Long Live the Tsar

But that newsflash from another universe was overshadowed by yet another announcement coming out of Russia last week, namely that President Vladimir Putin — the man who keeps NATO generals up at night — could join China’s Xi and Turkey’s Erdogan in the select but growing club of leaders for life.

At last week’s State of the Nation address, the ultra-stable world of Russian politics received a jolt when Putin announced a constitutional shake-up that would transfer power from the presidency to the prime minister and parliament. Then, in a move that took Russia-watchers by surprise, long-serving prime minister Dmitry Medvedev resigned, along with the entire Russian government. A short time later his replacement, a technocrat named Mikhail Mishustin, was sworn in.

Although the Russian leader denied aiming to rule the country for life, the move was widely seen as paving the constitutional way for Putin, who has held power since 1999, to continue to rule the country ad infinitum.

“For some time there’s been speculation about how Putin can find a legitimate method to stay in power after 2024,” said Mrs. Micky Aharonson, a Russia expert at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies and former head of the foreign relations directorate of Israel’s National Security Council. Despite the anti-government protests that reappeared last year in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the idea that change in Russia is imminent is “Western wishful thinking” she said.