Putin and the loneliness of the long distance president
An ideal Russia, in Putin’s paranoid logic, would be a Russia without its people.
outside Russia no one, apart from a handful of lost souls, needs Putin. This may not be the best news for him, especially bearing in mind his offshore oil and gas plans, but it’s not critical. But it looks as though things aren’t that much better at home – and here I’m not even talking about the wide-ranging opposition to his rule. In terms of internal politics, we can see through another decision, one even more jaw-dropping than his refusal to meet the G8. In this case, it is true, all the analysts have worked it out: the appointment of Aleksandr Tkachov, a former mechanical engineer, as his special envoy to Abkhazia is less a question of pandering to public opinion than a demonstration of his terminal mistrust of his own, ‘putinist’ elite...
Vladimir Vladimirovich’s self appointment as president was the act of a petty tyrant and marked the beginning of the slow but sure suicide of the post-Yeltsin regime. It wasn’t enough that middle class hopes of Russia joining the 21st century were dashed; the ambitions of the more dynamic members of the ruling elite and the technocrats were also smashed. Medvedev, of course, was a good boy, but the look in his eyes on 24th September… it’s clear to everyone that the famous ‘job swap’ was carried out by Putin for his own benefit and that of his immediate circle, and to the detriment of just about everyone else. And when at his swearing in Vladimir Vladimirovich made his way along the red carpet, with the beneficiaries of the Russian state lined up to flatter him with their smiles, in the sound of the applause could be heard the same old phrase: ‘we’d be better off without you, mate’. Outside on the streets at the same time, the same message was being carried in more laconic form through squares and along boulevards around the Kremlin, dodging police truncheons as it went - ‘Russia without Putin’.
So who is left of the ‘national leader’s’ gang – a ‘best friend’, friends? I don’t particularly know about such things, but it looks as though the ranks have thinned: connections with oil baron Timchenko have to be curtailed and hushed up; rumour has it that the appetites of judo expert Rotenberg became so great that he has fallen out of favour; there are disagreements on issues of political economics with ex finance minister Kudrin, and Putin’s goddaughter Ksenya Sobchak, again according to rumour, has crossed to the other side of the barricades. As for his own family, both his daughters live incognito and abroad, and his wife Lyudmila has been seen in his company twice in the last two years (I won’t go into the rumours)…
‘Russia without Putin’, ‘Putin and Emptiness’… this picture of total desolation has echoes of Marquez, or even Shakespearean tragedy! Not that the diminutive figure of Putin deserves such comparisons. But he has deserved his loneliness, and deserved it fully. It is a manmade loneliness, like the streets and avenues of Moscow during the rehearsal of the president’s drive to his swearing-in, cleared of people as though by a neutron bomb...
http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/artemy-troitsky/vlad-putin-and-loneliness-of-long-distance-president
outside Russia no one, apart from a handful of lost souls, needs Putin. This may not be the best news for him, especially bearing in mind his offshore oil and gas plans, but it’s not critical. But it looks as though things aren’t that much better at home – and here I’m not even talking about the wide-ranging opposition to his rule. In terms of internal politics, we can see through another decision, one even more jaw-dropping than his refusal to meet the G8. In this case, it is true, all the analysts have worked it out: the appointment of Aleksandr Tkachov, a former mechanical engineer, as his special envoy to Abkhazia is less a question of pandering to public opinion than a demonstration of his terminal mistrust of his own, ‘putinist’ elite...
Vladimir Vladimirovich’s self appointment as president was the act of a petty tyrant and marked the beginning of the slow but sure suicide of the post-Yeltsin regime. It wasn’t enough that middle class hopes of Russia joining the 21st century were dashed; the ambitions of the more dynamic members of the ruling elite and the technocrats were also smashed. Medvedev, of course, was a good boy, but the look in his eyes on 24th September… it’s clear to everyone that the famous ‘job swap’ was carried out by Putin for his own benefit and that of his immediate circle, and to the detriment of just about everyone else. And when at his swearing in Vladimir Vladimirovich made his way along the red carpet, with the beneficiaries of the Russian state lined up to flatter him with their smiles, in the sound of the applause could be heard the same old phrase: ‘we’d be better off without you, mate’. Outside on the streets at the same time, the same message was being carried in more laconic form through squares and along boulevards around the Kremlin, dodging police truncheons as it went - ‘Russia without Putin’.
So who is left of the ‘national leader’s’ gang – a ‘best friend’, friends? I don’t particularly know about such things, but it looks as though the ranks have thinned: connections with oil baron Timchenko have to be curtailed and hushed up; rumour has it that the appetites of judo expert Rotenberg became so great that he has fallen out of favour; there are disagreements on issues of political economics with ex finance minister Kudrin, and Putin’s goddaughter Ksenya Sobchak, again according to rumour, has crossed to the other side of the barricades. As for his own family, both his daughters live incognito and abroad, and his wife Lyudmila has been seen in his company twice in the last two years (I won’t go into the rumours)…
‘Russia without Putin’, ‘Putin and Emptiness’… this picture of total desolation has echoes of Marquez, or even Shakespearean tragedy! Not that the diminutive figure of Putin deserves such comparisons. But he has deserved his loneliness, and deserved it fully. It is a manmade loneliness, like the streets and avenues of Moscow during the rehearsal of the president’s drive to his swearing-in, cleared of people as though by a neutron bomb...
http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/artemy-troitsky/vlad-putin-and-loneliness-of-long-distance-president
