Just a few months short of a quarter-century as Russia\u2019s leader, Vladimir Putin on Tuesday will put his hand on a copy of the constitution and begin another six-year term as president wielding extraordinary power. Since becoming acting president on the last day of 1999, Putin has shaped Russia into a monolith \u2013 crushing political opposition, running independent-minded journalists out of the country and promoting an increasing devotion to prudish \u201ctraditional values\u201d that push many in society into the margins.<\/p>\n
His influence is so dominant that other officials could only stand submissively on the sidelines as he launched a war in Ukraine despite expectations the invasion would bring international opprobrium and harsh economic sanctions, as well as cost Russia dearly in the blood of its soldiers. With that level of power, what Putin will do with his next term is a daunting question at home and abroad. The war in Ukraine, where Russia is making incremental though consistent battlefield gains, is the top concern, and he is showing no indication of changing course.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe war in Ukraine is central to his current political project, and I don\u2019t see anything to suggest that that will change. And that affects everything else,\u201d Brian Taylor, a Syracuse University professor and author of \u201cThe Code of Putinism,\u201d said in an interview with The Associated Press. \u201cIt affects who\u2019s in what positions, it affects what resources are available and it affects the economy, affects the level of repression internally,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In his state of the nation address in February, Putin vowed to fulfill Moscow\u2019s goals in Ukraine, and do whatever it takes to \u201cdefend our sovereignty and security of our citizens.\u201d He claimed the Russian military has \u201cgained a huge combat experience\u201d and is \u201cfirmly holding the initiative and waging offensives in a number of sectors.\u201d That will come at huge expense, which could drain money available for the extensive domestic projects and reforms in education, welfare and poverty-fighting that Putin used much of the two-hour address to detail.<\/p>\n
Taylor suggested such projects were included in the address as much for show as for indicating real intent to put them into action. Putin \u201cthinks of himself in the grand historical terms of Russian lands, bringing Ukraine back to where it belongs, those sorts of ideas. And I think those trump any kind of more socioeconomic-type programs,\u201d Taylor said. If the war were to end in less than total defeat for either side, with Russia retaining some of the territory it has already captured, European countries fear that Putin could be encouraged toward further military adventurism in the Baltics or in Poland.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s possible that Putin does have vast ambitions and will try to follow a costly success in Ukraine with a new attack somewhere else,\u201d Harvard international relations professor Stephen Walt wrote in the journal Foreign Policy. \u201cBut it is also entirely possible that his ambitions do not extend beyond what Russia has won \u2013 at enormous cost and that he has no need or desire to gamble for more.\u201d But, Walt added, \u201cRussia will be in no shape to launch new wars of aggression when the war in Ukraine is finally over.\u201d Such a rational concern might not prevail, others say.<\/p>\n
Maksim Samorukov, of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said that \u201cdriven by Putin\u2019s whims and delusions, Moscow is likely to commit self-defeating blunders.\u201d In a commentary in Foreign Affairs, Samorukov suggested that Putin\u2019s age could affect his judgment. \u201cAt 71 \u2026 his awareness of his own mortality surely impinges on his decision-making. A growing sense of his limited time undoubtedly contributed to his fateful decision to invade Ukraine.\u201d Overall, Putin may be heading into his new term with a weaker grip on power than he appears to have.<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s \u201cvulnerabilities are hidden in plain sight. Now more than ever, the Kremlin makes decisions in a personalized and arbitrary way that lacks even basic controls,\u201d Samorukov wrote. \u201cThe Russian political elite have grown more pliant in implementing Putin\u2019s orders and more obsequious to his paranoid worldview,\u201d he wrote. The regime \u201cis at permanent risk of crumbling overnight, as its Soviet predecessor did three decades ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
Putin is sure to continue his continue animosity toward the West, which he said in his state of the nation address \u201cwould like to do to Russia the same thing they did in many other regions of the world, including Ukraine: to bring discord into our home, to weaken it from within.\u201d Putin\u2019s resistance to the West manifests not only anger at its support for Ukraine, but in what he sees as the undermining of Russia\u2019s moral fiber.<\/p>\n
Russia last year banned the notional LGBTQ+ \u201cmovement\u201d by declaring it to be extremist in what officials said was a fight for traditional values like those espoused by the Russian Orthodox Church in the face of Western influence. Courts also banned gender transitioning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would expect the role of the Russian Orthodox Church to continue to be quite visible,\u201d Taylor said. He also noted the burst of social media outrage that followed a party hosted by TV presenter Anastasia Ivleeva where guests were invited to show up \u201calmost naked.\u201d \u201cOther actors in the system understand that that stuff resonates with Putin. \u2026 There were people interested in exploiting things like that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Although the opposition and independent media have almost vanished under Putin\u2019s repressive measures, there\u2019s still potential for further moves to control Russia\u2019s information space, including moving forward with its efforts to establish a \u201csovereign internet.\u201d The inauguration comes two days before Victory Day, Russia\u2019s most important secular holiday, commemorating the Soviet Red Army\u2019s capture of Berlin in World War II and the immense hardships of the war, in which the USSR lost some 20 million people. The defeat of Nazi Germany is integral to modern Russia\u2019s identity and to Putin\u2019s justification of the war in Ukraine as a comparable struggle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just a few months short of a quarter-century as Russia\u2019s leader, Vladimir Putin on Tuesday will put his hand on\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":43452,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[13852,1665,11848,4790,13851,290,265,13850,499,6704,4612],"class_list":["post-43445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-civil-rights-curtailed","tag-dictatorship","tag-freedom-of-speech-restrictions","tag-lgbtq-rights","tag-new-presidential-term","tag-russia","tag-russia-ukraine-war","tag-victory-day","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-vulnerabilities","tag-world-war-2"],"reading_time":"5 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}