The Putin years

At the Kremlin in Moscow today, Vladimir Putin will be inaugurated as president for the fourth time. He has led his country for 18 years, part of that time serving as prime minister when the inconvenience of the constitution required him to stand down in favour of Dmitry Medvedev – not that anyone doubted who was in charge.

Mr Putin was returned to office in March after an election that was a travesty of the democratic practices he purports to embrace. There was no opposition to speak of since his main rival, Alexei Navalny, was forbidden from standing and the only other credible alternative, Boris Nemtsov, had been murdered. At the weekend, Mr Navalny was arrested along with hundreds of anti-putin activists for conducting unauthorised demonstrations in the streets of Moscow and elsewhere in Russia.

The opposition leader has compared the president to a tsar, though the Russian royal family tended to have less security of tenure. Should he see out this term in office, Mr Putin will have come close to matching Joseph Stalin’s many years in power. The Russians like a hard-man leader and Mr Putin has certainly sought to live up to the billing. The stand-off with the West over his country’s role in the Syrian civil war and its interference in European and American politics has created an international climate of mistrust that reinforces the president’s dismissal of his opponents as unpatriotic.

The protests are more a cry of anger from opponents than a sign of a groundswell of mass unrest with Mr Putin’s leadership. The election may have been rigged but he remains popular with the people precisely because he is seen as someone able to restore national pride and confront Russia’s enemies. But she might have far fewer of them were he not there.