Putin For President: You Can't Keep A Good Dictator Down

I wouldn't profess to know a great deal about Russian internal politics, but I am told that the Ivans do like a strong leader. Well they have that alright.

Let me correct that, I know enough about Russian internal politics to know that Vlad won't have lost his touch for things presidential.

Don't Fuck With Vlad. Cancel that, see below.

Putin's return as Russia's president appears set

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday proposed Vladimir Putin as presidential candidate for 2012, almost certainly guaranteeing Putin's return to the office four years after he was legally forced to step aside.

Medvedev made the proposal in an address to a congress of United Russia, the pro-Kremlin party that dominates Russian politics.

Putin, who currently serves as prime minister, took the rostrum immediately after Medvedev and launched into a lengthy lecture on changes and policies he saw necessary for Russia. That included a surprising suggestion that Russia's wealthy should pay higher taxes than average citizens.

The flat income tax that came into effect during Putin's 2000-2008 presidency has been widely praised as improving tax collection. But Putin's proposal for higher taxes for the wealthy appears to reflect growing discontent over the wide gaps between the grandiosely rich and the millions of Russians who continue living in poverty or marginal circumstances.

The congress must formally nominate its candidate, which appeared to be a foregone conclusion judging by the heavy applause that greeted Medvedev's proposal.

The proposal appears to end months of intense speculation over whether Medvedev would seek a second term or step aside in favor of his powerful predecessor.

Putin became prime minister in 2008 after two terms as president, stepping aside because of constitutional term limits, but as Russia's most powerful and popular politician he had been widely expected seek a return to the Kremlin.

Medvedev had been widely seen as simply a caretaker figure. As president, he has struck a reformist posture, calling for improvements in Russia's notoriously unreliable court system and for efforts against the country's endemic corruption. But his initiatives have produced little tangible result.

Medvedev on Saturday said he would continue his reform efforts and implied he would aim to stay in government after the presidential elections, for which a date has not been set.

Under constitutional changes, the presidential term in 2012 will be six years instead of four, putting Putin, if he wins, in a position of nearly unchallengeable power.

Putin, who built his popularity on the back of strong economic growth, told the party congress on Friday that salaries and pensions would continue to grow, and he promised increased funding for education, health care and housing.

But he also cautioned that the government may need to take unpopular steps to cope with the global financial turmoil.

"The task of the government is not only to pour honey into a cup, but sometimes to give bitter medicine," Putin said. "But this should always be done openly and honestly, and then the overwhelming majority of people will understand their government." CBS

Update:

The Cost of Britain's Thaw With Russia
By Alan Cowell
September 16, 2011

LONDON — Almost five years ago, on Nov. 1, 2006, Alexander V. Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. officer and self-exiled dissident, ingested a rare and highly toxic radioactive isotope, polonium 210, from a teapot at a hotel in Grosvenor Square.

Three weeks and one day later, he was dead after an excruciating decline. Almost to the last, investigators and physicians had no idea what killed him. And by the time the cause emerged, Mr. Litvinenko had died, never knowing what took his life. In a contentious, deathbed testament read out by a friend, Mr. Litvinenko laid the murder firmly at the door of the Kremlin and its boss, Vladimir V. Putin, who was then president.

“You may succeed in silencing one man, but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life,” the declaration said. On Dec. 7, 2006, Mr. Litvinenko, who had acquired British citizenship weeks before the poisoning, was buried at Highgate Cemetery in London, just across the way from the tomb of Karl Marx.

The British authorities demanded the extradition on murder charges of Andrei K. Lugovoi, a former business associate, and ex-K.G.B. bodyguard, who had been with Mr. Litvinenko on Nov. 1 in the Millennium Hotel. When Russia refused, Britain expelled four of Moscow’s diplomats. Russia kicked out four Britons. A chill settled, reminiscent of the Cold War.

It is worth recalling some of the detail, the drama and the flavor of those days because, just this week, it seemed as if another kind of burial — political, diplomatic, pragmatic — was under way when Prime Minister David Cameron visited Moscow and seemed to signal readiness for a thaw.

True, Mr. Cameron made clear that the British legal system did not permit Britain to drop its demand for the extradition of Mr. Lugovoi, who has long proclaimed his innocence.

“But at the same time,” he told Russians, “we have a responsibility to recognize the many ways in which we do need each other, to end the old culture of tit-for-tat and find ways for us to work together to advance our mutual interests.”

And in case anyone failed to understand the nature of those mutual interests, contracts were signed for business deals worth £215 million, or $340 million — hardly a high price for the British offer to step around the central question: could a British citizen be murdered with impunity in Britain at the whim of hostile outsiders? (The answer so far: yes.)

On a note of disclosure: I wrote a book about the Litvinenko affair. In recent days, however, I have been struck not so much by the memory of a particularly gruesome murder, but by what this saga says about the remarkable long game played by the Kremlin, the limits of British influence and the distinctive nature of British foreign policy under Mr. Cameron.

That style began to emerge earlier this year when — in what seemed a remarkably dissonant signal — Mr. Cameron toured the Middle East, then aflame with the first crackling fires of the Arab Spring, leading a delegation packed with defense contractors who had sold their weapons to precisely the kind of autocratic leaders under attack by pro-democracy forces. more NYT

h/t Maren