As Vladimir Putin starts 5th term, here's how he reshaped Russia & seeks to create new world order

Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to be sworn in for his fifth term as the leader of Russia on Tuesday.

After first becoming the Russian leader in 1999 on the New Year’s Eve, 71-year-old Putin has continuously held onto power. In nearly 25 years, he has consolidated power like few leaders have anywhere in the world.

Putin, a former agent of erstwhile Soviet Union’s intelligence agency KGB, has cultivated a host of loyalist oligarchs, removed those political and business elite who could challenge him, shut down dissent, removed all opposition in his country, and ramped up the challenge to the Western world order.

Putin has not just challenged the West by not following the rules of the US-led world order, but Russia under him has increasingly set out to undermine the West and United States by interfering in elections across countries, deploying proxies in parts of the world, partnering with China to prop a parallel alliance against Western democracies, and plunging Europe into the most serious crisis since the World War II with the invasion of Ukraine.

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Putin’s 5th term overshadowed by Ukraine war

The highlight of Putin’s fifth term is expected to be the Russian war against Ukraine that he launched in 2022.

While Russia will observe a weeklong celebration to mark Putin’s fifth term, the West has declared the elections sham as Putin did not have any substantial opposition challenging him. His most notable critic, Alexie Navalny, died in a Russian penal colony during the elections under mysterious circumstances. Other opponents are also serving prison sentences or have been forced into exile.

While Putin’s first year of war against Ukraine did not go as per the plan as Russian forces spectacularly failed to capture Kyiv and overthrow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Russian war efforts have gained momentum in recent months as Moscow’s forces have started piling on new victories in the east.

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After failing to capture Kyiv in the initial weeks of the invasion, Russia focussed war efforts to the country’s east, the Donbas region, and the war has seen been focussed them.

Russian leader for life

Putin served two terms as the President of Russia and left the office in 2008.

In 2008, Putin became the Prime Minister of Russia after the Russian constitution barred him from a third presidential term. Even though he was not the president, it is understood that he called the shots during the four-year stint as PM of Russia.

In 2012, Putin returned as the President of Russia. He got the Russian constitution amended to allow two more six-year terms for himself.

In 2021, Putin again got the constitution amended that would allow him to be in office till 2036. Much like his closest partner Xi Jinping of China, it said been said that he will remain president for life.

Putin building his ‘New World Order’

In October 2023, Putin accused the West of building a ’new iron curtain’ and said he was building a ’new world order’ to counter the West.

The iron curtain is a term that refers to the barriers the erstwhile Soviet Union erected to seal off itself from the West.

In contradiction to the liberal Western values, Putin has increasingly pushed nationalism and social conservatism, which have included passing laws against the LGBTQ community, notes AFP.

Putin has also pushed for family-centric roles for women and has clamped down on feminist movements.

“Some countries deliberately destroy norms of morality, institutions of the family, push whole peoples towards extinction and degeneration. We choose life,” said Putin in an address.

As for women, Putin said, “You, dear women, are capable of changing the world with your beauty, wisdom, and generosity of spirit, but mostly thanks to your greatest gift the nature gave you: giving birth to children. Motherhood is an amazing preordination of women.”

Ksenia Luchenko, a Visiting Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that Russia is pushing “moral traditionalism to the extreme” under Russia in the remaking of the country.

“Just as Bolshevism in the Soviet Union was a radical, fundamentalist interpretation of socialism, Russia now pushes moral traditionalism to the extreme. The president hands down one decree after another to regulate morality and ethics, and demonstrates his power over the private lives of his citizens. In doing so, he not only positions himself as a leader in an alternative (authoritarian) global order, but also stamps out liberal life in Russia and strengthens his autocracy,” said Luchenko in an article.