Life After Putin https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/life-after-putin http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2020/01/life-after-putin.html#more ... Putin will step down as president after his current term, which will end in 2024 unless an early election is held, but the system he has put in place will stay in place. Essentially, life after Putin will be more Putin under a different name. ... - Dual citizens and holders of foreign residency permits will now be barred from holding official positions within the Russian Federation. In addition, 25 years of Russian residency will be required of anyone running for President instead of the current 10. This may seem like a minor change, but it is causing Russia’s fifth-columnists and members of the liberal opposition to tear their hair out while gnashing their teeth because most of the current ones will be automatically disqualified from holding office while any future ones will be forced to choose between serving Russia and having a bug-out plan. More specifically, given their new outsider status, their Western masters will consider them useless and will no longer funnel funds to them or offer them free regime change training. This approach is sure to be more effective than the current, more labor-intensive one of playing whack-a-mole with foreign-financed NGOs and foreign agents attempting to infiltrate Russia’s government. Personally, I’ll miss having some of these miscreants around. They have provided quite a bit of entertainment, adding an element of stark raving lunacy to what is otherwise a rather stolid and detail-oriented political process. ... The last, and perhaps the most controversial suggestion I would like to make is to consider defining lawful, constitutional procedures for political self-determination, which is likewise an internationally recognized legal principle. The borders of the Russian Federation are, in some cases, the end product of a series of errors made during the Soviet era. During the post-Soviet era some of these have been remedied, after a fashion, and the regions in question have become de facto independent: Transnistria split off from Moldova and has been de facto independent for 28 years; Abkhazia from Georgia for 26 years; South Ossetia from Georgia for 12; Donetsk and Lugansk from the Ukraine for six. In many ways they have already been functioning as parts of the Russian Federation. But there is no constitutional mechanism for resolving this situation de jure by allowing them to determine their status in accordance with international law and to petition the Russian Federation for incorporation. When it comes to questions of self-determination, double standards abound. When Kosovo seceded from Serbia, no specific democratic procedures were followed, yet no questions were asked or even allowed. But when Crimea voted overwhelmingly to secede from the Ukraine and rejoin Russia, this was considered to be illegal and resulted in international sanctions that are in place to this day. Given the extreme level of rancor on this issue internationally, this may be an extreme stretch goal, but at some point a solution will have to be arrived at for adjudicating the status of territories that have been de facto independent for decades, and for their subsequent entirely voluntary inclusion in the Russian Federation. On Fri, Jan 17, 2020 at 10:17:13PM +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
Run down of recent Russian parliamentary events and what to expect.
Putin's Now Purged The West From The Kremlin https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/putins-now-purged-west-kremlin https://tomluongo.me/2020/01/17/putin-purged-west-kremlin/
... These events of the past couple of days in Russia are the end result of years of work on Putin’s part to purge the Russian government and the Kremlin of what The Saker calls The Atlanticist Fifth Column.
... Gilbert Doctorow has an excellent early reaction to this dramatic turn by Putin which I encourage everyone to read in full. The subtle point he makes is:
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2020/01/16/vladimir-putin-prepares-his-successio...
To understand what comes next, you have to take into account a vitally important statement which Putin made a few moments before he set out his proposed constitutional reforms. He told his audience that his experience meeting with the leaders of the various Duma parties at regular intervals every few weeks showed that all were deeply patriotic and working for the good of the country. Accordingly, he said that all Duma parties should participate in the formation of the cabinet.
And so, we are likely to see in the coming days that candidates for a number of federal ministries in the new, post-Medvedev cabinet will be drawn precisely from parties other than United Russia. In effect, without introducing the word “coalition” into his vocabulary, Vladimir Putin has set the stage for the creation of a grand coalition to succeed the rule of one party, United Russia, over which Dimitri Medvedev was the nominal chairman.
The end result of this move to devolve the cabinet appointments to the whole of the Duma is to ensure that a strong President which Putin believes is best for Russia is tempered by a cabinet drawn from the whole of the electorate, including the Prime Minister.
That neither opens the door to dysfunctional European parliamentary systems nor closes it from a strong President leading Russia during crisis periods.
Once the amendments to the constitution are finalized Putin will put the whole package to a public vote.
This is the early stage of this much-needed overhaul of Russia’s constitutional order and the neocons in the West are likely stunned into silence knowing that they can no longer just wait Putin out and sink their hooks into his most likely successor.
On Thu, Jan 16, 2020 at 03:16:33PM +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
Peace and politics - they don't usually go together.
But you don't usually have a putin at the helm of your state.
We could be so lucky in Australia to have half a Putin. Alas we have pocket lining dunderheads, morons and some genuinely sociopathic compromateds.
As the Western media scrambles to paint every cough and pause by Putin in the maximum possible nefariousness, at least we can look afield on occasion and get a betterer backstory:
Russian political earthquake: Putin sets out plan for Kremlin departure & Medvedev resigns https://www.rt.com/op-ed/478381-russian-government-resignation-mishustin/
... Today, the president set out the roadmap for his exit from the Kremlin, more-or-less kicking off the build-up to the transition of power. He will step down in 2024, or perhaps even earlier, and he intends to dismantle the “hyper-Presidential” system which allowed him to wield so much control in office.
... Make no mistake, Putin’s goal is to preserve the system which he inherited from Yeltsin, and then tweaked. For all its faults, after a difficult birth it has given Russians the greatest freedom and prosperity they have ever known. Even if much work remains to be done on distributing economic gains more fairly.
... One notable suggestion is that future presidents must have lived in Russia for 25 continuous years before taking office, and have never held a foreign passport or residency permit. This would bar a lot of the Western-leaning Moscow opposition from running. Not to mention a large swathe of Russian liberals, a great many of whom have lived abroad at some point. Interestingly, if this rule had existed in 2000 Vladimir Putin himself wouldn't have been able to become Russia's president. He lived in Germany from 1985-1990 (albeit on state duty).
...
Thank you, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.