Clayton Chudleigh

“With more than half of all Arctic coastline along its northern shores, Russia has long sought economic and military dominance in part of the world where as much as $35 trillion worth of untapped oil and natural gas could be lurking.” (Dillow)

For the first time in five years and since his reelection back in 2018, Vladimir Putin’s approval rating has dropped below 65 percent. His approval rating has been continuously recorded by the Levada Analytical Center since Putin first took office, and looking at the patterns in the ratings data, we see that these low ratings should make us nervous.

This is how The Wall Street Journal described Alexei Navalny back in 2012 near the beginning of his prominence in Russia as a political activist. Navalny has been an outspoken critic of political and governmental corruption as well as a critic of President Vladimir Putin himself, calling United Russia, Russia’s ruling party, a “party of crooks and thieves.” He has quickly become the prominent face of Russian opposition to Putin, and with this has led multiple nationwide protests. He has gained most of his followers through his social media presence, with over two million subscribers to his YouTube channel and even more than that following him on Twitter, not to mention his blog that has been translated into English. Along with all of this, he ran in the Moscow mayoral election supported by the People’s Freedom Party, coming in second with a large portion of the votes. With a presence like that, it makes sense that Putin would consider Navalny a threat.

Earlier this month, the Republic of Turkey defied the United States and NATO by accepting the delivery of the S-400 mobile surface-to-air missile system from Russia. The S-400 is the successor of the S-300 missile system, and compared to the U.S. Patriot missile system is capable of engaging more targets at longer ranges simultaneously. This deal has been in the works since 2017, brokered amid warnings from the United States of economic and political consequences.

With talks currently in place between the two countries in preparation for further integration, it is important to understand how both Russia and Belarus got to this point in their somewhat strained relationship. Looking at the two countries from a westerner’s perspective, one might think that the two countries have always been allied forces with a one-track mind, but when you dig a little deeper you may find that appearances aren’t always true to what is really going on underneath.