An Olive Branch from Putin?

Simon Saradzhyan

Global Governance, Russia

Despite containing a litany of customary anti-Western complaints, the Russian president's speech clearly showed that he’s willing to improve relations with the West once Russia and NATO complete announced deployments.

The good news about the public portion of Vladimir Putin’s June 30 meeting with Russian ambassadors was that there was no news—and that bodes well for those who have not yet lost hope that Russia’s relations with the West can be normalized. Despite containing a litany of customary anti-Western complaints, Putin’s speech clearly showed that he’s willing to improve relations with the West once Russia and NATO complete already-announced deployments of forces against each other.

Of course, once the press was ushered out of the meeting, Putin must have dispensed some new instructions to the diplomats and their boss, Sergei Lavrov, whose staff is currently drafting Russia’s new foreign policy doctrine. But at least in his public address to the ambassadors, who gather in Moscow every two years to receive strategic guidance, Putin did little more than repeat recent talking points. He referred to opportunities for deepening the “unprecedented” partnership with Beijing and advancing economic integration both with China and with Russia’s post-Soviet neighbors. As in his 2014 address to the envoys and other more recent speeches Putin did highlight the threats posed by NATO expansion and American unilateralism and faulted the collective West for not only ignoring Russia’s interests but also overthrowing regimes in “color revolutions.” At the same time, as has also become customary, Putin referred to Western countries as “partners” and left the door open for getting Russia’s relationship with the West back on better footing, even though NATO leaders are expected to sign off during their July 8-9 summit on plans to start rotating four “battalions-plus” size units next year in the Baltics and Poland in addition to one armored brigade and hardware that the U.S. plans to dispatch to the region to deter Russia.