Analysis | Russia’s Vladimir Putin begins fourth term after hundreds arrested in crackdown
Vladimir Putin won re-election overwhelmingly in March, extending his grip over Russia for six more years – a tenure of 24 years that would make him Moscow’s longest-serving leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin
Opposition leader Navalny was held along with nearly 1,600 of his supporters on Saturday during nationwide rallies against Putin as police and paramilitary activists used force to break up demonstrations in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
Putin, who has ruled Russia for 18 years and used his last term to annex Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and launch a military campaign in Syria on the side of Bashar al-Assad the next year, has promised to improve living standards at home during his next Kremlin stint.
But he has remained silent on the issue of his succession – despite this being an inevitable concern as the constitution bars him from running again when his fourth term ends in 2024.
Putin has struggled to revive an economy that crashed after Moscow was hit with Western sanctions over its annexation of Crimea in 2014, followed by a fall in global oil prices in 2016.
Despite this, his victory in the March election was never in question and the prospect of an inauguration in the Kremlin’s gilded Andreyevsky hall has generated little excitement.