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Post by Admin on Mar 19, 2018 18:09:39 GMT
Early results indicate that Russian President Vladimir Putin has coasted to a fourth term in office. Exit polls showed Putin picking up 73.6% of the vote in an expected landslide, granting him another six years in power, reports the AP. The controversy: Incidents of ballot stuffing were reported at voting stations across Russia, and the country's Central Election Commission said it was "immediately reacting" to all such claims.  And prominent opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was barred from running because of a criminal conviction handed down by Putin's government, had urged his supporters to boycott today's vote because the seven contenders running against Putin had refused to voice concerns about electoral manipulation. Vladimir Putin is set to extend his power in Russia for another six years after winning Sunday's presidential election with a decisive 73.9% of the vote, a state-run exit poll shows. Putin was widely expected to win his fourth term as President, with no meaningful opposition in the running and his fiercest opponent, Alexei Navalny, barred from the race. The Communist Party's Pavel Grudinin was a distant second with 11.2% of the vote, according to the exit poll conducted by the state-owned Russia Public Opinion Research Center. Exit polls are not final, and official results will be released in coming hours.  |
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Post by Admin on Mar 21, 2018 18:31:13 GMT
Putin has always known what would happen to him after March 18; his re-election for a fourth term was a given. But in the months building up to the elections, the Russian political elite was in a state of tremendous stress, waiting in horror for the day of the presidential election—not because they had doubts about the result, but because they were terrified of what would come next. Even following the attack on former military intelligence agent Sergei Skripal, the ministers were not particularly afraid of potential conflict with the West. The fundamental changes to come were far more serious.
Under the current Russian constitution, this should be Putin’s last six-year term in office. But virtually nobody in the bureaucratic elite of Russia believes that Putin will step down in 2024. “There is a misconception that Putin is tired, needs rest and wants to live the life of a billionaire,” says a former minister who still has personal access to the president. “But Putin is far from being tired. He is interested in everything and digs into every matter, paying attention to all the details. This is his lifestyle, this is who he is. He can’t imagine life without power.”
From the moment of re-election, Putin will start devising a complicated scheme of ruling the country in the future. Perhaps that means finding a loophole in the constitution, or changing it, or building a new structure of the state. All sources speaking to TIME from Putin’s inner circle are certain—at least for now—that Putin will somehow remain in power.
The ruling bureaucracy understands this means an era of turbulence is coming. The question—as the outspoken minister put it—is what this means for the rest of us.
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Post by Admin on Mar 25, 2018 18:23:32 GMT
The emergence of a new tsar
Putin has changed considerably during his time in power. He never planned to remain in the president’s office forever. During his first term as president in 2000–2004, he considered refusing to run for re-election. As I reported in my book All the Kremlin’s Men, his friends were future oligarchs amassing great fortunes as businessmen,such as Yury Kovalchuk and Gennady Timchenko, or the heads of special services such as Director of the Federal Security Service Nikolai Patrushev. For them, Putin was the guarantor of omnipotence and they put tremendous pressure upon him at that time.
During his second term, he started to think about his contribution to history and how he would be remembered. In 2008, he yielded the presidential office to Dmitry Medvedev and became prime minister, exercising control from behind the scenes. But the experience rankled him—he was particularly annoyed by how Medvedev reacted to the Arab Spring protests in 2011.
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Post by Admin on Mar 30, 2018 18:10:29 GMT
 From that moment on, Putin’s psychology underwent an irreversible transformation. He came to believe that he had been chosen for a special mission—to save Russia. This more than anything inspired the events of 2014, when he decided to annex the Crimean peninsula in response to a revolution in Ukraine that he believed to be part of a global anti-Russia conspiracy. The Western world reacted with dismay, and the U.S. and Europe imposed steep sanctions on Russia. But for many Russians the annexation of Crimea signified that Russia, for the first time after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, was once again a real superpower.  Ever since, making Russia great again has become a new ideology for Putin. State propaganda started to spread the idea that Putin is the only one who can restore the greatness of Russia. This concept was articulated in the most detailed way in the build-up to the presidential election, in a documentary broadcast on the state-owned TV channel Rossiya 1. The film, Valaam, about a once-neglected monastery that has been rebuilt since the collapse of the USSR with Putin’s support, conveyed the idea that Putin is a unique historical leader of Russia—able to unite fervent advocates of the Communist-era Soviet Union with those who dream of Russia’s pre-revolutionary empire, built on Orthodox Christianity. |
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Post by Admin on May 13, 2018 18:04:57 GMT
President Vladimir Putin stuck with his long-serving prime minister in his first act after being sworn in for a new term on Monday, signaling that he would keep faith with a policy direction that has brought Russia into conflict with the West.
Standing in the ornately-decorated Andreyevsky Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace, with his hand on a gold-embossed copy of the constitution, Putin, 65, swore to serve the Russian people, to safeguard rights and freedoms, and protect Russian sovereignty.
Putin secured a new six-year term after more than 70 percent of voters backed him in a March 18 presidential election. His most dangerous challenger, Alexei Navalny, was not allowed to take part and on Saturday was detained at a protest called under the slogan: “Putin is not our tsar.”
Soon after the inauguration ceremony, the Kremlin issued a statement saying that Putin had nominated Dmitry Medvedev again to be prime minister in his new term. Medvedev, a loyal Putin lieutenant, has held the job since 2012.
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