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By AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, MOSCOW, August 8 – Twenty years ago, Russian President Boris Yeltsin appointed his fourth Prime Minister in less than 18 months: Vladimir Putin, then chief of security services relatively unknown and inexperienced in politics.
The Yeltsin who was leaving was looking for a successor and few people could have predicted that Putin would now lead Russia, having badumed a dominant role in world affairs.
But this anniversary comes at a time of uncertainty about the reign of the leader.
Putin's approval ratings remain at a level that most western leaders would like to have, but they have suffered from a slowing economy and declining standard of living.
A protest movement in Moscow has meanwhile seen thousands of people arrested in recent weeks – the biggest crackdown since the wave of protests against Putin's return to the Kremlin in 2012, after another period as prime minister .
The 66-year-old is currently facing a succession drama.
This is his last term under the Russian constitution, but – after eliminating competition and gaining control of most media – there is no obvious figure to replace it.
According to badysts, it is unlikely that the oldest Russian leader in office since Joseph Stalin will completely abandon power at the end of his current term in 2024.
– Putin the liberal –
The situation was very different when Putin won his first presidential election after Yeltsin resigned at the beginning of the New Year 2000.
"Russia, despite its poverty and crime problems, remained a democratic and liberal country," said the well-known journalist Nikolai Svanidze, who often interviewed Putin at the start of his stay in the Kremlin.
"After 20 years in power, he is by no means limited, he is practically a sultan," said Svanidze.
Political badyst Konstantin Kalachev said that Putin was initially a liberal ready to work with the West, but over time he has taken a more conservative and hostile stance.
"Until the mid-2000s, the country was living a political life and the elections were competitive," said Kalachev.
After the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, which according to the Kremlin was backed by foreign governments to reduce Russia's influence on its Soviet-era satellite, Putin's attitude changed.
The West's contemptuous attitude towards Russia as well as its interventions in Iraq, Libya and elsewhere have further disillusioned Putin, Kalashhev told AFP.
"I believe his disappointment … was the trigger for this evolution" towards a harder line, said the badyst.
The liberal Russians, however, had concerns about their leader from the beginning – not only because of his KGB background, but also his harsh crackdown on Chechen separatists as prime minister.
A series of murderous bombings against Russian buildings, attributed to separatists, remains, however, of current interest. Some claimed that the security services had organized an operation to cover a new military intervention in Chechnya.
Putin's firm reaction to the crisis heightened his popularity among the general public and helped him move from acting president to elected leader, with 53 percent of the vote.
He remains popular among the many layers of the population, who see him as the man who restored the dignity of Russia after the humiliating fall of the USSR and as a guarantee of stability after the changes of the 1990s.
– & # 39; Historic Mission & # 39; –
Now, Putin and his team are looking for a way out of the Kremlin that will allow them to retain their influence, said badyst and media commentator Gregory Bovt.
This may be through the creation of a new institution rather than a brief return to the role of prime minister to circumvent the constitutional limits to the presidency, as in 2008, according to Bovt.
"A kind of collective body will be created to run the country, and Putin will still remain at the helm of the country," he said, a system similar to the former Soviet Kazakhstan, in which Nursultan Nazarbayev , long-term leader, has pulled out but continues to play.
But if that happens, Putin will probably be far removed from the daily management of Russia.
"It will remain to monitor the country … its task is to fulfill its historic mission," said Bovt.
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