REUTERS/eltonjohn/Instagram
Vladimir Putin did not call Elton John and suggested they meet to
discuss LGBT rights in Russia, but a lot of people believed that he did.
On Monday, John wrote a post on Instagram saying that he had received
the phone call. On Tuesday, the post went viral, penetrating even the Russian pro-government print media. By close of business, Putin’s spokesman denied that the call had ever taken place. On Wednesday, an experienced Russian prankster, nicknamed Vovan, released a recording
of the conversation in which he impersonated Putin and his partner,
nicknamed Lexus, impersonated the Russian president’s press secretary.
It says something about the state of Russian media that neither the
opposition journalists nor the pro-government ones thought to call the
Kremlin press office for corroboration before publishing: Both sides
know that social networks are usually a more reliable source than the
Kremlin. But it is even more remarkable that both sides (and a number of
foreign media outlets) believed that Putin personally called the
singer. Why would they so easily believe something that seems so
improbable? Try imagining the way the world looks from Moscow, and it
will all make sense.
Just two years ago this month Putin scored the biggest foreign-policy
victory of his career: He hijacked Syria. President Barack Obama had
just failed to get congressional support for intervention there.
Swooping in when the American president stumbled, Putin suddenly
positioned himself as the arbiter of war, peace, and chemical weapons.
He published an op-ed in the
New York Times that
was the single best example of Soviet propaganda techniques since the
collapse of the Soviet Union.
Appealing to international institutions
and calling out American exceptionalism, Putin used American ideals and
American terminology to put America in its place. He was on top of the
world.
Now, two years later, Putin is an international pariah. His country
is subjected to economic and diplomatic sanctions and is facing the
pressure of lowered oil prices. The economy is in a death spiral,
Putin’s cronies cannot travel abroad, and Putin himself has been shunned
and shamed by Western leaders. All this has happened because of two
things: the war in Ukraine and the Kremlin’s antigay campaign.
Last month, the Kremlin announced that Putin will attend the United
Nations General Assembly; he will address it on September 28. Putin has
not graced the UN personally in a decade, but he is in fact returning to
the site of his foreign-relations triumph of September 2013: it was in
the Security Council session then that Russia took control of the Syrian
issue. Now he wants, once again, to talk about Syria. This means that
he needs to push Ukraine and gay rights off the agenda. For the last few
weeks, a de facto ceasefire has taken hold in eastern Ukraine (where
many de jure ceasefires have failed) — and the Western media have
noticed. But how was he to communicate that Russia could be more
reasonable on the LGBT issue?
Enter Elton John. The singer attended a political conference in Kiev
last week, met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and talked
LGBT rights with him. He seemed to be positioning himself as a sort of
global LGBT ambassador. Over the weekend, John told the BBC that he
would like to meet with the Russian president and discuss the issue with
him as well.
In the Kremlin, John’s proposal could be taken literally. The Russian
leadership believes in a worldwide gay conspiracy, even a backroom
global gay government that is trying to take over the world. Back in
December 2013, when the Russian parliament was discussing the protests
in Ukraine, the chairman of the foreign relations committee, Alexei
Pushkov (who will be accompanying Putin to the UN), warned that if
Ukraine moves toward the West, it will become part of “the sphere of
influence of gay culture” — as directly opposed to the Russian sphere of
influence. Reporting on John’s speech in Kiev last week, Russia’s highest-circulation daily stated
that John “invited Ukraine to join the gay community.” So the same
newspaper could imagine that if Putin had, indeed, picked up the phone
to call John, he would have secured a direct line to the gay rulers of
the world — and he could communicate to them that he was a reasonable
man who shouldn’t be criticized quite so harshly.
If John would get that message to the gay power establishment, then
Putin could have his reset and the conversation in New York would focus
on Syria. After a few weeks of obfuscating what it’s doing in Syria,
Russia is saying
that it is trying to protect what remains of the Syrian state, because
if it fails then things will get even worse. The metamessage here is,
Russia is reasonable and rational while the West, with its sanctions, is
hysterical and unfair.
Why is Putin coming to the UN, and why is he working so hard to
re-frame the conversation? The sanctions have made an impact on Russia
and its politicians, and Putin may be hoping that they will be lifted or
relaxed. But more likely, re-establishing himself as an equal partner
in a conversation with the United States is an end in itself. He needs
it for his domestic audience, which has not seen a demonstration of
Russia’s international stature in a while. He also needs it for himself:
while he doesn’t care what the West thinks of Russian politics, he
personally does not enjoy being shunned. This is the man who worked
tirelessly, personally to host a big party in Sochi (and then almost
nobody came): he likes to hang out with the big guys and throw his
weight around.
