Façades are everything in Russia. Vladimir Putin learned that the hard way in 2011, when he let his own façade slip at a party convention and publicly admitted to an end run around the country’s constitutional term limit on presidents. His hand-picked successor, Dmitri Medvedev, announced that he would step aside to allow Putin to run again for his old office; Putin then capped this with an arrogant announcement that he and Medvedev had settled “several years ago” on arrangements for the former intelligence officer to return to the Kremlin after his loyal caretaker’s single term. Although Putin’s move surprised …read more
Source:: The New Republic
