Mission accomplished, dictatorship intact: Russia’s CEC and Myanmar’s enduring junta

By the time the next elections were held in 2020, the NLD had entered into what was almost an open conflict with the generals. One reason was the government’s refusal under Aung San Suu Kyi to set up separate polling stations on military bases and in closed military towns, where civilian observers would have been unable to monitor the voting process. In addition, the party openly promised to steadily reduce the officers’ influence on politics, even setting a specific date for ending all legislative privileges that guaranteed the military a role in politics: the year 2035.

The NLD scored another sweeping victory and again secured a majority in both houses of parliament. The generals then chose not to take any chances and decided to reclaim full power. In early 2021 the commander-in-chief of Myanmar’s armed forces, Min Aung Hlaing (the same man who had boasted on Facebook about eliminating the Rohingya) declared that Aung San Suu Kyi and her colleagues had rigged the elections. The head of government was deposed and arrested, and the military took control of administrative buildings and media outlets. The commander-in-chief assembled a new governing body — the State Administration Council of Myanmar — and placed himself at its head. After several years of flirting with democracy, the country returned under the rule of a junta.

Aung San Suu Kyi was sent to prison on charges of attempting to seize power, but after the Rohingya episode, the Nobel laureate from Myanmar could no longer expect real support from the United States or Europe. The junta, however, quickly found partners abroad — primarily in neighboring China, which had previously backed separatists but in recent years had invested billions of dollars into building and developing industry and infrastructure in Myanmar. Risking the loss of those investments, Beijing worked to establish common ground with the military.

Another partner was Putin’s Russia, whose economic interests aligned with those of the generals in Myanmar. Since Soviet times, Moscow had been one of Naypyidaw’s main suppliers of weapons. Even in the years of relative democratization, Russians dealt not so much with politicians as with the military, who controlled the portion of the budget allocated for purchasing equipment and arms.

The future junta leader Min Aung Hlaing traveled to Russia repeatedly to sign contracts for aircraft, air defense systems, and other weapons. Many of these agreements were still in force when the civilian government was overthrown, and once the junta explicitly backed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, relations with Moscow shifted from merely warm to outright friendly Min Aung Hlaing visited his Russian partners nearly every six months, and the two countries — separated by 2,500 km — began holding joint military exercises. Official delegations from Russia started arriving in Myanmar regularly.