Washington, in some official circles, and especially in Congress, there is the hope that Russia has done the math not just with regard to how much sanctions would hurt Europe, but with regard to how much they will hurt the Russian economy and that ultimately this math will force Moscow to change its course. Did you do this math? What were your conclusions?
S. Glazyev: The extent to which the Russian economy will suffer will depend on the extent to which it is involved in trade with the NATO countries. We are not looking at potential sanctions from China, India, Brazil, the CIS, or Turkey. If sanctions are imposed on Russia by the NATO partners of the U.S. excluding Turkey, which leaves the European Union, we are talking about potential losses in the size of hundreds of billions of dollars. But these losses will have a boomerang effect. In other words, if Russian accounts in dollars and euros are frozen, this will mean that the Russian borrowers who have taken credit, mainly Russian businesses who have borrowed from the EU and partly from the U.S. and other countries, will not be able to make payments on their debt, and presently this debt is worth about $700 billion. Our financial reserves are half a trillion dollars, but our debt is larger still at $700 billion. We will of course lose hundreds of billions, but Europe will lose even more. We are therefore confident that Europeans, being rational and valuing business, will after all listen to their business sector when it explains to the politicians that these sanctions will hurt Europe more than Russia, and will in the long run weaken Europe because, after all, Europe cannot give up Russian gas. And if Europe does impose sanctions, this means that it will have to pay for gas in Russian roubles because it will have banned transactions in dollars and euros. This will ultimately strengthen our financial system. We are thus optimistic about sanctions because with them, the EU would stimulate rouble transactions and the use of Russian financial instruments in trade, while the volume of trade with us that Europe is unable to give up is pretty high.
D. Simes: And what about the sanctions directly imposed on you? Do they hurt you or do you see them as an empty gesture?
S. Glazyev: I am personally not negatively affected because I have neither property nor accounts of any sort in the United States. I had no plans to come to America.
D. Simes: And one last, philosophical, but very important question. In the U.S., it is considered that now is a low period of U.S.-Russian relations, but it is still far from a Cold War, and that the U.S. need not worry about cooperating with Russia on other issues such as Iran and Syria. How would you describe the situation—is it a Cold War? Can we spar and punish each other over Ukraine, but still work normally on other problems?
S. Glazyev: Our feeling of danger for U.S.-Russian relations is based on more than business relations and sanctions. We have already calculated the consequences of and responses to the sanctions imposed by Washington. What worries us are the American actions in Ukraine and the CIS, as well as the EU Eastern Partnership politics. The thing is, the entire crisis in Ukraine was orchestrated, provoked, and financed by American institutions in cooperation with their European partners. They financed neo-Nazis. For fifteen years, the U.S. and Europeans financed neo-Nazis’ training, their camps, and preparation. By U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s acknowledgement, the State Department spent $5 billion on the creation of an anti-Russian political and paramilitary elite. This work led to the sad situation that now in Ukraine neo-Nazi and neo-fascists ideas prevail, as does admiration for, more than anything, Stepan Bandera’s associates who in their time murdered Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, and whomever they wanted, burning or otherwise killing them under Nazi leadership. This is very dangerous. We do not understand why the U.S. and the American ambassador for many years and months systematically supported those neo-Nazi ideologies and even methodically trained their followers. Why did Ms. Nuland have to feed them cookies on the Maydan, thereby demonstrating the political and moral support of the United States.
Second, we do not understand why the U.S. has supported anti-Russian politics in Ukraine for years. That neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine now is impossible to work with. What we presently see in Ukraine is a symbiosis of neo-fascist groups on the one hand and pro-Western ones on the other, working with the support of the United States, and simultaneously committing violence, pillages in the streets of Ukraine, and shootings of peaceful protesters. The U.S. has systematically supported the “Our Fatherland” party, which is now in power in Ukraine. In this way, America created the symbiotic relationship between neo-fascists and pro-Western leaders that make up the basis of the current regime, supported an illegal power take-over—a coup, and is further prodding this regime to go to war with Russia. This frightens us.
It is absolutely unclear why today, March 21, the European Union is signing a partnership agreement with the Ukrainian illegitimate regime, which too implicates the EU in supporting this regime. By signing this agreement, the EU is taking upon itself the responsibility for Ukraine’s foreign and defense policy, thereby leading Ukraine’s handling of its own regional conflicts, including military ones. In other words, by signing the document with the current illegitimate Ukrainian government, the EU is making itself responsible for protecting this regime. Why wouldn’t they wait two months for the scheduled early elections so they could sign an agreement with a legitimately elected government and an elected President? It turns out that they engineered their entire coup, human casualties, neo-fascists and all with the explicit purpose of installing in power a puppet to sign the treaty that the EU itself dictated which was earlier refused by Yanukovich. As follows, Yanukovich was removed from power, so the EU could make Ukraine its colony: the partnership agreement deprives Ukriane of sovereignty in trade, economic relations, technical regulations, as well as partly in defense policy. So, while they blame us that we have taken over Crimea, where a referendum took place that showed virtually unanimous support for the restoration of sovereignty and joining Russia, at the same time what the EU and U.S. are doing is perpetrating an economic and military-political annexation of the entire Ukraine by imposing on it a treaty that sacrifices its sovereignty and mandates that it follow European policy in foreign and military policy, as well as obey all European directives on trade, the economy, and technical regulations. And actually, the signing of such a partnership from a legal point of view would necessitate changes to the Ukrainian constitution in at least five articles; the current constitution does not allow it. We are watching how our Western and American partners are wittingly forcing on Ukraine illegitimate decisions, signing illegitimate agreements, supporting an illegitimate government, while law violations, violence and terror sweep over the country. All the Western-instigated steps lead not to stabilization, but on the contrary—to the destabilization of the situation.
D. Simes: And this can affect more than just the U.S.-Russian and EU-Russian relations with regard to Ukraine, do I understand you right?
S. Glazyev: In all seriousness, we cannot accept the singing of an illegitimate agreement with an illegitimate regime, which for Ukraine would mean a loss of sovereignty in a lot of spheres, from trade to foreign policy for the benefit of the EU. This is in essence aggression; an annexation of the entire Ukraine, and the move of the country under European Union jurisdiction in violation of all legal norms. A decision like this should require a referendum in Ukraine, which we repeatedly told the EU. This is what Putin was negotiating with Barroso. Two months ago, we were agreeing that trade and economic partnerships with Ukraine will be negotiated in concert with Russia. The idea was to choose the optimal arrangement with Ukraine so that Russia and Europe could both retain and increase their investments with Ukraine. As before, we are ready to partake in any program on Ukraine’s development and invest in it. Russia is Ukraine’s principal investor: for the past 20 years, we have invested $40 billion and are of course, more than anything, interested in the country being stable, calm, and successful. But unfortunately, the EU, instead of following through on these intentions, is now forcing on Ukraine an agreement which we can never accept as legitimate, particularly considering there is no legitimate Ukrainian government to sign it.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/A.Savin. CC BY-SA 3.0.