Vladimir Putin to rule to ‘end of his life’?

Vladimir Putin’s swearing-in for a fifth presidential term – the prospect of being able to serve until 2036 – should remind the democratic world of the need for strong leadership to confront his malign tyranny. His foremost Ukraine war supporter, Russian Orthodox Church head Patriarch Kirill, an alleged KGB contemporary who has described Putin’s rule as “a miracle of God”, provided telling insight into expectations of the next phase of Putin’s governance when he referred to the 71-year despot as “your highness” and hoped he would “rule to the end of his life”.

Putin marked his reinauguration with ostentatious belligerence, ordering immediate nuclear weapons drills following “provocative” comments by British Foreign Secretary David Cameron and French President Emmanuel Macron. Both had spoken of the potential need for the Western democracies to send troops to help defend Ukraine against Putin’s lawless invasion.

Putin’s first four six-year terms leave no doubt what the world should expect from him and the close alliance he has built with China’s Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and Iran’s terrorist- supporting ayatollahs. His legacy so far can be measured by the damage he has inflicted domestically and internationally.

The Russian people’s dreams of democracy when Putin succeeded Boris Yeltsin in 2000 have turned to dust as a generation was pressed into the military to fight wars, like that in Ukraine, that are part of the despot’s Stalinist ambition to recreate the Soviet Union. From the smoking ruins of Grozny in Chechnya to the rubble of Aleppo in Syria, where tens of thousands of civilians died in the Russian bombardment, Putin’s legacy is writ large. Likewise in rigged elections and the murder of those who sought to oppose him, such as Alexei Navalny and many others.

As Putin embarks on what could be two more six-year terms, leadership among the world’s democracies has seldom been more second-rate, especially in the US, where Joe Biden’s feebleness is as worrying as Donald Trump’s delusional refusal to utter a word of criticism of his “friend” Putin and his opposition to providing Ukraine with the means to defeat the tyrant.