VShe Wednesday April 22 should be a great day for Vladimir Putin. Called to the polls for a vote that looked like a plebiscite, the Russians had to approve the constitutional reform project concocted by their president to allow him to remain in power until 2036. The anointing of popular legitimacy n was not legally necessary, but in this type of approach, it never hurts.
The coronavirus has ruined everything. Slightly behind Western Europe, the epidemic has spread to Russia, which is now expected to peak in May.
Wisely, the vote was therefore postponed. No new date has been set: in Moscow no more than in Paris, no one can say at what stage an election can be held in complete sanitary security. The economic uncertainty is even greater – who wants to organize a plebiscite when unemployment is at the highest and incomes at the lowest?
Because another catastrophe is looming for Russia. If the news of the collapse in the price of a barrel of American oil WTI, which fell below zero dollar on Monday, shook Washington, it must have given cold sweats to the Kremlin. For Russia, whose economy, very dependent on oil revenues, was already stagnant before this crisis, the prospect of a lasting fall in oil prices is disastrous: the Russian budget is calculated on the basis of a barrel at $ 42.50.
The Covid-19 is not the only culprit. The collapse was also the result of an error in judgment by the Russian government, which, allied with Saudi Arabia this winter, wanted to kill the oil companies of the American shale by launching into a violent price war. The alliance between Ryad and Moscow, however, failed, resulting in market disruption and a painful drop in oil prices below $ 30 a barrel. In late March, Donald Trump negotiated a cease-fire with Vladimir Putin and Saudi leader Mohammed Ben Salman, but market forces, unleashed by the pandemic that has depressed global demand, are in the process of imposing their law. to diplomacy.
Traumatized by the memory of the 1990s
All of this comes at the worst time for Russia and for President Putin who announced in January a public investment plan, particularly in the social field, supposed to regain the favor of a population worn out by years of decline household income.
Russia, said Russian economist Sergei Guriev, a professor at Sciences Po, has a large sovereign wealth fund, equivalent to 10% or 12% of its gross domestic product (GDP). “So she has about two years before her before having to go and borrow on the markets”he said.
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