The person who will be most pleased with President Dmitry Medvedev's state of the nation speech on Thursday is the man who may well be giving it himself in three years time, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. For a supposedly Presidential speech, there was relatively little about foreign policy, which is telling, coupled with the fact that the speech painted a gloomy picture of the Russian status quo in terms of governance, infrastructure and economy. Medvedev is set for a fall; by taking responsibility for the domestic reform, which you might expect to be a prime minister's responsibility, he is clearing Putin of any tricky house-cleaning, and preparing him for a return to the Presidency.
Putin's former economic advisor Andrei Illarionov is dismissive, saying to Radio Free Europe: "I think it's a collection of loud phrases that don't have any serious basis". Boris Nemtsov, deputy prime minister of Russia (1997-1998) and co-founder of the excluded political movement Solidarity, described the proposals for reform as "clownery and comedy."
One very significant point is that the North Caucasus were described by Medvedev as "The most serious domestic political problem for our country." His warning that "The level of corruption, violence and clannishness is unprecedented" is the starkest comment yet about the deteriorating situation the region. His condemnation of corruption and violence there is the highest level acknowledgement yet by the Kremlin of the problems that the Chechnya Peace Forum has worked hard to highlight for over three years. The situation there is extremely serious, and Russian policy in the North Caucasus has been a total failure, leading to the increasing radicalisation of the region. Whether Medvedev will ever really be in a position to turn it around is severely in doubt. The ex-President who was sitting in the front row casts an unpromising shadow over both Dmitry Medvedev and the North Caucasus.
Ivar Amundsen
Director, Chechnya Peace Forum |
