Putin of yesterday

Well then! The winner Putin on Manezhnaya Square repeats the candidate Putin in Luzhniki! The same rhetoric about “political provocations”, the same face covered in anger, the same gestures, punching the air with clenched fists. The winner Putin seems to cut off Manezhka from tomorrow’s Pushkinskaya, future Bolotny and Sakharov. The Rubicon has been marked, 63% of very preliminary votes give Putin the right to declare himself the winner - shamelessly, arrogantly and brazenly. Without waiting for results in both capitals and other million-plus cities located in the European part of the country. However, why shamelessly? After all, it is quite obvious that Churov will adjust the final result to the Far Eastern figures. On Monday, in essence, it will be possible to come to terms with the CEC data as a fait accompli. And get ready to tighten the nuts.

Now, for as long as he wants, Gennady Zyuganov can tell us about his rejection of the results and his intention to continue the fight in the streets. No matter how belatedly, Sergei Mironov remembers his own missed chances at Bolotnaya, and Vladimir Zhirinovsky grimaces and gets into poses. The most interesting thing at this stage is not the question of the winner, but the question of third place. He or Prokhorov. The latter, despite the results, can be called a real winner. The billionaire, jack-in-the-box, political debutant, convinced bachelor (or single loser?) demonstrated such a remarkable will to fight that he managed to convince even the most hardened cynics of political independence. There are few who will henceforth call Prokhorov a Kremlin project. In addition, he has already declared that he does not intend to accept any proposals from Putin.

Well, about what's ahead. There is a strong feeling that by arrogating victory to himself (and I am inclined to believe so in the light of all election practices), Putin doomed himself to six years of not just a struggle for power, but a struggle for the survival of both his own person and those whom he will again be forced to cover. Ahead are extremely unpopular economic measures, such as the rapid growth of utility tariffs, permanent provision of salaries to the military and security forces, and the global financial crisis. And all this against the backdrop of total political tremors both within the country and abroad. Perhaps the only thing that will save Putin from the people’s anger (and then only at first) is that during the election campaign he did not manage to promise the people sky-high distances. After all, almost all of his articles in various publications, namely, they were perceived by analysts as programmatic, were empty and, as a result, did not oblige him to anything.