He was once Russia’s virility symbol, yet a year into his current role of prime minister there seems a little less swagger in Vladimir Putin’s step, say experts.
Baring his torso while hunting, threatening neighbours with nuclear attack, or switching off European energy supplies, the man who stood down as president last year and became prime minister always looked to have staying power.
But despite insistent speculation Putin will eventually return to Russia’s presidency, political experts say that a year after handing the post to Dmitry Medvedev on May 7 2008, not all is well for the ex-KGB agent.
Diplomats and analysts say the tandem with Medvedev has led to a blurring of lines of control.
More damaging still for Putin’s authority has been the economic crisis, in which hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost, the banking sector has partially seized up and the currency has plunged in value.
”Putin objectively has been really weakened, just because economic performance plays against him,” said analyst Yevgeny Volk, who heads the Moscow office of the US-based Heritage Foundation.
”The deterioration of the situation — growth in unemployment, rising inflation — certainly damage his image.”
Not that Putin is a spent force.
His personal approval rating — 76% at the end of last month according to the Moscow-based Levada Centre — would be the envy of Western politicians.
And he is still fawned over by officials and the media, as when he got adoring national media coverage after shooting a tranquilliser dart at an escaped tiger last August, or when a minister at a Cabinet meeting in October presented a hi-tech collar to Putin’s pet dog.
The economic crisis has played to Putin’s strength for communicating, evident when he visited a Siberian mining town in March to help oversee a housing resettlement project and handed a free television to one local family.
”The people are receiving new houses, starting another life,” Putin mused as the episode was beamed to the nation.
But as Russia holds its annual parade of military firepower on Red Square on May 9 — a tradition that Putin revived — the public may be less impressed than in the past.
The same Levada poll showed that only 43% of the public approve of the country’s overall course.
In Saint Petersburg, home town of Putin and many of the country’s top leaders, opposition activist Olga Kurnosova of the United Civil Front says there is rising discontent with Putin and the Petersburg ”clan” running Russia.
A local proposal to create a municipal ”youth Parliament” — and the nomination of a niece of Putin to head it — has become, in contrast to most projects associated with him, an object of derision.
”It prompts nothing but laughter,” said Kurnosova.
Political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, says that in a country like Russia opinion poll ratings are of less importance than the growing discontent among the political and business elite.
”The main problem is the disloyalty of the boyars,” said Oreshkin, referring to the regional chiefs spread across this vast country whose fealty has been ”bought” with subsidies from Moscow and who are irritated now this largesse is dwindling.
With oil prices low and the budget in deficit, Putin may have to take a more authoritarian course, forming something like a ”military junta” if he wants to keep control of a fractious elite, said Oreshkin.
Analysts add that United States President Barack Obama’s emollient approach on Nato enlargement and missile defence is not helping.
As Russian president, Putin was a natural when it came to attacking former president George Bush, for example over Iraq.
But fast-forward one year and he looked far less comfortable, barely speaking above a whisper, as he made a conciliatory speech praising the new Iraqi order in front of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki at a recent Moscow meeting.
As the public questions whether everything is really the United States’ fault, a change of tone is needed that Putin may struggle with, says political commentator Arkady Dubnov of the newspaper Vremya Novostei.
”If he made a clever switch in PR to give the impression the way out of the crisis was through cooperation with the West, through coordinated steps, he could strengthen his position,” said Dubnov.
But ”there’s a psychological barrier that is very hard for him to overcome,” he said.
One possible way out is for Putin to move back to the safety of the presidency, something of a tsar-like role.
Technically, he could stand again as president since the Constitution only prohibits anyone holding the office for more than two consecutive terms, permitting a return after an interval.
But whether Medvedev would be willing to stand down is another matter.
”With every month its gets harder. Medvedev has got his team,” said Oreshkin. ”Probably, he would listen now if Putin said to him: ‘It’s time to vacate your post.’
”But I’m not sure.” – AFP
