Putin’s Eight-year Political Course： From Being an Unknown Politician to Establishing His Time

　　Putin and his enemies

　　Liang Qiang

　　After successfully completing the procedural transfer of power, Putin has undoubtedly established his own era. With his superb political skills and strategy of governing the country, he not only became an outstanding great politician in this century, but also is likely to become a great leader in Russian history.

　　Even so, there are still many people who oppose Putin in this country, and their relationship with Putin also reflects the political evolution of this country in the past eight years under Putin.

　　Media people who pursue the truth

　　The first battle Putin won in his political career was the Chechen war, which made him jump from an unknown politician to a new political star. But it was the Chechen war that made him encounter his first political enemy-the media people who pursued the truth.

　　After the end of the Second Chechen War, the separatist movement in Chechnya began to transform into a terrorist movement, which successively created several major terrorist incidents in Russia. Although the terrorists were finally brought to justice, the measures taken by the Russian authorities in response to these terrorist incidents were questioned. Especially represented by the Beslan hostage incident in August 2004, after paying a heavy price of more than 400 deaths and more than 700 injuries, Putin, who once became a national hero since the end of the Chechen war, suffered the first crisis of confidence since he took office. Despite the official ban on the media, the truth that was revealed one after another made many people question the performance of powerful departments and Putin himself in this crisis: For example, the invincible "signal flag" troops only sacrificed 19 people in dozens of previous operations, but why did they pay a huge price of 10 deaths and 26 injuries in this operation? Some independent military critics believe that Putin’s talk about "peaceful settlement" at the beginning of the hostage crisis has caused confusion in the thinking of the special forces, which has led to differences within the special forces on how to rescue the hostages. In the previous handling of the hostage incident in Moscow theater, Putin took the advice of special forces and released anesthetic gas into the theater. As a result, more than 160 hostages died of suffocation, and the "signal flag" troops responsible for this incident were accused. Therefore, the "Signal Flag" and "Alpha" teams did not form a unified strategy in dealing with this hostage incident. By the time the fighting started,The two sides have not even reached a consensus on the offensive route and the position of the other side’s firepower. Besides, has the authorities been concealing the number of casualties? The official death toll is 338, but Izvestia believes that this figure is far less than the actual death toll. According to their investigation, the death toll should be around 400 to 600. "Izvestia" also said in the report that so many deaths could not be entirely caused by terrorists, and the special forces were probably killed by mistake in a chaotic gunfight because they lacked unified command in preparing for the rescue of hostages. These reports in Izvestia angered Kegong. The day after the hostage incident, Sarik, editor-in-chief of the newspaper, suddenly submitted his resignation. According to Russian government sources, before Sarik announced his resignation, Russian President Borodin personally called the boss of the Russian newspaper group where Izvestia was located.

　　Due to the huge consequences of this incident, the Russian Duma also had to set up a special investigation Committee on Beslan incident, but the result was just a routine matter. The victims of the Beslan hostage incident, dissatisfied with the official conclusions, spontaneously set up an independent "Beslan Mother" Committee, demanding that the authorities disclose all the facts and agree to the involvement of international professional institutions in the investigation. The movement has also become a rare anti-Putin group that can survive all the time.

　　Before the Beslan incident, Anna Park Anna Politkovskaya, a female journalist of Russian newspaper Novaya Novosti, had already started an independent investigation into the hostage incident in Moscow theater in 2002. Because it involves powerful departments and the military, such in-depth investigation has always been a "forbidden zone" for Russian media. Before that, several journalists were assassinated because of the investigation. However, this did not stop those who have their own independent thinking ability in the Russian press from thoroughly investigating and publishing the truth. As a rare expert on Chechen issues in Russian press, PoPark Jung Su Kofskaya concentrated all her energy on Chechen issues after the Beslan incident. Under the increasingly strict control of Russian media, she published two monographs abroad in succession, giving a detailed disclosure of the Beslan incident and the illegal acts of Russian troops in Chechnya. In 2005, after the "color revolution" broke out in Ukraine and Georgia, she repeatedly criticized the "crimes" of Putin’s system and predicted that a national revolution would break out in Russia soon. This made her a thorn in the side of various political forces. In September, 2006, Bo Park Jung Su Kofskaya was mysteriously shot and killed, becoming the 42nd journalist killed for work in Russia in the past 15 years. Due to the special status and international reputation of Bo Park Jung Su Kovskaya, the case caused an uproar, and many famous politicians at home and abroad, including Gorbachev, expressed their concern. Russian Attorney General Chaika also announced that he would personally investigate the case, but until now, Russian officials have still failed to give a satisfactory result. Since then,On the one hand, Moscow strengthened its crackdown on terrorism in Chechnya, on the other hand, it began to control the press in 2006. The consortia directly controlled by the Kremlin, such as Gazprom and Rosneft, began to March into the media, and many well-known independent media, including Izvestia and Independent TV stations, were acquired. Putin’s support rate has also increased from less than 50% after the Beslan incident to 70%, and has remained at this level.

　　A covetous oligarch

　　The year 2004 was a watershed in Putin’s political career. This year, the Yukos case, the most important economic case in Russia after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, ended with the victory of the state procuratorate. There is no doubt that Putin won the battle between regime and oligarchy, but he also paid a high price for it and made new enemies for himself. This man is the owner of Yukos, the former richest man in Russia, Khodorkovsky.

　　In the Yeltsin era, oligarchs enjoyed great economic and political privileges, but in the minds of ordinary people, they were synonymous with country thieves. Mr. Khodorkovsky can now appear in the Russian political arena as a new dissident, which is largely due to this major case of the century. Although he has become a penniless poor man and a prisoner, all the punishments given to him have enhanced his political prestige. After the final ruling of the Yukos case, Khodorkovsky’s presidential campaign support rate once rose to 8.3%. In the public declaration after the verdict, Mr. Khodorkovsky also clearly stated his political ambitions. "I will work with you, all those who want to freely express their opinions on their own country, people and our common present and future." I firmly believe that I will live with you in a country where freedom is everywhere. " Most of Khodorkovsky’s supporters are young people and people from big cities, and they will have an important influence on the future political trend of Russia.

　　The reason behind the Yukos case was originally thought to be the action of the new owner of Kegong to destroy the covetous oligarchs by administrative means. But with the passage of time, the true meaning of this case began to appear. According to the research of Autef Ping, a political scientist at Moscow University, with the rapid development of Russian nationalization after the victory of Yukos case, a number of new oligarchs surfaced. They are mainly composed of President Putin’s cronies and aides, many of whom are from the security intelligence agencies like Putin. They control the nine largest and most profitable state-owned enterprises in Russia. One common feature of these nine large state-owned companies is that they control the economic lifeline of Russia and monopolize some major industries in Russia. With the rising prices of crude oil and various raw materials in the international market, the profits of these nine large Russian state-owned companies have also risen rapidly, thus bringing huge capital gains to this interest group. At present, the group has controlled more than $200 billion in assets in Russia, accounting for 40% of Russia’s annual gross national product. Ping Autef believes that in Yeltsin’s era, a few billionaires plundered ordinary people, while in Putin’s era, "some billionaires plundered other billionaires". Deriagin, director of the Russian Institute of Globalization, put it more bluntly: "What we have here is just a new group of chaebols replacing the old ones. In other words, the powerful chaebol replaced the commercial chaebol. "

　　Now, no one in Russian oligarchs dare to make any comments on the political and economic decisions of the Kremlin. They are no longer the tycoons of the Queshan Club in Yeltsin’s era, but become well-behaved businessmen, or change their flags and be willing to drive for Putin. A handful of oligarchs opposed to Putin are either exiled abroad or exiled to remote Siberia like Khodorkovsky.