Putin’s return to the Kremlin in 2012 blighted Russia’s chances of peaceable evolution. That will stay so while he and his inner circle hang on to power, perhaps beyond 2024. Russia and the rest of us will suffer in consequence.
Putinist authoritarian rule has returned Russia to the dilemma confronting the Soviet Union at the end of the Brezhnev era: whether it can rethink or reformulate its fundamental purposes without un-leashing forces that its rulers cannot control.
Buying in to the myth of Russia’s humiliation at the hands of the West does nothing to improve relations in the long term. It could do a great deal of harm to Russia as well.
Russia’s judicial system is designed to sustain the primacy of the state over its citizens, but there is a cost to using such a tool—and that cost is rising.
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