Former Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev on "Where is Russia Headed"

On April 20, 12:00 noon -1:30 pm, I attended a presentation at the Atlantic Council by former Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev. Over one hundred persons were in attendance. Some of the main points made by Kozyrev during his brief opening remarks and in answer to questions from the audience:

--Russia today has a quasi-market economy large parts of which are controlled by the state and its bureaucracy. Property rights are shaky and entrepreneurs must keep their activities "under the radar." Russians "know" the limits of what they can and cannot do under the current economic/political system.

--The problems with the Russian economy are structural and the drop in oil prices is not the major cause of its difficulties.

--As was the case with the Soviet Union, there exists in Russia today an non-official, underground economy that manages, in its rough-and-ready way, to provide needed goods and services.

--In international affairs, what is occurring today is not a "new Cold War," but a return to the old Cold War; Russian foreign policy under Yeltsin was a partial success but did not live up to its promise. Russia today is a continuation of the Soviet Union.

--Putin's Russia is involved in "foreign adventures" that could lead the international situation to deteriorate even further.

--Ukrainians "are our brothers."

--The West should make clear to Russia how it will react to Russian actions outside its territory.

--The U.S. cannot do for Russia "what we must do ourselves."

--Putin deserves praise for his handling of Russian-Chinese border issues and not turning the relations between the two countries into an alliance against other nations.

--Polls in Russia are not a reliable measurement of popular feeling about the current government.There is no free press, so how can people know what is going on? And if polls are taken by telephone calls, who's really calling?

--There are many "patriotic Russians" in the bureaucracy, the military, the security services who are concerned about the status quo.

--If there is chaos in Russia, "everything is possible" there.

JB note: Oddly, there were no questions, so far as I could tell, about the impact of sanctions on Russia.
See: Andrei V. Kozyrev, "Russia’s Coming Regime Change," (New York Times, July 20, 2015)