Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law allowing him to run for two more terms in the Kremlin once his current term ends in 2024, a document posted on a government website showed. The legislation, which could pave the way for Putin to stay in power until 2036 should he choose to do so and win re-election, reflects sweeping changes to the constitution that were brought in last year.
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Russia started the year with political uncertainty, then cemented Putin’s future, and ended the year by poisoning the main opposition figure—and future relations with the Biden administration.
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While Russia recognises the complexity of China-India relations, it has made sure to adhere to the principle of multilateral cooperation. It is inclined to harmoniously develop its relations with both countries and avoid any imprudent moves. Russia could be a better intermediary than the US given its positive relations with India and China, but it has not done so…
In the two decades since rising to the top of the Kremlin, Putin has consolidated power and strengthened Russia’s role on the world stage. Many of these changes, which have come at no small cost, would have been unfathomable at the turn of the century; Putin’s election marked the country’s first democratic change of power. With Moscow now paving the way for Putin to rule until 2036, one of the world’s most powerful leaders may well become one of the world’s longest-serving.
The global economic consequences of COVID-19 would inevitably slow Russian economic growth. A prolonged collapse in oil prices would almost certainly push the economy into recession. Putin’s promises evaporated. In these circumstances, Putin needs to raise and stabilize oil prices. The question was how to do that without appearing to yield to Saudi or American pressure.
At the urging of President Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s lower house of Parliament passed legislation Tuesday allowing him to run for a fifth term as president. Putin, who is 67 years old and was first elected in 2000, noted that the legislation would still have to be approved by Russia’s Constitutional Court and in a nationwide plebiscite in April.
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Putin’s single biggest achievement in two decades in power—his true legacy—has been to re-empower the state bureaucracy…No part of this bureaucratic apparatus matters more than the national security establishment—the vast, hydra-headed complex of military, intelligence, and law enforcement ministries. These institutions may well determine not only who becomes the next president of Russia but what Russian politics will look like after Putin.
These days, many people in the Washington foreign policy establishment seem to agree that most of the world’s problems can be put down to either Beijing’s purported insistence on building a new, nefarious world order comprising “all under heaven,” or Moscow’s wily attempts to spread its tentacles everywhere from Madagascar to Libya and possibly even America. Thus, Russian “stooges” and Chinese “useful idiots” are lingering around every corner, so it seems.
When Russians woke up last Wednesday morning, most had likely never heard of Mikhail Mishustin, the head of the country’s tax service. But by the time they went to bed that night, Mishustin had been named as Russia’s new prime minister after a day that included a flurry of proposed changes to the constitution and a series of dramatic shake-ups that saw the government resign en masse. It was the first real inkling of the power transfer to come, with President Vladimir Putin set to reach his constitutionally imposed term limit in 2024.
Primorsky Krai is the eastern most point of East Europe, so east at that point that it stops looking like Europe and starts looking like Asia. So far east, that one tour guide at the state museum of Primorsky Krai, described Vladivostok as the edge of the world, and if the flat earth theory held true, then we’d fall off if we went any further east.
