Hard men present hard choices—none more so than Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia. Putin’s worldview is shaped by his admiration for the powerful czars of Russian history, Russia’s long-standing interest in controlling the nations on its borders, and his personal determination that his country never again appear weak or at the mercy of the West, as he believes it was after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He wants to reassert Russia’s power by dominating its neighbors and controlling their access to energy. He also wants to play a larger role in the Middle East to increase Moscow’s influence in that region and reduce the threat from restive Muslims within and beyond Russia’s southern borders. To achieve these goals, he seeks to reduce the influence of the United States in Central and Eastern Europe and other areas that he considers part of Russia’s sphere, and to counter or at least mute our efforts in the countries roiled by the Arab Spring.
All of that helps explain why Putin first pressured Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to walk away from closer ties with the European Union in late 2013, and why, after Yanukovych’s government disintegrated, Putin invaded and annexed Crimea. If Putin is restrained and doesn’t push beyond Crimea into eastern Ukraine, it will not be because he has lost his appetite for more power, territory, and influence.
Putin sees geopolitics as a zero-sum game in which, if someone is winning, then someone else has to be losing. That’s an outdated but still dangerous concept, one that requires the United States to show both strength and patience. To manage our relationship with the Russians, we should work with them on specific issues when possible, and rally other nations to work with us to prevent or limit their negative behavior when needed. That’s a difficult but essential balance to strike, as I found over my four years as Secretary.
Winston Churchill observed, “In a true unity of Europe, Russia must have her part,” and in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, there was great hope that it would happen. I remember the thrill of watching Boris Yeltsin standing on a tank in Moscow as he turned back a coup by old Soviet hard-liners that threatened Russia’s new democracy. Yeltsin was willing to quit pointing nuclear weapons toward American cities, destroy fifty tons of plutonium, and sign a cooperation pact with NATO. But he faced stiff opposition to his policies at home from those who wanted to keep their distance from Europe and the United States, keep as much control over their neighbors as possible, and keep the unruly force of Russian democracy at bay.
After Yeltsin underwent heart surgery in 1996, he never regained the energy and powers of concentration required to manage the unruly Russian political system. He unexpectedly retired on New Year’s Eve in 1999, six months before his term expired, clearing the way for his chosen successor, a little-known former KGB officer from St. Petersburg named Vladimir Putin.
Most people assumed that Putin was chosen because he would be loyal, protecting Yeltsin and his family, and because he would govern more vigorously than Yeltsin had. He was disciplined and fit, a practitioner of judo, and he inspired hope and confidence among Russians still reeling from so much political change and economic adversity. But he also proved over time to be thin-skinned and autocratic, resenting criticism and eventually cracking down on dissent and debate, including from a free press and NGOs.
In June 2001, when President Bush met Putin for the first time, he famously said, “I was able to get a sense of his soul.” The two leaders made common cause in the “Global War on Terror,” as Putin found it useful to align his brutal campaign in the restive Muslim-majority republic of Chechnya with America’s fight against al Qaeda. But it didn’t take long for relations to sour. The Iraq War, Putin’s increasingly authoritarian behavior at home, and Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August 2008 increased tension.
As Russia’s economy grew, driven by oil and gas revenues, Putin allowed the wealth to concentrate in the hands of politically connected oligarchs rather than investing broadly in the talents of the Russian people and the country’s infrastructure. He pursued an aggressive vision of a “Greater Russia” that unnerved his neighbors and conjured up bad memories of Soviet expansionism. And he used Russia’s natural gas exports to intimidate Ukrainians and others in January 2006 and again in January 2009 by cutting off supplies and raising prices.
Among the most egregious developments in the new Russia were the attacks on the press. Newspapers, television stations, and bloggers faced intense pressure to toe the Kremlin line. Since 2000, Russia has been the fourth most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist—not as bad as Iraq but worse than Somalia or Pakistan. Between 2000 and 2009 nearly twenty journalists were killed in Russia, and in only one case was the killer convicted.
When I visited Moscow in October 2009, I thought it important to speak out in support of press freedoms and against the official campaign of intimidation. At a reception at Spaso House, the stately home of American Ambassadors to Russia since 1933, I met with journalists, lawyers, and other civil society leaders, including one activist who told me that he had been badly beaten by unidentified thugs. These Russians had seen friends and colleagues harassed, intimidated, even killed, yet they went on working, writing, and speaking, refusing to be silenced. I assured them that the United States would publicly and privately raise human rights concerns with the Russian government.
Where you say something can be as important as what you say. I could talk with activists in Spaso House all I wanted, but most Russians would never hear my words. So I asked the embassy if they could find an independent broadcaster who would host me. One possibility, a radio station called Ekho Moskvy, or “Echo of Moscow,” sounded more like an awkwardly named propaganda outlet than a bastion of a free press. But our diplomats on the ground assured me that the station was one of the most independent, fair-minded, and hard-hitting in Russia.
In my live interview, I was asked about some of the pressing issues in the U.S.-Russia relationship, including Georgia and Iran, and then we turned to the question of human rights inside Russia. “I have no doubt in my mind that democracy is in Russia’s best interests,” I said, “and that respecting human rights, an independent judiciary, a free media are in the interests of building a strong, stable political system that provides a platform for broadly shared prosperity. We will continue to say that and we will continue to support those who also stand for those values.” We talked about the imprisonment, beatings, and killings of journalists. “I think people want their government to stand up and say this is wrong, and they’re going to try to prevent it and they’re going to make sure the people are brought to justice who are engaged in such behavior,” I said. The station remains on the air and continues to maintain its independence. Unfortunately, during the crackdown on dissent surrounding the invasion of Crimea in 2014, the radio station’s website was temporarily blocked. It appears the Kremlin is moving to further stamp out all dissenting voices.
After eight years as President, Putin faced constitutionally mandated term limits, leading him in 2008 to swap jobs with his Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev. At first the switch seemed like a farce, a way for Putin to keep a hold on power from a different perch, and there was certainly an element of that. But Medvedev surprised many by bringing a new tone to the Kremlin. He seemed more open to dissenting views at home, more conciliatory abroad, and more interested in diversifying Russia’s economy beyond oil, gas, and other commodities.
I came into office skeptical of Russia’s leadership duet but hopeful that we could find areas where we could work together. As a Senator I had been a frequent critic of Putin’s rule, but I knew it was counterproductive for us to see Russia only as a threat when there were issues we needed to pursue with them.
The question of nations working together on some issues while clashing on others is part of a classic debate within foreign policy circles. Should the United States stop negotiating on arms control or trade because we objected to Russia’s aggression in Georgia? Or should issues proceed on parallel tracks? Straight up transactional diplomacy isn’t always pretty, but often it’s necessary.
In 2009, President Obama and I thought we could achieve key U.S. national interests with Russia through an approach with three elements: finding specific areas for cooperation where our interests aligned, standing firm where our interests diverged, and engaging consistently with the Russian people themselves. This approach became known as “the reset.”
As we formulated this approach at State, Bill Burns, who had served three years as U.S. Ambassador to Russia, led our planning, offering insights into the opaque machinations of the Kremlin’s personalities. Medvedev was a young leader who had come to power without excessive Cold War baggage. Putin, by contrast, had cut his teeth in the KGB in the 1970s and 1980s, the ultimate Cold War résumé. In my view, despite the office shuffle, Putin remained a formidable power who would make attempts at expanding cooperation more difficult. If there were opportunities to do so—and I thought there were—it would be because both sides made a clear-eyed assessment of shared interests.
My first meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was in March 2009. Richard Holbrooke, who had known him when they both served as Ambassadors at the UN in the late 1990s, told me Lavrov was the consummate diplomat, serving his masters in Moscow with intellect, energy, and no small amount of arrogance. (Coming from Richard, that was really saying something!) Lavrov, perpetually tanned and well-tailored, spoke fluent English and had a taste for fine whiskey and the poetry of Pushkin. He had a turbulent relationship with my predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, especially (and for good reason) after Russia invaded Georgia. Those tensions had not disappeared, but if we wanted progress on nuclear arms control, sanctions on Iran, or access to Afghanistan’s northern border, we needed to cooperate. Perhaps a joke could break the ice.
In politics a sense of humor is essential. There are countless reasons why you have to be able to laugh at yourself. How many times, as Senator from New York, did I go on David Letterman’s show to deliver a pantsuit joke? (The answer is three.) During the 2008 campaign I made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live alongside Amy Poehler, who had perfected a hilarious “Hillary Clinton” with a memorably boisterous laugh. In diplomacy, with its carefully scripted conversations across language and cultural divides, there’s less room for humor. But occasionally it comes in handy. This felt like one of those times.
In a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February, Vice President Biden had said, “It is time to press the reset button and to revisit the many areas where we can and should be working together with Russia.” I liked the idea of a “reset”—not as a way of ignoring our real disagreements but to embed them in a broader agenda alongside areas of common interest. Talking it over with my team in the run-up to meeting Lavrov in Geneva, Switzerland, we hit on an idea. Why not present Lavrov with an actual reset button? It might get people laughing—including Lavrov—and ensure that our commitment to a fresh start, not our disagreements, made the headlines. A little unconventional, maybe, but worth a try.
Lavrov and I met in the InterContinental Hotel’s Salon Panorama, named for its panoramic view of Geneva. Before we sat down, I presented him with a small green box, complete with a ribbon. While the cameras snapped away, I opened it and pulled out a bright red button on a yellow base that had been pulled off the whirlpool in the hotel. It was labeled with the Russian word peregruzka. We both laughed and pushed the button together. “We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” I asked. The Foreign Minister took a closer look. The other Americans in the room, especially the Russian-speaking ones who had chosen the word, held their breath. “You got it wrong,” he said. Was this light moment about to become an international incident? I just kept laughing. Then so did Lavrov, and everyone relaxed. “It should be perezagruzka,” he explained. “This means overcharged.” “Well,” I responded, “we won’t let you do that to us, I promise.”
It was not the finest hour for American linguistic skills. But if our goal had been to break the ice and make sure no one would ever forget the “reset,” then our translation error had certainly done that. Lavrov said he would take the button home and keep it on his desk. Later that night, Philippe Reines, who had helped dream up the joke in the first place, made a last-ditch effort to correct the spelling error. He approached the Russian Ambassador to Switzerland, who was holding the button, and asked to replace the label. “I don’t think I can do that until I talk with my minister,” the cautious Ambassador replied. “Well, if your minister doesn’t give that back to us, my minister is going to send me to Siberia!” Philippe exclaimed. I must admit, it was a tempting thought.
At President Obama’s first meeting with Medvedev, in London in April 2009, the American and Russian delegations faced each other across the formal dining table at Winfield House, the residence of our U.S. Ambassador. I was the only woman on either side of the table. This was President Obama’s first overseas trip since taking office, a strategic swing through Europe to attend a G-20 meeting, a NATO summit, and visits to key allies, and I was glad to be by his side. Our time on the road together over the years, from that first visit to London all the way to our historic final trip to Burma in late 2012, gave us a chance to consult and strategize far away from the daily hubbub of Washington. Before one of our meetings in Prague, on that same April trip, he pulled me aside and said, “Hillary, I need to talk to you.” He put his arm around me and walked me over toward a window. I wondered what sensitive policy matter he wanted to discuss. Instead he whispered in my ear, “You’ve got something in your teeth.” It was embarrassing, to be sure, but also the kind of thing only a friend would say and a sign that we were going to have each other’s backs.
During that first meeting with the Russians, the two Presidents broached the idea of a new treaty to cut the number of nuclear weapons on both sides and managed to find common ground on Afghanistan, terrorism, trade, and even Iran, despite disagreements on missile defense and Georgia. Medvedev said that Russia’s experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s had been “pitiful” and that they were willing to allow the United States to transport lethal cargo across their territory to supply our troops. That was important because it would give us leverage with Pakistan, which otherwise controlled the only route for troops and equipment into Afghanistan. Medvedev also acknowledged, to my surprise, that Russia had underestimated Iran’s growing nuclear capacity. “Turns out you were right,” he said. Russia had a complicated relationship with Iran. It was selling Tehran weapons and even helping it build a nuclear power plant, but the Russians did not want to see nuclear proliferation or instability on their already volatile southern flank. As you’ll read later, Medvedev’s comment opened a door for stronger cooperation on Iran and eventually led to a landmark vote at the UN to impose tough new sanctions. He did not, however, alter his opposition to our plans for missile defense in Europe, despite the fact that, as we said many times, it was designed to protect against potential threats from Iran rather than from Russia.
President Obama emphasized the positive and promised a quick follow-up on a new nuclear arms treaty, as well as deeper cooperation regarding Afghanistan, terrorism, and Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization. All in all, it was a thorough, candid discussion of difficult issues—what we came to expect from Medvedev. The reset seemed to be on track.
A team of State Department negotiators, led by Under Secretary Ellen Tauscher and Assistant Secretary Rose Gottemoeller, worked for a year with their Russian counterparts to iron out every detail of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, which set limits on numbers of Russian and American nuclear warheads on missiles and bombers. After President Obama and Medvedev signed the treaty in April 2010, I began making the case to persuade my former Senate colleagues to ratify it, working closely with my Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Rich Verma, a longtime aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and an astute student of Capitol Hill’s often impenetrable ways. I called key Senate Republicans, who told me they didn’t trust the Russians and worried the United States would not be able to verify compliance. I explained that the treaty gave us mechanisms to do just that and if the Russians didn’t live up to their word, we could always withdraw. I reminded them that even President Reagan, with his philosophy of “trust but verify,” had signed disarmament agreements with the Soviets. And I stressed that time was of the essence; the old START had expired, so for nearly a year we hadn’t had any weapons inspectors on the ground in Russia checking what was happening in their missile silos. That was a dangerous lapse we couldn’t let continue.
In the weeks leading up to the vote, I spoke with eighteen Senators, nearly all of them Republicans. As Secretary of State I worked with Congress on many matters, especially the Department’s budget, but this was my first experience twisting arms on behalf of the White House since leaving the Senate myself. It was helpful to call on my relationships with former colleagues built over eight years of reaching across the aisle to write legislation and consult on committees. We also had on our side a master Senate operator, Vice President Biden, and the bipartisan tag-team at the helm of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Chairman John Kerry of Massachusetts and Ranking Member Richard Lugar of Indiana.
We kept getting closer to the two-thirds majority of the Senate required under the Constitution to ratify a treaty, but the final votes were hard to find. Our prospects dimmed after the midterm elections in November 2010, when Republicans took control of the House, winning sixty-three more seats, and narrowed the Democratic majority in the Senate, picking up six seats. Despite that setback, Senator Lugar urged me to come up to the Hill in person to make the final sale. With the outlook for passage grim, I kept working the phones and visited the Capitol again just before Christmas to make a final appeal. That night the Senate voted successfully to end debate, and the next day the treaty passed 71 to 26. It was a victory for bipartisanship, U.S.-Russia relations, and a safer world.
Over time, President Obama and President Medvedev developed a personal relationship that offered further opportunities for cooperation. At a long meeting I had with Medvedev outside Moscow in October 2009, he raised his plan to build a high-tech corridor in Russia modeled after our own Silicon Valley. When I suggested that he visit the original in California, he turned to his staff and told them to follow up. He included a stop there on his 2010 visit to the United States, and, by all accounts, was impressed with what he saw. That could have been the start of realizing Medvedev’s vision for a diversified Russian economy—if Putin had permitted it.
The reset led to a number of early successes, including imposing strong sanctions on Iran and North Korea, opening a northern supply route to equip our troops in Afghanistan, bringing Russia into the World Trade Organization, winning UN backing for the no-fly zone in Libya, and expanding counterterrorism cooperation. But the tone began to shift in late 2011. In September Medvedev announced that he would not run for reelection; instead Putin would reclaim his old job in 2012. This shuffle confirmed what I had said four years before: that Medvedev was just keeping Putin’s chair warm.
Then, in December, Russia’s Parliamentary elections were marred by widespread reports of fraud. Independent political parties were denied the right to register, and there were reported attempts to stuff ballot boxes, manipulate voter lists, and other blatant irregularities. Independent Russian election observers were harassed, and their websites faced cyber attacks. At an international conference in Lithuania, I expressed serious concerns about these reports. “The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted,” I said, “and that means they deserve fair, free, transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them.” Tens of thousands of Russian citizens reached the same conclusion and took to the streets to protest. When chants of “Putin is a thief” filled the air, Putin lashed out—directly at me. “She set the tone for some actors in our country and gave them a signal,” he claimed. If only I had such power! The next time I saw President Putin, I chided him about his remarks: “I can just see people in Moscow waking up and saying Hillary Clinton wants us to go demonstrate. That’s not how it works, Mr. President.” Still, if I had helped even a few people find the courage to speak out for real democracy, then it was all to the good.
In May 2012, Putin formally reclaimed the title of President and shortly afterward declined President Obama’s invitation to a G-8 summit at Camp David. A cool wind was blowing from the east. In June, I sent a memo to President Obama outlining my views. He was no longer dealing with Medvedev and needed to be ready to take a harder line. Putin was “deeply resentful of the U.S. and suspicious of our actions,” I argued, and intent on reclaiming lost Russian influence in its neighborhood, from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. He might call his project “regional integration,” but that was code for rebuilding a lost empire. I was with President Obama when he sat down with Putin for the first time as two heads of state on the sidelines of a G-20 meeting in Los Cabos, Mexico. “Bargain hard,” I advised, because Putin will “give no gifts.”
Russia soon took a less constructive approach on many key issues, especially the conflict in Syria, where it propped up the Assad regime in its brutal war and blocked all attempts at the United Nations to organize a strong international response. The Kremlin cracked down hard on dissidents, NGOs, and LGBT citizens at home and went back to bullying its neighbors.
For those who expected the reset to open a new era of goodwill between Russia and the United States, it proved to be a bitter disappointment. For those of us who had more modest expectations—that de-linking tough issues and toning down rhetoric on both sides could create space for progress on specific priorities—the reset delivered. Later, after the invasion of Crimea in 2014, some in Congress blamed the reset for emboldening Putin. I think this view misunderstands both Putin and the reset. After all, he had invaded Georgia in 2008 and faced few consequences, from the United States or others. Putin invaded Georgia and Crimea for his own reasons, on his own timetable, in response to events on the ground. Neither the Bush Administration’s tough rhetoric and doctrine of preemptive war nor the Obama Administration’s focus on pragmatic cooperation on core interests deterred or invited these acts of aggression. The reset was not a reward; it was a recognition that America has many important strategic and security interests, and we need to make progress where we can. That remains true today.
To understand the complexities of our relationship with Russia during the reset and what we were trying to achieve, consider just one example: Central Asia and the challenge of supplying our troops in Afghanistan.
In the aftermath of 9/11, as the United States prepared to invade Afghanistan, the Bush Administration leased former Soviet air bases in two remote but strategically located Central Asian countries, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. They were used to fly soldiers and supplies into the Afghan theater. Given the extraordinary international dynamics at the time, Russia did not object, despite the fact that it viewed these underdeveloped former Soviet republics as within its sphere of influence. But soon the Kremlin was encouraging the Uzbek and Kyrgyz governments to make sure the Americans did not stay permanently. For Putin, Central Asia was Russia’s backyard. He was wary of both growing Chinese economic influence and an American military presence.
By 2009, President Obama was in the early stages of planning a troop surge into Afghanistan, to be followed by a phased withdrawal beginning in 2011. That meant the U.S. military once again needed to move large amounts of troops and matériel into and out of the mountainous, landlocked country. The most direct supply line into Afghanistan was through Pakistan, but this route was vulnerable to attacks by Taliban insurgents and temper tantrums by Pakistani officials. Pentagon planners wanted a second land route, even if it was longer and more expensive, to ensure that our troops were never cut off. The natural place to look was Central Asia. Cargo could be off-loaded at ports in the Baltic Sea and then shipped thousands of miles by rail through Russia, to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and finally across Afghanistan’s northern border. Meanwhile troops could be flown in through the still-open air base in Kyrgyzstan. The Northern Distribution Network, as it came to be known, would provide lavish revenues to corrupt regimes, but it would also significantly aid the war effort. It was one of those classic compromises of foreign policy. But before it could get going, we had to get Russia to agree to let us transport military equipment across its territory.
In President Obama’s first meeting with Medvedev, he emphasized that, as part of the reset, the Northern Distribution Network would be a top priority for us. In response, Medvedev said that Russia was open to cooperating (and profiting from the transit fees). In July 2009, when President Obama visited Moscow, an agreement was formally signed to allow the transport of lethal military equipment through Russia to Afghanistan.
Medvedev’s agreement on lethal transit masked another agenda, however. For the Kremlin, influence in Central Asia was still turf to be guarded, jealously. So even as Russia allowed U.S. cargo to move through its territory, it worked to expand its own military footprint across Central Asia, using our presence as its excuse to increase control over the region’s regimes and undermine their growing ties with Washington. It was like a modern-day version of the “Great Game,” the elaborate 19th-century diplomatic contest between Russia and Britain for supremacy in Central Asia—except that America had a narrowly focused interest in the region and was not seeking dominance.
In early December 2010, I traveled to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, meeting with leaders to keep things on track. In a town hall meeting with students and journalists in Bishkek, I answered questions about relations with Moscow. “Where does Kyrgyzstan come in your reset with Russia?” one young man asked. I explained that while our countries disagreed on many topics—I mentioned Georgia and human rights in particular—our goal was to work together on a positive agenda and overcome a long legacy of mistrust.
One of the journalists followed up with a question about whether the reset would come at the cost of Kyrgyzstan and Central Asia: “Is there any rivalry going on between Russia and the U.S., I mean, in the region, particularly in Kyrgyzstan?” I replied that we were trying to avoid such a scenario and that the goal of the reset was to reduce tensions between Washington and Moscow, which should help countries like Kyrgyzstan that sometimes feel trapped in the middle. But, I added, it was true that Kyrgyzstan was a fledgling democracy in a region of autocracies. Democracy was in retreat in Russia. It was nonexistent in China, the other big player in the region. So this was not going to be easy. “I think it’s important for you to have relations with many, but not be dependent on any,” I said. “Try to balance off all the different relations you have, and get the best help you can.”
When Putin was preparing to take back the presidency in Moscow, he published an essay in the fall of 2011 in a Russian newspaper announcing plans to regain lost influence among former Soviet republics and create “a powerful supra-national union capable of becoming a pole in the modern world.” Putin said that this new Eurasian Union would “change the geopolitical and geo-economic configuration of the entire continent.” Some dismissed these words as campaign bluster, but I thought they revealed Putin’s true agenda, which was effectively to “re-Sovietize” Russia’s periphery. An expanded customs union would be just the first step.
Putin’s ambitions weren’t limited to Central Asia. In Europe he used every bit of leverage he had to keep former Soviet republics from building ties to the West, including cutting off gas to Ukraine, banning imports of Moldovan wine, and boycotting Lithuanian dairy products. His acquisitive gaze extended north, to the Arctic Circle, where melting ice was opening up new trade routes and opportunities for oil and gas exploration. In a symbolic move in 2007, a Russian submarine deposited a Russian flag on the floor of the ocean near the North Pole. More ominously, Putin was reopening old Soviet military bases across the Arctic.
President Obama and I discussed Putin’s threats and how to counter them. I also made a point of traveling to countries that felt threatened. In Georgia, which I visited twice, I called on Russia to end its “occupation,” a word that caused some consternation in Moscow, and withdraw from the territories it had seized in 2008.
For many Americans, the crisis in Ukraine and the Russian invasion of Crimea in early 2014 was a wake-up call. A part of the world that many had not thought much about since the end of the Cold War was suddenly back on the radar. But far from being a surprise, the Ukrainian crisis was in fact the latest reminder of Putin’s long-standing aims. With these ambitions in mind, the Obama Administration and our European allies had quietly begun working for years to reduce Putin’s leverage and counter his machinations.
On January 1, 2009, Gazprom, Russia’s powerful state-owned energy conglomerate, halted natural gas exports to Ukraine. That, in turn, restricted energy flowing to part of Europe. Eleven people froze to death in the first ten days, ten of them in Poland, where temperatures fell below–10 degrees Fahrenheit. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. In fact it had happened exactly three years earlier, in the middle of another cold winter.
Ukraine, which has a sizable ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking minority, has had a close but conflicted relationship with Moscow for centuries. The Orange Revolution, following disputed Ukrainian elections in 2004, brought a pro-Western government to power that sought closer ties with the European Union, angering Putin. Shutting off the gas in 2006 was his way of sending a not-so-subtle message to the independent-minded leaders in Kyiv. In 2009, he was trying to jack up the prices for Russian energy and remind everyone of his power. The move sent a chill across Europe. Much of the continent relied on Russian gas; if Ukraine could be cut off, so could anyone. After nineteen days a new agreement was signed, and gas began to flow again into Ukraine by the time of President Obama’s inauguration.
In my confirmation testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that same January, in the middle of the crisis, I talked about the importance of strengthening NATO and the transatlantic alliance and emphasized my intention to give energy security “a much higher priority in our diplomacy.” I cited the problems in Eastern Europe as “only the most recent example of how energy vulnerability constrains our foreign policy options around the world, limiting effectiveness in some cases and forcing our hand in others.”
In my first telephone conversation with Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, a week after taking office, we discussed the challenge. “We want a new policy and a new source,” Sikorski told me. He favored a pipeline through the Balkans and Turkey that could give Europe access to natural gas holdings in the Caspian Sea. It had become known as the Southern Corridor pipeline and emerged as one of our most important energy diplomacy initiatives. I appointed Ambassador Richard Morningstar as my special envoy to negotiate the necessary agreements to get the project going. This was complicated by the fact that Azerbaijan, the key source country on the Caspian, had a long-running conflict with its neighbor Armenia. Morningstar developed a constructive working relationship with the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, to the point that I recommended Morningstar be nominated as our ambassador there. I twice visited Azerbaijan to encourage regional peace efforts, promote democratic reforms, and move the pipeline forward, including by meeting industry leaders at the annual Caspian Oil & Gas Show in Baku in 2012. As I left the State Department, deals were falling into place and construction is expected to begin in 2015 with the goal of getting gas flowing by 2019.
When I met with EU leaders in March 2009, I urged them to elevate energy as an urgent priority for action. I later worked with the EU’s Cathy Ashton to create the U.S.-EU Energy Council. Teams of U.S. energy experts fanned out across Europe to help countries explore alternatives to Russian gas. When I visited Poland in July 2010, Foreign Minister Sikorski and I announced Polish-American cooperation on a global shale gas initiative to capitalize on new extraction technologies in a safe, environmentally sustainable manner. Exploration has now started there.
America’s own expanding natural gas supplies helped loosen Russia’s grip on Europe’s electricity—not because we started exporting lots of gas, but because we no longer need to import it ourselves. Gas once destined for the United States started finding its way to Europe. Consumers there got cheaper gas, and Gazprom was forced to compete, no longer dictating supply and demand.
These efforts may not have made big news back home, but they were not lost on Putin. By 2013, when Ukraine was negotiating for closer trade ties with the EU, he must have felt Russia’s influence slipping. Putin threatened to increase gas prices if the deal went through. Ukraine’s debt to Russia was already more than $3 billion, and the country’s finances were in shambles. In November, Ukraine’s President Yanukovych abruptly walked away from the nearly completed EU agreement and soon accepted a $15 billion bailout package from the Kremlin.
Many Ukrainians, especially those living in the capital, Kyiv, and the non-Russian-speaking sections of the country, were inflamed by the about-face. They dreamed of living in a prosperous European democracy, and now they faced the prospect of coming once again under Moscow’s thumb. Massive protests broke out and intensified when the government fired on demonstrators. Under pressure, Yanukovych agreed to constitutional reforms and new elections. A deal was brokered between the government and opposition leaders through the mediation of diplomats from Poland, France, and Germany. (The Russians participated in the talks but then refused to sign the agreement.) The crowds in the streets, however, rejected the compromise and demanded Yanukovych’s resignation. Surprisingly he then abandoned his palace and fled Kyiv for the east, ultimately ending up in Russia. In response the Ukrainian Parliament asked opposition leaders to form a new government.
All this unsettled Moscow. Under the guise of protecting Russian citizens and Ukrainians of Russian descent from what he said was anarchy and violence in Ukraine, Putin sent Russian troops to occupy the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which had been part of Russia until the 1950s and was still home to many ethnic Russians and major Russian naval installations. Despite warnings from President Obama and European leaders, the Kremlin engineered a rump referendum for secession in Crimea that was largely boycotted by the non-Russian-speaking citizens. The UN General Assembly condemned the referendum in late March by an overwhelming margin.
As of this writing, Ukraine’s future is in jeopardy. The whole world will be watching to see how this plays out, especially other former Soviet states and satellites fearful for their own independence. All our work since 2009 to reinvigorate NATO, restore strained transatlantic relations, and reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian energy has put us in a stronger position to meet this challenge, though Putin has many cards to play, too. And we have to keep working at it.
I spent time over the years thinking about ways to understand Putin.
On a visit to his dacha outside of Moscow in March 2010, we engaged in a contentious debate about trade and the World Trade Organization that kept going in circles. Putin wasn’t giving an inch. He was hardly even listening. In exasperation, I tried a different tack. I knew that one of his personal passions is wildlife conservation, which I also care about deeply. So out of the blue, I said, “Prime Minister Putin, tell me about what you’re doing to save the tigers in Siberia.” He looked up in surprise. Now I had his attention.
Putin stood and asked me to follow him. Leaving our aides behind, he led me down a long corridor to his private office. We surprised a number of beefy security guards who had been lounging about. They jumped to attention as we passed. Behind an armored door, we reached his desk and a nearby wall containing a large map of Russia. He launched into an animated discourse in English on the fate of the tigers in the east, polar bears in the north, and other endangered species. It was fascinating to see the change in his engagement and bearing. He asked me if my husband wanted to go with him in a few weeks to tag polar bears on Franz Josef Land. I told him I’d ask, and that if he couldn’t go, I’d check my schedule. Putin raised an eyebrow in response. (As it turned out, neither of us went.)
Another memorably unscripted conversation with Putin occurred in September 2012 at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting he hosted in Vladivostok. President Obama couldn’t attend because of his campaign schedule, so I represented him. Putin and Lavrov resented the President’s absence and my strong criticism of Russia’s support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria. They would not agree to a meeting between Putin and me until fifteen minutes before the dinner started. But, in accordance with protocol, the representative of the United States, as the former host of APEC, would be seated next to that year’s host, which meant Putin and I would sit together.
We discussed his challenges, from Russia’s long border with China in the east to the restive Muslim states inside Russia and across its borders. I told Putin about my recent visit in St. Petersburg to a memorial for the victims of the Nazis’ siege of the city (then called Leningrad), which lasted from 1941 to 1944 and killed more than 600,000 people. That struck a chord with the history-conscious Russian leader. He launched into a story about his parents that I had never heard or read about. During the war Putin’s father came home from the front lines for a short break. When he approached the apartment where he lived with his wife, he saw a pile of bodies stacked in the street and men loading them into a waiting flatbed truck. As he drew nearer, he saw a woman’s legs wearing shoes that he recognized as his wife’s. He ran up and demanded his wife’s body. After an argument the men gave in, and Putin’s father took his wife in his arms and, after examining her, realized she was still alive. He carried her up to their apartment and nursed her back to health. Eight years later, in 1952, their son Vladimir was born.
When I reported this story to our U.S. Ambassador to Russia Mike McFaul, a prominent Russia expert, he said he too had never heard it before. Obviously I have no way to verify Putin’s story, but I’ve thought of it often. For me, it sheds some light on the man he has become and the country he governs. He’s always testing you, always pushing the boundaries.
In January 2013, as I prepared to leave the State Department, I wrote President Obama a final memo about Russia and what he might expect from Putin in the second term. It had been four years since the reset first allowed us to make progress on nuclear arms control, Iranian sanctions, Afghanistan, and other key interests. I still believed it was in America’s long-term national interest to have a constructive working relationship with Russia, if possible. But we had to be realistic about Putin’s intentions and the danger he represented to his neighbors and the global order, and design our policy accordingly. In stark terms, I advised the President that difficult days lay ahead and that our relationship with Moscow would likely get worse before it got better. Medvedev may have cared about improving relations with the West, but Putin was under the mistaken impression that we needed Russia more than Russia needed us. He viewed the United States primarily as a competitor. And he was running scared because of his own resurgent domestic opposition and the collapse of autocracies in the Middle East and elsewhere. This was not a recipe for a positive relationship.
With all this in mind, I suggested we set a new course. The reset had allowed us to pick off the low-hanging fruit in terms of bilateral cooperation. And there was no need to blow up our collaboration on Iran or Afghanistan. But we should hit the pause button on new efforts. Don’t appear too eager to work together. Don’t flatter Putin with high-level attention. Decline his invitation for a Presidential-level summit in Moscow in September. And make clear that Russian intransigence wouldn’t stop us from pursuing our interests and policies regarding Europe, Central Asia, Syria and other hotspots. Strength and resolve were the only language Putin would understand. We should send him a message that his actions have consequences while reassuring our allies that the United States will stand up for them.
Not everyone at the White House agreed with my relatively harsh analysis. The President accepted Putin’s invitation for a bilateral summit in the fall. But over the summer it became harder to ignore the negative trajectory, especially with Edward Snowden, the contractor who leaked National Security Agency secrets to journalists, given asylum by Putin in Russia. President Obama canceled the Moscow summit and began taking a harder line with Putin. By 2014, and the Ukrainian crisis, relations had plummeted.
Beyond Crimea and other international consequences of Putin’s rule, Russia itself has become a study in squandered potential. Talented people and money are leaving. It doesn’t have to be this way. Russia is blessed not just with vast natural resources but also a well-educated workforce. As I’ve discussed with Putin, Medvedev, and Lavrov over the years, Russia could be charting a peaceful and profitable future as part of Europe rather than as its antagonist. Think of the more expansive trade deals Russia could negotiate with a different attitude. Instead of intimidating Ukraine and other neighbors, it could be engaged in greater scientific cooperation with EU and U.S. partners, expanding innovation and developing advanced technologies, trying to build its own high-tech world-class business center, as Medvedev envisioned. Think also of the long-term strategic interests Russia could pursue if Putin weren’t fixated on reclaiming the Soviet Empire and crushing domestic dissent. He might realize that Russia’s hand in dealing with extremists along its southern border, as well as with China in the east, would be strengthened by closer ties with Europe and the United States. He might see Ukraine as it wants to be seen—as a bridge between Europe and Russia that would increase prosperity and security for all of them. Unfortunately, as of now, Russia under Putin remains frozen between the past they can’t let go of and the future they can’t bring themselves to embrace.