The question—as the outspoken minister put it—is what this means for the rest of us. Putin has changed considerably during his time in power. During his first term as president in —, he considered refusing to run for re-election.
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 , 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 Looking at what was happening with the weakened regime of Muammar Gaddafi, Putin believed that Russia should in no circumstances support the international operation against Libya, seeing it as part of a global conspiracy in which Russia would be the next target.
But Medvedev backed the international operation in Libya, and declined to veto a U. Security Council vote authorizing it. To Putin, this illustrated how nobody could be trusted to run the country except him. He would return to the Kremlin in He came to believe that he had been chosen for a special mission—to save Russia. This more than anything inspired the events of , 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. 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.
In the most symbolic episode of the film, Putin says that there is almost no difference between the Orthodox Christianity and Communism, and that the Bolsheviks in fact reproduced the traditional dogmas that dominated the Russian Orthodox Church for centuries.
Putin is preparing for a new era. In the past year, he has begun a process of clearing house. He has fired a number of older governors and installed young and little-known bureaucrats in their place. The most typical appointees of were the governors of Samara and Nizhny Novgorod. They are virtually indistinguishable, so much so that Russian media compare them to Agent Smith from The Matrix —the self-cloning agent of the all-powerful central computer. The president is slowly building a new generation of Russian bureaucrats in his own image.
Among them are Igor Sechin, chief executive of the Rosneft energy company and considered the leader of this group, and the governor of Saint Petersburg Georgy Poltavchenko. By and large, these figures never believed in Communism, but have now come to believe in God. The president himself naturally subscribes to this view. Together, the new technocrats and older Chekists present an existential challenge to the Russian political elite. Putin would still hover over everything, but in a different arrangement, which might even mean that some new faces and institutions could appear on the scene.
A referendum on proposed constitutional amendments is scheduled for April 22nd. The Kremlin formed a stage-managed commission to consider draft amendments, even as everyone knew that the final text would be written by a small circle of Putin advisers walled off from the public.
In the meantime, ministers were fired; new ones filled their places. One of the more outlandish scenarios that circulated held that Russia and Belarus would merge to form a new state, which Putin would then lead. In a move out of the Karl Rove playbook—Rove pushed for state ballot measures prohibiting gay marriage, as a way to increase Republican turnout in the election—Putin declared that the new Russian constitution should outlaw gay marriage, in a hope that a cheap fob to conservatism might resurrect interest in an otherwise rote process.
I never thought a new constitution would usher in an age of honest or accountable democratic politics, but, like many fellow Russia-watchers, I did think that Putin might formally switch positions—say, take up a perch as the head of the State Council, a once-obscure body that is now poised to take on new significance as part of the constitutional reboot.
It is now clear that Putin will keep his hold on power not through sleight of hand or constitutional trickery. Stalin ruled for twenty-nine; Putin has the prospect of thirty-six. No one should feel sorry for Putin, but he appears trapped by the very system that he created. Having denuded all other bases of authority and centered all power in his own personality and image, Putin has no way out.
They were Russia's biggest street protests in recent years, and the police cracked down hard, detaining several thousand. Navalny made a name for himself by exposing rampant corruption, labelling Mr Putin's United Russia as "the party of crooks and thieves". Millions watched a Navalny video about "Putin's palace", a luxury Black Sea estate allegedly gifted to Mr Putin by wealthy friends.
Arkady Rotenberg, a billionaire close to Mr Putin, later claimed to be the owner. Navalny is now in poor health in jail, convicted controversially over an old embezzlement case. His Anti-Corruption Foundation FBK and Western governments called the trial politically motivated and the European Court of Human Rights ruled he should be released from jail because of the risk to his life.
Navalny is another key reason why Mr Putin's relations with the West are so bad now. Mr Putin headed the FSB before becoming president. Novichok - a Russian weapons-grade toxin - was also used to poison Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in England in Russian state agents were blamed for that too.
The Skripals survived, but a local woman died. Mr Putin denied any links to those and other attacks on prominent political opponents. Vladimir Putin grew up in a tough, communal housing block in Leningrad - now St Petersburg - and got into fights with local boys who were often bigger and stronger.
That drove him to take up judo. According to the Kremlin website, Mr Putin wanted to work in Soviet intelligence "even before he finished school".
It was better to fight "terrorists" in Syria, he explained, than to wait for them to strike in Russia. He also used the crude language of a street fighter when defending his military onslaught against separatist rebels in Chechnya, vowing to wipe them out "even in the toilet".
The mainly Muslim North Caucasus republic was left devastated by heavy fighting in , in which thousands of civilians died. Georgia was another Caucasus flashpoint for Mr Putin. In his forces routed the Georgian army and took over two breakaway regions - Abkhazia and South Ossetia. And it showed Mr Putin's readiness to undermine pro-Western leaders in former Soviet states.
Putin still in fashion 15 years on. Vladimir Putin's formative German years. Church lends weight to Putin patriotism. Mr Putin's entourage is a fabulously wealthy elite and he himself is believed to have a huge fortune.
He keeps his family and financial affairs well shielded from publicity. The Panama Papers leaks in exposed a murky network of offshore companies owned by a longstanding friend of Mr Putin - concert cellist Sergei Roldugin. Mr Putin and his wife of Lyudmila got divorced in after nearly 30 years of marriage. She described him as a workaholic. According to a Reuters news agency investigation, Mr Putin's younger daughter, Katerina, is thriving in academia , has a top administrative job at Moscow State University and performs in acrobatic rock 'n' roll competitions.
The elder Putin daughter, Maria, is also an academic, specialising in endocrinology. Reuters found that several other powerful figures close to Mr Putin - often ex-KGB - also have successful children in lucrative management jobs.
He is passionate about ice hockey, like judo - and state TV has shown his skills on the ice. Mr Putin's brand of patriotism dominates Russia's media, skewing coverage in his favour, so the full extent of opposition is hard to gauge. Even in , as prime minister under President Dmitry Medvedev, he was clearly holding the levers of power.
In his first two terms as president, Mr Putin was buoyed by healthy income from oil and gas - Russia's main exports. Living standards for most Russians improved. But the price, in the opinion of many, was the erosion of Russia's fledgling democracy.
Since the global financial crisis Mr Putin has struggled with an anaemic economy, hit by recession and more recently a plunge in the price of oil.
Russia lost many foreign investors and billions of dollars in capital flight.
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