If Vladimir Putin remains in power until 2036, he would have ruled Russia for as long as Ivan the Terrible
thing a tame parliament is. On March 10th, acting on a proposal from the first woman in space , the Russian Duma approved an amendment to the country’s constitution that would reset the clock barring anyone from serving more than two consecutive terms as president.
A few technicalities remain . Russia’s Constitutional Court still has to rule on whether Mr Putin’s changes are indeed constitutional. It is a sign of how completely Mr Putin has packed and bent Russian institutions to his will that no one imagines that he will fail to get his way, just as no one imagines that Valentina Tereshkova, who took her giant leap for womankind back on June 16th, 1963, was acting off her own bat.
None of this ought to come as a surprise. Mr Putin and his circle have made too many enemies and too much money for him to risk giving up power voluntarily. The real question has been how he would dress up his intention to rule indefinitely. Once before he got around the two-term rule, by taking the supposedly less powerful post of prime minister, swapping jobs with the pliable Dmitri Medvedev who served as president between 2008 and 2012.
The trick assumes that Mr Putin will be as weakly opposed in 2024 and 2030 as he was in 2000, 2004, 2012 and 2018. Is that plausible? The timing of the changes is ominous for him. This week’s collapse in the oil price will hurt the economy. Despite 20 years in charge and a clear global trend to find substitutes for fossil fuels, he has failed to do nearly enough to diversify Russia away from oil and gas. His government has built up enough financial reserves to last for years, but not for ever.
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