The Next Putintate

...Russia’s elections have had little to do with fairness and democracy...

...Vladimir Gusinsky’s media empire, snapped up by a staterun company...

...It is a poorly kept secret that the 1996 elections that gave him a second term were rigged: Many serious observers believe that Yeltsin might well have lost in a fair fi ght to Gennadii Zyuganov, head of the Communist party...

...If he goes, as czar he anoints his successor (as Yeltsin anointed him...

...The Putin elite, confi dent that gas and oil wealth guarantees it impunity, is pushing a host of antiWestern policies at home and abroad...

...Legitimate, effective mechanisms exist for sending Moscow the message that, while it may choose to disregard international norms, there are consequences...

...No one in Moscow forgets for a minute that the signature events of Putin’s presidency were the dispossession and imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the effective nationalization of his oil company (along with major chunks of other “strategic” industries), and the now firmly established control of these vastly profi table and tasty morsels by a small cohort of Putin’s friends and allies...

...Gusinsky fl ed Russia after a few days in jail in 2001, and Gutseriev did the same this summer after prosecutors hit him with criminal charges and his son died in a mysterious car accident...

...Second, a selection that is about property is a potential earthquake for the domestic elite, but will likely register no more than a tremor for ordinary citizens...

...So before reporters tie themselves in knots repeating Putin, Zubkov, Ivanov, Medvedev, Clinton, Giuliani, Obama, Romney, they should master two rules of thumb...

...some want more...

...If he stays, his team will furnish the necessary window dressing, be it a constitutional referendum for another term or a force majeure maneuver...

...The sum total of property that slid from the control of one group to another under Putin is counted in the tens of billions of dollars, and all of it is up for grabs if a new czar assumes the throne...

...Meanwhile, the Russian elite is publicly mum and privately manic, for the fate of its gains, ill-gotten and otherwise, depends on the name of the coming czar...

...Showboating ploys like calls to expel Russia from the G8 make infi nitely less sense than quietly holding Russia to its G8 commitments, including anticorruption initiatives...

...This is the ultimate goal, and it trumps all other concerns about Russia’s future...

...The very long list includes Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s oil company, Yukos, nationalized in a hostile takeover...

...The American elite is publicly active and privately calm, for it keeps what it has earned no matter who becomes president...

...Heavy-handed Kremlin tactics recently forced TNK-BP and Shell to cede hefty stakes in Russian projects to state-controlled companies on less than favorable terms...

...A thoroughgoing check by Western governments of that elite’s globalized fi nancial interests might be surprisingly salutary...

...He comes with cronies, the cronies are always hungry, and the stakes at the trough could not be higher...

...These mechanisms can be used to great effect...

...The West bit its tongue...

...Mikhail Khodorkovsky didn’t just lose Yukos...

...Russia has had its three chances over the last century and a half...

...This doesn’t mean that the ballots will bear a single name...

...It all comes back to the fact that Russia’s presidential election is about property...

...The lesson is simple: Follow the money...

...BY DANIEL KIMMAGE & DMITRY SIDOROV Russians will go to the polls to elect a new president in March 2008, Americans in November, and in both countries the media frenzy is in full swing...

...In the purely Russian game, the real stakes can be even higher...

...leading titanium manufacturer VSMPO-Avisma, swallowed by the state-run arms exporter...

...Now Putin is deciding whether he should stay or go...

...A czar, of course, never comes alone...

...But there the similarity ends...

...Their purpose will be to confer an appearance of legitimacy on the leader of the pack, and to ensure control over the country and its vast resources...

...The single exception occurred when Boris Yeltsin fi rst came to power in 1991...

...Once the issue is settled, the Kremlin’s mass-media propaganda machine will either burnish the image of the next president with endless imagery and spin, or tout the legitimacy of an extended reign for the current president...

...The opinions expressed here do not necessarily refl ect those of their employers...

...The procedure must look “democratic,” or else it will be diffi cult to convince the “enemies” of Russia that the “21st-century energy superpower” obeys the rules of the civilized world...

...and, more recently, Mikhail Gutseriev’s oil company, Russneft, currently under acquisition by Kremlin-friendly oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who has publicly promised to surrender it to the state if the Kremlin so much as asks...

...There is, of course, a catch to a presidential election that is really a selection: Not everyone is satisfied with what they have...

...Dmitry Sidorov is Washington bureau chief of Kommersant, a leading Russian business and political daily...

...For everyone outside Moscow’s most moneyed milieu, it hardly matters who the next czar is...

...The only question is whether anyone in the West has the courage to use them...

...As it turns out, the West has more leverage than it thinks...

...Russia’s hostile policy towards the West and the United States will stay in place, reforms will remain frozen, and the country’s infant civil society will be placed in foster care for the foreseeable future...

...he’s serving eight years in a Siberian camp...

...The mercenary reality behind the Kremlin’s electoral fl imfl am exposes the Putin regime’s Achilles’ heel...

...By contrast, California-based Google is far removed from the shifting sands of Gazprom, Gusinsky, and Gutseriev, and its cofounder Sergey Brin, though born in Moscow, will hold on to his shares no matter who replaces Bush in the White House...

...But that would have been bad for “democracy,” and Boris notched a win with a little help from friendly oligarchs...

...The redistribution of property that followed Putin’s ascent ran into the tens of billions of dollars...

...It’s all about the money...

...Western companies are not immune...

...What’s more, specifi c legislation, such as section 312 of the Patriot Act, which deals with “proceeds of foreign corruption,” and European Union money-laundering directives on “politically exposed persons,” are powerful tools for targeting the ill-gotten assets of corrupt offi cials and politically infl uential insiders...

...First, an election that is about policy, especially in a country as large and powerful as the United States, concerns ordinary citizens and the international community...

...In today’s polarized America, the election is about policy—Iraq, health care, the culture wars...

...Daniel Kimmage is a regional analyst at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty...

...Roman Abramovich’s oil company, Sibneft, nationalized in a friendly takeover (with full payment to the owner...

...In Russia, it’s about property, and how Vladimir Putin’s anointed successor will secure or divide it...

...The West was complicit in the failure of democracy in Russia in 1996, touting a roll with loaded dice as a victory for democracy...

...Small wonder Moscow’s upper echelons don’t have a lot of time for policy discussions these days...

...The recent freezing of a mere $25 million in a Macau bank— chump change by international standards—did wonders for the North Korean regime’s pliability in negotiations...

...If a fi ght ensues, the combatants have no public venue to resolve their differences and no rules to prevent the losers from having to forfeit all...

...But it holds no terrors for the domestic elite—Google and Microsoft are not up for grabs...

...And sooner or later, the people of Russia will fi nd out who they should vote for...

...But these seeming contenders will be bystanders, and they will know what their names are doing on the ballot...

...Russia has already signed on to a wide array of international obligations, such as G8 anticorruption initiatives...

...Reforms at the beginning of the 20th century foundered in war and revolution, the Khrushchev thaw turned to mud under Brezhnev, and Yelstin’s awkward attempt to bring democratic politics to millions has ended in a fi ght for property among billionaires...

...In 2008 the dice are loaded again...

...Now that the consequences are clear, what can be done...