Putin became the Prime Minister of Russia exactly 25 years ago. Professor Kari Liuhto evaluates Russia’s achievements in the Putin era.
The then Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin shakes hands with President Boris Yeltsin in October 1999. Sovfoto/Universal Images Group/Shutterstock
- Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia for a quarter of a century.
- In the early years of Putin’s reign, the Russian economy grew rapidly and the people became prosperous.
- However, the modernization of the economy was not done, and now Russia is threatened with chaos due to the effects of the invasion of Ukraine.
On Friday, August 9, Russia will celebrate a kind of anniversary, because today it will be a quarter of a century since Vladimir Putin became prime minister.
The then president was behind the choice Boris Yeltsinwho a few months later on New Year’s Eve 1999 suddenly announced his resignation. At the same time, power passed to acting for Putin, who became president. In March 2000, Putin won early presidential elections.
At the beginning of Putin’s reign at the turn of the millennium, Russia took great leaps forward, for example in terms of the economy.
Putin’s 25 years in power can accommodate a lot of development. During the first presidential term, relations between Russia and the West improved significantly. Russia sought to build cooperation with the European Union and the United States. In the middle of Putin’s reign, i.e. in 2012, Russia finally became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Until the global financial crisis, i.e. 2008, Russia’s economic growth was much faster than it has been since then.
In the years 2000–2008, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Russian economy grew by an average of more than 7 percent per year. Since then, growth has been considerably more leisurely.
Good luck
Professor at Turku University of Economics and a long-time researcher on Russia Kari Liuhto assessed to Iltalehti that Putin’s next years in the Kremlin coincided with the heyday of the Russian economy, which made it possible for Putin to still be at the helm of the Kremlin more than two decades later.
Putin’s role as an economic grower is actually small, because Russia was lucky with the cycle of oil and other raw materials. Their price increase brought Russia huge export revenues and brought rubles into the state coffers.
During Putin’s first two presidential terms, Liuhto also highlights the removal of power from the oligarchs and the creation of a kind of stability in society.
However, the beginnings of Russia’s burgeoning democratic deficit were already received in 2003 in the case surrounding the oil company Yukos, as a result of which the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky was transported to prison.
Liuhto also sees Putin’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007 as a signpost for Russia’s development, where he, among other things, accused the United States of striving for a unipolar world order with the help of NATO. The theme is familiar from the Kremlin’s current propaganda.
Putin briefly moved back to the position of prime minister from the presidency for the years 2008–2012, when the task was handled by Dmitry Medvedev.
In August 2008, Russia waged a short but brutal war against the former Soviet country of Georgia, which ended in Russia’s overwhelming victory. As a result of the war, South Ossetia and Abkhazia declared themselves independent, but apart from Russia, only a few countries have recognized them.
The war in Georgia brought to the Kremlin’s mind the idea of ”returning territories” to Russia. According to Liuhto, alarm bells should have sounded in the West at that time because of Putin and Russia’s imperialist dreams.
However, this did not happen, and only Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022 revealed Russia’s true face.
According to Professor Kari Liuhto, Putin’s yearnings for the Russian empire should have been taken more seriously in the West. Vesa-Matti Wrong
Chaos
After the invasion of Ukraine, Putin has kept the wheels of the Russian economy turning by putting all the investments into the military industry. The problem is that then the growth is financed by the state and only brings temporary relief.
– The Russian economy is like a teddy bear that has been put on a skiing slope. It can’t do it anymore, but it will definitely come down, says Professor Kari Liuhto.
With the war in Ukraine, Russia has lost the European market for its oil and gas. China has been hoped for as a replacement in Moscow, and the cooperation between the two countries has deepened over the past two years.
However, Liuhto points out that the rapprochement between China and Russia took place entirely on Beijing’s terms.
– China wants to be the world’s largest economy by the end of the 2040s, for which it needs raw materials. Russia fell into its arms as if it were a gift from God, and Beijing will by no means let Russia’s raw material resources out of its grasp.
According to Liuhto, Russia is in danger of drifting into chaos, because it has not succeeded in modernizing its economy by investing in technology and innovations. The war is currently consuming all resources.
– Russia is slowly starving, and the economy and standard of living will certainly decrease in the future. At the same time, authoritarianism is increasing and Russia is marching more and more in the direction of Stalinism.
Correction on August 9, 2024 at 9:00 a.m. Russia became a WTO member in 2012, not 2003.
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