Posted on September 11, 2009 - by Venik

Russia has huge political and economic problems, says Dmitry Medvedev

President’s assessment of ineffective economy and weak democracy stops short of blaming Vladimir Putin

Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, has admitted that his country faces appalling structural problems including a weak democracy, shrinking population, and a non-performing economy.

In a withering assessment of the country, Medvedev avoided criticising Vladimir Putin, the man in charge for most of the last decade and now prime minister, but said Russia had so far failed to fulfil its enormous potential.

The country faced vast social challenges, he said, including corruption, a feeble civil society, terrorism, alcoholism, and smoking. Russia was also in the grip of a poverty-fuelled insurgency across its North Caucasus, he added.

“An ineffective economy, a semi-Soviet social sphere, a weak democracy, negative demographic trends and an unstable Caucasus. These are very big problems even for a state like Russia,” Medevdev wrote in his official blog.

The president also conceded that Russia’s vertically controlled political system – in which all opposition parties have been squeezed out – was not ideal.

Its democracy should be “open, flexible, and complex” with “competitive elections”, he suggested.

Most commentators were left underwhelmed by Medvedev’s comments – which follow a number of recent attempts by the president to shape the debate over Russia’s future. Most Russians continue to believe that it is Putin who runs the country.

The newspaper Vedomosti noted that Medvedev – a former St Petersburg lawyer – used the word “but” 18 times in his article, and the word “of course” nine times.

It was pointless to call for modernisation and innovation while the Putin-led Russian government was doling out billions to inefficient state-run firms, the paper noted.

Political commentators have spent the past year scanning for signs of a split between Putin and Medvedev. The current consensus is that there isn’t one. In his article, addressed to Russia’s “dear citizens”, Medevev was careful not to blame Putin, his mentor.

Experts said that Medvedev did not appear to recognise that, as president, it was his task to solve Russia’s manifold problems. “You have to ask Medvedev some primitive questions. What are you doing? You are the president. You have all the constitutional powers,” said Andrei Ryabov, a scholar at Moscow’s Carnegie Centre.

Ryabov said that Russian bloggers had reacted sceptically to the article – ahead of Medvedev’s once-yearly state of the nation speech next month. “They point out that if Medvedev was serious he would dismiss his government,” he said. Asked whether the president’s speech was “hot air”, he replied: “Something like that.”

Putin is due to give his own assessment of the health of the nation later today during a meeting with international journalists, including the Guardian, at his dacha just outside Moscow.

Original article

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