In Moscow's Shadows 246: Is Russia A Great Power?
5/3/202651 min
A battlefield setback in Mali sparks a much bigger question: what kind of power is Russia now, and what kind of power can it afford to be? Is it a superpower? No. Is it a great power? It depends what you mean. It certainly is not just the "gas station with nukes" of the cliche.
Putin’s language of “sovereign civilisation” recasts greatness as resistance rather than dominance, especially as Victory Day messaging leans on endurance. I argue Russia is a middle power that can pivot, triangulate and sometimes punch above its weight without shaping the world order.
That's no bad thing. Russia (and Putin) are not "failures" as some would suggest, even if they have by no means hit their grand, aspirational goals. Russia would be a lot happier if it accepted this status but for Putin and his Homo Sovieticus peers, alas, this is not enough - and that is what has lead us all to the present unhappy place.
The article I mentioned from The i Paper is here, and the Deutsche Welle video is here.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsMark Galeotti· Host0:00
Simple question. Is Russia a great power? The trouble is, to answer that, you really have to decide what you mean by great power. [upbeat music] Hello, I'm Mark Galeotti, and welcome to My View of Russia in Moscow Shadows. This podcast of varying length, frequency, and format, yet always reassuringly low production values, is supported by generous and perspicacious patrons like you, and also by the crisis exercise software company, Conductor. So the trigger for today's ruminations was what happened last weekend in Mali in Africa. There, Russian mercenaries from the Africa Corps or African Corps, maybe we should really be calling it, which is the state-controlled mercenary organization that sort of subsumed Wagner's operations on the continent, closely controlled now by Defense Ministry and the Ministry of Defense, uh, the military intelligence. More on that in a moment. But anyway, it's there supporting the government in its struggle against both an Al-Qaeda affiliated