Putin's Ratings Fall Because He Won’t Take Responsibility During Crisis, Paneyakh Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 14 – The ratings of Vladimir Putin are falling because he so obviously wants to avoid taking responsibility for handling the crisis and instead is shifting it to the governors, businesses and ordinary people, according to Ella Paneyakh, a sociologist at the European University in St. Petersburg.

            She tells Rosbalt that “the growth in negative assessments of the president were predictable” but not at all typical of the international scene. In other countries, even in Italy, where leaders took responsibility, they gained support because “people understand that they are being defended from a real danger” (rosbalt.ru/piter/2020/04/14/1838351.html).

            But in Russia, Paneyakh says, this hasn’t happened. Instead, the Kremlin’s rush from responsibility and its lack of clarity in what it is doing – its directions have been inconsistent and halting – have cost it support.  It has made business responsible for paying people. It has made governors responsible for the situation locally. And it has thus left the people on their own.

            Still worse in many ways, she continues, the Kremlin leader has not exercised effective control over the police and Russian Guard who seem “incapable of distinguishing people going to stores and those going for recreation.” The Russian people can see this and are drawing conclusions about the capacities of the powers that be.

            Such actions by the siloviki seem to Russians, Paneyakh says, “illegal, illegitimate and an additional factor” in what some now see as a looming constitutional crisis.

            “As a result of all this,” the sociologist suggests, “even when the government does something correct, its actions are viewed more negatively than one might expect … we have come to a point when every decision of the president and the government is viewed by people as an attempt to manipulate or deceive them.”

            And there is another development in public opinion which may have even greater consequences in the future: Russians now “view the regional authorities as leaders,” contrasting what they are doing with what appears to them to be “the clumsy and confused” moves of Putin and the federal government.