I'm Not An Ordinary Prisoner.

People Expect Some Kinds Of Decisions From Putin That Will Help Them See Their Own Future. A Significant Part Of The People That He Relies On Are Quite Content With Him Telling Them That Nothing Is Going To Change. But That Part Of The Elite That Does Want To See Some Changes And Improvements Are Going To Expect Him To, In His Next Term, Bring Russia Back Into The Club Of The Great Powers.

And So, Now Things That Are Important Are, For Example, The Upcoming Elections. It's Important That Society Demonstrate That It Is Not Pretending That These Elections Are Elections.

It's A Very Erroneous Strategy To Try To Push The Russian Opposition To Unite. First Of All, The Opposition Is Addressing Different Parts Of Russian Society That Have Differing Points Of View. And Besides, A United Opposition Is A Nice Big Target That The Authorities Have A Much Easier Time Fighting. And Besides, Resisting An Authoritarian Regime With An Authoritarian Opposition Merely Means That, In The Event Of Victory, You're Just Doing Yet Another Round Of The Same Old, Same Old.

Putin Doesn't Conduct Elections In The Western Sense Of Elections. This Is More Accurately Probably Described As A Plebiscite, Where People Are Supposed To Express Their Support For Him. The Russian System Is Not Unique In This Respect, But It Is Rather Interesting. Here, In The West, The Impression That People Have Is That Putin Runs The Whole Country. This Is Not So, At All. To A Certain Extent, You Could Say That He Runs The Kremlin, And This Means That It's, In Some Situations, Hard To Tell Whether It's Him Running The Kremlin, Or The People Around Him Running Him.

Putin Has An Obvious Problem. His Country's Economy Is In Stagnation. He Needs To Constantly Be Pointing A Figure At Who Is At Fault. America Is At Fault. He Needs To Show Those Fronts - Those Directions In Which He Is Defeating America. In Syria, For Example, In Syria, He Is Defeating America; Not Isis, He's Defeating America.