Saturday will mark ten years of Vladimir Putin's reign in Russia. These ten years do not encompass a conventional stay of power, Putin being neither officially elected or sworn in on August 9th 1999, and his role having shifted from Prime Minister to President and back again in that time. However almost from the date that Boris Yeltsin, in his final fading days as president, dissolved the Russian government and named Putin as acting Prime Minister ten years ago, it has been painfully clear who has been in charge.
Putin, a little-known figure in Russian politics at the time of his rapid ascent to power, did not gain his political training through traditional technocratic or bureaucratic avenues. Rather, he rose through the ranks of a rather more sinister institution, learning and negotiating the unyielding internal code of the KGB to become head of its successor - the FSB - in 1998. It was from there that he stepped across the divide to join, right at the top, the world of public politics. However, as Putin himself famously declared, there is no such thing as a former intelligence officer. Indeed, he quickly moved to consolidate the role of the intelligence agencies at the very centre of power, surrounding himself with former KGB cronies and setting the Russian administration on an authoritarian path that proceeded to roll back virtually all of the progressive political reforms that had been so hard won by his troubled predecessor.
On Saturday, Russia should look back on the past ten years and see not a period of Russian resurgence under a strong and defiant leader - as the cult-of-personality driven by Putin's state-owned media agenda would have the country believe - but rather an unmitigated failure that has seen the retrenchment of Russia in terms of its economy, society, democracy, global status, relations with the international community, relations with its former-Soviet neighbours, and above all, record on the rule of law, freedom of the press, and human rights.
Epitomising Putin's failure as a leader is the atrocious policy of aggression pursued almost from his first days in office against the people of Chechnya. A war which began as a show of muscle and decision of political expediency has turned Russia into a perpetrator of war crimes; violator of the UN Charter and Human Rights Convention; violator of the Charter and Human Rights Convention of the Council of Europe; violator of the Peace Treaty signed by presidents Yeltsin and Maskadov 12th May 1997; and violator of international law; not to mention increasing tenfold the instability of the North Caucuses region and decimating the lives of an entire population.
Those who saw the images of Putin parading himself as a ‘macho-man' whilst on holiday this week in Russia's Tuva region should feel collectively ashamed and sickened. This is a man who has systematically closed down all independent outlets of information in his country and silenced all dissenting voices to the point where such images are rolled out as ‘news' to a supine public and used to perpetuate a self-glorifying myth. They conceal crimes of aggression, murder and corruption that have forever stained Russia's reputation in the world. Saturday's anniversary of ten years of Putin should be anything but celebrated, it should be deplored.
Ivar Amundsen
Director, Chechnya Peace Forum |
