(Financial Times) Russia’s parliamentary elections on December 4 and presidential poll next  March are often dismissed as processes whose outcomes are pre-ordained. But the  Kremlin may find it more difficult to control the results than it once did.

The mood in Russia has changed since the last electoral cycle four years ago.  Back then, the economy was still growing at 7 per cent a year, the global  financial crisis a distant cloud. Moscow’s leadership brimmed with confidence.
Most Russians would have been happy to see then president Vladimir Putin  remove a constitutional limit of two consecutive presidential terms and stay on.  Instead, he installed Dmitry Medvedev as placeholder president and moved to the  prime minister’s chair – respecting the letter, if not spirit, of the  constitution.
Now Mr Putin is coming back for a third presidential term, Russia’s  intellectual and business elites, at least, are no longer sure this is a good  thing. Debates at last week’s annual Valdai Discussion Club, a Putin initiative  dating from 2004 that brings together top foreign and domestic specialists on  Russia, revealed deep unease.
Emboldened, perhaps, by the off-the-record format, many Russian participants – including those who once broadly backed Mr Putin – openly questioned whether  today’s ossified political system could deliver the modernisation Russia needs.
Timothy Colton, a Harvard professor who summarised the group’s findings to Mr  Putin at a dinner on Friday, suggested that most agreed on one thing: “The  present model of government, which took shape in Russia in the last 10 or 12  years, appears to have exhausted its potential.”
A report prepared mostly by Russian experts as the basis for the Valdai  discussions gave an even starker assessment.
Today’s Russia had “no efficient parliamentary system, no independent  judicial system, and no developed municipal administration”, it warned.  Parliamentary parties were “imitations”. The leadership had “bought” bureaucrats’ loyalty by allowing them to steal. But corruption was out of  control, and now the main factor determining policies in many areas.  (read more)
Personally I believe this kind of political consideration is just fluff and puff optics and narrative building from Putin’s opponents and detractors.   The MASSIVE rise of Red Communist China, the emergence of an Eastern European/Asian conglomerate, and the visible advocacy of China and Russia to work with friendships and coalitions supporting anti-western forces like Iran will insure a hard line authoritarian rise to power.
Russia and China are well positioned, and will collaboratively align to extend their economic and military power against a more open capitalist west.
Indeed, time will tell…..