October 07, 2007	Sunday	Ramazan 24, 1428

MOSCOW: On Sunday Vladimir Putin turns 55. In the eighth-floor flat of a Moscow tower block a group of students are discussing how to congratulate Russia’s president. On the sofa are three teenage girls wearing pink T-shirts with the logo “I want Putin”. (On the back are the words “For a third term”). The flat has been converted into a sort of Putin shrine. The former KGB agent looks down sternly from white-blue-red Russian flags; one of the boys, Ilya, is sporting a T-shirt with the slogan “If not him, who else?”

“I love our president,” Yulia Minazhetdinova, an 18-year-old student from Moscow, explains. “Girls like him as a man. I would love to have a husband just like him.”

Igor Boyko, the 19-year-old founder of the Putin Fan Club, reels off a list of Putin’s achievements: stabilising Russia’s economy and pensions, bringing peace to the Caucasus and restoring Russia’s prestige in the eyes of the world. Like many pro-Kremlin youth groups, the Putin Fan Club has only one aim: to persuade Putin to stay in power. Increasingly, it looks as if the club will get what it wants.

On Monday Putin gave his strongest hint yet that he intends to carry on as Russia’s de facto leader after his second term as president expires. Speaking to a congress of United Russia, the main pro-presidential party, Putin revealed that he was contemplating becoming prime minister. This was a “realistic idea”, he said, so long as United Russia won December’s parliamentary elections, and someone “decent, competent, and effective” took over his old job in the spring of 2008.

Under Russia’s constitution, Putin is barred from serving more than two consecutive terms. But there is nothing to stop him from running the country as prime minister. Following his announcement two main scenarios unfolded: Putin installs a weak puppet president in March next year, runs the country as prime minister, and returns as president in 2012, just in time to host Russia’s winter Olympics.

Alternatively, following a landslide victory in December’s polls, Putin uses United Russia’s two-thirds majority in the Duma to amend Russia’s constitution and turn Russia into a prime minister-led parliamentary republic. This has the advantage of appearing to bring Russia closer to the western democratic model. Either way, he stays in power —a prospect that last week stunned and appalled Russia’s small liberal opposition.

Nobody had expected Putin to retire gracefully from politics — he had hinted that he intended to retain influence. Almost two-thirds of Russians want him to stay on as president. But few people had believed that he intended to carry on ruling indefinitely.

“When I first heard the news I thought it was a joke,” Tanya Lokshina, of the human rights group Demos, told the Guardian. “This means that the presidential elections, from which so many people expected so much, have become completely meaningless. For Russia, this means more of the negative trends we have seen in recent years: rising authoritarianism and setbacks on human rights and democracy.”

She said Putin could realistically expect to stay in power for another 20 to 30 years. “This development means he is staying for a long time. The reason he wants to be PM is quite logical: he wants to remain in control, and he doesn’t trust anyone around him.”

She added: “Up until now Russia seemed a typical managed democracy, with all the democratic institutions in place, but being manipulated in different ways. What is happening now is reminiscent of Soviet times. The kind of power that Putin is likely to acquire as prime minister is similar to the power of the Communist party in the Soviet Union.”

Garry Kasparov — the opposition leader who is to stand in next year’s election —said Putin’s move was a “leap back of 20 years, to the Soviet past”. “We are witnessing the next public act of the Kremlin’s unfolding play. In accordance with this scenario, all political life will be totally dominated by United Russia,” Kasparov predicted.

In truth, it’s a model that most Russians are content with. For many, opposition parties are unattractive. The very word “liberal” is tainted by association with the chaos of the 1990s when price controls were lifted, “oligarchs” seized chunks of the economy and the life savings of millions of people disappeared overnight. Putin has staked his definitions of democracy on appealing notions of prosperity: the ability to own a car and an apartment and to go abroad on holiday.

Yet critics insist many of the benefits of perestroika — the democratic blossoming under Mikhail Gorbachev — have been wiped out. Putin has changed the system so that constituencies can no longer elect MPs directly, meaning that the handful of opposition MPs in the Duma will lose their seats. On top of this, Russia’s Kremlin-loyal courts have liquidated the few small political parties that criticise Putin.

Last week Gorbachev — these days a marginal figure in Russian politics — issued a rare rebuke to the president after his own social democratic party was wound up. “Laws have been passed which restrict the possibilities of free democratic choice and political competition. This significantly narrows the space for public politics,” he said.

But the problem for Russia’s weak and factional opposition is that Putin still enjoys genuine political support.

Rising wages and a stable rouble are concrete improvements that have won backing for the Kremlin. New data collected by the independent Levada Centre polling agency indicates 61 per cent of people in Moscow are in favour of Putin becoming prime minister after he leaves the presidency — a high figure considering the capital is traditionally more oppositionist than the provinces.

Lev Gudkov, director of the centre, said a traditional tendency towards paternalism meant Russians recognised enduring problems such as social inequality and corruption, but shifted the blame away from an all-powerful leader on whom all their hopes rested.

“Putin is a ‘Teflon’ president. Nothing sticks to him,” said Gudkov. “All successes and positive tendencies are ascribed to him and all failures are loaded on to the government, bureaucrats, or ‘enemies’ of Russia,” he said.

While Putin may become prime minister and install a weak president, there are other potential models. In any event, Putin is likely to remain a key figure. His stance since January, when he accused the United States of unilateralism during a speech in Munich, has reaped particular approval. “Putin’s new aggressive tone on foreign relations is welcomed very highly by the population,” said Gudkov. “It’s taken as a sign of the strengthening of Russia’s role and authority on the world stage. Russians respect power.”

What may be dawning on western countries is the uncomfortable truth that a slide towards authoritarianism is not incompatible with economic growth and prosperity. The rift between Moscow and European capitals has become so wide that little outcome is expected at the next EU-Russia summit in Lisbon at the end of this month. “It’s already clear there won’t be any ‘returnables’”, one western diplomat told the Guardian. However, Europe, so dependent on Russian oil and gas supplies, seems unwilling to take its criticism too far.

The members of Putin’s fan club, meanwhile, are unbothered by Russia’s allegedly undemocratic trajectory — or by the fact that critics of the president are banned from appearing on TV. “I don’t see any authoritarianism. Critics should be objective and not subjective,” Boyko says, adding that non-governmental organisations critical of Russia’s human rights record were funded by the CIA and unpatriotic wreckers such as Boris Berezovsky. “Mr Putin is clever, charismatic, strong-willed and brave. Brave because he has defeated Russia’s many enemies,” he says.

It is not clear yet whether the fan club will get to deliver their homemade birthday cake to Mr Putin personally. Igor concedes they will probably eat it themselves. Outside it is dusk and Moscow’s long, warm summer has given way to rain.—Dawn/ The Guardian News Service