By Natylie Baldwin, Consortium News, 6/30/20

Voting in Russia began on Friday and will conclude Wednesday on a referendum over a series of constitutional changes that would enhance the powers of the presidency, including, most controversially, allowing President Vladimir Putin to potentially remain in office for 12 more years beyond the end of his term limit in 2024.

There is more to the proposed changes, however, that bear looking at.

In mid-January, Putin announced his proposals during his annual address to the Federal Assembly. Several days later, he submitted the initial draft law to the Duma, Russia’s lower house.

The first few paragraphs reiterated some of the changes he outlined in his speech, including restrictions for individuals running for president of Russia and other major federal offices such as prime minister, cabinet members, parliamentarians, regional governors and judges.

These include candidates’ restrictions on dual citizenship and residency and, for the president, a requirement of continuous residency in Russia for at least 25 years. As others have pointed out, these rules effectively prohibit the children of the current political class from running for major office in Russia since most of them have studied and/or lived in the U.S. or Europe and have therefore had long-term residency in a foreign country.

Another amendment will require that Russia’s constitution take precedence over international law if the two are in conflict. Putin’s draft law stated:

To protect national sovereignty, it is proposed in the draft law that the decisions of interstate bodies based on the provisions of international treaties signed by the Russian Federation shall not be implemented in Russia if their interpretation contradicts the Constitution of the Russian Federation.

With respect to the expanded responsibilities of the parliament – consisting of the Federation Council (upper chamber) and the Duma (lower chamber) – the draft law summary states:

To make interaction between the representative and executive branches of power more effective, to strengthen the role of the State Duma and parliamentary parties, as well as to enhance the responsibility of members of the Government, it has been proposed that the Constitutional provisions on the procedure for appointing the Prime Minister and deputy prime ministers of Russia be amended to stipulate that candidates for these posts are appointed by the President following their approval by the State Duma.

Interestingly, there is some debate on what kind of qualitative change this represents. Professor Paul Robinson has looked at the full Russian draft submissions and made some comparisons between what the current constitutional language is and what it will be changed to. It appears to amount to a distinction without a difference:

“The words that I have emphasized in the quotation … clarify the situation: ‘the name of the candidate for prime minister will be submitted ‘to the State Duma by the President of the Russian Federation.’ In other words, everything will remain as it was, only now the Duma ‘confirms’ the candidate rather than gives its ‘consent’.”

A Presidential Republic

Putin emphasized in his January address, and reiterated in subsequent remarks, that though there may be room to expand some of the parliament’s authority, it is appropriate for Russia to remain a presidential republic and not a parliamentary republic:

“I think that Russia, with its vast territory, with many faiths, with a large number of nations, peoples, nationalities living in the country – you can’t even count, someone says 160, someone 190, you know, needs strong presidential power.”

The draft law also gives the Federation Council authority to investigate and remove judges for incompetence or corruption if the president recommends it:

“In addition, the Federation Council is to have the power to terminate the powers of judges of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Russia, the judges of the courts of cassation and appeal upon the recommendation of the President of Russia, if they are found guilty of acts that defame the honour and dignity of judges, as well as in other cases described in the federal legislation according to which the said persons can no longer perform their duties.”

Furthermore, the draft law allows the Constitutional Court to review proposed legislation for constitutionality prior to passage into law:

“The role of the Constitutional Court is to be strengthened by giving it the power to analyse, at the request of the President of Russia, compliance with the Constitution of laws adopted by the two houses of the Federal Assembly before they are signed by the President.”

As promised the draft law codifies that the state is responsible for providing basic social justice measures:

“To protect the social rights of citizens and ensure equal opportunities for them throughout the country, Article 75 of the Constitution is to be complemented with provisions setting forth the minimum wage in the amount not lower than the subsistence minimum of the economically active population throughout the country, guaranteeing the indexation of pensions, social benefits and other social payments, and setting out the basic principles of nationwide retirement benefits.”

Russia currently has a minimum wage but this will codify into the constitution that the minimum wage must be indexed to reflect the current minimum cost of living; in other words, it cannot be below the recognized poverty line. 

Continue reading here.

The complete interview of Putin by TASS News Agency is now available on YouTube, broken own into clips by topic, with English subtitles. The playlist is available here:

This is the first clip on the list and each subsequent clip should automatically play after the other.

By Natylie Baldwin

Originally appeared at Oped News, June 23, 2020

Many American pundits and politicians have referred to Vladimir Putin as a nationalist. This has always been a disingenuous characterization of the Russian president to anyone who has studied him carefully over the years. Putin is more what could be termed a sovereigntist. He believes unequivocally in national sovereignty and in Russia’s right to be an independent nation that freely makes its own decisions in its perceived interests – engaging in multilateralism when appropriate, but as a respected equal. This is not nationalism in the commonly understood meaning of the word, which connotes a form of national chauvinism – the idea that a country (or ethnic group) is superior to others and has the right to do what it wants at anyone else’s expense. I have never heard Putin say anything that suggests this kind of ideology, unless he’s being quoted out of context, which happens frequently in the western press. Moreover, there are real nationalist politicians in Russia, namely Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the LDPR Party and one of the more popular opposition politicians. One can get an idea of some of his more outlandish ideas here – including support for monarchy and denigrating diplomacy.

In an interview with Oliver Stone in June of 2019, Putin specifically gave his opinion of nationalism:

Vladimir Putin: In general nationalism is a sign of narrow-mindedness.

Within the context of domestic Russian politics, Putin is a moderate. He sees himself as a Russian patriot and pragmatist whose top priorities are the security and stability of Russia as well as improving Russians’ living standards. Anyone who has an understanding of Russian geography and history immediately comprehends these priorities and why they resonate with the Russian people, who overwhelmingly believe that Putin, whatever his flaws, took a country that was literally on the verge of being a failed state in 2000 and turned it around. In order to keep the country together after the disaster of the 1990s, it was necessary to foster social cohesion. Consequently, Putin encouraged the trend, already underway, of the re-discovery of Russia’s pre-Soviet cultural heritage, with the Orthodox Church playing a significant role and Russians’ cultural conservatism acknowledged. All this reflected the need to emphasize boundaries, rootedness and order in the search for stability after the chaotic Yeltsin era that plunged the nation into massive poverty, crime and its worst mortality crisis since World War II. There is also a strong sense of duty and loyalty that Putin personally values.

These qualities have made him attractive to some western conservatives, despite the fact that in many ways Putin is a statist as is fitting with Russia’s long political history, which does not include the libertarianism that a large segment of American conservatives have traditionally embraced. Conversely, Putin’s cultural conservatism has been weaponized by liberal Democrats, especially as it pertains to gay rights. Ironically, this obscures the fact that Putin’s actual record shows a leader with a more nuanced and moderate socio-political view as he’s overseen the expansion of individual rights for Russians within the justice system and opposes re-institution of the death penalty. Meanwhile Russian women enjoy maternity and child benefits that American women could only dream of.

In an interview with Rossiya 1 on May 17^th, Putin stated that Russia – a country straddling two continents and 11 time zones – was more its own civilization than just a country.

Continue reading here.

A few weeks ago Russia experienced a major oil spill in the Arctic region near the Taimyr Peninsula, which occurred due to melting permafrost and instability as well as negligence in maintaining oil storage and infrastructure.

According to Oilprice.com, on May 29:

a fuel storage tank owned by Russian nickel and palladium mining company, Nornickel, collapsed and spilled 21,000 tonnes (about 158,000 barrels) of diesel into the nearby Ambarnaya river outside the Siberian city of Norilsk.  The accident–which has drawn comparisons to the Exxon Valdez accident off Alaska in 1989– is being regarded as the worst of its kind in Russia’s Arctic region. One source has reported that as much as 29,000 tonnes (about 218,000 barrels) of diesel could have found its way into the soil and nearby water bodies.

President Vladimir Putin declared a state of federal emergency in the Krasnoyarsk region as Nornickel scrambled to try and contain the spill from contaminating the Arctic zone. But their best efforts have failed, and now there are reports that the oil has flowed 12 miles north and seeped into a nearby Arctic Lake where it might cause untold damage to marine ecosystems.

Putin was reportedly furious about the handling of the spill by the Nornickel corporation, including its alleged failure to adequately maintain the tank as well as a delay of up to two days in reporting the incident. In addition to declaring a federal emergency Putin ordered billionaire part-owner of Nornickel, Vladimir Potanin, to pay the full cost of the cleanup.

Though government investigators and environmental groups in Russia have blamed negligence by Nornickel in its maintenance of the tank, the accident occurred within the backdrop of Russia suffering global warming and its effects at 2.5 times the rate of the rest of the world:

A large number of industries, roads, and entire cities are built atop the permafrost terrain in Russia. When the permafrost thaws, the ice that has remained stable and buried deep in the ground loses stability. Experts have already noted that thawing permafrost is responsible for fissures that have appeared in apartment buildings in Norilsk.

Environmental groups such as the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace Russia have pointed out that the risks of thawing permafrost to Arctic infrastructure are public knowledge, and companies like Nornickel should take the necessary steps to avert disasters.

Just this past weekend, Siberia saw record-high temperatures of 100 degrees. As I discussed in a post last year, though a substantive environmental movement has been slow to effectively get off the ground in Russia, many Russians are increasingly concerned about climate change and other environmental issues as major storms, floods and wildfires on an unprecedented scale have been occurring throughout the country. As reported by private Russian news agency Interfax, a recent state-run poll of Russian opinion revealed that 1/3 of Russians were unhappy with the government’s handling of environmental issues, with the majority of those dissatisfied residing in small to medium sized cities further away from Moscow and St. Petersburg. The Interfax report also noted that “Ecological issues have been among the most prominent causes of public protest in Russia in the last few years, with demonstrations against waste disposal being held from Moscow to Murmansk Region.”

Some are wondering if the oil spill will finally be the catalyst for implementing more environmental reforms and regulation. As Bloomberg reported:

Yet stricter regulation to prevent and liquidate oil spills has been stalled in parliament since 2018, when a draft bill passed its first reading. The law would require companies with fuel storage or pipelines to maintain detailed plans to contain spills and create financial reserves to fix any damage.

After the accident, Putin ordered checks of similar tanks around Russia and urged the quick adaptation of new legislation. This week, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin revived talk of the 2018 bill.

But the legislation in question has been criticized as insufficient:

The draft is too vague to make an impact and needs a clear mechanism to create provisions, according to Darya Kozlova, head of oil and gas regulation at Moscow-based Vygon Consulting. A better approach would be to rely on insurance policies and online monitoring, she said.

But it isn’t just environmental and public interest groups that recognize the increasing implications of the problem for the economy and society. Russia’s energy minister, Alexander Novak, has publicly acknowledged that, with the drop in oil demand caused by the Covid pandemic and the more competitive cost of renewables, the future role of fossil fuels in providing the world’s energy needs will likely fall:

Firstly, the Russian official explained that lifestyle changes, such as less flying and fewer car trips, would mean that the energy industry will be “experiencing a structural change” in the coming years.

The development of digital, cloud and IT technologies will also affect the energy sector, the energy minister said. “More electricity will be consumed, less will be generated from hydrocarbon sources, more from renewable energy sources,” he stated.

Due to these changes, Novak explained that he no longer agrees with previous estimates that the share of hydrocarbon energy would drop down to 75 percent by 2040. Due to the increased efficiency and reduced cost of renewable sources, the minister believes this prediction will be wrong.