https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/15/europe/russian-government-resigns-vladimir-putin-reforms-intl/index.html

In a move that presages Putin retaining control of Russia after 2024, today the entire Medvedev administration is resigning at Putin's behest, Medvedev and all his cabinet ministers
Mikhail Mishustin is being installed as the new Prime Minister of Russia, and Putin is submitting amendments to rewrite the Russian constitution to transfer the powers to install the prime minister and ministers from the president to the Duma, effectively transferring the powers of the presidency to the parliament only after he uses them to set up a government that will presumably last until the end of his presidency. In 2024 Putin would be at the end of his second of two sets of two consecutive presidential terms after switching places with Medvedev and becoming having him appoint Putin his prime minister in 2008 and transferring those powers to the PM (and back), in order to circumvent the constitutional limit on a third consecutive term.

So yeah, the one-man rule of Russia will continue for the foreseeable future, or unless Putin has a heart attack

well, the timing is certainly surprising (unless it's based on some event or development that i'm currently unaware of), but that might just be an attempt to give it the semblance of legitimacy. putin moving around political pawns to change the constitution to his liking is neither new nor shocking though. to think that some still consider russia a democracy is rather funny to me.

the number of times i've heard "the people of Russia love Putin, the pine over strongmen" as an excuse for not having true democracy....

as if any leader would bother to host sham elections if he knew he could easily win.

He did this last time he'll do it again.

at this point i think it's even more perfidious than that. i would not be surprised if he (much like erdogan) could get a genuine majority in perfectly free elections. obviously not the kind of majority he'd want (thus the election fraud), but still...

that does, of course, not mean it'd be a legitimate rule by any reasonable standard though, considering how he used state media to brainwash whole generations into believing he is responsible for their relative (by russian standards) prosperity, and doing away with (in reality more like monopolising) corruption, how he systematically arrested (ironically most of them on 'corruption' charges), oppressed, and smeared political opposition and critical journalists - or made them disappear entirely through 'suicides', 'freak accidents', 'mysterious heart conditions', 'inexplicable radiation poisonings', 'lengthy holidays in labour camps'...

fuck that guy and what he did to the russian people. he's worse than mitch mcconnell...

Perfect

I feel for the Russian people. Their country's history has been dominated by autocratic rule. A few decades ago, they were one of the elite global powers. But now their economy has cratered. I suspect their leadership will become increasingly desperate as domestic turmoil increases. Russian international irrelevance is probably a good thing for America, but we are not there yet, and their people will continue to suffer until they are.