What Will Putin Do With Six More Years
Vladimir Putin surprised no one by securing another term as Russia’s president.
Putin has six more years at the helm of the world’s largest country and second-most
powerful military. And the 144 million people of the nation largely support his
ongoing dominance of Russia.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Russian parliament, summarized
this common sentiment in 2014 by saying, “If there is Putin, there is Russia.
If there is no Putin, there is no Russia.”
When the Soviet Union collapsed, the West rejoiced, proclaiming it a victory for liberty,
a triumph for democracy, and evidence of the supremacy of capitalism over socialism.
But Putin does not view this as a positive event, because it decimated Moscow’s
power in the world. He said in 2005, “[T]he demise of the Soviet Union was the
greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”
Vladimir Putin wishes the Soviet Union never fell. He wishes it were still here today.
And he has been working to restore Russian power to its Soviet levels.
When Putin became president, Russia was in chaos. It was threatened internally
and externally. But Putin aggressively consolidated the country socially, politically,
militarily and economically.
More recently, falling oil prices and Western sanctions have pounded the value
of the ruble, and living standards have declined to a degree. Yet because of Putin’s
record of lifting millions from poverty and restoring Moscow’s international re-
levance, the Russian people remain fiercely loyal to him.
Instead of seeing him as the cause of the current troubles,
they continue to view him as the solution.
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At the end of Putin’s second presidential term in 2008, he faced a problem:
The Russian Constitution says, “One person may not hold the position of
Russian president for more than two terms in a row.” So Putin left the
presidency—but only in the letter of the law, not the spirit. Bypassing Law
He stepped aside to become prime minister, handing the presidency to his loyal
protégé, Dmitry Medvedev. But throughout Medvedev’s term, Putin remained
in charge. He remained Russia’s ruler in all but official title, with Medvedev
serving essentially as his puppet.
In August 2008, Russian forces invaded the former Soviet republic of Georgia,
easily conquering all resistance. Moscow assumed control of 20 percent of
Georgia’s territory, and it remains in control to this day.
In 2012, Putin returned to the presidency with a newly extended six-year
presidential term. His rule over Russia was official once again.
March of 2014, Russian forces stealthily invaded Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula
and annexed it to Mother Russia. Crimea is viewed within Russia as the nation’s
greatest victory in decades, and as a righting of historical wrongs. To reinforce
this message, this year’s presidential election was held on the fourth anniversary
of the takeover.
Since seizing Crimea, Putin has continued to destabilize eastern Ukraine, sending
Russian forces to help pro-Russian rebels in a protracted conflict that has claimed
10,000 lives so far, with more deaths almost every day.
He has forcefully prevented Georgia, Ukraine and other former Soviet countries
from strengthening their relationships with Europe.
He pushed the U.S. out of his backyard in 2013 by pressuring Kyrgyzstan to evict
American forces from Manas Air Base, the U.S.’s last remaining military base
in Central Asia.
Meanwhile, beyond the Soviet regions, Russia has helped the murderous regimes
of Syrian President Bashar Assad and North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-un to retain
power. And Putin has been instrumental in letting Iran continue its treacherous
pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Moscow now spends a higher percentage of its gross domestic product
on its military than does America. The efforts have paid massive dividends.
“The Russian military is now better equipped and more capable of conducting modern
combat operations than at any point since the fall of the Soviet Union, which has
caught analysts in the West by surprise,” wrote the Strategist’s Mitchell Yates in 2016.
And don’t forget: Russia has a vast nuclear arsenal, larger by number even than
that of the United States. It has publicly stated that nuclear weapons remain vital
to its defense strategy and that in certain circumstances it might launch preemptive
nuclear strikes to defend its interests.
Eliminating Internal Enemies
Throughout all his years of working to restore Russia’s power on the global stage,
Putin has worked ruthlessly to quash all opposition from fellow Russians.
He has crippled Russia’s democracy, enfeebled its parliament, and seized control
of some of Russia’s most profitable firms. Putin’s internal wars have slaughtered
more than 150,000 Russians in the Islamic region of Chechnya.
With kgb-style methods, he has crushed or silenced all forms of independent
journalism and turned the Russian media into a personal propaganda machine.
Evidence suggests that he has murdered more than 130 journalists inside Russia and
numerous dissenting Russians exiled in foreign nations, such as the United Kingdom.
A list from human-rights group Memorial shows that 142 people are currently in
Russian prisons for their political or religious beliefs. Quartz wrote, “In this, Putin’s
Russia is continuing Tsarist and Soviet traditions: Political dissenters are still being
sent to Siberia or to work camps as in Stalinist days.”
https://memohrc.org/ru/pzk-list
Russia’s Constitution still states that the president may serve no more than two
consecutive terms, meaning Putin would be obligated to step down in 2024. But
with such a tight grip on the levels of power, he could easily amend the Constitution,
orchestrate another rendition of the “Medvedev shuffle,” or devise some other
