Vladimir Putin: How Covid-19 and 2020 disrupted the Russian president’s best plans

Vladimir Putin: How Covid-19 and 2020 disrupted the Russian president’s best plans

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Observers were quick to read the fine print: the constitutional review would reset the clock on presidential term limits, potentially extending Putin’s grip on power until 2036. A referendum was scheduled for April, and Putin appeared to be heading for a lifelong presidency.

What followed, instead, was an annus horribilis for Russia, and perhaps Putin’s most challenging year to date.

When Covid-19 started to spread around the world, Russia for a brief moment seemed to be ahead. The country closed its border with China and Putin boasted that the virus was “under control”, thanks to what he described as robust initial measures to stem the spread of the disease.

But this approach was little more than bragging and beating around the bush. Shortly after the government announced a national blockade that began on March 28, it became clear that the country was grappling with a major public health crisis.

In April, Moscow recorded a death rate about 20% higher than the 10-year average, while officials in the capital indirectly acknowledged that they were underestimating the deaths of Covid-19.

The government was forced to postpone the referendum on constitutional changes.

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Doubts grew about how well the Kremlin was handling the pandemic and whether it was being harassed by the Russian public about the seriousness of the crisis.

These suspicions only increased when Russian doctors and medical staff turned to social media to raise the alarm about underfunded hospitals and a death toll they said was greater than officially recognized. Reports from frontline healthcare professionals falling out of windows and fires on defective Russian fans have further undermined public confidence.

Russia’s economic situation was also dire. The country was mired in a coronavirus-induced recession, exacerbated by falling global oil prices, a major export.

By the middle of the year, the World Bank predicted that Russia’s GDP growth in 2020 would shrink 6%, down 11 years, accompanied by an increase in unemployment and an increase in poverty levels.

This deep economic stress threatened to derail the ruling party’s United Russia political program by exposing the deep weaknesses of the social pact that kept Putin in power for two decades.

Reports of fans on fire in an intensive care unit at St. George's Hospital in St. Petersburg in May heightened doubts about how the Kremlin was dealing with the pandemic.

Putin’s political durability is often attributed to a simple bargain between him and his citizens: accepting limited political competition in exchange for stability and steady increases in the standard of living. But in the midst of the pandemic, that agreement began to break.

In July, protests erupted in the easternmost city of Khabarovsk, where thousands took to the streets in extremely unusual street protests in support of the region’s governor, Sergei Furgal, who had been arrested and accused of orchestrating the murder of two businessmen in 2004 and 2005. Furgal denied involvement in the murders. His supporters saw the case as a politically motivated process by a regional opponent of United Russia.
Perhaps equally worrying for the Kremlin, street protests swept through neighboring Belarus in August after current President Alexander Lukashenko, often described as Europe’s last dictator, claimed victory in an election that observers said was marked by widespread fraud.

Lukashenko, who has governed since 1994, refused to step aside and his security forces brutalized and arrested thousands of Belarusians, leaving the Kremlin in the face of the uncomfortable scenario of citizens of a neighboring and ally country refusing to play with false Russian-style democracy. .

The Kremlin managed to hold a national referendum that guaranteed constitutional changes, with the help of a national campaign to get votes, a state holiday and the mobilization of the country’s large state sector, which accounts for a large part of the workers.

But Putin’s managed democracy system faced a new crisis in late August, when opposition leader Alexey Navalny fell seriously ill on a flight from the Siberian city of Tomsk to Moscow.

Navalny had been leading a campaign called “smart voting” – an effort to get votes for candidates in local elections who had the best chance of defeating United Russia’s candidates.

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The Kremlin critic was eventually taken to Berlin for treatment, after Russian doctors initially insisted that the opposition leader was seriously ill to make the trip.

The German government later revealed that the tests proved that he had been poisoned by a nervous chemical agent in the Novichok group.

The Kremlin denied any attempt to harm Navalny, and Russian state television developed a series of conspiracy theories to explain the apparent assassination attempt.

But the Russian government has drawn swift criticism from international leaders, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying, “There are very serious questions now that only the Russian government can and must answer.”

In mid-December, a CNN-Bellingcat investigation found evidence that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) formed an elite team specializing in nerve agents who have followed Navalny for years.
During the marathon of his annual press conference, Putin’s comments on the Navalny reports were both a boast and a denial. “Who needs it, anyway? [Russian agents] they wanted, they probably would have ended, “said Putin.

Navalny’s poisoning, in fact, demolished much of the goodwill that Russia had sought to build internationally in the midst of the pandemic.

In early April, the Russian government took a public relations coup by sending fans and protective equipment to New York to help hospitals on the front lines of the crisis.
It was a symbolism about the substance: the fans were the same model that caught fire in Russian hospitals, and the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency said they were never used.

The Russian government also supported efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine, a project that has become a matter of national prestige.

In August, Putin announced with great fanfare that the vaccine developed internally in Russia – called Sputnik V, a name inspired by the Cold War space race – had been approved for public use, although it had not passed Phase 3 tests. being the first attracted international skepticism, as well as the Kremlin’s subsequent recognition that Putin himself would not receive the injection.
This is not surprising: Putin’s health information is a closely guarded secret, and the presidential administration has taken extraordinary steps to protect the coronavirus head of state, including installing a special “disinfectant tunnel” for visitors to his residence outside Moscow and the Kremlin.

The outbreak of the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region further tested the Russian government’s crisis management skills in 2020.

Although the brief but intensely bloody fighting ended with the deployment of Russian peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh, the ceasefire agreement also demonstrated Turkey’s regional influence. Russia is no longer the only indispensable power in the post-Soviet space.

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Kremlinology is an inexact science, but as 2020 approaches its end, we can ask whether Putin is reconsidering the apparent plans to remain president until 2036.

After all, Russian lawmakers drew up a possible escape plan for the Kremlin leader, passing legislation that would give former presidents lifelong immunity from criminal prosecution.

The project in no way implies the Russian president’s imminent departure – after all, Putin is a man who likes to keep his options open.

But for some observers, the bill recalled the surprising transfer of power from former Russian President Boris Yeltsin to then Prime Minister Putin on New Year’s Eve 1999. One of Putin’s first acts as president was the signing of a diploma granting immunity to Yeltsin.

The end of this convulsive and difficult year, then, is likely to leave avid observers in Russia waiting for new Putin New Year surprises.

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