By Will Marshall, President of PPI
Since his election as president in 2000, Vladimir Putin has methodically consolidated power in his hands with the expressed aim of making Russia great again. Instead, he’s diminished his country’s power and global standing in every respect but one — Moscow’s ability to threaten its neighbors with nuclear weapons.
Russian observers have characterized Putin’s increasingly autocratic reign as a tacit pact with Russian society: The Kremlin won’t interfere in the everyday lives of citizens if they stay out of politics. It’s a bad bargain for the Russian people.
For one thing, it’s cost them a rare shot at governing themselves after centuries of czarist and totalitarian despotism. Over the past two decades, Putin has steadily snuffed out post-Soviet Russia’s incipient democracy — rigging elections, jailing dissidents and journalists, suppressing independent civic associations and colluding in the assassination of regime critics at home and around the world.
