It may appear that we’re back in the USSR, but a lot has changed in Russia since the 1980s

There’s a vintage feel about the events taking place today but for all their superficial similarities it would be a mistake to revert to old assumptions, writes Mary Dejevsky

Supporters of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny march to demand his release from prison in Moscow (Getty)

Shut your eyes and you could almost be back in the latter stages of the Cold War. A new US president has held his first phone call with the Kremlin ruler, where he talked about “acting firmly in defence of US national interests” in a conversation described by the Kremlin as “businesslike and frank”. 

Clutching at one of the few areas where the two countries still speak a common language, they expressed an interest in further nuclear arms control and agreed to extend the last remaining Cold War-era accord – the successor of the original Start treaty on long-range nuclear weapons – for another five years, rather than let it expire next month.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s foreign minister is trying to exploit what could be a new climate between the superpowers by relaunching a Palestinian proposal for an international conference on the Middle East, sometime in the spring or summer. And human rights are back on the agenda, as Moscow and the west clash verbally over the fate of a PR-savvy dissident, whose activist wife is now fronting his cause. Police are beating up and detaining protesters, raiding apartments and finding reasons to keep the dissident himself locked up. Europe is tentatively trying to keep an east-west dialogue open, against the better judgement of hawks on the other side of the Atlantic.

Ah, for the old days of ideological division, superpower diplomacy, heroic individuals, and small opportunities. This is practically where I came in as a reporter and commentator on this part of the world. Look more closely, however, and those very similarities, those echoes of the past, illustrate just how much has changed in the past 35 years or so.

Washington and Moscow may seem to be reverting to the old arms control standby, as a constant to hold on to in uncertain times, but the time when these two capitals could claim to be dictating the security of the world is gone. If two powers are locked in anything like the global rivalry of the past, it is the United States and China. It is not even clear even that this binary competition exists, at least not yet; we may be closer at present to Moscow’s idea of a “multi-polar” world, with the US, the EU, China, India, and, yes, Russia representing distinct forces in a world where economics may play as big a part in international relations as security.

Nor is nuclear arms control the be-all and end-all of security, as it was in those days. Extending the Start treaty may foster a little trust, but any new security agreements will be worth little if China is not included. It has also to be asked whether, with cyber, drones, and the “smart” weapons being developed by the US and Russia, nuclear weapons are quite what arms control needs to be about now.

Sergei Lavrov’s plan to bring the Middle East back on to the international agenda, based on Israel-Palestinian talks and the “two-state solution”, also has a distinctly vintage feel. The balance in the region has changed since this was the central concern of US policy – much though that might be a cause for regret among Palestinians. A majority of Arab states have now de facto recognised the state of Israel.

The Arab Spring has left more instability than democracy in its wake, altering the power balance in the process. Russia has reestablished itself in the region, if only as a broker, following its intervention in Syria. Iran is a power to be reckoned with. Turkey looks more and more like an anomaly in Nato. Now self-sufficient in energy, the United States has less need to treat the region as vital to its interests. China has been making inroads. An Israel-Palestinian agreement would provide a neat end to old business, but it no longer looks central to other change.

Nor are we back on familiar territory in Russia itself. Washington and London may be condemning the Kremlin over its treatment of the anti-corruption campaigner, Alexei Navalny – and British MPs had a good old-fashioned rant about human rights in Russia this week – but Putin’s Russia is not the Soviet Union.

The nuclear scientist and human rights campaigner, Andrei Sakharov, was exiled to the “closed” city of Gorky (now reverted to its pre-Soviet name, Nizhny Novgorod, and thoroughly open to the world). Protests in his name were mostly stopped before they could start. Sakharov was effectively cut off from the world – to the point where Mikhail Gorbachev had to order a telephone connected to his apartment, so he could inform him that he was being freed.

Like Sakharov, Navalny may have the benefit of a strong, articulate and crusading wife. But where Yelena Bonner had to rely mainly on foreign journalists to get his message out, the Navalnys have the benefit of social media. Communications have changed beyond compare, and the power ratio with it. Unless the Kremlin cuts the internet – and so far it has stopped at selective monitoring – Navalny will not be silenced. Much is murky about events that led to his medical evacuation to Germany, but his voice was still heard. He was a pioneer of politics on the internet and he has teams all over Russia who will maintain his “virtual” presence, even if he were made to “disappear”.

Navalny’s prospects of overturning the current order in Russia should not be exaggerated. It is more stable than it might look, and Navalny may not be the one to bring change; his support until recently hovered in single digits. But the crowds he was able to muster last weekend across Russia, and his appeal among the rising, first fully post-Soviet, generation should give the Kremlin pause for thought and could foreshadow a different Russia.

As in the 1980s, there is a split between the US and Europe, broadly speaking, about how to deal with Russia. Joe Biden, as would be expected from most just-inaugurated US presidents, is pursuing a hard line. The EU high representative, Josep Borrell, in contrast, insisted this week that he was proceeding with his planned trip to Russia in February, despite the imprisonment of Navalny. “I do not share the opinion that when things go bad you do not talk”, he told reporters in Brussels. “On the contrary, that is the moment in which talking is even more required.” He also noted that it would be good to visit Moscow before the EU council discusses Russia policy in March.

That discussion could presage a shift in EU policy away from the generally tough approach that has prevailed since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. And this might be, first, because, with no imminent change likely in US Russia policy, there is no point in waiting to form a common transatlantic front, but, second, because the balance of views in the EU has changed. The departure of the UK has deprived the east and central Europeans of a hard-hitting ally on Russia; France, Germany and Italy have recently broached trying to bring Russia in from the cold, their concern being that a time may come when the US security guarantee is no longer there.

The United States may be entering a phase where its foreign policy is more familiar and congenial to Europe than it has been for a while, with Biden himself a product of that previous age. But, for all the superficial similarities, the world has changed a lot since the 1980s – and Russia has changed more than most. To settle back into old assumptions and not to recognise that change would be a huge, even a historic, mistake.