Why don’t the Russians see sense and replace Putin with a more moderate leader?
Vladimir Putin has built his regime in a way that is almost impossible to oust him. If they eventually do, there would be more damages than what Russians are complaining about in his reign.
Putin has ruled in such a way that people around him don’t trust each other, sometimes hate each other, so if he is gone the system will change somewhat – either a collapse or big overhaul will happen which will definitely bring Russia back for some years.
Today’s Russia is not like any other country, how Putin has meticulously has brought himself this far worth taking note:
Putin won his first official election in March 2000, which secured him two consecutive presidential terms until 2008. He then served as prime minister between 2008 and 2012, when he returned to the presidential post.
A 2008 constitutional amendment lengthened Russian presidential terms to six years instead of four, and Putin’s current fourth term as president runs to 2024.
Putin had now signed into law a new bill that grants him the right to run twice more in his lifetime, meaning he could conceivably remain in office until 2036 at the earliest, at which point he would be 83 years old.
In the last two decades, Putin has focused on building himself up as a crucial cog holding Russia’s political system together. The consequences of that strategy, however, are that the system becomes very fragile once that centrepiece is removed. And the Russians know this too well and wouldn’t let it happen.
Hence, the reason they wait to overthrow his government.
Economically, Russia is neither progressing nor stagnating – the third is the case. But we can conclude that Russians are presently trapped in “fears of the unknown” – they fear the impending worst that could happen.
Maybe right now, they are with the logic that “the devil we know is better than the angel we don’t know”.
Russians are unable to replace Putin with another moderate leader because Putin made it so– the Russian system is built around him.
