[34][35] In November 2007, Simon Tisdall of The Guardian pointed out that "just as Russia once exported Marxist revolution, it may now be creating an international market for Putinism" as "more often than not, instinctively undemocratic, oligarchic and corrupt national elites find that an appearance of democracy, with parliamentary trappings and a pretense of pluralism, is much more attractive, and manageable, than the real thing".

[61] The article concluded with an alarmist statement that Russia was in the midst of one of the most difficult periods in its history: "For the first time in the past 200–300 years, it is facing the real threat of slipping down to the second, and possibly even third, rank of world states".

[39] Migranyan said that Putin began establishing common rules of the game for all actors, starting with an attempt to restore the role of the government as the institution expressing the combined interests of the citizens and "capable of controlling the state's financial, administrative and media resources".

[67] BBC diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall in her 2007 article described Russia's "scarred decade" of the 1990s, with "rampant hyperinflation", harsh Yeltsin policies, population decrease at a rate similar to that for a nation at war, and the country turning "from superpower into beggar", and then wonders: "So who can blame Russians for welcoming the relative stability Putin has presided over during the past seven years, even if other aspects of his rule have cast an authoritarian shadow?

[68] According to Dr. Mark Smith (March 2003), some of the main features of Putin's regime to that point were the development of a corporatist system by pursuing close ties with business organizations, social stability and co-optation of opposition parties.

A specific and complex branch of laws has also been constructed through these last years to make it more difficult for NGOs and human rights organisations to run and communicate on their activities, to access information, and to receive international funding, thus severely hindering their ability to operate independently, and for the smaller ones, to survive.

In other instances, the blanket application of these sanctions might contradict the requirement under the European Convention on Human Rights that the interference with the freedom of association and assembly has to respond to a pressing social need and has to be proportional to the legitimate aim pursued.

[100] According to advocate Ivan Pavlov, Alexei Navalny was not the party to the proceedings and the judge refused to give him such status; at the hearing, the prosecutor stated that defendants are extremist organizations because they want the change of power in Russia and they promised to help participants of the protest with payment of administrative and criminal fines and with making a complaints to the European Court of Human Rights.

[134] Russian politician Boris Nemtsov and commentator Vladimir Kara-Murza define Putinism in Russia as "a one party system, censorship, a puppet parliament, ending of an independent judiciary, firm centralization of power and finances, and hypertrophied role of special services and bureaucracy, in particular in relation to business".

[135] Russia's nascent middle class showed few signs of political activism under the regime as Masha Lipman reported: "As with the majority overall, those in the middle-income group have accepted the paternalism of Vladimir Putin's government and remained apolitical and apathetic".

[136] In December 2007, the Russian sociologist Igor Eidman (VCIOM) categorized the Putin regime as "the power of bureaucratic oligarchy" which had "the traits of extreme right-wing dictatorship — the dominance of state-monopoly capital in the economy, silovoki structures in governance, clericalism and statism in ideology".

[137] In August 2008, The Economist wrote about the virtual demise of both Russian and Soviet intelligentsia in post-Soviet Russia and noted: "Putinism was made strong by the absence of resistance from the part of society that was meant to provide intellectual opposition".

[138] In early February 2009, Aleksander Auzan, an economist and board member at a research institute set up by Dmitry Medvedev, said that in the Putin system "there is not a relationship between the authorities and the people through Parliament or through nonprofit organizations or other structures.

[146] On 4 March 2022, Putin signed into law a bill introducing prison sentences of up to 15 years for those who publish "knowingly false information" about the Russian military and its operations, leading to some media outlets in Russia to stop reporting on Ukraine.

[69] "There is a school of thought which says that a number of Putin's steps in the economy (notably the fate of Yukos) were signs of a shift toward a system normally described as state capitalism,[153][154][155] where "the entirety of state-owned and controlled enterprises are run by and for the benefit of the cabal around Putin—a collection of former KGB colleagues, Saint Petersburg lawyers, and other political cronies", he said in his words.

[158] Jason Bush, chief of the Moscow bureau of the magazine Business Week has commented in December 2006 on troubling growth of government's role: "The Kremlin has taken control of some two dozen Russian companies since 2004 making them public property, including oil assets from Sibneft and Yukos, as well as banks, newspapers, and more.

[172] In December 2008, Anders Åslund pointed out that Putin's chief project had been "to develop huge, unmanageable state-owned mastodons, considered "national champions"", which had "stalemated large parts of the economy through their inertia and corruption while impeding diversification".

[173] On 14 November 2016, Elvira Nabiullina, the head of Central Bank of Russia, stated that "the previous model which based upon exporting raw materials and stimulating consumption, including through consumer lending, has been exhausted; this was manifested in «the fading of the rates of economic growth before the crisis and the drop in oil prices".

According to this document, the main objectives of foreign policy are the following: On 10 February 2007, Putin delivered a confrontational speech in Munich where, inter alia, he accused the West of breaking the promise not to expand NATO into new countries in Eastern Europe believing that is a threat to Russia's national security.

[183] In opinion of Andrey Kolesnikov, senior fellow of the Carnegie Moscow Center, this speech was the "foul of the last hope": Russian president wanted to scare the West with his frankness believing that, perhaps, "western partners" would take into account his concerns and make several steps forward to meet him.

In his speech, he urged the formation of a broad anti-terrorist coalition to combat ISIS and blamed the events in Ukraine on "external forces", warned the West against unilateral sanctions, attempts to push Russia from the world market and export of color revolutions.

For the first time, he also held a meeting with President Obama to discuss the situation in Syria and Ukraine, but in the outcome of the negotiations and despite the persistence of deep contradictions the experts saw a faint hope for a compromise and the warming of relations between the two countries.

that Russian military organization needed further reform; as Vladimir Shamanov said, cadre regiments and divisions, intended for receiving mobilization resources and deployment in the period immediately preceding the outbreak of war, have become a costly relic.

These goals should be achieved through 3 elements:[256] The Gerasimov doctrine[257] enunciates wide use of so-called non-linear warfare and reflexive control (propaganda, cyberattacks, diplomatic actions, economic instruments, bribing foreign public officials, etc.

[292] American historian Stanley G. Payne argued that Putin's political system is "more a revival of the creed of Tsar Nicholas I in the 19th century that emphasized 'Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality' than one resembling the revolutionary, modernizing regimes of Hitler and Mussolini.

'Authoritarianism is growing harsher, society is being militarised, the military budget is increasing,' they warned, before calling on the West to 're-examine its attitude towards the Kremlin leadership, to cease indulging it in its barbaric actions, its dismantlement of democracy and suppression of human rights.'

[317] In 2008, the Paris-based AFP reported that ahead of the December parliamentary and March presidential elections, in which despite being required by the constitution to leave office, Putin was widely expected to find some way to retain power as his personality cult was gathering pace.

[331] In 2006, political scientist Julie Anderson wrote: "Under Russian Federation President and former career foreign intelligence officer Vladimir Putin, an 'FSB State' composed of chekists has been established and is consolidating its hold on the country.

A report called He Is Not Dimon To You shows how Medvedev allegedly owns and controls large areas of land, villas, palaces, yachts, expensive apartments, wineries and estates through complicated ownership structures involving shell companies and foundations.

According to David Satter, Yuri Felshtinsky, Alexander Litvinenko, Vladimir Pribylovsky and Boris Kagarlitsky, the bombings were a successful false flag operation coordinated by the Russian state security services to win public support for a new full-scale war in Chechnya and to bring Putin to power.