Illustrations by Stephanie Mannheim In Russia’s parliamentary elections on December 4, 2011, United Russia – the party of President-turned-Prime Minister-turned-current-President Vladimir Putin – won the majority of seats in the Duma, the Russian Parliament, amid cries (and video evidence) of widespread election fraud. On December 5, Russians took to the streets in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Over the course of the next three months, tens of tho...
The pose is almost menacing. Two penetrating, steel-blue eyes gaze downward at the viewer, the mouth calm but clenched. Russian president Vladimir Putin, Time’s 2007 Person of the Year, projects a threatening image in the magazine’s cover shot. The same could be said about Russia’s current image in the West. Western observers have decried Moscow’s silencing of opposition leaders and state control of the press, as well as Russia’s use of its natu...
On Sunday, Russians from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok will vote to decide who will be president for the next six years. If the favored Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, running in place of incumbent president and United Russia party mate Dmitri Medvedev, wins more than 50 percent of the country’s vote on Sunday, he will become president again and be able to extend his tenure at the apex of Russian political power until 2018. At that point in time,...
...otest. Wielding “Goodbye , Putin!” signs and wrapped in ushankas and scarves, the crowds periodically gather around makeshift platforms to listen to speakers demanding electoral reform, often lambasting Prime Minister Vladmir Putin and his pliant complotter, Dmitry Medvedev. These gatherings reached their zenith at the end of December and have now caused some Russian officials to call for electoral reform and increased transparency, though it see...
...Duma, did away with direct elections in 2004. The Kremlin can also fire governors essentially at will, resulting in governors who are more interested in serving the interests of President Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin than in working with their own constituencies. Is this new bill the beginning of a countrywide thaw in the Russian political system or simply a Kremlin public relations move to try and convince the protestors from last...
...oscow outspokenly tested Washington’s willingness to prevent Russia from projecting power outside of its regular sphere of influence. Washington’s response was unsurprisingly weak. In the last decade, President Vladimir Putin developed Russia’s new power projection capacity and theorized the fundamental axioms of Russia’s new grand strategy, known as the “Putin Doctrine.” As he outlined in several speeches – and most...
As predicted, Vladimir Putin won the March 4 Russian presidential elections with over 60 percent of the vote. What followed were the expected accusations of illegitimacy from members of the opposition. Fraud possibly occurred in the election, especially in southern provinces such as Chechnya, where over 93 percent of the vote went to Putin, a puzzling result that has become a tradition in recent Chechen elections. However, this level of fraud d...
...this point — has made a decent effort in feigning that it was a functioning democracy. Last week, any semblance of this charade simply imploded. In a move that would put even Bloomberg to shame, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced he would once again seek the Russian presidency. Perhaps the most unsettling thing about his all but certain return is that it is completely unsurprising. Medvedev’s presidency at times could be regarded as s...
...der door is now open to the Third Rome: the Arctic Ocean. In this regard, in order to understand all the geostrategic consequences of the Arctic’s navigability to their fullest extent, one must consider the return of Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin this May. Fully back in command, Putin can pursue the road map he initiated in the mid-2000s. Heir to the Rurik and Romanov doctrines and carried over to the present epoch by Soviet communist internation...
...is move wouldn’t hurt us on the international stage. Russia supports Assad because they enjoy having a client-state in the Middle East, because they have their own problems with Muslim revolutionaries in Chechnya, and because Putin feels a sense of camaraderie with sclerotic despots like himself. But Putin knows Assad is tap-dancing on thin ice and would probably acquiesce in exchange for a role in the coming Western state-creation field-day when...
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