Mr Putin, whose approval ratings are close to 70 per cent, has occupied the Kremlin for four terms since he was first elected in 2000 but had to step down in 2008 because of constitutional limitations.
There is currently no legal way for the 67-year-old president to run again in 2024 when his fourth term ends, and speculation has been rife about what could be done to keep him in the top spot.
One of the options would be to change the number of presidential terms written in the constitution or hand more powers to the government, parliament or a new body for Mr Putin to lead.
Let me note that that's a brave 30% that refuses to praise the supreme ruler who has secret police and pliant judges under his command.
Back to Putin's career path.
Term limits can be extended to let Putin rule as long as he wishes. But let's not pretend that's an obstacle.
But that last quoted sentence refers to handing powers to whatever other office (with a bonus reclaiming of imperial lands!) Putin occupies.
I'm betting on the latter route to power. Russia has practiced moving troops into Belarus, after all. And Putin does have his own personally loyal army.
Which would cause a lot of problems for NATO.
UPDATE: Uh oh:
Western allies fear that Russia will gain sovereignty over Belarus, a former Soviet satellite state that could help preserve Vladimir Putin’s grip on power and sharpen Kremlin threats against NATO members.
Russian expansion is on the table because Putin is trying to finalize the implementation of a union treaty that the two countries signed in 1998. Moscow and Minsk interpret the agreement differently, but Putin has begun to apply economic pressure to Belarus while scheduling a flurry of meetings with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko over the last year.
“I think this mild annexation will just happen, probably next year,” Alisa Muzergues, a foreign policy analyst at GLOBSEC in the Slovak Republic, told the Washington Examiner. “To be honest, my personal feeling is that it's already a done deal."
I've been worried about such an Anschluss for a long time.
This puts Poland on the frontline; makes it easy for Russia to cut off Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania from the rest of NATO; and gives Russia more options to threaten Ukraine's northern flank.
