After President Biden called Russia’s President Vladimir V. Putin a “crazy POV” this week, the Kremlin was quick to issue a scathing condemnation.
But the image of an unpredictable strongman ready to escalate his conflict with the West is one that Mr Putin has fully embraced after two years of all-out war.
At home, the Kremlin is maintaining mystery over the circumstances of Alexei A. Navalny’s death last week, preventing the opposition leader’s family from retrieving his body.
In Ukraine, Mr Putin is pushing his army to maintain its brutal offensive, boasting on television that he stayed up all night as the town of Avdiivka fell to Russian forces.
And in space, US officials warn, Russia may be planning to put a nuclear weapon into orbit on a satellite, which would violate one of the last remaining arms control treaties.
In power since 1999, Mr Putin, 71, is set to extend his rule to 2030 in Russian elections next month. As the vote approaches, he is fueling his increasingly outspoken view of himself as a history-making leader who carries on the legacy of past rulers who were willing to sacrifice untold lives to build a stronger Russian state.
But Mr. Putin also faces headwinds: a still determined Ukrainian resistance, a Western alliance that remains largely united and murmurs of discontent among the Russian public. The question is whether Mr Putin, rejoicing in leading a “millennial, eternal Russia”, can avoid the domestic turmoil that has also been a recurring feature of the country’s history.
“Putin lives in eternity,” said Boris B. Nadezhdin, an anti-war politician who tried to mount a presidential bid to challenge Mr. Putin but was barred from the March ballot. Listing rulers dating back to the ninth century, he added of Mr Putin: “It is clear that he thinks of himself alongside Oleg the Wise, Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible and perhaps Stalin.”
Mr. Nadezhdin, who has worked in the Russian government and served in parliament, insisted in a video interview this week that Mr. Putin’s grip on power is weaker than it appears. The security, stability and increased prosperity that had long been Mr. Putin’s selling point after the chaos of the 1990s are all waning, Mr. Nadezhdin said. “This regime,” he continued, “is historically doomed.”
Indeed, although Mr. Putin has worked hard to paint Russia as an invincible state, he has repeatedly been caught off guard. There was the stunning failure of the Kremlin’s intelligence services two years ago, when Mr Putin expected that Russian troops would be welcomed as liberators and that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government would quickly collapse.
There was the 24-hour uprising staged last summer when Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, long considered a close ally of Putin, brought Russia to the brink of civil war.
And, despite a crackdown on dissent that some analysts describe as harsher than the late Soviet Union, Russians are still bravely arrested for showing dissent.
A group of women continued to hold small demonstrations demanding that their mobilized sons and husbands be brought home. People laid flowers in memory of Mr Navalny in many Russian cities. and Mr. Nadezhdin was able to collect more than 100,000 signatures last month in his bid to get on the presidential ballot with an anti-war message.
On Wednesday, Russia’s Supreme Court upheld the Federal Election Commission’s decision to keep Mr. Nadezhdin off the ballot. It was a sign that Mr. Putin, although he has allowed liberal candidates to run against him in previous elections as a show of pluralism, is taking no chances this time.
Instead, the Kremlin appears focused on using the presidential election, scheduled for March 15-17, as a contest for public approval of Mr. Putin’s rule — and his invasion.
Next Thursday, Mr. Putin will set the stage with his annual State of the Nation address, a televised event that features the president presiding over hundreds of top officials who show their loyalty to their leader.
Konstantin Remchukov, editor of a Moscow newspaper close to the Kremlin, said being able to present a landslide election victory as proof of public support for the war appeared to be Mr Putin’s main goal for the March election.
“The election – and Vladimir Putin’s high result in this election – is intended to electorally legitimize Putin’s policies, including the SVO,” Mr. Remchukov said in a telephone interview, using the Russian initials for “special military operation.” , the Kremlin’s term for war. “If he gets, say, 75 to 80 percent of the vote, then that will mean that the people give him their approval for this policy.”
Presenting the invasion as widespread public support also allows the Kremlin to justify its crackdown on dissent.
Footage of masked security service officers detaining critics of the war has become commonplace on Russian television. On Tuesday, Russia’s internal security service, known as the FSB, announced it had arrested a visiting 33-year-old Russian-American woman on suspicion of treason.
Her alleged crime: donating about $50 to a Ukrainian charity. He faces 20 years in prison.
News of this arrest came just four days after the death of Mr Navalny, who spent more than three years in prison, including some 300 days in “punishment” cells. How Mr Navalny died in an Arctic prison known as Polar Wolf remains unknown. His spokeswoman said Thursday that authorities said he died of natural causes.
On Thursday, Mr Navalny’s mother said authorities were “blackmailing” her into agreeing to a “secret funeral” for her son.
“With Navalny’s death, the Russian regime surpassed the post-Soviet one in its cruelty and cynicism,” wrote Alexander Baunov, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. He argued that Mr Putin’s rule had turned from “a dictatorship of deception to a dictatorship of fear and, after the outbreak of war, to a pure dictatorship of terror”.
But Mr. Putin has publicly distanced himself from the repression apparatus he oversees. While a spokesman said the president had been informed of Mr Navalny’s death, Mr Putin himself had no comment.
Instead, Mr. Putin revealed this week that he was awake late at night after Mr. Navalny’s death consumed by something else: the war in Ukraine.
In a televised meeting with his defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, Mr. Putin described being informed in real time of Russia’s advance on Avdiivka until 4 a.m. last Saturday. At 11 a.m., Mr. Shoigu and Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s general staff, returned to brief the Russian leader again on Ukraine’s hasty withdrawal from the strategically important city, Mr. Putin said. .
Mr Shoigu said the army had carried out the president’s order to install loudspeakers on the southern Ukrainian front to persuade soldiers to surrender. The message was intended to show Mr Putin as a tireless leader, in tune with all the details of the war.
At the meeting, Mr Putin dismissed White House concerns about possible Russian plans to launch a nuclear weapon into orbit this year. Instead, he said, it was Russia’s new generation of nuclear weapons aimed at ground targets that “they should really fear.”
On Thursday, Mr Putin took another step to remind the world of Russia’s arsenal, taking a 30-minute flight in a nuclear-capable bomber. But hours later, when asked about Mr Biden’s “crazy SOB” comments earlier condemned by the Kremlin spokesman, Mr Putin became playful — a reminder of the former KGB agent’s penchant for sowing confusion.
Using a nickname for Vladimir, Mr. Putin said of Mr. Biden: “He can’t say: ‘Voluntary, good boy.’
