by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright December 3, 2007
All Rights Reserved.

aced with getting termed-out in May 7, 2008, Russian President Vladimir Putin figured out a way of staying in power for the foreseeable future. Sworn into office in the gilded halls of the Kremlin in May 7, 2000, Putin circumvented the Russian constitution, limiting him to only eight years in office. By fixing the election and gaining a decisive majority in the Russian parliament or Duma, Putin maintains indefinite control. When Putin ran in 2000, he was virtually the only candidate on the slate. This time around, his United Russia Party won a whopping 64.1 % of the vote, assuring a decisive 70% seats in the new parliament. While Russia's president carried the most authority, the new government confers new powers to the previously impotent prime minister. Putin plans to hand-pick his president, serve as the next prime minister and keep control of the Russian Federation.

      Since 2000, Putin upended Russia's fledgling free press, drove powerful oligarchs [rich businessmen] into exile and expropriated privately owned industries, including incarcerating Russia's richest man Mikhail Kodorkovsky, formerly head of Russia's Yukos oil monopoly and potential political competitor. Putin seized control of Russia's vast oil wealth after it was privatized under the late Russian President Boris Yeltsin, following the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and fall of the Soviet Union March 17, 1991. When Putin, a former KGB agent, came to power in 2000, he dismantled Russia's free press, closing down NTV, Russia's only independent TV network, driving its president Boris Berezovsky into exile. Berezovsky sought political asylum in the U.K. before immigrating to Israel, claiming to be the target of a Kremlin assassination plot while living in London.

      Putin attempts to persecute his political opponents know no limits, recently accusing the White House and U.S. State Department of meddling prior to Russia's Dec. 2 parliamentary elections. Despite the fix, Putin blamed the U.S. for manipulating Russian affairs. “Their goal is the delegitimization of the elections. But they will not achieve even this goal,” said Putin, accusing the U.S. State Department of sabotaging the Organization for Security Cooperation, a European group that monitors free-and-fair elections. In reality, Putin prevented the group from obtaining visas to perform their job of monitoring elections. “This was a decision that was simply based on the fact that we were not receiving any visas and time had run out,” said OSC spokeswoman Urdur Gunnarsdottir, refuting Putn's propaganda that the U.S. State Department discouraged OSC from monitoring the election.

      Putin's overwhelming victory in parliamentary elections displays his iron grip on the Russian government. “Of course it's a sign of trust,” Putin told reporters celebrating his Party's landslide. “Russians will never allow the nation to take a destructive path, as happened in some of the ex-Soviet nations,” revealing, if nothing else, Putin's contempt toward breakaway republics. For the last seven years, President George W. Bush considered Putin “a friend,” while the ex-KGB agent dismantled Russia's democratic gains started under former Communist Party Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev's “glasnost” and Yeltzin's “perestroika,” where Russia shed its Marxist-Leninist, totalitarian past for democracy. Putin's seven-plus year reign dismantled most gains made under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Now Putin stands squarely in the way of the U.N. Security Council disarming Iran.

      Putin's manipulation of Russia's parliamentary elections hasn't passed unnoticed. Russia's latest “democratic” exercise was “not a fair election,” said Goran Lennemarker, president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. There was “overwhelming influence of the president's office and the president” on the entire election campaign affecting the outcome, observed Luc van den Brande, who headed the OSCE parliamentary delegation. Former world chess champion and opposition leader Gaary Kasparov, who was arrested for demonstrating in St. Petersburg and Moscow, called the election a “farce.” Russia's Kremlin, on the other hand, touted the vote as a “plebiscite,” attesting to Putin's success reviving Russia's economy and prosperity. Few objective observers believe Russia's elections were anything but a sham.

      Putin likes to throw Russia's weight around, especially playing spoiler on the U.N. Security Council. Flush with petrodollars, stolen for imprisoned former oligarch Mikhail Kodorkovsky, Putin has plenty of cash to finance arms' sales to rogue regimes and insurgents fighting U.S. occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the U.S.S.R. met an unceremonious fate in Afghanistan, defeated by Osama bin Laden's mujahedeen fighters, Russia supplies more weapons and logistics to America's enemies, including the Taliban, al-Qaida and Iran. Attempts to curtail Iran's uranium enrichment program have been stymied by Putin, more concerned about collecting $1billion for building Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor than stopping President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from building his first A-bomb. Now that the West knows what Putin is up to, it's time to stop doing business as usual.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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