Vladimir Putin said he would not plunge Russia into stagnation in a third presidential term but offered stability for what he warned would be a long and painful period of global turbulence. Putin, who ruled Russia since 2000 as both president and prime minister, looks set to win the March election but is facing a growing wave of public discontent after a contested parliamentary vote last month.
His critics liken the 59-year-old prime minister, who has dominated politics in both positions and has no serious rivals in the forthcoming vote, to Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev who presided over a period of stagnation in 1970s. "In the modern world stability is an asset which can only be earned by hard work, by showing openness to change and readiness for thought-out, calculated reforms," Putin wrote in the pro-government daily Izvestia on Monday, adding that stability "has nothing in common with stagnation".
In an article which opponents said was short on specifics, he said he supported neither "subversives" who want rapid change nor "self-satisfied gentlemen" who favour the status quo. Putin said Russia would soon be hit by a new global economic crisis and touted his achievements as a crisis manager who steered the country through a time of low oil prices in 2008-09.
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