PUTIN WILL GO

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 MOSCOW 000610

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR EUR/RUS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/09/2017
TAGS: PGOV PINR KDEM PREL RS
SUBJECT: PUTIN WILL GO


Classified By: Ambassador William J. Burns. Reason: 1.4 (d).

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No Third Term
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1. (C) Although rumors swirl after each major public
appearance, even diehard skeptics now agree that President
Putin will leave office when his second term expires in May

2008. With each passing month the conspiracy theories, which
most recently crested in the wake of the Litvinenko
assassination, have seemed less credible, and Putin's own
insistence on the need to respect the larger letter of the
Russian constitution more believable. That the President's
departure has become an established fact was in evidence at
his marathon annual press conference February 1, where
journalists probed the succession process and queried Putin
about his plans after office, but did not entertain the idea
that he would stay beyond 2008.


2. (C) Skepticism about Putin's intentions has long been fed
by the opaque nature of the succession process and the lack
of historical precedent. Should the status quo hold, Putin
will be the first relatively young, healthy, and popular
leader in Russian history to voluntarily depart office.
Instead of engendering pride that Russia is becoming "a
normal country," that prospect is creating anxiety among many
who associate the end of the Putin era with the end of
stability. The lack of credible institutions abet that
tendency. Putin's intention to wait until after the December
Duma elections before tipping his hand on a successor ensures
that uncertainty will only grow as the year progresses.

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After Putin
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3. (C) In the year plus remaining to him, Putin must prepare
the way for his heir apparent and carve out a niche for
himself. That first undertaking is to all appearances well
under way, with a creeping consensus here that Presidential
Administration First Deputy Dmitriy Medvedev is on a glide
path to the presidency. Unrelenting media exposure, his own
public relations team, control of the high-profile National
Projects and, with the new year, opportunities to stump for
Russia in places like Davos, have given Medvedev the pole
position in a race that includes Minister of Defense Sergey
Ivanov as his chief rival. Ivanov has not conceded the
contest, however, and unlike Putin's departure, a Medvedev
presidency is not a foregone conclusion.


4. (C) Imagining a life after the presidency may be harder
than stage-managing the succession. In May 2008, Putin will
leave the Kremlin and enter uncharted territory. Boris
Yeltsin, was ill, aged, and unpopular when he left office.
Efforts to envision Putin as head of a state-controlled
conglomerate or of one of the Kremlin-fostered political
parties run aground on the belief that no Russian president,
in a "winner take all" system, would willingly recede into
the background. As many here have noted Russia, unlike China,
makes no provision for an elder statesman who can exercise
influence at a respectable distance.

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Putin in the Year Remaining
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5. (C) Putin shows all intentions of remaining in the fray
until his 2008 departure date. He will postpone anointing a
successor in order to stave off the inevitable, "lame duck"
status. At his annual press conference, Putin bristled at
questions about his post-presidency plans, noting that he has
more than one year in office. And the winding down of his
term has seen a flurry of legislative initiatives on
long-lingering tasks --the civil code, strategic sector
investment, the subsoil law, and even tax reform-- as he
pushes to clear his desk before leaving office. Last fall,
Putin listed corruption and the demographic crisis as
problems for his successor; making it plain that he planned
no major new initiatives on those fronts.


6. (C) Hydrocarbon-slaked self-confidence probably makes
Putin's Russia in the final year of his term more immune than
usual to efforts to change its behavior. On the other hand
Putin, with an eye on his legacy no doubt, has seemed more
ready to listen to worries about the climate for NGOs and to
smooth feathers ruffled by Russia's ham-handed behavior
abroad in 2006. His insistence on the economic component as
the key constituent of any bilateral relationship allowed him
to assert --in some cases credibly, in others less so-- that

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there was "nothing personal" in recent bilateral disputes.
Still, the Kremlin is not a monolith, and as the clock ticks
down the struggle over succession could heat up, leaving the
Vladimir Vladimirovich too preoccupied with protecting his
flanks to worry much about how the Putin era will go down in
history.
BURNS