Three reasons Putin might want to interfere in the U.S. presidential elections

2016/8/4 15:49:49

Right now, Putin wants the U.S. to remove sanctions imposed on Russia after its annexation of Crimea in March 2014. Perhaps even more importantly, Russia has parliamentary elections this September, and presidential elections again in 2018, when Putin is expected to run for a fourth term. The Kremlin does not want a repeat of the protests of 2011-’12, and certainly no pronouncements from the U.S. about whether the elections are free and fair or whether Putin has a genuine popular mandate for his next presidency.

 


By Fiona Hill for Brookings, Aug 3, 2016:

 

The Clinton campaign, among others, has accused Vladimir Putin of encouraging Russian intelligence to hack the Democratic National Committee (DNC) files and hand over thousands of emails to WikiLeaks as part of a broader scheme to get Donald Trump elected president.

 

But why would Putin even want to influence the U.S. presidential election? There are several reasons Russia might want stir up trouble in an already contentious campaign. Russian views of the United States are at a low point; Putin believes the U.S. plays its own nefarious games in Russian politics; and Moscow would like to undermine U.S. international credibility by highlighting the deficiencies in American party politics.

 

PUTIN THINKS THE U.S. ALREADY DID IT TO HIM FIRST

 

As far as Putin and his inner circle are concerned, it was the United States that moved first to meddle in Russian politics when Putin decided to return for a third term. In 2011-’12, Russian demonstrators took to the streets to protest electoral violations in the parliamentary elections and the lack of alternative candidates to Putin in the presidential election. Putin and his inner circle believed the U.S. was to blame. Putin even asserted that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had either incited or directly financed the demonstrations.

 

In Putin’s mindset, the West always tries to bring Russia down. Next year will be the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, and this year marks the 25th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In the Russian worldview, first Germany in World War I and then the United States in the Cold War took advantage of domestic divisions and vulnerabilities and the Russian state collapsed twice in one century.

 

So one of Putin’s primary objectives is to force Western leaders to back off in order to make sure this doesn’t happen again. Putin wants the United States and other Western governments to stop funding, as part of their foreign policies, organizations that promote political and economic transformations in Russia. He also wants to block U.S. officials from meeting with opposition figures and parties. From Putin’s perspective, democracy promotion is just a cover for regime change.

 

[…]

Right now, Putin wants the U.S. to remove sanctions imposed on Russia after its annexation of Crimea in March 2014. Perhaps even more importantly, Russia has parliamentary elections this September, and presidential elections again in 2018, when Putin is expected to run for a fourth term. The Kremlin does not want a repeat of the protests of 2011-’12, and certainly no pronouncements from the U.S. about whether the elections are free and fair or whether Putin has a genuine popular mandate for his next presidency.

 

[…]

https://www.brookings.edu/2016/08/03/3 ... s-presidential-elections/

 

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