The EconomistMarch 14th 2020 291S
hortly afterbecoming president in
2000, the 48-year-old Vladimir Putin
pondered how he would one day leave of-
fice. Riding in a presidential limousine
through Moscow at night, he confided to an
interviewer: “I very much hope that one
day I will manage to go back to a normal life
and that I will have some private future. I
can’t say that the life of a monarch inspires
me. A democracy is much more viable.”
Twenty years on, Mr Putin is further
away from a peaceful post-presidential life
than ever. On March 10th the Duma, Rus-
sia’s parliament, voted to approve consti-
tutional changes proposed by Mr Putin,
and added one that resets the number of
terms he can serve. Under the current sys-
tem, he would have had to stand down in
2024; now, he could go on until 2036, and
perhaps longer.
Mr Putin has pondered various meth-
ods of retaining power for some time:
merging Russia with Belarus to create a
new country to rule over; presiding over an
all-powerful Supreme State Council; or be-
coming prime minister in a new parlia-
mentary system. In the end, he chose thecrudest, but perhaps simplest, method—
changing the constitution and giving him-
self an option to stay on. In this, he is fol-
lowing in the footsteps of several post-So-
viet central Asian despots, observes Kirill
Rogov, a political analyst.
Mr Putin’s other amendments curb the
power of parliament and courts and posi-
tion him as “not only the head of the state
but the head of the executive branch as
well, attributing to him the co-ordination
of all public authorities and affirming his
dominance in the judiciary”, as Mr Rogov
explains. The power-grab is shrouded in
the language of God, tradition, heterosex-
ual families and Russia’s great victory in
the second world war (the 75th anniversary
of which Russia will mark on May 9th).
Like many autocrats, Mr Putin suggeststhat he needs to remain in power to ensure
stability. This week he invoked the turbu-
lence in the oil market, the new corona-
virus and threats from enemies within and
outside. “They are waiting for us to make a
mistake or to slip up, losing our bearings
or, worse still, getting bogged down in in-
ternal dissent, which is sometimes fanned,
fuelled and even financed from abroad,” he
told the Duma.
The collapse in the oil price, which at
one point this week was down by 30%, add-
ed drama to his words. Oil and gas are most
of Russia’s exports and generate a third of
gdp. That Russia remains so reliant on
hydrocarbons is largely Mr Putin’s fault. On
his watch attempts to diversify the econ-
omy have failed to achieve as much as they
should have.
Mr Putin implied that the world was too
stormy a place for him to abandon his posi-
tion. A former kgbagent, he defined his
role not merely as the defender of the con-
stitution (which he is busily rewriting), but
“the guarantor of the country’s security, do-
mestic stability and evolutionary develop-
ment”—evolutionary because “Russia had
its share of revolutions.” It hardly needed
saying that he was the only man capable of
averting such mortal dangers. Still, it was
said, and by none other than Valentina Te-
reshkova, a famous Soviet cosmonaut who
is now an mp aged 83. She was given the role
of voicing the reset proposal, which was
promptly approved by the president and
the Duma.
All of this was part of a special operationRussiaThe prisoner in the Kremlin
MOSCOW
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