Putin has emerged from his third term stronger than ever, but it is unclear where he goes from here

That Vladimir Putin will be reelected has never been in doubt. What the Russian president’s fourth term, sometimes referred to as Putin 4.0, is likely to bring is a more open question.

The past six years have brought Russia into deepening conflict with the west. But Putin has emerged from his third term far stronger than he was in 2012, shoring up his image as a generational leader who has cowed all but his most committed opposition and taken steps to revive Russia’s greatness, with controversial moves such as the annexation of Crimea.



Paradoxically, the first order of business now, according to analysts and sources close to the Kremlin, is for Putin to set up an escape plan.

“The big idea in the next term is for him to find a way to make a transfer of power that will ensure the security of him and a fairly large number of people surrounding him,” said Konstantin Gaaze, a journalist and political commentator at Carnegie Moscow Center. “I think he’s going to find it is simpler to just become a president for life.”



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Kremlin politics have become a bloodsport. In 2007, when Putin chose Dmitry Medvedev as his interim successor, elites felt they could back Medvedev or a rival candidate with little to fear, Gaaze said. Now, with a shrinking economy and elites manoeuvring before a possible succession battle, the knives are out.

“There’s no one being prepared to replace him,” said a person close to the Kremlin, who asked not to be identified. “So everyone thinks it could be them.”



Putin’s terms in power over the past 18 years have differed significantly from one another. In his first two, from 2000 to 2008, he largely benefited from high oil prices and rising standards of living among Russians, including the elite, to consolidate political power. He pushed out oligarchs, and pushed out the opposition.

There was a pact with the electorate: I improve the economy. You stay out of politics.



The four years under Medvedev, with Putin in the role of prime minister, ended in a failure to launch, with Russia allowing a Nato intervention in Libya and electoral fraud leading to huge pro-democracy street protests beginning in 2011. Putin and Medvedev clashed publicly.



The protests, backed by middle-class urban Russians, shaped Putin 3.0. As Alexander Baunov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said then in Slon magazine, Putin turned away from the elite, embracing socially conservative movements and working-class populism.



“Let this elite go to hell,” he wrote. “Now we rely on the people, on the masses of workers.”



The annexation of Crimea followed in 2014, establishing Putin’s legacy and launching a clash with the west that has helped bolster his popularity. It is a platform he seems unlikely to step down from.



Seven years earlier, Putin had declared at the Munich security conference that Russia would oppose US hegemony. It is the closest that Putin has come to laying out a foreign policy doctrine.



Some saw echoes of Munich this month when Putin dedicated half of his state of the union address to Russia’s modernising of its nuclear arsenal.



Q&A Does Russia present a credible threat to the UK? Show Hide Russia has been a useful bogeyman since its annexation of Crimea in 2014. UK military chiefs were spooked when Russia, during an intervention in Ukraine, used a combination of drones and artillery to destroy Ukrainian armour, and raised questions about whether the UK would be able to do much better than the Ukrainians in similar circumstances. The UK is far enough away for Russia not to pose a territorial threat. But UK forces are deployed in the Baltic states along with US and other Nato forces as a deterrent in the unlikely event of a Russian landgrab.

Russia does present a threat through hybrid warfare, or the use of deniable acts of disruption – primarily cyber-attacks on the UK that could disrupt essential services or interference in the democratic process, such as in elections.

“Putin has just finished reading his Munich speech,” wrote Dmitry Smirnov, a journalist who covers Putin’s schedule in minute detail for the patriotic newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda. “It established new rules of behaviour for the planet,” he said.



Electoral politics in Russia are largely uncompetitive. The actual politics are opaque.



Meanwhile, some are toying with an idea of post-politics based around issues that will let young people get involved without threatening the Kremlin.



“The idea is to de-politicise politics,” said Gaaze. “No more battle for political power. Just volunteerism and service to one’s country.



“They think this might calm things down.”

