Moscow, August 10: Vladimir Putin has celebrated a decade in power, and it appears the former KGB strongman may maintain his grip on Russia’s government for years to come.
Supporters credit him with rescuing the economy from the post-Soviet doldrums and restoring national pride. Critics say the price — rolling back democratic reforms and stifling dissent — has been too high.
Sunday marked 10 years since an ailing Boris Yeltsin promoted Putin from security chief to prime minister on Aug. 9, 1999. He was elected president the following year and in 2008 he handed the post — but not all the power — to a hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev.
Putin became prime minister again, allowed almost all the men he surrounded himself with as president to remain in power, and is still understood to call the major shots.
And the signs are that the 56-year-old is far from ready to loosen his grip on power. The muscle-bound St. Petersburg native stripped to the waist for a man-versus-nature photo shoot in southern Siberia earlier this week, plunging fearlessly into an icy river and climbing cliffs and trees.
Observers see little impediment to Putin’s goal of holding the reins until and even after 2020.
“Putin can easily rule until 2012 (the next elections) or longer,” said Lilia Shevtsova, of the Carnegie Moscow Center, stressing his handling of the current crisis could play a decisive role in his future.
Between his two times as prime minister — the brief stint in 1999 and the current term he is serving since last year — Putin sandwiched a presidency that cleared the political landscape of opponents.
Putin reversed the democratic achievements of Yeltsin by abolishing the direct election of regional governors, marginalized the liberal opposition and, critics say, instilled an atmosphere of impunity for those who silence his challengers by fair means or foul.
Under Putin, who once told journalists to keep their “snotty noses” out of his business, independent media are few and far between, and those outlets not under state control are intimidated into subordination. A cartoon network showing U.S. shows last month censored an episode of hit comedy South Park that poked fun at Putin.
According to a recent Freedom House count, 16 journalists have been killed since Putin came to power, with only one case solved. Probably the highest-profile death was that of Anna Politkovskaya, the Novaya Gazeta reporter who wrote articles on Chechnya and the book “Putin’s Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy.”
But many credit Putin with rebuilding a country out of the smashed remains of the late 1990s, when the ruble collapsed and the economy ground to halt.
Russians in the big cities have seen their quality of life raised dramatically since 1999. Though critics say Putin has done little to lessen Russia’s dependency on its abundant oil and gas resources, high world prices for the commodities have seen unprecedented economic growth.
Moscow and St. Petersburg are awash with superrich, though the current global downturn has recently relegated billionaires to mere millionaires. And Putin has also helped to slow Russia’s alarming population decline — down to 141 million from almost 150 million after the Soviet collapse.
He has promoted a healthy lifestyle, not only by example — Putin is a judo expert and frequent swimmer — but also by a series of programs that encourage sports and warn of the dangers of smoking and drinking, ubiquitous in the worse-off regions.
But perhaps guaranteeing Putin support among Russia’s patriotic electorate — currently he enjoys a 78 percent popularity rating — has been an aggressive foreign policy. He has resumed Soviet-era air patrols over foreign waters and shot down efforts to expand NATO, a Western military alliance he sees as a Moscow foe, toward Russia’s western fringes.
As a result, Moscow’s relations with Washington nose-dived. U.S. support for Georgia and Ukraine, two Westward-leaning countries formerly under Moscow’s control, raised suspicions in the Kremlin that Washington was trying to turn them against Russia. Last year’s Russia-Georgia war was seen as a climax of those tensions, and serious diplomacy was required by successor administrations in Moscow and Washington to reset the relationship.
Putin wants Russia in the world elite — a notion surmised most fittingly perhaps by the man he selected to succeed him, Dmitry Medvedev.
Medvedev said in a recent interview with Russia’s NTV network that he wants any Russian traveling abroad to be granted the same respect as that afforded to Westerners.
Many consider Medvedev a stopgap president, allowing Putin to retain power while adhering to the constitution, which only allows two consecutive terms.
The next election is in 2012, the maiden vote for an extended, six-year term.
–Agencies