Romanian YouthVoice.RO: Vladimir Putin’s return to the Soviet Union

Before Vladimir Putin’s first mandate Russia had a chance of eventually becoming a functional democracy where regimes change through the ballot box. With Putin’s continuous stay and return to power, Russia tips inexorably toward becoming just another petro-dictatorship whose regime is propped up by oil money and repression. This is a fateful moment in Russian history, because the change, when it does come, will most probably arrive from outside, not inside, the system and it is not sure the republics that are now part of the Russian Federation by force will still want to be part of such a mess.

Imagine Putin in 2024, the date when his likely two next presidential terms will come to an end… “The return of Putin means long years of Brezhnev-style stagnation,” says Eduard Boyakov, director of Moscow ’s avant-garde Praktika Theater cited by TheDailyBeast.com.

But in this new old story, Putin is not alone. President Dmitri Medvedev apeared at the beginning with reformist message. “Should Russia continue to drag into the future our primitive raw-materials economy, endemic corruption and inveterate habit of relying on the state, foreign countries or some all-powerful doctrine to solve our problems?” Medvedev wrote on the Kremlin’s blog in the early days of his presidential mandate. But his continuous talk about the reform and democracy did not manage to move at all the corrupt officials or to stimulate a real economic growth.

So, be prepared for another decade of Soviet Union in the East, be prepared for oil and gas blackmail, be prepared for a countinuous life of the frozen conflicts in the Republic of Moldova (Transnistria) and Caucasus…

Source: http://www.youthvoice.ro/english/vladimir-putins-return-to-the-soviet-union/