It's probably too soon to write him off completely, but Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who has enjoyed stratospheric approval ratings of as high as 85%, can expect to see his popularity and power crash along with the oil prices that have sent Russia's post-Soviet economy into the tank (again).
Russian analyst Masha Lipman of Carnegie Endowment's Moscow Center writes in the Washington Post:
"Investors are gone; the stock market barely exists. After nine years of surpluses, Russia will have a budget deficit in 2009, and the solid economic growth of recent years may give way to a contraction. An increasing number of enterprises are shifting to two- or three-day workweeks, sending their employees on unpaid vacations or laying them off. Unemployment, which had been very low in recent years, is rising, and the country lacks an adequate social infrastructure to help those who are losing their jobs. It is commonly believed that we haven't yet seen the worst."
One of Russia's most astute politicians, Anatoly Chubais, says the chances for serious social and political turmoil are now 50%. As predicted in this space-and it didn't take a genius-Czar Putin's Great Russian Revival was destined to run out of gas without high energy prices to bankroll it. Earlier warnings from Russian economists that Russia needed to diversify its petro-economy went largely unheeded.
The Russian people, who handed near absolute power to Putin when times were good, could be stuck with him for another 12 years or more after constitutional changes recently pushed through by the rubber stamp parliament.
Lipman adds, "…the public mood has darkened significantly. The percentages of those who think the country is moving in the right direction vs. the wrong direction has shifted from 61 percent vs. 24 percent in September to 43 percent vs. 40 percent in December. People feel insecure. "
Is an economically weak Russia safer or more dangerous to its neighbors? Before you answer--consider that Russia's military incursion into Georgia occurred near the height of the oil price boom and hence, Russian economic power. Email your thoughts to hurdontheweb@gmail.com
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