At the beginning of the current war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has been at the helm of Russia since 1999. How long will the world’s largest country run?
When will Vladimir Putin’s grip on the Kremlin end? Although he is “the only one” who has chosen the current war in Ukraine, according to Emmanuel Macron, the president of the Russian Federation is in the spotlight and attracts the wrath of the vast majority of the world’s population.
A former KGB spy, he came to power in 1999 after succeeding Boris Yeltsin, who resigned as president by surprise. At that time, he officially took office on May 7, 2000, and began his second term in March 2004, after being re-elected President of Russia with 71.22% of the vote. During his first two terms, Putin has steadily increased the weight of the intelligence services he comes from, as well as those of the police and army, and his style, which is considered authoritarian, is liked by a large part of the Russian population.
Limited to two terms, he arrived in 2008 at the end of his eighth year in power and has repeatedly stated that he does not want to change the Constitution to run for a third consecutive term. On the other hand, he took a leading role in the United Russia party’s election campaign to run for prime minister in 2008, which he managed to do after the party’s victory in the legislative elections. He therefore became prime minister and therefore retained some power, in compliance with the constitution, and left the Kremlin to its last prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev.
President again … until 2036?
In 2012, he ran again in the presidential election, when constitutional reform had just increased the term of the presidency from 4 to 6 years, leaving him the opportunity to rule until 2024. He won the 2012 presidential election by 63, 6% of the vote in the first round, a result contested by the opposition. In 2018, he again won the presidential election in the first round with 76.7% of the vote and announced that he did not intend to change the Constitution so that he could remain in power at the end of his term. A statement suggesting that he will step down at the end of his current term, c 2024.
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Except that in April 2021, Vladimir Putin signed a decree allowing him to run for two new presidential terms, paving the way for him to remain in power until 2036. The limit of two consecutive terms still exists, but “this limit does not apply to those who held the post of head of state before the amendments to the Constitution came into force”, which equals the current president’s counters to zero. Therefore, it is not impossible for Vladimir Putin to remain in power for another 14 years, until the age of 83.
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