Drum queen Bruna Almeida of the Sao Clemente samba school takes part in a parade on the second night of the annual Carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro's Sambadrome, February 20, 2012. REUTERS/Sergio Moraes
Resolute Putin Faces a Russia That’s Changed
MOSCOW — A guest hovering around the doorway of an elegant restaurant last fall glimpsed a ritual worthy of a czar.
Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin stopped in his tracks, eyes ahead, arms hovering at his sides. An aide materialized, silently whisked away Mr. Putin’s parka, and vanished. A second aide appeared with a sport jacket and slipped it over his shoulders. Then Mr. Putin resumed walking without a word or a look, “almost as if he had never stopped,” noted the guest, Clifford G. Gaddy, an American scholar.
Mr. Putin, who grew up in a hardscrabble Soviet housing block, has spent more than a decade in a byzantine world of petitioners and servants. Now, in the year he turns 60, he will face his biggest challenge: coming to grips with a society that has greatly changed under his watch, while he has remained essentially the same.
Mr. Putin now seems assured of a convincing victory in the first round of the presidential election on March 4, making a runoff unnecessary. The emerging threat to his rule has slid beneath the surface. But it will follow him across the six years of his third presidential term, as he will be forced to respond to a populace beginning to demand more of a stake in the governing of Russia.
With his once phenomenal popularity gradually waning, Mr. Putin will have to find other ways to guarantee his legitimacy.
On Thursday, Mr. Putin made a surprise appearance at a campaign rally. According to police estimates, 130,000 people jammed into Luzhniki Stadium, waving signs with messages like “Putin, the path to the future” and “We don’t want revolution” and “There is no alternative.” When Mr. Putin stepped onto the stage — a small figure in a black parka — the atmosphere in the stadium seemed to twitch, and he was met with a sustained roar of approval.
The pomp cannot obscure the fact that Mr. Putin, who served eight years as president and four as prime minister, is embarking on his final act as Russia’s leader. A banker close to Mr. Putin advised him in a recent article not to extend his rule after this six-year term, commenting that “in the opinion of many people, it is not simply a very long time, it is too long.” In 2008, the Constitution was amended to lengthen the presidential term to six years from four.
New tasks are at hand, like searching for a trusted person to whom Mr. Putin can eventually transfer his authority, just as Boris N. Yeltsin did with Mr. Putin 12 years ago.
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