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And so, #Russia de-escalates: First at home, and then in Ukraine.
(A quick thread. TL;DR: None of this is over just yet.)
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(A quick thread. TL;DR: None of this is over just yet.)
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The most recent and very welcome piece of news is Shoigu& #39;s announcement that Russian troops will be pulling back from the Ukrainian border. It is very good to know that a full-scale invasion of #Ukraine is apparently not in the offing.
https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/breaking-russia-declares-troop-withdrawal-from-ukraines-borders.html
/2">https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-p...
https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/breaking-russia-declares-troop-withdrawal-from-ukraines-borders.html
/2">https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-p...
There will be a lot of mostly pointless arguing over why this happened. Some will claim that Russia never intended to invade. Others will claim that deterrence worked. Only Putin knows, and he isn& #39;t talking.
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What is clear, though, is that neither Kyiv nor the West made any visible concessions. If this was posturing and bullying, it doesn& #39;t appear to have achieved anything, and Zelensky and Biden have little reason to regret their courses of action, whatever Putin may have said.
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The slightly older news is the remarkable drop-off in arrests at yesterday& #39;s protests: "only" around 1800.
https://ovdinfo.org/news/2021/04/21/zaderzhaniya-na-akciyah-za-svobodu-alekseya-navalnogo-21-aprelya-2021-goda-onlayn
/5">https://ovdinfo.org/news/2021...
https://ovdinfo.org/news/2021/04/21/zaderzhaniya-na-akciyah-za-svobodu-alekseya-navalnogo-21-aprelya-2021-goda-onlayn
/5">https://ovdinfo.org/news/2021...
Yes, 1800 arrests are still a lot, given that the constitution guarantees the right to peaceful protests -- and these protests _were_ peaceful. But the number pales when compared to what we saw in January, when some 11,000 people were arrested.
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As with Ukraine, it was the Kremlin that deescalated here, not its opponents. Yesterday& #39;s protests do not appear to have been appreciably smaller than the January protests, and if anything they were bigger. That, too, will feel like a win for the opposition.
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On both fronts -- with Ukraine and with the opposition -- the Kremlin is likely to have calculated that further escalation would create unpredictability, at a time when Putin is clearly hoping for smooth sailing.
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But if the Kremlin believes that de-escalation is a more easily controllable process, that& #39;s only because it believes it has proven its points, and that both Ukraine and the opposition will avoid pressing their respective advantages, lest Moscow re-escalate.
We& #39;ll see.
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We& #39;ll see.
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On the home front, meanwhile, complacency would be misplaced. Next week, a court will begin proceedings to decide whether Navalny& #39;s core opposition organizations are "extremist", a ruling that will have far-reaching consequences (and which is likely a foregone conclusion).
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The Kremlin seems to have set its sights on eliminating the pro-democratic opposition as such, or at least severely marginalizing it.
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Marginalization, of course, tends to create radicalization, but the relatively restrained response to yesterday& #39;s protests may have dulled people& #39;s sense of threat. Again, we& #39;ll see.
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Overall, though, there are fewer people in jail than there might have been, fewer people in hospital, and fewer people in immediate fear of war. And that is all good news.
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