Dissolving Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s government and outlining major constitutional reforms, President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday moved to assert more explicitly his absolute control over Russian politics.
This is Putin’s clearest signal yet that he intends to continue as Russia’s master for the long term.
Although Putin backed away from amending the constitution to allow himself to serve another term in 2024 (the constitution limits presidents to serving two consecutive terms at a time), his other reforms are designed to consolidate his dominance. The details are not yet fully clear, and Putin says all the proposals will be put to a referendum, but his strategy is clear. Standout reforms include:
- Allowing the president and parliamentary upper house to remove Supreme Court judges and play a role in approving security service heads.
- Increasing the State Council’s authoritative power — it’s currently a presidential advisory board.
- Requiring constitutional court checks on new legislation.
- Empowering the Duma to appoint the prime minister and Cabinet — even where the president disagrees with appointees.
- Requiring presidential candidates to have lived in Russia for at least 25 years and always without foreign citizenship or residency rights.
Interestingly, Putin also wants to ban top officials from having dual citizenship or foreign residency permits — likely to reduce their vulnerability to foreign intelligence service recruitment.
In any event, it’s pretty clear that Putin is creating new political structures to restrain the power of future presidents. An important factor to consider is that while these amendments seem declarative, Putin will play an outsize role in their interpretation and action. Again, this is about ensuring that no future leader can wrest control from Putin in a way that would jeopardize his interests.
What of the new Cabinet?
Well, the predictably docile Medvedev was happy to endorse his expulsion from the inner circle. Putin has asked Mikhail Mishustin to serve as Medvedev’s replacement. It’s an unremarkable choice. The 10-year head of Russia’s long-corrupted federal tax service, Mishustin has avoided the bright lights of Kremlin celebrity in favor of quiet Putin loyalism. But in replacing the corrupt Medvedev with Mishustin, Putin has simply replaced one yes man for another. Mishustin will serve primarily for the protection of the inner-circle corruption that defines Russia’s kleptocracy.
That said, the departure of longtime foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu (a possible Putin successor) will be interesting. Putin can now appoint new faces that offer a fresh presentation to the Russian people and an assurance of absolute loyalty to his person.
Still, the key takeaway here is that whether in the shadows or otherwise, Putin is going to be the Russian czar for a long time to come.
