Just seven months ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin won re-election for the fourth time, with 77 percent of the vote.
However, according to a poll conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, if a presidential election were held now, Putin would probably receive only 47 percent of the vote, forcing him into a second-round run-off.
This is a dangerous state of affairs for Russia and the world.
Of course, poll data in Russia do not necessarily reflect the real balance of power. Yet such a steep decline is a remarkable development, not least because Russians, who remember well the harsh punishments dissidents faced during Soviet times, often prefer to speak positively of their leaders when asked.
Putin first secured the presidency in 2000 on the promise to raise living standards and restore Russia’s status as a leading global power. Fortunately for him, oil prices began to skyrocket.
Meanwhile, he set to work reviving the Soviet Union, under a different name, but similarly based on opposition to US global leadership and Western-style democratization.
From the start, Putin used media censorship to secure his authority, ensuring that any success — including rising oil prices — was hailed as his personal achievement.
As Russian Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said in 2014: “There is Putin — there is Russia; there is no Putin — there is no Russia.”
Of course, failures were never Putin’s fault. So in 2007, when economic growth was slowing and social inequality rising, Putin delivered a speech at the Munich Security Conference condemning the US for its domination of global affairs and implying that the expansion of NATO into the Baltics was directed against Russia.
Suddenly, all of Russia’s struggles could be blamed on a new Cold War, supposedly declared by the West. In 2008, Kosovo’s declaration of independence and Russia’s war with Georgia further reinforced Putin’s “besieged fortress” narrative.
Nonetheless, by 2013, Putin’s approval ratings dropped to record lows — even lower than today’s levels. So Putin pulled out the big guns, first metaphorically and then literally.
In 2014, after Russian athletes performed impressively at the Sochi Winter Olympics — with the help of a vast state-sponsored doping system — Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea.
State media proclaimed that Putin was fulfilling his promise of restoring Russia’s former greatness.
Putin’s approval rating soared to 85 percent. Russian stores were filled with T-shirts emblazoned with his face alongside phrases like “Thanks for the Crimea” and “The Politest of People.”
For the overwhelming majority of Russians, Putin’s authority was indisputable. If their president supported a policy or decision, Russians willingly accepted it, however unpopular it had been initially.
Putin had followed the advice attributed to Vyacheslav Konstantinovich von Plehve, who served as the director of police and later minister of the interior under czar Nicholas II: “To avert a revolution, we need a small victorious war.”
However, while Putin’s small victorious war boosted his standing and silenced dissent, the long-term consequences have been severe, owing to the stringent Western sanctions imposed in response to the annexation of Crimea.
As a result of those sanctions, the ruble’s value has fallen by half against the US dollar, inflation is up, and Russian household purchasing power and living standards have fallen.
At the end of last summer, the cash-strapped Russian government was forced to raise the retirement age — a move opposed by 90 percent of the population. Not even an emergency TV appeal by Putin himself could secure broader public support.
Moreover, despite Putin’s backing, the ruling United Russia party has suffered rare electoral setbacks in Russia’s Far East. Representatives of the nationalist, anti-Western Liberal Democratic Party trounced the United Russia candidates in second-round run-offs in the gubernatorial elections in the Khabarovsk and Vladimir oblasts.
In a gubernatorial election in Primorsky Krai, a Communist Party candidate appeared to win — thanks partly to protest votes against United Russia — before the election was ruled invalid and the United Russia candidate was declared the winner. The uproar was so potent that, for the first time in Russia’s post-Soviet history, the election results were annulled.
Some experts claim that United Russia’s electoral defeats reflect a kind of “power fatigue,” but the fact remains that as average Russians’ well-being has declined — and Putin cronies’ wealth has continued to swell — proclamations of Russia’s greatness have begun to ring hollow.
Citizens now wonder how strong Russia’s position really is. Buckling under sanctions and isolated by the West, the country has begun to look less like a great power than a geopolitical has-been.
Official propaganda still blames the West for the country’s plight, but Russians are not convinced and they are not nearly as impressed by Russia’s engagement in faraway Syria, whatever boost it might provide to the country’s role in world affairs, as they were by the annexation of neighboring Crimea.
However, if Putin’s 18 years in power have taught us anything, it is that his declining approval ratings are not good news for anyone. Russians might be tired, but Putin is not, and if he feels that his authority is waning, he could soon decide that it is time for another victory at others’ expense.
Tikhon Dzyadko is a Russian analyst and journalist at the independent TV network RTVI.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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