Putinism's Middle East Echoes - Part 1: High Putinism and Gamel Abdel Nasser's Rais-State

A poster welcoming Vladimir Putin to Cairo on his February 2015 state visit to Egypt

In the wake of the very public death of Boris Nemtsov within a stone's throw of the Kremlin, many commentators have done their best to establish whether President Vladimir Putin may have personally given the order to kill a political rival. Senior figures within the remnants of Russia's organized opposition such as Alexei Navalny and Leonid Volkov remain convinced that only Putin himself has the strength to order such a high profile killing. By contrast scholars and journalists such as Mark Galeotti or the investigative team at Novaya Gazeta have speculated that Nemtsov's death was the product of actions by nationalists, security services or individuals loyal to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov who may be increasingly operating outside of the Kremlin's control. Confronted with the assassination of Nemtsov and Putin's subsequent disappearance, these attempts at making sense of an unpredictable regime used comparisons with key moments in Russian history  to help frame their own interpretation of events. Such grand historical moments as the rise of the oprichniki under Ivan the Terrible, the Black Hundreds of the late nineteenth century, Stalin's purges and even Gorbachev's 'conservative turn' have been used to help explain Putin's actions and his own future legacy. Yet when looked at more closely such comparisons of events in contemporary Russia with past crises in Russian history are deeply flawed, potentially distorting our analysis of the emergence, structures and impact of the Putin regime. 

The Imperial autocracy under the Romanov dynasty contained factors underpinning its identity and institutions that have few equivalents in Putin's Russia. The existence of a land-holding nobility whose legitimacy was based on the dynastic continuity of the Romanov dynasty was a pillar of pre-1914 Imperial Russia. Political debate was defined by how conflicts between the nobility and emerging social groups in the cities affected repeated attempts by a tsarist elite to centralise state power. Though a siloviki nomenklatura has provided a degree of continuity within the security services and parts of the state capitalist elite, under the Putin regime it cannot draw on the long term continuity and ritualised dynastic legitimacy that even incompetent tsars could rely on until the late nineteenth century.

Comparisons with the Soviet Union also fall short. Throughout its existence, the USSR nominally adhered to an ideological framework that cut across ethnicity and religion. Though the state often promoted de facto russification under Stalin and Brezhnev, Communist ideology put limits on what could be said and done openly. Moreover, the institutional structures of the post-Stalinist Communist Party placed constraints on the leadership's freedom of manoeuvre, while also connecting the Soviet elite with a transnational movement that could be used to promote its interests. Despite Putin's attempts to use various ideological networks to mobilise support for his regime, there is no equivalent within contemporary Russia to the overarching ideological discourse that defined the Soviet experiment. Rather, the Putin regime uses Russian history as a symbolic resource that helps it justify its actions through references that are recognizeable to the Russian public. Yet such instrumentalization of history by an authoritarian regime does not necessarily mean that the underlying structures its leadership has put into place match those of previous eras in their country's history.

Rather than using such problematic historical models, it may be preferable to develop comparisons with forms of political organization and mobilization in other parts of the world that bear greater similarities to the structures and direction of travel of the Putin regime. In particular, a particular form of security service driven quasi-plebiscitary dictatorship initially developed by Egypt's Gamel Abdel Nasser in the 1950s contains remarkable parallels with the kind of state that Putin has constructed over the past fifteen years. Over the past sixty years, this Egyptian template has been emulated by authoritarian regimes from Libya to Pakistan and Syria to Sudan, a political space that many International Relations scholars such as Richard Haass have come to call the Greater Middle East.

In three posts this blog will outline how exploring the echoes within the Putinist state of regimes built by authoritarian leaders such as Nasser can provide us with a better understanding of how Russia has arrived at its current impasse and how it may evolve in future. The first section, High Putinism and Gamel Abdel Nasser's Rais State, will outline how Putin's mobilisation and consolidation strategies contain striking similarities with the efforts by Nasser to construct a power vertical in mid-Twentieth century Egypt. Examining the weaknesses and strengths of Nasser's experiment may help us understand the impact of what Brian Whitmore has described as the era of High Putinism, which came to a close with the Bolotnaya demonstration of 6 May 2012. In the second section, Late Putinism and the Hybrid Dictatorship of Muhammad Zia ul Haq, we will look at the parallels between the hybrid warfare strategies deployed by the Putin regime in Ukraine and Chechnya and the methods used by Pakistan's General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s. His search for new sources for ideological legitimacy after a quasi-Nasserist approach to state mobilisation entered a period of crisis hold important lessons for those analysing the current Late Putinist phase Russia seems to have entered. The final section, Post-Putinism and Ali Abdallah Saleh's War of Revenge, will point to how the actions of Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh after his ouster from power could foreshadow the kind of behaviour Putin may display if he is no longer able to dominate the Russian political system. A better sense of such parallels between Putin and Saleh, whose attempt to consolidate power in the Nasserist style fractured Yemeni society in 1994, could help Ukrainian and European policy-makers ensure that Russia avoids the kind of state fracture that we are currently witnessing in Yemen.

High Putinism and Gamel Abdel Nasser's 'Rais-State'

On the surface you could find few more different politicians than Vladimir Putin and Gamel Abdel Nasser. While Putin's talents as a public speaker are limited, Nasser was legendary for flamboyant speeches that galvanised the support of vast crowds. Given to sardonic quips, Putin has built an image of cool detachment, providing many Russians with a sense that their president can calmly guide their country through periods of crisis. Though Putin has tried to work crowds at such events as the annual regime youth convention at Lake Seliger, he has tended to fall flat in anything but the most controlled exchanges with large groups of people outside the elite. By contrast, as a talented demagogue Nasser could enthusiastically engage with Egyptians and other Arabs of all backgrounds. This 1966 clip of Nasser pouring scorn on the Muslim Brotherhood is one of many examples of a wit and charm which Putin has never been able to match:

Nasser mocks the Muslim Brotherhood, 1966.

But if one looks beyond these differences in style, the strong similarities between the substance of the Nasser regime and the first, High Putinist, decade of Putin's time in office stand out. As a young officer Nasser was part of a coalition of military, business and political factions including the Muslim Brotherhood which came together to bring down the Egyptian monarchy through the 'Free Officers' coup of 1952. Yet as Anne Alexander has pointed out, as leader of the 'Free Officers' Nasser was initially only one of several key figures operating under the leadership of General Muhammad Naguib. Although public agitation played a role, Nasser managed to attain a dominant position after the Muslim Brotherhood and other factions overplayed their hand and Naguib was outmanoeuvred through opaque in-fighting within the military. 

Though much has been made of Nasser's charismatic public persona by biographers such as Said Aburish, his rise combined covert elite factional battles with open political campaigning that paved the rise of a relative outsider from obscurity to dominance within four years. In fact, Nasser's legendary status as Egypt's charismatic Rais (President) who could sway a crowd through wit and quickness of thought was only cemented after his calm response to an assassination attempt by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1954. It is this managed rise, with its public campaigning concealing equally significant battles for turf and dominance behind the scenes that one can already see the parallels with the spectacular career of an obscure former KGB officer in 1990s Russia. For Nasser, as with Putin, every move from 1950 onwards combined an increasingly public presence with various covert moves to intimidate his opponents and strengthen the position of his faction within the military, state and economy. 

The actions Nasser took to cement his hold on power also have some similarities with the actions Putin took in the first two years of his presidency. In ruthlessly turning on his erstwhile allies within the Muslim Brotherhood and engaging in confrontations with former colonial powers France and Britain, Nasser was able to mobilise a significant proportion of the population behind his social and pan-Arab foreign policy agendas. In a contemporary echo of these strategies, Putin used war against an internal enemy in the Chechens along with a more assertive Russian stance on the international political stage to solidify public support for the centralisation of state power. Admittedly, the kind of conflicts Nasser and Putin used to consolidate their positions were very different in nature, reflecting the distinct challenges they faced at specific historical junctures. While Nasser used an anti-colonial quasi-socialist ideological framework to legitimate his political project, Putin emphasised Russia's great power status and at least outwardly claimed to support the creation of a functioning free market. Yet the structural outcomes that both sought to bring about have remarkable parallels. 

In both cases authoritarian leaders who had recently seized power focused public anger against internal as well as external enemies to help build an increasingly centralised power vertical. Putin used the brutal suppression of the Chechen insurgency to symbolically turn the tide in what was seen as a crisis of Russian statehood. Nasser's ruthless political campaigns against the Muslim Brotherhood marked a means through which he could impose central discipline on the Egyptian state. In 1950s and 1960s Egypt as in early 2000s Russia appeals to national pride and a greater role in global affairs helped cement the image of the ruler as the protector of national greatness. To create a facade of democratic legitimacy, Putin and Nasser used dubious electoral processes as a quasi-plebiscitary element that could be used to claim that the public had concretely express its full support for the president and his factions. Curtis Ryan illustrated how the Nasser government also used various means to control opposition actions in order to simulate acceptance of its rule across different milieus in a way that would have made Putin's former Chief of Staff for internal affairs Vladislav Surkov proud.

In the process, Putin and Nasser presented themselves as modernisers who centralised power at the expense of previously autonomous regional and business elites who were deemed to be holding the nation back. However much corruption still marred the day to day life of citizens, intermittent attempts to crack down on corrupt officials maintained a degree of discipline within the state, cementing the impression of a benevolent leader toiling away at all hours to protect the people. This attempted modernization of the economy and society through intensive centralization of a power vertical was legitimised through appeals to national pride, with Putin and Nasser equating a restoration of centralized state power with a restoration of national greatness. Though the strategic implications of an increased invocation of pan-Arabism in the late 1950s Middle East and some sort of cross-border 'Russian world' after 2005 remain distinct from one another, both reflected a deep conviction within state elites of that intervention in culturally related states, the 'near abroad' as many post-1990 Russians called them, was an entirely legitimate course of action. In both cases though there were often profound disagreements within the elite about the extent to which the state should seize coordinate economic activity, the central leadership remained focussed on economic and technological modernization as a means with which to challenge rival powers.

Nasser inspects a Russian Ilyushin aircraft purchased

 as part of his Egyptian modernization programme, 1957.

What remained of the old order was forced to lobby for support for their pet projects from a powerful and clannish elite centred on a presidential court. Both Putin and Nasser moved to displace previously powerful economic figures by empowering cronies in key sections of the economy. This put them in a position to arbitrate between various factions and if necessary buy off potential threats from within what remained of a middle class and business networks. As John Waterbury pointed out, during the first decade and half of Nasser's rule the security services came to play an increasingly central role in this process, entrenching their position along with the military as arbiters far beyond their initial intelligence remit. While the sources of national wealth remain quite distinct between mid-twentieth century Egypt and 1990s Russia, this systematic co-optation of great chunks of the economy by military and intelligence leaders in order to create a form of centrally coordinated state capitalism became a feature of both the Nasser and Putin regimes.

The resulting intertwined nature between military, intelligence service and business elites, which Roberto Roccu explores in an excellent study of the political economy of modern Egypt, have become a lasting legacy of the Nasser era that remained at the core of the most recent attempts to roll back the democratic gains of the 2011 revolution. Moreover, Nasser's enormous political influence across the Arab world after outmanoeuvring the British, French and Israelis during the Suez crisis and strengthening ties with non-Western powers including the Soviet Union encouraged many leaders who seized power in the Greater Middle East during this period to consciously emulate his model of government. Political strongmen emerged in states as varied as Libya, North Yemen, Iraq and even in some ways Pakistan, who both absorbed aspects of Nasser's ideological model and adopted many of the state modernization initiatives that seemed to be pushing Egypt to the cusp of great power status by the mid-1960s. These state structures, and the way they have thrown their support behind a leader from the intelligence services who is willing to protect their interests, be it in the early 1960s or now under General Sisi, continue to reproduce power relations that would be more than familiar to most Russia watchers.
Structural parallels between the era of High Putinism between 2000 - 2008 and the Nasser regime of the 1950s and 1960s could then provide a few possible hints as to the internal balance of power the lies behind the curtain within the Kremlin. Exploring the rivalries, institutional frameworks and mobilization strategies of such an analogous regime may therefore be a more useful methodological tool for budding kremlinologists than any number of references to Stolypin or Beria. There are in particular three fundamental ways the rise of the Nasser regime in the mid-1950s as well as the growing problems it faced by the late 1960s can help us develop useful insights into how political structures developed by the Putin regime at its height have helped lead it into its current impasse.

The first is dependence on a form of charismatic leadership that lacks a strong basis of legitimacy in long-established dynastic traditions or a well-formulated political ideology. Though pan-Arabism and massive infrastructure projects have became part of the Rais myth that shaped popular memory of Nasser, as Fouad Ajami pointed out at the time attempts by his regime to develop a more systematic ideology often veered into incoherence. While pan-Arabist rhetoric provided a recognizeable core to Nasserism, the lack of any systematic economic or social analysis underpinning it gave the Nasserist political elite considerable political flexibility. Without such a coherent socio-economic ideological programme, Nasser's successors from Sadat to Sisi were in a position to simply eject most projects and ideals he claimed to espouse when they became inconvenient. While the profoundly repressive and increasingly corrupt institutional framework established by Nasser survived his death in 1969, the great bulk of his personal political agenda was largely been abandoned a decade later. The ephemeral nature of much of what defined Nasserism should be kept in mind when discussing the extent to which the particular ideological projects Vladimir Putin's inner circle are trying to promote will survive after he has left the scene.

The second key parallel between the Nasser and Putin regimes at their height is the considerable autonomy state institutions were able to carve out as leading officials became personally answerable only to a specific leader at the apex of the power vertical. From the very start, state modernization was hampered by the leader's need to foster rivalries between state institutions in order to prevent the formation of alliances within the bureaucracy that could represent a threat. As long as economic and political conditions enabled a single individual and his inner circle to exert tight control over every aspect of policy these state institutions displayed few signs of independence. Yet when the power vertical begins to fail, the lack of strong interconnections between key institutions leads to fragmentation, as each autonomous state entity from the judiciary through and security through to regulatory agencies do everything possible to prevent any challenge to their sphere of influence.

The way in which such institutional balkanization can lead to profoundly dysfunctional outcomes for Egyptian society has been explored by Nathan Brown in his excellent work on the Egyptian judiciary. Brown's key insight was that once the power of the centre began to erode in the final years of the Sadat administration, the Egyptian judiciary effectively carved out semi-autonomous control over its sphere of responsibility, doing everything to fend off attempts by Mubarak to reassert stronger state control over the judicial process. Thus after the Tahrir revolution of 2011, the battles by judges to assert their independence against the security services did not result in any underlying democratization of the judiciary. Rather, once judges, lawyers and Ministry of Justice officials had received reassurances from the Ministry of Interior that their bureaucratic turf would not be impinged upon, most members of the judiciary enthusiastically joined the security services' campaign to reassert state power in order to protect their institutional autonomy. Despite a facade of unified purpose under Mubarak or Sisi, with these trends playing out across the bureaucracy the Egyptian state has therefore fragmented into semi-autonomous rival institutions whose interests occasionally align. 

This precedent may provide some indication of what may have taken place within the Russian state behind the facade of High Putinism. The Kremlin's power vertical may have asserted dominance over state and society for a while. Yet by discouraging interconnections between agencies and ministries, below the surface it may have fostered the emergence of increasingly self-contained institutional actors. Rather than hollowing out the state, as Sam Greene has speculated, the damage caused by Putinism to governance in Russia is therefore of a different nature. Once Putin or his successors lose the ability to sustain the power vertical, competing institutional verticals may come to the fore. As early as 2007, the so-called siloviki wars between rival security services already indicated that such tensions were bubbling just below the surface. As Egypt witnessed in the final years before the fall of Mubarak, when a system dependent on a highly personalised form of government breaks down, each agency, ministry and even the judiciary may rush to assert its control over the specific spheres of political and economic life that fall within their remit. Such turf wars between structurally distinct institutions could make it extraordinarily difficult for any future Russian president to restore cohesion and some semblance of good governance. Rather, it may face the limitations Nasser's inheritance has imposed on Egypt's current Sisi regime, faced as it is with institutions whose leaders are too weak to become dominant yet strong enough to prevent much needed change in their areas of responsibility.

Perhaps a final useful parallel between both regimes that could help us analyse the legacy of early 2000s High Putinism are the challenges they faced in mobilizing support without losing tight control of the public sphere. For Nasser, promoting Arab nationalism based on an assumption that Egypt was the cultural and political centre of the Arab speaking peoples was fundamental to his regime's legitimacy. It both justified deep Egyptian involvement in the affairs of its neighbouring states, while lessening the popular pressure on the regime to develop coherent reforms of the social order. With Egypt experiencing a period of economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s, the Nasser regime had the financial leeway to expand parts of the welfare state and engage in prestige projects such as the building of the Aswan Dam designed to increase industrial and agricultural production.

Yet as Clement Moore pointed out, by the mid-1960s botched state attempts to consolidate control over the Egyptian economy were causing serious social problems that remained endemic in subsequent decades. Moreover, Barbara Zollner has set out how despite the execution of Sayid Qutb and other senior figures within the Muslim Brotherhood, attempts to eradicate its influence over Egyptian life never quite succeeded. Thus, after overcoming the British, French and Israeli intervention in Suez in 1956, the regime searched for repeated foreign policy successes that could help sustain the popular enthusiasm that enabled Nasser to entrench his position in the 1950s. Yet the use of foreign policy initiatives and pan-Arab projects to mobilize popular support led to short-term adventurism that only added to Egypt's long term instability. Thus the failed attempt at unification with Syria between 1958 and 1961, a botched military intervention in Yemen in 1962 and finally the disastrous war with Israel in 1967 were all the product of the regime's attempt to sustain legitimacy at a time when its efforts at state modernization were increasingly crowned with failure.

Here again the evolution of the Nasser regime and the increased use of tactical foreign policy gambles by the Putin regime to maintain popular support in the face of deepening internal problems after 2008 demonstrate a remarkably similar trajectory. The siloviki wars of 2007 and the complex compromises surrounding Dmitri Medvdev's potemkin rise to the presidency were all strong indications that the modernization of the state and the economy, were beginning to run into serious difficulties. Stanislav Secrieru among others pointed out how internal conflicts over the modernization agenda helped pave the way for a more aggressive approach to foreign policy which culminated on the war against Georgia in 2008. The way in which the failures of an modernization agenda can feed into increased foreign policy adventurism to sustain popular support is a common pattern for many authoritarian regimes. Yet the parallels between the Nasser and the Putin regimes and the role foreign policy played in a controlled mobilization of popular support around quasi-imperial nostalgia and transnational cultural identities indicates that the domestic impact of 1950s and 1960s Egyptian foreign policy could be a useful point of comparison for those examining the legacy of the first decade of Putin's rule.

With such remarkable structural parallels between the Nasser and early Putin regimes, exploring recent Egyptian history could provide historians and political scientists with a better understanding of how Putin's attempt to legitimize his own position as Russia's Rais has reshaped state institutions. Yet while Putin has remained in power long enough to be confronted with a crisis that destabilized his power vertical, Nasser died in office before the aftermath of the 1967 War forced the Egyptian political elite to engage in de-Nasserization. As a successor with his own distinct power base, Anwar Sadat was able to distance himself from Nasser's errors of judgement with the kind of radical break that the Medvedev-Putin 'tandem' never seemed capable of bringing about.

While the political direction of Egypt diverges after the death of Nasser diverges significantly from that of Russia after the 'castling' and Bolotnaya crises of 2011, there is another state in the Greater Middle East that experienced structural changes and developed mobilization strategies very similar to that of the Late Putinist period that is still unfolding today. With a collapse of established legitimization strategies for both civilian and military elites, late 1970s Pakistan saw a set of ideological and strategic shifts that very much mirror the course taken by the Kremlin since 2012. This period of elite transformation, which will be explored in the next post, was initiated and guided by an irascible military leader, General Muhammad Zia ul Haq.

Sometimes Everything Doesn't Change: The Aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo Attacks

The aftermath of an Algerian jihadi bomb attack in Paris, 1995

A shocking attack at the heart of a major city that inflicts significant casualties. Tens of thousands demonstrating solidarity with the victims. Fraught debates on television and social media about freedom of speech and tolerance of political movements connected to the perpetrators. And columnists and politicians saying that ‘everything has changed’.

In the past years these scenes have repeated themselves in many Western states. Most recently the attack by a gunman on the Canadian Houses of Parliament and a hostage taking in Sydney already demonstrated the vulnerability of major cities to acts of terror by supporters of jihadi ideologies. In France itself, the attack on Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket are only the latest in a succession of terrorist incidents reaching back to the shooting of Jewish school students and soldiers of Algerian origin by a supporter of jihadi ideology in March 2012. Looking further, Paris experienced a wave of bombings by Algerian jihadis in the mid-1990s while even earlier in the 1970s brutal acts of terror by radical left-wing networks were a regular challenge faced by French governments. Each of these terrible acts represented an attack on the fundamental values that underpin the political order of the French Republic. Yet after initial weeks of anxiety such attacks in themselves ultimately failed to cause the deep social changes commentators predicted.

There is no doubt that in certain parts of Europe minority groups in general and Muslim and Jewish communities in particular are coming under increasing pressure as right wing populist movements promote ethnically exclusivist agendas. Yet the kind of impact such right wing populist movements are having do not necessarily follow a uniform pattern across Europe. Even within larger European countries such as Germany, right wing populist movements can have a major impact in certain provinces while barely registering in other regions. In a country where Muslim communities are tiny such as Hungary, the ethnic exclusivism of a movement such as Jobbik is far more likely to be directed at established minorities such as Jews or Roma. In societies with significant Magrhebi or Turkish minorities such as France or the Netherlands, right wing populist movements campaigning against Muslim migrants often court more conservative strands of the Jewish community in order to shield themselves from accusations of extremism.

Adding complexity to this picture are the deep ideological fractures within Muslim immigrant communities. In Germany, the Turkish community remains deeply divided between supporters of movements based on a Kemalist secular tradition and more religiously oriented groups. Such profound differences between secularists and Islamist milieus are now also beginning to play a significant role in the development of Tunisian and Libyan diaspora communities based in France and the UK. A growing sense of unease among such secular milieus has made many Europeans of Maghrebi or Turkish origin willing to engage with right wing populist movements as well as supporters of Israel, who they see as potential allies against Jihadi threats to their way of life.

As tragic as they are, acts of terror alone such as the shooting at Charlie Hebdo's offices often do not lead to the sweeping changes analysts and pundits predict. Rather, different social groups interpret such events in a way that confirms their own pre-established biases. In their efforts to instrumentalize this event for their own political ambitions, right wing populist leaders such as Marine Le Pen or Nigel Farage are preaching to the converted, solidifying their own political base rather than recruiting undecided voters to their cause in a lasting fashion. Fears that such terrorist acts may play into the hands of right wing populists are also more likely to mobilize their political opponents in support of their own left-wing or centre-right values rather than suddenly lead to a massive switch in political allegiance. Whether right wing populists succeed in a way that threatens the position of minorities in Europe such as Jewish and Muslim communities therefore comes down far more to long term social factors specific to each European region than the immediate shock a terrorist act can cause. However overwhelming acts of terror can initially be when we witness their every on social media, sometimes they don’t change very much at all.

Dresden People's Republic: The Regional Roots of Pegida's Rise and Coming Fall

It has been a story that has crept up on most observers over the Autumn, until it dominated Germany's news agenda by the beginning of December. With only a few hundred participants in early October, within two months the Pegida's (Patriotische Europäer Gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes) protests every Monday against a putative Islamisation of the Occident had attracted over fifteen thousand participants. While attempts to get similar protests under the same brand started in other parts of Germany have faltered, the momentum these islamophobic Pegida protests have built in Dresden have caused consternation in Germany. Suddenly, Dresden has seen an influx of German and international journalists trying to make sense of events.

One of the problems hampering this reporting about the Pegida protests is a tendency to equate it with distant historical events such as the rise of National Socialism. Yet in the case of Pegida, reading a little less about the 1930s and a little more about the 1990s could help develop a better understanding of why the movement has done well in Dresden and stuttered elsewhere in Germany. In the aftermath of unification the swift economic collapse of GDR industry hit Dresden and many other parts of Saxony particularly hard. Mass unemployment by 1991 led to swift disillusion with the promises made by West German political elites that reunification would lead to prosperity. The collapse of the GDR's border service coupled with war and political transformation in Eastern Europe also led to a massive influx of migrants, pushing public services across Germany already struggling to cope with reunification to the limit. This traumatic experience fostered a fundamental distrust of the German political elite among many East Germans. While in other parts of the former GDR such discontent led to a revival of the old East German SED, now in the guise of the Linkspartei as well as various other Green, left-wing or conservative movements, parts of Saxony quickly became strongholds of the radical right. 

The emergence in Saxony of extensive right-wing extremist networks was part of a nationwide surge between 1991 and 1994 during which neo-Nazi skinhead gangs became a public order problem in both East and West German cities. Yet even in other major cities in the East, including Saxony's Leipzig, these gangs were often confronted with equally strong left-wing, migrant and pro-democracy conservative youth milieus that were more than willing to fight back in order to reclaim control of the streets. As a half-British/half-Ukrainian teenager growing up in Hannover, I witnessed first hand how such neo-Nazi skinhead groups were often fought and contained by all levels of society, ensuring they lost momentum and members by the mid-1990s. Yet in Dresden left-wing networks that proved so crucial in countering the radical right in Leipzig remained politically marginalised. Rather, the nationwide prominence of the left-alternative scene in Leipzig's Connewitz and Plagwitz neighbourhoods drew in young Dresdeners who would otherwise have made up the core of anti-Fascist activism in their home city. 

In a similar fashion, most migrants who were part of the 1990s immigration wave quickly moved out of Dresden to other cities in Germany because of an atmosphere of intimidation. Vietnamese and some Turkish Alevi groups, the only two immigrant communities that remained in Dresden in any number, held on because they organised themselves in a way that deterred direct attacks. But these migrant milieus were not in a position to exert political influence. Conservative Christian movements that helped integrate migrants into the German centre-right also found it difficult to exert influence in Dresden, which had low church attendance rates in the 1990s. As a consequence, while neo-Nazi youth gangs saw a major decline in Dresden as the economic situation stabilised by the early 2000s, many social attitudes that had enabled their rise had not been challenged by regional political elites. 

It is therefore no surprise that Dresden has been particularly fertile ground for the emergence of such a protest movement. In the past decade Dresden has become a regular place of radical right protests commemorating those who died when the British Royal Air Force bombed the city in 1944. In a region which still grapples with social deprivation, there is a large section of the populace that feels abandoned by national and regional political elites. Though there has been an upswing in growth, the potential emergence of another wave of mass migration in the last two years coupled with the continuing pressures the Hartz IV social welfare reforms exert on the more economically vulnerable portions of the workforce have built up these local anxieties. With the emergence of the right-wing populist AfD marking a threat to its political dominance, the governing CDU has been reluctant to firmly criticise those who participate in Pegida because of concerns that it may lose conservative voters to this upstart challenger. As a member of Saxony's Sorbian Slavic minority, the region's Ministerpräsident (Prime Minister) Stanislaw Tillich is also under pressure to demonstrate that he understands the concerns of more conservative and nationally-oriented CDU voters, many of which remain suspicious of Sorb minority rights.

Unlike Leipzig and other cities across East and West Germany, immigrant communities or left-wing and church-based political networks, that in themselves have a growing immigrant membership, were slow to challenge Pegida's momentum and demonstrate that those opposed to the radical right control the streets. By contrast, in cities where church organisations, the anti-Fascist left and members of immigrant communities are numerically strong, those organising Pegida  demonstrations have been vastly outnumbered by counter-demonstrators who want to prevent a shift towards the radical right. As a political space, Dresden therefore has its own unique dynamic with its own underlying pressures and conflicts. The success of Pegida there may mark more of a local extreme right-wing bid to gain dominance in the region rather than any movement with truly nationwide ambitions. In the 1990s, one of the core strategic aims of radical right-wing networks in Saxony was the establishment of 'nationally liberated zones' (National befreite Zonen) in which they exerted de facto control undercutting state authority. Pegida's 'shadow Republic' whose leaders challenge the legitimacy of political elites, state authority and the media could perhaps be seen as an updated variant of this strategy.

Yet in the last several days momentum seems to be shifting against the organizers of the Pegida movement. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo murders in France, on 10 January, the CDU together with church, left-wing and migrant organisations were finally able to organise a counter-demonstration that outnumbered even the largest Pegida marches. The participation of senior CDU politicians, including Stanislaw Tillich, is of great significance and may point to a clear swing of conservative Saxon opinion against Pegida. 

Just as in the 1990s conservative milieus in Saxony only clearly turned against the radical right when disorder began to damage the Bundesland's national and European reputation, so such regional pride may begin to increase willingness among many conservative Saxons to distance themselves from Pegida. The ferocious mockery of Pegida across Germany may bring about a dynamic where, as in the 1990s, regional embarrassment rather than a deep commitment to minority rights leads many Saxon conservatives to turn against extremists and populists and return to the comforting embrace of the CDU.

The Paradox of Ukrainian Power

"It is early April 2017 and the world is watching events in the Russian city of Kazan with grave concern. Initial protests against the decline of Tatar language education and financial neglect of the region in the capital of the Tatarstan Autonomous Republic of the Russian Federation barely gained attention. But central authorities struggling with economic problems and tensions with Ukraine overreacted, using special forces units brought in from across Russia against peaceful protesters. Marginalised by Moscow and experiencing a serious decline in illicit revenues, local security officials distanced themselves from the actions of OMON riot police, in some places even siding openly with protesters.Yet it was a sudden escalation in mid-February 2017 that overwhelmed central authorities and shocked observers. Where protesters had  previously confronted external riot police with stones and makeshift clubs, trained militiamen emerged with automatic weapons to storm local state buildings and engage in clashes with military units. As conflict watchers on social media identified weapons sourced from Ukraine's Donbass region in Tatar insurgent hands, the Russian community in Kazan split between Moscow loyalists and those alienated by the brutality of Russian units and their proxies. With defections from local police increasing by the day and insurgents moving to seize the Tatarstan Republic's administration, by early April large parts of Kazan were no go areas for Moscow loyalists. Meanwhile, polite people with Ukrainian-sounding accents quietly checked out of Kazan's Palace Hotel as chaos unfolded around them." 

At a time when Russian-backed forces occupy parts of East Ukraine and the Kremlin piles pressure on Kyiv and its shattered intelligence service, a scenario where Ukrainian operatives take advantage of regional unrest to destabilize the Russian Federation seems quite far-fetched. But it is worth recalling that two years ago the creation of separatist quasi-states in Donetsk and Luhansk backed by Russian forces may have seemed equally implausible to even the most pessimistic observer of Ukrainian politics. In an environment in which economic crisis, growing tensions with the West and a conflict in Ukraine that has become a strategic quagmire are beginning to erode the stability of the Russian state, what once may have seemed improbable may quickly come to fruition as the unintended consequences of Kremlin actions and Western or Ukrainian responses come to the surface.

While scholars, journalists and diplomats spent much of 2014 preoccupied with anticipating the moves the Kremlin was about make, I would like to suggest that we now need to start focussing on what Ukraine's rapidly changing security services may do to protect what they define as the strategic interests of the Ukrainian nation. Just as misperceptions over the FSB, GRU and their pro-Kremlin proxies' willingness to escalate in 2014 slowed Western responses to their actions, so an underestimation of the lengths to which Ukrainians could go to exacerbate Russian weaknesses may lead to equally destabilising developments in 2015.

There are two aspects two the post-Maidan transformation of the Ukrainian military and security services which those hoping to deescalate the Russo-Ukrainian conflict need to keep a particular eye on. First, attention needs to be paid to debates within a National Security and Defence Council (NSDC) that has become central to Kyiv's strategic planning process. Secondly, policy makers and analysts need to keep track of the specific security institutions that come to dominate intelligence work and the turf battles between them. Though the SBU (Sluzhba Bezpeky Ukrainy) remains Ukraine's primary security service, the institutional devastation it suffered at the hands of Russian operatives in March 2014, recently described in an excellent piece by Mashable's Christopher Miller, has opened up opportunities for other institutions, special forces and paramilitary units to get involved in intelligence operations. How these pressures play out will shape the operational procedure and personnel that emerge within the SBU and its rivals as frantic reconstruction efforts after the collapse of spring 2014 reshape the Ukrainian security sector.


1. The NSDC and the Strategic Goals of Post-Maidan Ukraine

As with so many other parts of Ukraine's security and defence infrastructure, since its establishment by President Leonid Kravchuk the NSDC has led something of a shadow existence. In the two decades after independence, the heads of the NSDC have had to occasionally co-ordinate difficult security challenges such as nuclear disarmament, secessionist sentiment in Crimea and the accidental shooting down of a passenger jet in 2001. In general though, few Ukrainian governments seriously prioritised security matters, allowing corruption and a lack of investment to undermine Ukraine's defence and intelligence capabilities. With the army organising its involvement in UN peacekeeping operations and the Iraq War the NSDC's role gradually went into decline. In the last few years control of the NSDC has largely become a means through which presidents used appointments to reward supporters and punish opponents. This culminated during the ill-fated presidency of Viktor Yanukovich with the head of the NSDC, Andriy Kluyev, coordinating the hollowing out of Ukraine's democratic institutions and suppression of opposition activists.

The institutional framework Andriy Parubiy, the co-ordinator of the Maidan self-defence units, took on immediately after the Maidan Revolution was largely inadequate for the task of organising the defence of the country. Moreover, little help could be expected from the fractured leadership of a military whose core units were either stripped of equipment through corruption or involved in peacekeeping operations in Africa. The security services were so deeply penetrated by Russia's FSB that many operatives defected to pro-Russian forces, taking hard drives containing key information with them. It is perhaps a sign of the measure of success Parubiy had in helping pull Ukraine back from the brink in the wake of the loss of Crimea and the collapse of state authority in the East that while the leadership of the Ministry of Defence experienced significant turnover, his reputation has survived largely intact. Now Deputy Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada (parliament), Parubiy played a key role in helping integrate the volunteer battalions that together with airborne regiments have  become the professional core of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Throughout Parubiy's tenure, his team primarily struggled to craft short term responses to acts of Russian aggression, often scrambling to pull together whatever assets they could fine to hold ground that had not yet been lost.

Only with the lessening of combat intensity in the Donbass region after the Minsk Accords of 5 September 2014 has the NSDC leadership had the space to engage in long-term planning. With the former post-Maidan Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada and Acting President Olexander Turchynov taking over, the NSDC has a political heavyweight in charge with the robustness to retain a high degree of authority over planning processes in the SBU and the military. It is therefore under Turchynov that the NSDC will come to a set of conclusions about Ukraine's national interests that may either lead it to prioritise defensive stabilising measures or take on a more aggressive stance that could have destabilising effects. At core lies the question of whether this emerging Ukrainian security elite sees a stable and influential Russia as a neighbour that can be managed or whether figures such as Turchynov come to the conclusion that an independent Ukraine can only survive if Russia remains politically and economically weak.

Here the signals coming from Kyiv have been decidedly mixed. Senior figures around President Poroshenko have emphasised that a restoration of some kind of working relationship is in the interest of both nations. With Turchynov's Narodniy Front, the other key party in the governing coalition, employing more robust rhetoric towards pro-Russian forces Turchynov has already developed a reputation for being something of a hawk. How these various debates within the cabinet and NSDC over long term strategy for dealing with the Russian threat are resolved will then set the tone for measures taken lower down the security hierarchy. 

If the NSDC decides that the international community is willing to maintain a level of pressure that deters the Kremlin from further undermining Ukrainian territorial sovereignty, it is likely to set out a doctrine focussed on simply holding territory and shoring up the nation's defences against covert infiltration. Yet if Western resolve is seen as shaky, then there is a distinct possibility that the NSDC will evolve a security doctrine based on the understanding that Ukraine can only be safe if Russia is too weak to exert influence on neighbouring states. If such a view hardens across the new Ukrainian security establishment, then a tacit acceptance of more aggressive tactics across a range of economic, political and security targets designed to keep Russia permanently under pressure may become entrenched.  

Already there are signs that the current Ukrainian government feels secure enough to use its control over infrastructure in Crimea and the Donbass in a way that puts the Kremlin on the back foot. At a time at which Russia is facing economic turmoil, moves by the Ukrainian government to cut off occupied Donetsk and Luhansk from the financial system and shut down Crimea's access to transport, electricity and water are driving up the costs of this conflict for the Kremlin. By effectively crippling the economy of both regions, such a Ukrainian blockade is stoking local discontent as well as divisions between pro-Russian groups that have seized power, making the zones under Russian occupation increasingly difficult to govern. That these forms of quite blunt pressure seem to have forced the Kremlin to come to a compromise when it comes to Ukrainian energy and coal imports may strengthen those within the NSDC who believe hardball tactics that take advantage of Russian weakness will keep the Kremlin at bay.

Without reliable support from Western allies, there is therefore a strong chance the NSDC will evolve a long term security doctrine with strong parallels to the Iron Wall paradigm that has shaped Israeli strategy for eighty years. Based on the writings of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, a prominent Zionist in the 1920s, the Iron Wall model assumes that national survival can only be secured through strong military and security services with the ability to keep opponents off balance and divided. For Jabotinsky, an Iron Wall strategy needs to be pursued relentlessly until opponents are forced to accept the legitimacy and territorial integrity of a contested state. Evolving far beyond Jabotinsky's original goals, strategic doctrine based on the Iron Wall model has been used by various Israeli governments to justify actions such as invasions of Lebanon or assassinations of potential opponents that arguably go well beyond the security needs of the Israeli state. 

Strong engagement by NATO and the EU with the NSDC is therefore imperative to avoid a sense of permanent insecurity fostering such an aggressive approach. Beyond long term support for the NSDC's capacity-building efforts, strong engagement by EU and NATO institutions with a small but growing band of security analysts in Kyiv such as Dmytro Tymchuk or Yuri Butusov could also help influence debate in a way that emphasises the advantages of a more defensive strategy. Extensive support from Western institutions and strong relationships with scholars and officials in Kyiv could do much to ensure the NSDC does not encourage institutions it is coordinating from engaging in preemptive moves that could close the door to rebuilding relations with any Russian regime that emerges after the fall of President Putin.

If the West fails to provide extensive aid and advice, an NSDC inclined to believe Ukraine can only be safe if Russia remains off balance is more likely to tolerate, perhaps even encourage, covert operations to sustain an Iron Wall strategy. Why various institutions and networks jostling for prominence in Ukraine's post-Maidan security landscape may be tempted to engage in such operations is what we will look at next.


2. Competition Between Security Networks in Post-Maidan Ukraine  

Since the fall of Yanukovich and the unfolding acts of Kremlin aggression that followed,  the Ukrainian security institutions the NSDC has tried to coordinate have been in a state of flux. Whether any reformed successor organization to Ukraine's bloated and infiltrated Foreign Intelligence Service can provide reliable intelligence about developments in Russia, Belarus and Moldova is an open question. This intelligence vacuum along with the moribund nature of the army and the sudden collapse of the SBU during the annexation of Crimea have opened up opportunities for new actors to take a leading role in Ukraine's security sector. 

The establishment of volunteer battalions to counter the growing momentum of pro-Russian forces in May and June 2014 has added new, in many cases brigade-sized, units that will be part of the professional core of the Ukrainian military for some time to come. Together with troops from airborne and mechanized brigades that have taken the brunt of the fighting, veterans from these volunteer units are now the core recruitment pool for the military's intelligence directorate (HUR), which is being reconstructed from the ground up. The incorporation of many volunteer units into a reformed National Guard has revived a second force structure under the control of the Ministry of Interior that had largely been eliminated by the Yanukovich administration. With its own nascent intelligence gathering capabilities, the National Guard gives ambitious figures around Interior Minister Avakov the opportunity to pursue their own anti-Russian operations. That people as disparate as business oligarchs, civic volunteer networks and radical political movements have become so essential to the fight against Russian aggression further complicates the challenge the NSDC faces in ensuring that everyone involved in the defence of Ukraine is working in harmony. 

Understanding how potential institutional competition between these various actors will play out, and whether the NSDC can ultimately bring them into line, is complicated by the relative dearth of research about the Ukrainian security sector before the Maidan Revolution. Some researchers such as Taras Kuzio  or Joseph Albini have provided interesting insights into the internal development of the SBU. Yet there has been very little work on Ukraine that provides the kind of comprehensive analysis connecting the evolution of the policing and intelligence worlds with wider social trends that Mark Galeotti has pioneered in his research on the Russian security sector. Though in the aftermath of the Maidan Revolution and Crimea many scholars are working to close this gap, the scarcity of detailed research in this area makes it more difficult to establish how interaction between loyal veterans of the pre-Maidan security services and new 'revolutionary' recruits may influence the tactics they will use to fulfil the NSDC's strategic goals.

But there are some indications of the directions in which this institutional framework could evolve. In particular, the massive turnover in personnel experienced by all major Ukrainian security institutions in the last six months is a development that needs to be watched closely. With so many policemen, military officers and intelligence officials proving unreliable, thousands of new opportunities have opened up for Ukrainians who had no previous experience of combat or cover operations. Beyond institutional bureaucracies, a network of civic volunteers working together with patriotic oligarchs, best described by David Patrikarakos, has bypassed established structures to supply front line troops with much-needed equipment and support police in detecting pro-Russian sympathizers trying to destabilise regions outside the area of combat operations. 

While this massive infusion of fresh and loyal personnel has bogged down pro-Russian offensives and may ultimately help deter further Russian aggression, it could have a more problematic impact if the NSDC decides to focus on covert operations against various targets. With many of these new recruits still linked to their old volunteer battalions and in some cases even radical political movements, external actors may be in the position to use units within the SBU or other agencies to pursue their own agendas against Russian or pro-Russian targets. Such continued weakness in command and control could also make it tempting for operatives to run their own 'cowboy' operations, designed to destabilize Russian occupied territory or even parts of Russia itself without the knowledge of the NSDC leadership. 

The key role played by civic and oligarchic networks in helping reconstruct Ukraine's security sector could actually compound this problem. Military officers and security officials frustrated with the SBU's bureaucracy or desperate to show results can now draw on a wide range of activists and cash rich businessmen outside the security services to help fund and organize covert operations which may have unpredictable consequences. That such operations could be distorted by personal grudges, financial interests or a desire to enhance the reputation of a particular political movement is also a potential risk that arises if volunteer efforts that proved priceless in helping restore military strength become integrated in intelligence and infiltration work. 

Whether veterans of the pre-Maidan security services that have remained loyal will be willing or able to restrain their revolutionary colleagues remains questionable. As Christopher Miller, Taras Kuzio and others have pointed out, the risk that the FSB still has a network of informers within the security services remains high, making it more difficult for veteran operatives to exert authority over new recruits. Moreover, among the many genuine Ukrainian patriots within the SBU and the military there are indications that a desire for revenge against Russian opponents is barely lurking beneath the surface. The adoption of jingoistic rhetoric by ex-Berkut and SBU veterans in new security structures is certainly an act of expediency for those trying to distance themselves from the old regime. But I would contend that as it becomes internalized it may also encourage such figures to back impulsive plans. In the last six months Ukrainian 'siloviki' have lived through the greatest humiliation experienced by security services since the Second World War at the hands of an openly triumphalist FSB and GRU. For many old hands loyal to Kyiv, a desire to wipe this mark of shame from their records mixed with the need to prove their loyalty to the Ukrainian state increases the likelihood that they would willingly involve themselves in aggressive operations against Russian targets if they are encouraged to do so.

Such a dynamic may be exacerbated by attempts by senior political figures within the current Ukrainian government to maximise their influence over the security sector. The institutional empire-building of Interior Minister Avakov is especially significant in this regard. Drawing on his own wide-ranging network of contacts, which includes former civil society activists as well as members of the radical right, Avakov has put loyalists in place throughout the security services and done as much as possible to expand the remit of agencies under his control. While his ruthless approach ensured the loyalty of the police and the National Guard,  it is also helping to enhance the position of the Ministry of Interior to the extent that it may become a rival power structure to that of the NSDC. As a consequence, Avakov is coming into a position to launch his own alternative initiatives in ways that can bypass Turchynov and other NSDC officials responsible for coordinating intelligence work. A security sector split into a 'Turchynov vertical' and an 'Avakov vertical' would further increase the risks of potentially counter-productive actions, with covert operations against Russian targets becoming a means with which rival factions will try to enhance their influence.

Such covert operations would not necessarily have to take place in Russia to cause Moscow serious difficulties. With so much Kremlin prestige on the line and borders between occupied territories and Russia wide open, actions that help turn Crimea and the 'People's Republics' in East Ukraine into ungovernable spaces will have knock-on effects on the Russian Federation itself. Not only is economic collapse in these areas driving up the financial costs of occupation for the Kremlin, continuing political chaos in the Donbass region has already led to conflict between pro-Russian factions that has culminated in skirmishing and assassinations. The fragmentation of occupied territories into rival criminal fiefdoms increases the risk for the Kremlin that militia battles in Donetsk and Luhansk could spread to neighbouring Russian oblasts. In Crimea, there are enough disgruntled Ukrainians and Tatars around to provide the basis efforts toward destabilizing the peninsula if the SBU or another agency decided that this was a priority. However much the Crimean Tatar leadership and pro-Kyiv activists have emphasised non-violent resistance, if Russian authorities continue with a needlessly provocative approach, Ukrainian operatives who wish to use covert violence to pressure their rivals in the FSB are likely to find willing local recruits.

As Russia begins to experience serious economic turbulence over the course of 2015, new opportunities will arise for Ukrainian operatives who want to extend payback into the Russian Federation itself. Recent audacious attacks by Chechen insurgents in Grozny and continuing fighting across the North Caucasus region provide a ready platform for any intelligence team tasked with putting the Kremlin under pressure. In the 1990s, several radical Ukrainian nationalists joined Chechen rebel groups to fight the Russian Army. These links have been renewed, with a number of anti-Kremlin Chechens fighting with Ukrainian forces in East Ukraine. Such existing links would give a starting point for any operatives who decide to fuel anti-Kremlin insurgencies with an infusion of lethal aid with or without the knowledge of the NSDC. Further moves by the Kremlin to complete the centralisation of power which are putting ethnic minorities across the Russian Federation under greater pressure to undergo russification will also open up possibilities for initiatives designed to weaken the Russian state. Discontented minorities that no longer feel safe within the 'Russian World', regional elites whose income streams are being plundered by Moscow and even criminal gangs struggling to survive as profits decline could all provide useful levers for any destabilisation operations. 

However, such a shift to more aggressive covert operations would contain enormous risks for the Ukrainian state. With FSB infiltration still a huge problem for all major security institutions, chances remain high that plans for any such an operation would leak, damaging Ukraine's international image. In such a situation, some form of Russian escalation would undoubtedly follow that would not necessarily elicit a firm Western response. Any operations that could actually come to fruition would still be difficult to keep secret. As we have seen over the past few years, conflict watchers on social media have become adept at identifying weaponry deployed by insurgents and establishing its source, making it more difficult for intelligence agencies fuelling insurgencies to mask their presence. In the past two decades, the single-minded pursuit of Iron Wall strategies has done enormous damage to both Croatia and Israel's relationships with their core allies. It is unlikely that an NSDC strategy based on the same assumptions would enable Ukraine to escape a similar fate.

Even successful covert destabilisation operations may trigger developments that could cause Ukrainians considerable trouble. Moves to help compound Russian economic difficulties would certainly make it more difficult for the Kremlin to act, but such turmoil could easily have knock-on effects on Ukraine's own fragile economy. Turning occupied territories into ungovernable spaces would also make it far more difficult and costly to reconstruct their institutions if they ever came back under Kyiv's control. Moves to undermine security in vulnerable Russian regions are likely to have the most dangerous impact, with the potential to trigger refugee flows and cross-border violence which could easily draw Kyiv into conflicts in the North Caucasus and elsewhere in the Russian Federation that are not of direct strategic relevance to the Ukrainian state.

And yet even with all these dangers the risks that the post-Maidan security services could be drawn into aggressive covert operations against Russia remain high. With the probability of Kremlin intervention, a full military offensive against pro-Russian forces in Donetsk and Luhansk remains out of the question.This leaves few other areas of action for the Ukrainian government if it feels under public pressure to retaliate against terror attacks by pro-Russian groups or Russian intelligence services against targets associated with the Ukrainian war effort. As Nikolai Holmov has pointed out, this low-level terrorist campaign has become a challenge police and intelligence officials across the country are still struggling to cope with. A gradual escalation of such attacks will see a growing likelihood of a serious loss of civilian life leading to public fury at Russian and pro-Russian perpetrators. Coupled with continuing military casualties from skirmishes on the front line in the East and a general deterioration in the relationship between Russian and Ukrainian society, any such Kremlin instigated terrorist blunder will put the NSDC under enormous pressure to 'do something' and 'hit back'. In such a situation, developing an aggressive Iron Wall strategy and backing covert operations against pro-Russians and the Russian Federation will become a tempting path for Ukrainian security services with few other options.


Conclusion

The scenarios and possibilities outlined in this text are not inevitable. There is much NATO, the EU and the wider Western Alliance can do to prevent the kind of covert escalation that has seriously blighted relations between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. In any long-term aid packages for Ukraine, extensive engagement with the NSDC must therefore play a central role.

On a strategic level, EU member states need to ensure that a provisional settlement with Russia to deescalate the situation in East Ukraine gives Ukraine solid guarantees that any Russian breach of such a deal will trigger a robust economic and political response. More directly, NATO must provide financial aid and expertise to help Kyiv modernize its extensive arms industry and reform its army to enable it to deter any further escalations by the Kremlin. As long as Ukraine grapples with a sense of permanent national insecurity, the NSDC is likely to base its planning on an Iron Wall strategy. 

This partial integration of Ukraine into Western security and defence structures would also help give EU member states the leverage needed to restrain Kyiv from retaliating in kind to any Kremlin provocations that run out of control. Just as NATO expansion in the late 1990s was more about ensuring that East European states operated in accordance with international law rather than any concerns about Russia, so a similar gradual process of integration for Ukraine will strengthen the voices of those in Kyiv who believe that a national security strategy must remain in harmony with established European norms and values. 

Specific aid packages and transfer of expertise targeted at reforming the SBU and Ministry of Interior on an institutional level are also an essential part of this process. By improving command and control capabilities and providing tactical training designed to enhance the professionalism of operatives and officials, much can be done to prevent individuals or small groups running their own private wars against enemies of the Ukrainian state. Such strong support from EU and NATO member states should also enable the Ukrainian state to develop clearer lines of responsibility in order to avoid a situation where rivalries between strong personalities within the government lead to turf wars between institutions they control. Such intensive cooperation between Western security services and their Ukrainian counterparts is essential not just for the reform of the Ukrainian state, but to securing peace and stability across the region once any agreement with Russia is reached.

This is therefore the central paradox that will confront Ukrainian, European and Russian policy-makers over the next year. Since the beginning of the Maidan Revolution in November 2013, President Putin has taken enormous risks to prevent the integration of Ukraine into European institutions. Yet by providing incentives for a potentially vengeful Ukrainian state to stick to the rules, in the long term this European integration process may prove the best guarantee of Russia's security the Kremlin will get.