I said before that Putin is not a savior of Russia, but the Jewish-born KGB agent is simply trying to revive what some of his fellow biological tribesmen and certain spiritual ideologues did with the Soviet Union. Looking at Putin talking about God and marriage is a distraction from the fact that not only do such declarations mean little in a nation whose history is one of law defined by brute force, but that Russia is actively taking steps towards a consolidation of power into a Soviet-like structure.
Another example of her behavior is that as the discussions for a new Russian constitution continue, a law was just passed abolishing presidential term limits, creating the possibility for a “president-for-life” scenario the New York Times reports.
At the urging of President Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s lower house of Parliament passed legislation Tuesday allowing him to run for a fifth term as president.
Mr. Putin, who is 67 years old and was first elected in 2000, noted that the legislation would still have to be approved by Russia’s Constitutional Court and in a nationwide plebiscite in April.
But in Russia’s tightly controlled political system, Tuesday’s choreographed flurry of events was the clearest sign yet that after 20 years as president or prime minister, Mr. Putin is preparing to stay in the Kremlin for, perhaps, the rest of his life.
If he serves two additional terms, Mr. Putin will have held the nation’s highest office for 32 years, longer than Stalin but still short of Peter the Great, who reigned for 43 years.
In finding ways to escape what seemed to be ironclad limits on his tenure, Mr. Putin joined President Xi Jinping of China and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey as authoritarian leaders who have sought to extend their power. (source)
It is obvious why Putin supports this, and it is because he envisions himself as his hero, the evil mass murderer Iosip Jughashvilli, known popularly as Josef Stalin.
The difference between Stalin’s USSR and Putin’s Russia, however, is that Stalin was able to draw off of the strength that Russia had in her people during the Czar years, even though he was overthrown in 1917. A century of communism later and Russia’s population continues to drop by a million people a year even with constant mass migration from Central Asia, she is plagued with drugs, has an HIV infection rate similar to some African nations, her infrastructure is crumbling, and people are trying to flee because they do not see hope. According to one study put out by the Russian ministry of Health (Note: It was published on Komsomolskaya Pravda in Russian, but I do not have the link at the moment, and my apologies) it said that 30% of Russian hospitals do not have indoor plumbing and 40% lack central heating. This is just one sector, and indicates the horrendous state that the nation is in.
Putin can use as many iron-fisted tactics as he wants, but Russia is crumbling from within and if conditions stay as they have, Russia may break apart, and there may be nothing that the Kremlin can do to stop this from happening.