Putin’s inauguration: “This regime is becoming more and more ossified”

Putin is sending a signal of stability with his performance, says Russia expert Sabine Fischer. His coming term of office will be entirely dominated by war – while unresolved questions are becoming more and more pressing.

daily News: The so-called “Inauguration”, at which Vladimir Putin was confirmed as President of the Russian Federation for the fifth time, was not a long spectacle, but a precisely staged one. How do you rate the individual elements – Putin’s long walk through the Kremlin corridors, his oath to the constitution, military parade and subsequent church visit?

Sabine Fischer: The production was intended to symbolize the stability of the regime and its ruler and to signal strength to the outside world. That’s what he was talking about: Putin, the ruler of Russia, who takes care of the well-being of the Russian population internally, but at the same time also establishes and further strengthens the country as a great power externally. He ended the speech with the words: “Together we will prevail.”

The blessing of the Russian Orthodox Church is of course part of this production. Patriarch Kirill assured Putin that both the people and the church would understand if the ruler sometimes had to “make difficult decisions.” This fits into the Russian narrative of the war in Ukraine, which, according to the Kremlin, is a defensive war by Russia against the so-called collective West. When the church appears in this propaganda image, it is always about traditionalist values ​​that the regime claims to defend and which it has been propagating with ever greater vigor for ten years.

daily News: Let’s take a look at the guest list: The television broadcast of the ceremony showed well-known figures from the Russian elite and the naturalized film actor Steven Seagal, who was appointed “Representative for Humanitarian Relations with the USA”. According to media reports, diplomats from France, Hungary, Slovakia, Greece, Malta and Cyprus were there. What has changed there – compared to the four previous inaugurations?

Fisherman: Behind this is the disruption of relations with the West – with exceptions such as Hungary – and the fact that Russia is thrown back to the states that at least do not criticize its war against Ukraine on the international level or even support it.

Of course, this is a big difference from the situation in 2018 and especially from the inaugurations in 2004, 2012 and 2018. What I found striking was that significantly fewer people were present in the Andreas Hall of the Kremlin Palace than at previous inaugurations. I am not sure whether this is because the number of international representatives has decreased or is still a result of the corona pandemic. This tendency for Putin to only meet with smaller groups of people or to keep his distance began with the pandemic and has never changed.

“Navalnaya has set the tone for the content”

daily News: The Russian opposition also drew attention before the inauguration: Yekaterina Duntsova managed to found a party after a long effort, employees of the dead Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny published new research on renovations to Putin’s summer residence, and his widow Yulia Navalnaya gave a short speech on YouTube, in which she compared Putin’s election promises of the past decades with what really happened after each inauguration. But everyone seemed more anxious than combative. A strong counter-staging looks different.

Fisherman: At the moment the opposition can do very little. This also has to do with the situation in Ukraine that is currently quite favorable for Russia militarily. Since Russia finally became a dictatorship in 2022, many opposition figures have been forced abroad or are in prison. The few who are still active are massively intimidated and prevented from taking part in the political process. Navalny’s murder was another major blow.

The regime is stable, at least for the moment. In Russia, too, quite a few people know that the presidential elections in March were purely staged and that the result of 87 percent for Putin does not correspond to the reality in society. But the signal is clear for now, and the regime will continue the war it started.

Yulia Navalnaya made a real substantive statement by clearly showing what Putin had been talking about in previous inauguration speeches – namely, promises to ensure the well-being of the people, improving living standards, freedom, equality – and arguing that he does exactly the opposite of what he promised in all the previous years. We will see what political impact it can ultimately have.

“Functional principle Loyalty”

daily News: On the day of the inauguration, the government also resigns – this gives Putin, as president, the opportunity to appoint new ministers. There were a lot of rumors in advance. How do you assess the likelihood of change?

Fisherman: The regime is increasingly faced with a dilemma that has biological reasons. Putin is now in his early 70s, and most of the companions he has had with him for many, many years are his own age. This means that this regime is getting older and more and more encrusted, because an essential operating principle of this regime is loyalty to Putin. The principle of loyalty has led to many actors remaining in office, no matter how incompetent they may have been.

At the same time, some renewal will be necessary at some point if the regime wants to survive. That’s exactly what all this speculation is now about: whether there will be a new prime minister, whether Sergei Kirienko should be rewarded with a better position for successfully staging the election, or whether Alexei Dyumin, Putin’s former bodyguard, will take a career step? I can’t make a prediction about this. We know even less about what is going on in the Russian center of power today than we did before February 2022.

And any form of renewal actually contradicts the basic operating principle of this encrusted and aging dictatorial regime. The basic principles of politics will not change either way: Russia under Putin is an extremely personalized, dictatorial regime. Before the 2018 presidential election, there was a phase in which so-called liberal technocrats and the conservative parts of the elite argued against each other, even encouraged by the Kremlin in the form of various expert councils. All of this is over. During Putin’s recent term in office, the Kremlin has increasingly shifted towards this extremely conservative, imperialist and aggressive line. And there he will stay.

daily News: So what lies ahead for the people of Russia between now and the expected end of Putin’s just-started term in 2030?

Fisherman: The first and practically only item on the agenda is war. Everything else is now subordinated to this war: the economy, domestic politics, foreign policy. And I think Putin made that clear again and again in his speech today, but also in other speeches.

I think what it boils down to is that the Russian side feels relatively safe at the moment that it can continue this war, laboriously and slowly, but with limited success, until the US presidential elections in November. And then one hopes that Donald Trump comes to power and Ukraine’s war fortunes change because international aid for Ukraine could collapse.

The war was also an incredible accelerant for repression inside Russia. Just in the last few days we have seen how the law on foreign agents has been tightened. People are arrested every day and journalists are harassed. All of this will increase in intensity, not decrease.

The interview was conducted by Jasper Steinlein, tagesschau.de