And he says, "No, I'm going to change the constitution to make me ruler for life." Eventually, maybe in 2018, maybe in 2024, maybe he will finally retire and find a successor. And they figured that would be that, hopefully.Īnd certainly, he's not going to rule forever. He's going to be president for a third term.Īnd people figured, because he had already amended the constitution to extend the presidential term from four years to six years, that he would then do another two consecutive terms and serve till 2024. And everybody went back and forth, will he or won't he he couldn't possibly, that would be outrageous it would be such a violation of the spirit of the constitution if not its form.Īnd then, he surprises everybody and says, "I'm going to do it." And then people say, Okay, well, he– we didn't think he would, but he did. So if in 2011, all of Moscow ground to a halt, wondering whether Putin would stay for a second term as prime minister or if he would come back to the throne as the president. What he's doing inside Russia is making the subtext text. What is it important to understand in that time, going from Trump up until now, of what he's doing inside Russia? In the middle of the Trump presidency, going up really till now, one of the things that he does is on the domestic side, the crackdown on protestors, the rewriting the constitution, jailing people. He has, in his mind, reestablished Russia as a superpower on the world stage.Īnd all that's missing is Ukraine, which, recall, he does not believe is a real country, which he believes historically is part of Russia and which needs to be brought back into the fold. He has moved into parts of Africa and Latin America. He has filled the vacuum left in the Middle East by the US withdrawal. He's built a good relationship with China. He has rebalanced the power dynamic between Russia and the US. He has slowly built up Russia's position in the world, often by playing spoiler, and often by taking the US down a few pegs. He has squirreled away these massive reserves – 600-something billion. The economy is doing pretty well it has survived the sanctions of the last few years. There's barely any independent media left. I mean, there's nobody left people are either dead, in jail or in exile. Um.įar smarter people than I have written about this, but from the Kremlin's point of view– or from Putin's point of view, in the fall of 2021, he has vanquished the opposition. I think Ukraine was also a missing piece in a leg– in the legacy. He is clearly thinking about his legacy, and has been for some time. He has outlived the vast majority of his, of his cohort. It's also an age to which most Russian men never live. He is, he puts a lot of stock in numbers and big, important dates and anniversaries. The first thing that's important to notice, he turns 70 in October. Ioffe has been covering Russia for more than 15 years, and on this episode of The FRONTLINE Dispatch, she talks with one of the filmmakers of Putin’s Road to War, Mike Wiser. That’s Julia Ioffe, an American journalist born in Russia, who is a founding partner at the media company Puck. And it doesn't matter how many Russian soldiers die in the process, how many Ukrainian soldiers and civilians die in the process// He's more dangerous than he's ever been at any point in the last 22 years//He will grind the country down to a fine, fine ash. FRONTLINE’s new documentary Putin’s Road to War investigates the man who has brought the world to this dangerous moment - Russian President Vladimir Putin. I’m Raney Aronson-Rath, and this is the FRONTLINE Dispatch. The US Ambassador to the United Nations suggests the number could increase to more than 5 million before it’s over. … with mass casualties, the Russians blocking exit routes and stopping civilians from fleeing… Many more remain trapped inside the country. More than 2 million civilians have fled - in what the UN has described as the fastest growing refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War. Russian tanks and troops are continuing their assault on Ukraine. Russian shells pummeling a residential neighborhood in Kharkiv.Įxplosions and air raid sirens across Ukraine.Īpocalyptic scenes on the outskirts of the capital city of Kyiv.
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