From the January-February 2020 issue of News & Letters
by Gerry Emmet
The Jan. 15 resignation of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and the Russian Cabinet signaled President Vladimir Putin’s plan to retain power after his final term in office ends in 2024.
Putin presented his plan in a televised speech. It includes a weakening of the presidency and, allegedly, a strengthening of the role of the parliament in choosing the prime minister and cabinet.
But Putin is actually laying the groundwork for his own continued hold on state power much as the strongman of neighboring Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has done by resigning from the presidency he held for 28 years to appoint himself Chairman of the Security Council.
It will be a less formal version of Xi Jinping appointing himself China’s president for life.
Many in the United States are too obsessed with Vladimir Putin. President Putin is being used as an excuse for those in the U.S. who need to rationalize their own aggression and excuse their wish to force the old-fashioned capitalist worldview on the rest of the world.
In fact it is not surprising that President Putin appeals to many Russians who see him as a necessary protection against the one hundred year old effort of the U.S to prevent Russia from becoming a strong and independent world power capable of resisting the imperialism of the U.S. ruling class.
I personally see a sincere wish in President Putin to engage the United States in a sensible effort to lessen the risk of nuclear war between our nations and to instead find more areas of possible cooperation and detente.
So I hope that a more reasonable and balanced view of President Putin will emerge in the U.S.–a view that can see all possible areas of peaceful sharing between our two nations and work together for world peace and a real move to finally rid the world of our insane nuclear weapons and agree on concrete steps to curtail further global warming.
In peace and solidarity,
Rama Kumar
Fairfax, CA
Friends and Comrades,
I feel strongly that President Putin is a better man than he is being portrayed by many in the United States-and I hope that News and Letters will publish my previously stated views about President Putin in an upcoming edition.
Thank you,
Rama Kumar