From left, Russian Premier Vladimir Putin, Russian minister of economic development Elvira Nabiullina, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Russian presidential chief of staff Sergei Ivanov meet to discuss economic issues in the Gorki presidential residence outside Moscow, December 28, 2011.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin switches campaign managers in the middle of an election campaign. Is his position as solid as he would like the world to think?
The prime minister was talking tough, telling a nationwide TV audience that the parliamentary elections are over, and it’s time to move on.
But the tough talk came days after his government announced political reforms in hopes of taking the momentum out of a planned opposition rally. The move seemed to have had little impact. The rally, which took place in Moscow Saturday, drew an estimated 100,000 protesters.
“The psychological compensation he needs when being forced to make some moves and being afraid that these moves in a positive direction being perceived as his weakness,” said Nikolai Petrov, political analyst for the Carnegie Moscow Center, about the tough talk.
A clear sign of problems came Tuesday when Putin decided to switch campaign managers - less than 10 weeks before the presidential election.
Vladislav Surkov, the sidelined political advisor, helped Putin come to power in 2000. A former advertising man, he worked for a decade in the Kremlin. He created the now ruling United Russia party. He created Nashi, the Putin youth group. And he brought television channels under tight political controls.
“This replacement weakens the Kremlin in that Surkov is the founding father of the big political machine which will not work effectively without him,”Petrov, who worked in the Kremlin before Surkov arrived, says:
The new political advisor, Vyacheslav Volodin, was a founder of the Russia Popular Front, a support group of trade unions and professional groups.
This heavily blue collar group may become a key pillar of support for Putin as Russia’s urban middle class tire of him. At a televised meeting of the Front on Tuesday, Putin, nodded sympathetically as a retired metal worker spoke of his outrage at the anti-government postings on Russia’s free-wheeling Internet.
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