Aslund: Hiding from Rule of Law

In a new Op/Ed for the recently reactivated Moscow Times, Anders Aslund points out two reasons why the president of Russia is unable to give up power: “Putin could not retire for two reasons. First, serious accusations of corruption and grand larceny have been raised against him. Therefore, he could not retire in a Russia without rule of law because no legal guarantees of amnesty could be plausible. Second, Putin’s rule is a personal authoritarian system in which all power rests with the ruler. If he retires, his system is prone to collapse.” Aslund also argues that today the Chekists must despise Dmitri Medvedev for having “outwitted” them, and he wonders which Sechin proxy might have access to Marina Salye’s report from 1992 on Putin’s alleged corrupt foreign trade deals in St. Petersburg. Looks like 2008 shall continue where we left off.