A strong and unpredictable man? After two years of war, Putin embraces his image

After President Joe Biden this week called the Russian president “crazy.” Vladimir Putinthe Kremlin was quick to issue a harsh condemnation.

But the image of an unpredictable strongman willing to escalate his conflict with the West is one that Putin has fully embraced after two years of full-scale war.

At home, the Kremlin is keeping the circumstances of his death, which occurred last week, a mystery Alexei Navalnypreventing the opposition leader’s family from claiming his body.

In Ukraine, Putin is pressuring his army to maintain his brutal offensive, boasting on television that he stayed up all night as the town of Avdiivka fell to Russian forces.

And in space, American officials warn, Russia may be making plans put a nuclear weapon into orbitaboard a satellite, which would violate one of the latest arms control treaties.

In power since 1999, Putin, 71, is set to extend his mandate until 2030 in Russian elections next month.

As the vote approaches, he fuels his increasingly open conception of himself as a historic leader carrying forward the legacy of past rulers, willing to sacrifice untold numbers of lives to build a stronger Russian state.

But Putin also faces obstacles: a still determined Ukrainian resistance, a Western alliance that remains largely united and murmurs of discontent among the Russian public.

The question is whether Putin, while rejoicing at leading a “thousand-year-old and eternal Russia”, will be able to avoid the internal turmoil that has also been a hallmark of the country’s history.

“Putin lives in eternity,” he said. Boris B. Nadezhdina pacifist politician who attempted to run for president to challenge Putin, but was barred from the March election.

Nadezhdin listed rulers dating back to the 9th century and added:

“It is clear that he thinks of himself along with him Oleg the Wise, Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible and maybe Stalin“.

Nadezhdin, who has worked in the Russian government and been a lawmaker, insisted in a video interview this week that Putin’s grip on power is weaker than it appears.

Security, stability and increased prosperity, which have long been Putin’s strengths after the chaos of the 1990s, are being undermined.fadingNadezhdin said.

“This regime,” he continued, “is historically doomed.”

Trial

In fact, although Putin did everything to present Russia as an invincible state, he was repeatedly surprised by it guard down.

Two years ago, when Putin hoped that Russian troops would be welcomed as liberators and that the president’s government Volodymyr Zelenskiy quickly collapsed, the Kremlin’s astonishing intelligence failure occurred.

Last summer’s 24-hour riot, in which Yevgeny Prigozhinlong considered a close ally of Putin, he brought Russia to the brink of civil war.

And, despite a crackdown on dissent that some analysts say is more ferocious than in the late Soviet Union, the Russians continue defying arrests to show your disagreement.

A group of women continued to organize small protests demanding the return home of their mobilized sons and husbands, people laid flowers in Navalny’s memory in dozens of Russian cities, and Nadezhdin managed to submit more than 100,000 signatures last month in his attempt to join the presidential ballot with an anti-war message.

Russia’s Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the Federal Election Committee’s decision to exclude Nadezhdin from the ballot.

It was a sign that Putin, despite allowing liberal candidates to run against him in previous elections champion of pluralismthis time he takes no risk.

He is also making it increasingly clear that those who oppose him must fear for their lives.

Russian officials celebrated the murder in Spain this month from a Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine.

And in his recent interview with Tucker CarlsonPutin praised the killing of a former Chechen separatist fighter in a Berlin park in 2019, describing the killer as motivated by “patriotic feelings.”

In this context, the Kremlin appears focused on using the presidential elections, scheduled for March 15-17, as a parade of public support for Putin’s government… and his invasion.

Putin will set the stage on Thursday with his annual speech on the topic state of the nation, a televised event where the president presides over hundreds of senior officials who show their loyalty to their leader.

Konstantin Remchukov, editor of a Moscow newspaper close to the Kremlin, said that being able to present a landslide election victory as evidence of public support for the war appears to be Putin’s main goal for the March elections.

“The elections — and Vladimir Putin’s excellent performance in these elections — are intended to electorally legitimize Putin’s policies, including the SVO,” Remchukov said in a telephone interview, using the Russian initials for “special military operation “, the Kremlin term for war.

“If he gets, let’s say, between 75 and 80% of the votes, it will mean that the people give their consent to this policy.”

Dissidents on the rise

Portraying the invasion as having broad public support is also enabling the Kremlin justify the repression of dissent.

Images of masked security service agents detaining war critics have become common on Russian television.

On Tuesday, Russia’s National Security Service, known as the FSB, announced it had arrested a 33-year-old Russian-American visitor on treason charges.

His alleged crime: donating about $50 to a Ukrainian charity.

He faces 20 years in prison.

News of the arrest came just four days after the death of Navalny, who spent more than three years in prison, including around 300 days in solitary “punishment” cells.

It is not yet known how Navalny died in the Arctic prison known as Polar wolf; His spokesman said Thursday that authorities said he died of natural causes.

On Thursday, Navalny’s mother said authorities were “blackmailing” her into accepting a “secret funeral“for your son.

“With Navalny’s death, the Russian regime has surpassed the Soviet one in cruelty and cynicism,” wrote Alexander Baunov, a researcher at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

He argued that Putin’s government went from being “a dictatorship of deception to a dictatorship of fear and, after the outbreak of war, to an absolute dictatorship of terror.”

But Putin, in public, keeps his distance from the repression machine he oversees.

Although a spokesperson said the president had been informed of Navalny’s death, Putin himself did not comment on the matter.

Instead, Putin revealed this week that he stayed up late the night after Navalny’s death, consumed by something else:

the war in Ukraine.

In a televised meeting with the Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu, Putin said he was informed in real time of the Russian advance on Avdiivka until 4am last Saturday.

At 11 am, Shoigu and the general Valeri GerasimovThe chief of the Russian General Staff returned to inform the Russian leader again about the hasty Ukrainian withdrawal from the strategically important city, Putin said.

Shoigu said the military carried out the president’s order to install loudspeakers on Ukraine’s southern front to persuade soldiers to surrender. The message aimed to show Putin as a tireless leader, attuned to all the details of the war.

During the meeting, Putin dismissed White House concerns about possible Russian plans to put a nuclear weapon into orbit this year.

Instead, he said, it is Russia’s new generation of nuclear weapons aimed at ground targets they “should really fear.”

On Thursday, Putin took another step to remind the world of Russia’s arsenal, making a 30-minute flight aboard a nuclear-capable bomber.

But hours later, when asked about Biden’s “crazy son of a bitch” comment that the Kremlin spokesman had previously condemned, Putin turned jocular, recalling the former KGB agent’s fixation on sowing confusion.

Using a nickname for Vladimir, Putin said of Biden:

“He can’t say, ‘Volodya, good boy.'”

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