During yesterday’s press conference, Vladimir Putin did not deviate from his traditional image. «Who needs him? If they wanted to poison him, they would have finished the job», «I haven’t been vaccinated yet, unlike people like me», «we are innocent and fluffy» — for four hours this «patient» (as he called his opponent, whose name he once again refused to pronounce) tried to entertain the audience, but it didn’t go very well.
If Boris Yeltsin, after a decade in power, announced on the night of December 31, 1999, that he was tired and was leaving, then Putin, who has been in power for a third decade, may be tired, but he clearly has no intention of leaving. This should be understood as his answer to the question of whether he will run for another term in 2024: «…as for the stable development of the country, it comes at a high price…». Formally, the decision belongs to the people, whether to do it or not — I will see». In other words, in Russian translation — «definitely yes», and then the same in 2030 for another six years.
However, according to published data, even from the official VTsIOM, Putin’s rating has reached a historical low — only 26% of Russians support him. But when everyone who can challenge him ends up as a «patient» in a Berlin clinic, a remand center or a cemetery, there is no need to worry about the rating. No wonder his backer, Alexander Lukashenko, with an even lower rating, got a whopping 80% of the vote in the presidential election — as the classic of Soviet election campaigns said, «It’s not how they vote that matters, but how they count.»
But seriously, Putin’s tired self-confidence is both good and bad. Why it’s bad is understandable — the «patient» is determined to rule his «clinic» until 2036, ethics and ratings be damned. And the good part is that he is not the same as he was in 2014, when he annexed Crimea, or in 2015, when he was ready to fight Turkey over Syria, accusing Recep Tayyip Erdogan of «radical Islamization» of his country. This time, on the contrary, we heard from him that the Turkish president is a man who keeps his word and «does not wag his tail».
Moreover, this is said not when Erdogan retreats from his borders (the surrender of Aleppo), but when he advances into the «zone of exclusive influence» of the Kremlin, which has always considered the territory of the former USSR as such. Therefore, the longer the tired «Kremlin patient» remains in power, the more the balance of power in the post-Soviet space will gradually change, including in the direction of strengthening the Muslim factor, but we must not forget that while this is happening, our brothers who have already become victims of the policies of this «patient» and those who will become victims under his continued rule will be behind bars.
And apart from them and those who should think about how to free them, there are influential forces whose plans do not include the endless rule of the «Kremlin patient». So it is not impossible that next year he will have to communicate with the public not in such a self-confident tone, but more like his Belarusian counterpart does now.