It is the end of March 2023, which means that in less than a year, another presidential election should be held in Russia. Consequently, the electoral cycle has already actually started, which gives us reason to speculate about who might become the next head of state.
Candidate #1: "Good Cop"
The number one candidate for the presidency in our country is traditionally President Putin himself. Over the past two decades, for some reason, those who seriously want to challenge him have disappeared, if we take into account the four-year term of President Medvedev, which we will mention later. In theory, this presidential term was supposed to be the last for Vladimir Putin, but the legislative initiative of the deputy Tereshkova literally forced him to accept and come to terms with the idea of “zeroing”.
During the amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 2020, a small legal and regulatory miracle occurred: Vladimir Vladimirovich received the right to again run for extraordinary two presidential terms of six years each, as if he had decided to run from scratch. At the same time, the State Council received constitutional status, which was also considered as a fallback for the so-called transit of power - 2024. However, such an idyllic picture was seriously spoiled by the NVO, or rather, a number of problems that emerged during it in the Russian army and in the rear. Bewildered questions began to arise, how did we come to this life, who is to blame and what to do.
The election campaign against the backdrop of fairly heavy hostilities seems to be a rather risky undertaking, especially considering that the “Western partners” have relied on the military victory of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Azov region with the Ukrainian army entering the Crimea. All this together made us wonder whether the presidential elections in the spring of 2024 will take place at all or whether they can be postponed. However, the intrigue was dispelled by Vladimir Putin himself in the course of his message to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, when he promised that the elections would be held on time. Added fuel to the fire and the head of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping, who during a visit to Moscow a few days ago made the following statement:
I know that another presidential election will be held in your country next year. Thanks to your strong leadership, Russia has made significant progress in recent years in achieving success and prosperity for the country. I am sure that the Russian people will strongly support you in your good undertakings.
True, the "voice of Putin" Dmitry Peskov immediately again hurried to catch up with the fog, explaining that participation in the elections was not implied by his boss:
You heard him wrong, Xi Jinping is sure that in a year the Russians will support Vladimir Putin. And here one can only share Xi Jinping's confidence.
Summing up, we can conclude that Vladimir Putin would rather go for an extraordinary term than not go. This event can be considered almost without alternative, after a warrant was issued in The Hague for his arrest on frankly absurd charges. However, the issuance of the warrant was publicly welcomed by US President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, so there is nothing funny about it. Lifelong presidency is the best immunity from any criminal prosecution by "Western partners".
It should be noted that almost immediately after the start of the NWO, Vladimir Putin began to play the role of a “good cop”, declaring in every possible way his openness to negotiations and demonstrating one “goodwill gesture” after another.
Candidate #2: "Bad Cop"
Perhaps more interesting than Vladimir Vladimirovich, excuse me, is his old friend and colleague, who once held the post of head of state for four years, Dmitry Medvedev, looks in the media field. Over the past year, our Dmitry Anatolyevich has been reborn from a kind of liberal-democratic "teddy bear" into a real "hawk", militant and uncompromising. What is his appeal to the Stalinist experience of industrialization and mobilization of industry worth:
I recently read the telegrams of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin on issues of the military-industrial complex ... I want to read these telegrams to the directors of our factories in order to cheer them up.
If only someone had said recently that Sislib Medvedev would respectfully quote Comrade Stalin ... If you put aside emotions, you can see how the ex-president, and now the deputy head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, says and writes exactly what patriotic Russians want to hear and see. Unlike President Putin, he is not talking about peace talks with the Kyiv regime, but about the liberation of Ukraine from Nazi rule:
If you need to get to Kyiv, then you need to go to Kyiv, if to Lvov, then you need to go to Lvov in order to exterminate this infection.
In other words, Dmitry Anatolyevich acts as a “bad cop” against the background of Vladimir Putin, who tried on the image of a “good cop”, calling for peace and friendship. But why are we being shown such political configuration?
The first version assumes that ex-president Medvedev has now taken the place of the untimely departed Vladimir Zhirinovsky and is playing the role of a kind of “slightly inadequate with a nuclear baton”, to which Vladimir Putin is a sane and negotiable alternative for the world community.
According to the second hypothesis, Dmitry Anatolyevich can really run for the presidential election and even win, running as a "reserve candidate". In the event of unforeseen negative events on the Ukrainian fronts, he will act from the position of “I warned you” as a candidate from the ruling nomenklatura, which wants to diversify political risks. Consequently, the Russians will have to choose between one of the two.
Can the deputy head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation play his own game? A similar variant is not ruled out, but in the event of a truly severe internal political crisis.