Putin’s Anticipated ‘Sharp Turn’
Putin’s Anticipated ‘Sharp Turn’
The last few weeks have not been too successful for Vladimir Putin’s public image. In October, Reuters reported that the Russian president has serious health problems, which forced him to cancel a number of foreign trips. Around the same time, a poll by the Levada Center showed that only 34 percent of Russians want Putin to remain in power for another term. Perhaps for both reasons, the Kremlin decided to cancel Putin’s “direct line with the people”—the traditional television question-and-answer session that he has held every year for the past decade.
Attempting to regain the initiative, the administration announced that Putin has begun working on his state-of-the-nation address, which will be read to Parliament before the end of the year. Kremlin sources are suggesting that the speech will mark “a sharp turn in the political course of Vladimir Putin, both in domestic and in foreign policy.” Neither the details, nor the direction of this “turn” have been specified, but the sources mentioned the possibility of “a serious personnel cleansing.”