Vladimir Putin’s mobster regime is running out of time

The Russian president’s power to influence events at home and abroad looks increasingly weak.

Russian President Vladimir Putin. Picture: AFP

The difference between Americans and Russians is that Americans are unable to imagine the worst ever happening while Russians know for certain that it will. That kopeck’s worth of wisdom was delivered to fictional mobster Tony Soprano by an East European immigrant hoodlum in the late lamented television series. It’s worth bearing in mind as Vladimir Putin, who has survived 20 years in the Kremlin with Tony Soprano-like guile and brawn, gets ready to outstay and outmanoeuvre yet another US president.

When Moscow analysts told him that Joe Biden will essentially be Barack Obama Mk 2, Putin’s heart surely sank. At 68, living alone and germ-free in a villa outside Moscow defended from COVID-19 by a thick plastic tunnel that sprays visitors with disinfectant, he doesn’t seem to be up for another great power tussle. There was no love lost between the Russian leader and Obama; he could be running out of the fight needed to contest another iteration of the US-Russia stand-off.

Three months before Obama won his first term, Putin marched into ex-Soviet Georgia. By 2011 Putin was accusing the Obama administration of fomenting street unrest in Moscow. Then came his land-grab of Crimea, a sponsored war in eastern Ukraine, followed by Obama’s expulsion of Russia from the G8. The latest volume of Obama’s memoirs compares Putin to a small-town crook, paints him as “unremarkable, short and compact, a wrestler’s build”, mocks his bare-chested torso as the exhibitionism of an Instagraming teenager. If a Biden presidency is going to be a replay of the Obama years, Putin may just retreat into his shell. Only if Biden adopts some of the transactional approaches used by Donald Trump might there still be deals to be struck.

The question nags after two decades. Should Putin go or should he stay? And if he is going to bow out, when and on what terms? A rigged constitutional referendum has opened the way for him to contest another two terms in 2024 and 2030. If he did that, and won, he could rule until 2036. That would be his 84th year. Most politicians, and indeed Putin himself, would probably agree that is a crazy proposition. “My presidency must end one day, I am perfectly aware of that,” he conceded publicly last month without giving further clues.

And yet he has no eye for picking young talent that could be groomed for succession. There is the question, too, of legal immunity after he leaves office. When power was handed to him by the ailing Boris Yeltsin it was on the understanding that he would shield the Yeltsin family from court action or revenge. He honoured the pledge.

Putin wants more solid guarantees. What if an anti-establishment, anti-corruption tribune like Alexei Navalny found a way of beating him at the ballot box? There would be no cosy deals. So last week the Russian parliament approved a law granting immunity from investigation or prosecution to former presidents and their families.

Putin is a belt-and-braces man. On the one hand he has sorted things so he can carry on ruling for the rest of his life. But he has also encouraged laws allowing him to step down without having to fear a knock on the door of his retirement palace. That gives him if not peace of mind – he is as unlikely as Tony Soprano to find that – then at least some wiggle room if challengers emerge.

It boils down to the issue of whether Putin still has the will to rule. In the past there were always big-top projects like the Sochi Winter Olympics, or existential threats (the danger that Ukraine could shift westwards, out of Moscow’s orbit) to fire him up.

Now, though, he becomes briefly excited by the chase for a “world-beating” COVID-19 vaccine, gets one of his daughters to have the jab, persuades some oligarchs to do the same, nudges Hungary to try it out and then his attention wanders. He hasn’t had the injection himself.

Putin at the Kremlin's Alexander Hall, in Moscow. Picture: AFP

His domain is shrinking. A recent short war between Russia’s ally Armenia and Turkey-backed Azerbaijan ended in a Moscow-brokered peace. Putin drew only one brooding conclusion from that conflict: countries on Russia’s border which give in to people power and democratise their governments make themselves vulnerable to attack from neighbours. The Armenian prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, came to power in that way in 2018, much to Putin’s displeasure. His days may be numbered.

In Moldova meanwhile, also once part of the Soviet empire, a pro-European leader has been elected, trouncing the candidate favoured by the Kremlin. In Belarus the brutal Kremlin-backed crackdown is turning people against any kind of alliance with Russia.

Everywhere Russia seems to be on the retreat. The privatisation of outer space means that western companies are ferrying astronauts to their destination rather than using Russian tech. The economy is tanking not just because of the pandemic but also the slump in oil prices.

A still-energetic leader would summon the effort to reinvent himself – to draw up plans, say, to reform the school system to narrow the yawning social gap in performance that has been exposed by COVID-19; to find a way back to the people. Instead, Putin, glued to television, lives out a sub-Trumpian existence, waiting for an opportunity to shine again. Soon enough Russians will conclude that the Putin system has failed, that the man and his mask have become indistinguishable.

The Times