Putin is awaiting a coronation. Seven problems he will have to deal with

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin will take his fifth presidential oath today in the Kremlin. Officially, with great fanfare, he will become the head of Russia for the next six years. With a landslide victory in the rigged presidential elections in March, he asserted that there is no significant alternative emerging in the country.

The term of office, which he himself extended in the constitution, and the systematic suppression of the opposition give him an almost unlimited mandate for further steps.

The fundamental questions to which he will have to find an answer, or the challenges he will have to cope with, are quite clear. How he approaches them remains open. List The reports have selected seven topics that Putin will have to address.

Before the elections, Putin rather avoided debates about the war in Ukraine, but there is no doubt that, at least at the beginning of the new term, it will be the most fundamental topic that he will have to deal with. The conflict, which according to his promises was supposed to end within a few days, has been going on for the third year and is not expected to end anytime soon, even though Russia currently has the upper hand on the battlefield.

However, in the months before Putin’s re-election, voices of disagreement with the continuation of the invasion appeared more and more often, with which the dictator will have to deal more and more often.

Pre-election opposition to the war

Tens of thousands of people then supported the only anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin. There were also regular protests in the streets by mothers and wives of soldiers demanding their return from the front. Thus, although the regime mainly suppressed opposition voices, its staunch supporters are also beginning to speak out, on whom the consequences of the invasion fall.

Although Putin describes the war in Ukraine as a matter of life and death for Russia, as a result, failure in it would mainly threaten the continuity of the regime. Even experts called the election itself a kind of referendum on the continuation of the war in Ukraine.

“By withdrawing his troops without a significant victory, Putin would risk a serious backlash at home, perhaps even an armed revolt by hardliners like the one provoked by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin last year. It would also be a big blow to his hopes of going down in history as one of Russia’s most successful war leaders,” Russia expert Marc Bennetts wrote in his commentary for the British newspaper The Times.

Related to the overall tone of the invasion of Ukraine is the question of possible further mobilization, which has been speculated about in Russia since the first one. At the time around the election, it was not reasonable for the Kremlin to talk about her, but there was intense discussion about the fact that he could approach her after the vote. In addition, the Russian advance in Ukraine required huge human sacrifices.

But according to Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center head Tatiana Stanovay, Putin does not need further mobilization after all. One of the reasons is that many Russians from poorer regions serve in the army, for whom it is the only way to earn better money.

Recently, Moscow has been gaining additional kilometers of territory, especially in the Donetsk region, still at the cost of high losses (also on the Ukrainian side). At the same time, however, the Russians are learning to improve their tactics, and it doesn’t look like sudden changes to Moscow’s disadvantage at the moment.

So Putin has no reason to resort to an unpopular measure. Recall that the first mobilization in September 2022 sparked protests and hundreds of thousands of Russians fled the country to avoid the conscription order. On the other hand, the second mobilization could reassure the relatives of the soldiers who had to go to the front a year and a half ago.

Due to its length, the war not only brings moral problems, but many Russians are also struggling with a worsened economic situation. According to the magazine Foreign Affairs, it is precisely the boost of the damaged economy that will become one of Putin’s priorities.

Even Western sanctions and the war machine have not yet put the Russian economy to rest. There is no indication that this will happen in the near future. Still, people realize that sometimes eggs are missing or it’s harder to get the latest iPhone.

“The Russian economy has switched to war mode, and is thus focusing mainly on defense spending. The sanctions imposed by the West do not help either. Thus, the regime must try to maintain a socio-economic standard that will not arouse too much dissatisfaction in the Russian population,” Thomas Graham, an expert on Russia at Yale University, told the News List earlier.

At the last inauguration in 2018, there were protests where the police arrested about a thousand people. This time, such events will most likely not take place.

Over the past two years, the Kremlin has stepped up repression against any opposition to the war and the regime. The regime outlawed opposition groups and made it impossible for independent media to operate in the country. After all, Putin surpassed even the Soviet leaders in repression.

Leading Russian opposition figures are either in exile, dead, or serving long prison terms, and their fates remain uncertain. With the further consolidation of power that Putin demonstrated in the election, however, an even greater emphasis on suppressing any dissent is expected.

“Every time I think I can’t go any further, something is found. But as far as the laws regarding criticism of the regime are concerned, I don’t expect them to be completely tightened. Even now, the laws are so vague that anything can fit under them. However, the area where the laws are being tightened a lot concerns mobilization and levies. It’s much harder to desert or avoid service at all,” lawyer Lauren McCarthy from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who focuses on Russian legislation, pointed out to List News.

With the inauguration, the president is obliged to dissolve the government and form a new one. It is thus expected that some changes could occur at the highest levels and subsequently also at lower levels. Speculation is especially rife around the possible change of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu due to the recent arrest of his longtime deputy Timur Ivanov, who is facing charges of corruption.

How solid is Shoigu’s position?

Former Kremlin spokesman Abbas Galyamov, who the authorities now call a “foreign agent”, also believes that the deputy’s arrest is actually an attack on the minister. “Ivanov is one of Shoigu’s closest people. His arrest shortly before the appointment of a new government indicates that the current minister’s chances of staying in office are plummeting,” he noted to Reuters.

The last changes that took place in the government took place four years ago and did not concern the most important posts.

Putin is planning his first foreign trip after the inauguration to China. The strengthening of ties with Beijing will be one of the main domains of the Kremlin’s foreign policy, after all, it has not been otherwise until now. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russia has found itself at odds with Western countries and is therefore looking for allies elsewhere.

Despite strong statements about how borderless friendship reigns between the states, there is an unequal dynamic in Russian-Chinese relations in which Beijing has the upper hand, Sinologist David Gardáš pointed out earlier for Seznam Zpravy.

Relations between Russia and China

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Beijing, where he once again “fell” into the arms of his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. However, against the background of the war in Ukraine, the relationship between the two great powers is deepening to the detriment of Moscow.

“On a personal level, there is probably a real friendship between the two autocrats. As for the bilateral relations between the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, there, rather than friendship, one can talk about a kind of marriage of convenience,” said an expert from Sinopsis for Seznam Zprávy.

Putin will also try to deepen foreign cooperation with the states of Central Asia, where Moscow’s influence began to decline after the start of the war. Some of his journeys could also lead to Africa, where Russian mercenary groups operate.

During the campaign period, Putin also assured Russians that the ongoing war does not stand in the way of the country solving long-term and serious problems.

At the domestic level, the president wants to respond, for example, to the demographic crisis, which is exacerbated by the ongoing conflict. After all, the birth rate also became part of propaganda, and the authorities urged women not to terminate their pregnancies, through billboards and in the media.

There have already been reports that the regime is trying to suppress reproductive rights. Now the “elections” are settled and the regime has a freer hand.

“Putin is now seriously obsessed with the demographic situation in Russia. This should not be confused with religious views or any moralizing. He is not interested in that, his reasons are purely corporate, pragmatic,” Russian lawyer Marianna Muravyeva, who deals with women’s rights in her native country at the University of Helsinki, pointed out to Seznam Zpravy.