Putin's Third Term as Russia's President, 2012-18

Larry Black

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780367582487
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351701228
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides a comprehensive and systematic overview of Putin's third term as Russia's president. It covers political, international relations, economic and social issues, and provides a balanced assessment of Putin's successes and failures. These include the conflict in Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea, scandals associated with the Olympics, Russia's increasing involvement with Asia, including with the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, and shifts in the economy away from huge reliance on energy resources. The book sets Putin's activities as president in their wider context, discussing his overall popularity, the weakness of potential opposition and the development of the Russian Federation as a relatively new state.

1 The presidency

According to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the president is the head of state and guarantor of the Constitution and of state sovereignty. He or she determines the direction of both internal and foreign policy and is the Supreme Commander of the armed forces.¹ The Constitution grants the president the right to select the prime minister, the head of the Central Bank, government ministers, judges, regional governors, plenipotentiary representatives and the chiefs of security and the armed forces. With few exceptions, these responsibilities have remained intact since the document was adopted by referendum in December 1993. Faced then with uncertainties generated by the recent dissolution of the USSR, living in a gravely weakened ‘new’ country beset by serious internal strains and a badly deteriorating economy, most Russians welcomed a Constitution that allocated unusual powers to a head of state.

On taking office, the president swears an oath to ‘respect and safeguard the rights and freedoms of man and citizen’ and ‘to faithfully serve the people’.² It is here that presidential obligations become less clear in practice.

2012: the return

Even though his personal campaign for office was desultory and he faced raucous protests after the controversial State Duma elections in December 2011, no one was surprised when in March 2012 Vladimir Putin won his third term as president of Russia.

His debate-free campaign featured long essays on central issues prepared by him for Russia’s print media, and regular promises of fair elections. For example, in a long article titled ‘Democracy and the Quality of Government’, he pledged to modernize Russia’s political system and decentralize it somewhat by re-establishing the direct election of governors.³ He promised as well to make it easier for parties to register and to launch a nationwide campaign against institutionalized corruption. Other pieces carried his perspectives on Russia’s social policies, the economy, nationalities, military reform and foreign policy.

The election itself was anti-climactic. A turnout of a little over 65 per cent of eligible voters gave Putin over 60 per cent of the votes cast (see Table 1.1).

Although the presidential election was less controversial than the earlier Duma imbroglio, internationally known Russian activists such as Aleksei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov, Mikhail Kasyanov, Garri Kasparov and Sergei Udaltsov all cried foul, and were quoted at great length in the Western media. The OSCE and other European institutional monitors reported that candidates campaigned freely, but that overall conditions were skewed in Putin’s favour.⁴ In their turn, Russian officials charged Western critics of pre-conceived biases.

Table 1.1 Presidential election, official results, 4 March 2012

Eligible voters = 108,000,000	Turnout = 65.34 per cent
	%	Votes
Vladimir Putin	63.60	45,602,075
Gennady Zyuganov	17.18	12,318,353
Mikhail Prokhorov	7.98	5,722,798
Vladimir Zhirinovsky	6.22	4,458,102
Sergei Mironov	3.85	2,763,935

Source: Central Electoral Commission of the Russian Federation (www.vvboru.izbirkom.ru)

In the meantime, a pattern was set for the opposition in Russia. Just as they had in December 2011, thousands of protesters came out after the presidential election, and demonstrations driven by frustration over real and alleged electoral violations continued in Russia’s main urban centres for several more months. Yet, participation numbers were on a downward slide. The energy that drove Putin’s opponents could not offset their failure to offer unified agendas or attractive alternative programmes.

When left-wing radical Udaltsov called for a ‘march of millions’ to take place the day before Putin’s inauguration on 7 May, chances for such a turnout were already dim. Surveys conducted by Russian pollsters revealed that confidence in Putin and his trust rating rose shortly after the election. These opinions were corroborated by Washington’s Pew Research Center.⁵ Other Western pollsters regularly concluded that even the protesters preferred strong leadership and ethno-nationalist policies to democratic reform.⁶ This predilection guaranteed that when the activists turned away from calls for free elections to anti-Putin rhetoric, the general public tuned out.

By the spring, the pressure on Putin was greatly diminished. Udaltsov’s day of ‘millions’ saw only about 20,000 demonstrators show up in Moscow. Authorization was granted for 5,000 to demonstrate peacefully, so the larger-than-allowed crowds amounted to a lot of easily angered people milling around on the same site. Nevertheless, the majority on both sides of the political line remained peaceful until die-hards threw rocks and tried to break through police lines to reach the Kremlin. Chaos ensued. Police used tear gas and truncheons and detained some 700 people. About 30 police officers were injured. The Western media covered the violence with a certain amount of excitement, and did not bother to highlight either the peaceful majority or the equally large pro-Putin rally that went on at the same time.

The presidential election and its political aftermath left President Dmitry Medvedev with three months to complete a lame duck term. During that interim, president-elect Putin stepped down as chair of ‘Putin’s Party’, that is, the United Russia (UR) ruling party that Navalny had labelled a band of ‘crooks and thieves’.⁷ On Putin’s recommendation, Medvedev took its leadership position.

Optimistic start

On the day of the gala inauguration, and the next day, Putin signed ukazy ordering substantial increases in real wages and the implementation of measures to realize Russia’s demographic, education and science initiatives, improve health care and sustain the government’s existing social policies. He demanded too that the military be 70 per cent equipped with modern weaponry by 2020. Next, he nominated Medvedev officially for the prime minister’s office. No one believed that this was an attempt to sustain the myth of a tandem governing Russia, as had been the theory – if not clearly the practice – during Medvedev’s presidency. Putin was now in charge.

The president then made a start on implementing pre-election promises. To broaden the base of governance he expanded Russia’s State Council to include the presidential envoys to federal districts, leaders of all Duma fractions (parties), and executive level state officials.⁸ A little later, Putin announced the makeup and mandate of a Presidential Council to oversee the most important National Priority Projects, with himself as chair. These projects encompassed long-term undertakings to modernize Russia in the education, housing, agricultural, public health and demographic spheres. Medvedev had been responsible for them since their first year, 2005, with a goal of raising the quality of life for Russians. His successes had been steady, but limited.

Although the percentage of surveyed citizens with a ‘positive opinion’ of Putin dropped from 60 to 48 per cent in May, he was less concerned about public protests than he was with what appeared to be the unelected opposition’s ties to orchestrated criticisms from abroad.⁹ Persuaded that the danger of a ‘coloured’ revolution in Russia, that is, a massive popular demonstration that expands into the overthrow of the existing government, was greater than he had previously thought, he tightened government oversight of foreign-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and introduced both direct and indirect limits on political demonstrations and election campaigning. To make such restrictions palatable to the general public, the executive branch launched social and economic welfare programmes and initiated a wide-ranging campaign promoting patriotism, both to inject his populist following with added energy and, after 2013, to fuel Russian support for policies related to Ukraine.¹⁰

Putin’s star began to rise. When asked at the end of October 2012 who they would vote for if there were a presidential election ‘next Sunday’, 46 per cent of a large and broad sampling chose Putin, n...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Transliteration, spelling and punctuation
• Abbreviations and key terms
• Introduction
• 1 The presidency
• 2 The Russian Federation: strengths and strains
• 3 The political cockpit
• 4 The Ukraine conundrum
• 5 Economic considerations
• 6 Themes in foreign policy
• 7 Military issues
• 8 Quality of life
• Lull before the storm? Concluding remarks
• Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index