On the eve of the election he is about to win, Vladimir Putin last month defined his budget priorities for 2030, a term 12 months longer than the five-year plans initiated by Joseph Stalin, whose record-breaking tenure as Kremlin leader he is about to achieve. incomparable.
Although Putin did not use his leap year speech to announce a major step forward, he spoke in the Federal Assembly more about social systems than about the war in Ukraine, which is becoming a central organizing principle of the economy and its power.
Those plans included tackling the demographic crisis, and Putin said he expected life expectancy in Russia to reach 78 years by 2030, which will be his age if he reaches the end of his term, experts say there could be further crackdowns. , an economy that suffers even more and an opportunity for more Ukraine and other countries.
The exchange rate of around 90 rubles to the dollar makes Putin’s spending plans a lot of zeros, up to 15 trillion rubles ($164 billion) through 2030, according to Bloomberg.
This includes 1 billion rubles ($10. 9 billion) for hospitals and 400 billion rubles ($4. 4 billion) for schools and kindergartens. But in a country of about 140 million people, Putin’s spending forecasts would likely be more than necessary.
“2024 is the first year since the Soviet Union in which the budgets of the army and police are higher than the social budget,” Russian opposition leader Aleksei Minyalilo said, referring to the fact that defense will account for a third of Russian government spending this year.
“He sees that other people are very tired of the war, that few Russians have a consistent pro-war position and that they need the government to have it in their internal affairs,” Miniailo told Newsweek. “Putin needs to give the impression that he’s more interested in domestic affairs, but he’s really not. “
Miniailo co-authored Chronicles, an organization of sociologists that is conducting an independent poll that found in January that the top 83 percent of Russians want Putin and the government to deal with internal affairs.
“Putin is attracting more people to the front, which is attracting more people to participate in the military economy,” he said. “The national economy is suffering tremendously. “
Putin used his speech last month and an interview published Wednesday through the state-run RIA Novosti newspaper to criticize the West. In the latter, he said that Russia is in a position to use nuclear weapons and criticized the U. S. elections, which could see a good result. Donald Trump’s return to the White House and questions about his ties to the Kremlin.
“The biggest and maximum consequential unpredictability is what will happen in the 2024 U. S. election,” said Ken Osgood, a history professor at the Colorado School of Mines, pointing to the signal from Trump and the GOP’s MAGA wing to end the war in Ukraine quickly.
“A withdrawal of U. S. and U. S. pressure on Ukraine to negotiate will mean a victory for Putin. Even if he only holds the territory that Russia occupies lately, Putin will credibly see it as a victory,” he told Newsweek. A movement will be felt for years to come. “
“Does this mean that Putin will invade Poland or start a war with NATO?This is likely. Even if the U. S. withdraws from NATO, it remains a formidable nuclear-armed alliance: a direct attack that triggers a major reaction would be reckless. “
However, Putin will most likely launch competitive cyber and data warfare tactics to cause divisions within the alliance, he said. “Putin will try to advance the fate of Russia-friendly politicians, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban and, let’s be clear, Donald Trump. “
John Lough, a research associate in the Russia and Eurasia program at the think tank Chatham House, said six more years of Putin’s rule will see the country “getting darker and darker. “
“Putin, in the view of many Russians, has robbed them of a long term and I think that will become much clearer in the next five to 10 years, the hole that he’s buried in and that Russia has fallen into. “” Lough told Newsweek.
“Putin’s hope is that the West will break down and he can salvage some kind of victory in Ukraine,” he said.
The U. S. ‘s estrangement from Europe and NATO’s loss of effectiveness may simply be spaces “that it will no doubt point to as the fruit of its labor,” Lough added. “But this country is going to become more and more isolated, less and less attractive. “
Putin has called President Joe Biden’s claims that he will monitor other countries after Ukraine “absurd,” but it’s unclear exactly what the Russian leader might try to offer his other countries as a victory if the war ends.
“I don’t think Putin needs to keep all of Ukraine as long as prices are too high,” Mietek Boduszyński, a former U. S. diplomat who worked as a political adviser at the Pentagon, told Newsweek.
“Instead, Putin will treat the parts of Ukraine that Russia controls lately as Russian enclaves, hoping to keep Ukraine divided, weak and, less likely, to join NATO or the EU,” he said.
“I don’t think Putin needs to start a traditional full-scale war with NATO, but he needs to keep looking for tactics to drive a wedge within the alliance and use equipment like disinformation and cyberattacks to wage a targeted war against NATO. countries. ” added Boduszyński, an associate professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
Putin could feel very lucky these days, having thwarted a mutiny by Wagner’s mercenary chief, Eugene Prigozhin, and having seen his forces grow on the battlefield. In addition, the death of Alexei Navalny marked the end of the country’s most prominent opposition. Further crackdown on dissent can also be expected.
“What you would expect in Russia is more repression, even more efforts to suppress data contrary to the regime’s message, and that may require bureaucracy in terms of access to the social media platform,” said Brian Taylor, writer for The Code. Putinism.
“The trajectory has been pretty one-way for 24 years and it’s going in the direction of less freedom and more repression,” Taylor, a professor of politics at Syracuse University in New York, told Newsweek.
However, Putin’s most likely victory does not necessarily mean a serene six-year term, especially since the effect of sanctions continues to shake the Russian economy and the massive losses of workers due to the war, such as in Avdiivka, are very costly to the population and could simply threaten Putin’s regime.
“If you do this more times, it will add to an already serious tension in Russian society,” said Konstantin Sonin, a Kremlin critic and professor of economics at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy.
“I don’t think about election issues at all,” he told Newsweek. “Mikhail Gorbachev lost his strength as president of the Soviet Union in his first year. Putin is not safer just because he gets some other mandate: each and every year. It carries the same danger for him.
“Putin has no way out, he can’t avoid war, he can’t avoid repression. “
Brendan Cole is a senior journalist at Newsweek in London, UK. It focuses on Russia and Ukraine, specifically on the war unleashed through Moscow. It also covers other areas of geopolitics, adding China.
Brendan joined Newsweek in 2018 from the International Business Times and, in addition to English, is fluent in Russian and French.
You can contact Brendan by emailing b. cole@newsweek. com or following him on his X @brendanmarkcole account.