Vladimir Putin The head of the Kremlin is sworn in once more, so there's not much prospect for change.
I bet he could walk it without a blindfold.
Vladimir Putin is going to stroll to the St. Andrew's Throne Hall through the Grand Kremlin Palace for the fifth time. There, he will be sworn in for a new six-year term as president of Russia and take the oath of office.
Although the path may seem familiar, a lot has changed since Putin's initial inauguration in May 2000.
At the time, President Putin promised to "take care of Russia" and to "preserve and develop democracy."
After twenty-four years, the head of the Kremlin is still fighting Ukraine, a war in which Russia has suffered significant casualties. President Putin has been restraining democracy at home by imprisoning opponents and eliminating all checks and balances on his authority, rather than fostering it.
Fiona Hill, a former national security advisor in the White House, believes that Putin now views himself as Vladimir the Great, or a Russian tsar.
"I believe we'd have a pretty positive opinion of Putin if we went back to his first two terms as president. He restored political stability and solvency to the nation. Russia's system and economy were operating at a higher level than at any other point in its history.
"That course has been drastically altered by the war in Ukraine, which dates back to the annexation of Crimea ten years ago. Rather from being a pragmatic, he has become an imperialist."
It's amazing to consider that since Vladimir Putin took office, America has had five presidents and Britain has had seven prime ministers.
Having ruled Russia for almost 25 years, Mr. Putin has undoubtedly left his mark. The terms "Brezhnevism," "Gorbachevisim," and "Yeltsinism" were hardly used in the past.
However, Putinism is real.
According to Andrei Kolesnikov, senior fellow at the Carnegie Eurasia Russia Center, "we have one more -ism in our history: Stalinism."
"In my opinion, Putinism is just another Stalinist incarnation. He acts in the manner of [former Soviet leader] Stalin. Similar to Stalin's era, his power is individualized. He likes to employ a lot of repressive political tactics. Similar to Stalin, he is prepared to hold onto power to the very end."
The problem facing the West is how to deal with a more authoritarian Russian president who is anxious to bring back the glory he believes Russia once had—a modern-day tsar armed with nuclear weapons.
According to Fiona Hill, "there's an awful lot that we can do on the issue of nuclear weapons." "Some nations, including China, India, and Japan, have retaliated against Putin's nuclear sabre-rattling in Ukraine because they find it extremely unsettling. By establishing an international framework to counter this irrational and speculative rhetoric about using nuclear weapons, we may force Russia to exercise caution.
Maybe that may serve as a model for how we should approach Vladimir Putin, who is a bit of a rogue leader in many ways. We must provide a setting that is more restrictive and less tolerant of the activities he desires to engage in."
Vladimir Putin was declared the winner of the March presidential election with over 87% of the vote. But in a competition that was generally regarded as neither fair nor free, he had not faced any real competition.
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