Putin's regime

Hat die derzeitige politische Ordnung in Russland mittel- und langfristig Bestand? Die fundamentale Herausforderung der Fortexistenz des heutigen kleptokratischen Regimes Russlands in den kommenden Jahren wird das Zusammenfallen zweier systemunterwandernder Tendenzen – ökonomischer Stagnation und politischer Transition – sein. Deren kombinierter Effekt wird selbst kluge Kremlführung nicht ohne weiteres neutralisieren können. Es wird daher früher oder später wieder zu einem System- und nicht nur Führungswechsel in Russland kommen, worauf der Westen sich bereits heute einstellen sollte.

Andreas Umland, a political expert, in his recent article claims, that even though the Putin’s regime is “demonstratively nationalistic, imperialistic, anti-liberal and oriented towards “national leader” – and thus actually resembles classical fascism” – it lacks the central fascist feature, a striving to revival and purification of the “nation”. Umland’s central thesis states that this regime is built to a greater degree on a kleptocracy, the power of the thieves, not on committed striving to some high-minded aims. And even far right vector in an external and internal politics, which became much stronger after 2014, is intended to a greater degree to restore empire losing colonies and its economic influence on them, and to a lesser degree – to restoring nation. Roughly speaking, it’s all about the Customs Union, which Ukraine refused to enter. And likewise, common people, even those who went fighting to Donbass, are much more interested in paying their mortgage loans than in restoring “Novorussia” “nation”.

Assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was a shocking wake-up call for many all over the globe. Circumstances were more than eloquent – bullets hit Nemtsov right in front of Kremlin and merely one day before the planned protest march. Putin’s Russia: What did Nemtsov’s assassination reveal about the current regime?
Naturally, all Western eyes turned to Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. However, opinions divided immediately – some admitted that this shooting was totally useless for Putin, so it’s not worth looking for the roots of crime in Kremlin; other said that it was impossible to happen without Putin standing behind it.
However, even those who do not directly point their fingers at Putin still admit (reasonably enough) that he is responsible to a certain extent – mainly for creating an atmosphere where dissenters are persecuted, and it was especially escalated by Putin’s regime from the beginning of the war in Ukraine. These opinions do not change much after announcing that the suspects of Nemtsov’s murder have been arrested.
So we have none other than Putin to blame. But isn’t it a simplification of the situation? Does it actually tell anything not only about Nemtsov’s assassination but also about the current Russia in general?

This paper aims to describe the initial responses of the Russian government, under Putin’s administration, to the Covid-19 pandemic from early January to early September 2020 when Russia launched the Sputnik V vaccine. The author argues that Russia’s responses have distinctive characteristics: a duality between laid-back approaches accompanied by all forms of disinformation and counter-narrative in the framework of strategic deception. The Russian government has displayed a laid-back pattern of responses from the start, marked by a reluctance to establish emergencies and the efforts to cover up information regarding positive cases. This pattern then continues in the form of strategic steps taken, which is the delegation of authority to local and regional governments. This strategy, while lowering the risks for the government, precipitated the decline of the legitimacy of the regime. The government then makes additional efforts by committing strategic deception: disinformation and domestic propaganda as well as efforts to generate counter-narrative at the global level in order to secure the regime’s internal legitimacy and achieve Russia’s position as an alternative leader in the world.

On 10–11 March, the State Duma passed, in the second and third reading, the constitutional amendments bill, thereby concluding the next step in the constitutional reform announced by Vladimir Putin on 15 January. The most important amendment, announced at the last minute, was a ‘reset’ of the President’s terms of office (under the current Constitution, Putin could not run for president in 2024). The constitutional amendments are expected to take effect once they are approved by a ‘nationwide vote’ in April 2020.