Putinismo pode superar o tempo do stalinismo, para infelicidade dos russos - Adam Taylor (The Washington Post)

Qualquer que seja o resultado do seu longo reinado, ele vai deixar a Rússia esgotada e isolada; uma potência nuclear e um desastre econômico, social e político. PRA

Putinism allows no rivals. What about an heir?

Adam Taylor

The Washington Post, March 14, 2024

Vladimir Putin has led Russia for almost a quarter-century. If he wins reelection for his fifth term as president Sunday, as is virtually certain, he will be eligible for another six years — during which his time in the Kremlin would become longer than Joseph Stalin’s Soviet leadership — and after that, another six-year term.

Putin, who is 72, will be well in his 80s if he serves out both terms. And there’s no reason to suspect he would step down at that point. The working assumption among most Russian watchers is that Putin will be ruler for life. This longevity may be both an asset and a weakness.

Putin, a former KGB spy, was just 46 when he was flung to the top level of politics in 1999, plucked from relative obscurity by an ailing Boris Yeltsin to serve as Russian prime minister and soon became acting president.

One reason he has survived so well is because his style of leadership allows no rivals. Alexei Navalny, Russia’s strongest and most charismatic opposition figure in years, died in an Arctic penal colony last month, having already survived a poisoning in 2020. Other potential rivals have been killed, like Boris Nemtsov, shot dead on a Moscow street in 2015.

It isn’t just liberals who face threats like this, either: Wagner chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin, an outspoken mercenary leader and former ally of Putin, died in flames two months after a short-lived military uprising last year.

Even his nominal rivals in this weekend’s election are, at best, state-sanctioned nobodies. The only two antiwar candidates, Yekaterina Duntsova and Boris Nadezhdin, were kept from the ballot on technicalities.

Putin’s long past, and likely future, in power significantly helps him in foreign affairs. When dealing with a country like the United States, where partisan shifts tend to happen every four or eight years, he can grit his teeth and wait for a friendlier leader. He doesn’t have the domestic pressures of his most prominent foreign foe, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, who has to stay popular to maintain his position.