America may be plotting to ensure regime change in Russia

In a throwback to the Cold War years, the US and Russia are shadow-boxing over Ukraine. Moscow had won the first round with the holding of the referendum and the annexation of Crimea. The unfortunate downing of the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, with 283 innocent civilians on board, by Russia-armed Ukrainian rebels mistaking it for a Ukraine military carrier made president Vladimir Putin almost an international pariah. Washington has decidedly won the second round.

The severe sanctions slapped on Russia by the US following the incident will severely impact the Russian economy in the longer term. Washington’s obvious plan is to get troublesome Putin out of the way. The expectation is that once Russians feel the crunch they will turn against the president. Much depends on how Putin plays his cards and how effectively the anti-Putin lobby in Russia can turn this into a “people's movement”.

Since the crisis in Ukraine, Putin’s popularity has soared domestically. A majority of ordinary Russians believe that a strong man like Putin is what the country needs in its hour of crisis, a leader who can act decisively and perhaps regain some bit of the country’s lost glory, at a time when it is almost encircled by the West in its own backyard.

Putin, once the chief of the KGB, Russia’s spy agency, is not a man to back down easily. In a show of strength, he has ordered the Russian army to the border areas adjoining Ukraine. Hitting back at the sanctions imposed by the West, Russia, in turn, has slapped sanctions on several Western imports, especially food products. But these sanctions are unlikely to affect the West. Australia is now threatening to stop selling uranium to Russia. How long Putin will be able to stand up against the crippling Western sanctions is not clear. Neither side is willing to back off and begin to talk — the West because it thinks Putin is in a spot; and the Russian president because he believes he cannot have the Western forces in what he considers his backyard. The fact that the eastern rebels are now talking of ceasefire with Ukraine, is an indication that Russia may be backing off.

Much will also depend on China and whether Beijing is willing to play ball with the US against Russia. China and Russia had signed a mega $400 billion gas deal earlier this year. However, this will take some time to get operational. The Ukrainian crisis has forced Russia to urgently seek an alternative to Europe, Moscow’s main energy market. Putin may just sack some of his hardline advisers, including Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and get back former finance minister Alexei Kudris, who is reforms-friendly and acceptable to the West. He has been critical of those who want to go back to State-controlled economy. Putin will have to rebuild links with sections of the business elite opposed to him. His new Prime Minister will have to negotiate a final accommodation with Ukraine.

The attempt to demonise Putin has been on for quite some time in the West. The break up of the former Soviet Union had led to euphoria across the world that Communism was dead and peace in Europe would no longer be a dream. The chaos in Russia with weak leaders like Boris Yeltsin led Western powers to have a more benign view of the former super power. When Putin came centre stage in 2000, the US and its allies were uneasy. The former KGB chief was keen to restore some of Russia’s past glory. The US and the EU had launched a relentless drive to box Russia into a corner with pro-Western governments encircling the former superpower. Georgia and Ukraine were the natural targets.

While Moscow played its cards right in Crimea, things did not go according to the script in other eastern hot spots in Ukraine. Kiev has sent in its army to retake the region.

Putin’s luck ran out when the rebels mistakenly gunned for a civilian passenger airline. The tragic incident helped to strengthen the hands of Ukraine, the US and its allies. Russia has been chastised, hectored and lectured and some have even called him a terrorist for arming the thugs who brought down the civilian aircraft.

Yet a similar mistake was made by the US in 1988, when a civilian passenger plane  Iran Flight 655 was shot down by a US missile over the Strait of Hormuz. The captain in command of an Aegis class cruiser, Vincennes, thought it was an enemy aircraft. Everyone acknowledged it was a horrendous mistake, and nobody called the captain a terrorist. The US had paid damages and that was the end of the story.

The downing of the Malaysian plane was exactly the excuse the US was looking for to hit Putin for arming the pro-Russian rebels of Ukraine. But the self-righteous indignation is at best ironic, at worse hyprocritical, considering the US plays this game all the time all over the world. Most recently, the initial arming of the rebels who now form the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was done by the US and its allies, as well as by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. All this was to oust Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, a friend of both Iran and Russia. The Sunni nations funded and armed the ragtag bunch of radical jihadis, which also had al-Qaeda in their midst. In their haste to get Russian ally Assad out, the Western powers had created the Sunni monster army, which many believe is more dangerous than the al-Qaeda. Regime change has become the latest buzzword against rulers the West dislikes. It was Iraq’s Saddam Hussain at one time, Libya's Muammar Gaddafi at another time and now it is Russia’s Putin. The Russian leader may not be an easy prey.

The author is a senior journalist