Good grief, Russia doesn’t do anything by halves do they? In a move that pretty much nobody saw coming, the entire Russian Government just handed in their resignation and bounced. All of them. Every last one (except Putin, of course).
Here’s what’s happening.
Russia has both a President and a Prime Minister. Our old friend Vlad is the President that we all know and love for such shenanigans as posing shirtless for calendars, and interfering in the US election. Just normal leader things.
Their Prime Minister is a step below the President, and until today was a guy named Dmitry Medvedev. He’s been Russian’s Prime Minister since 2012, and before that he was actually President for four years as a placeholder for Vladimir Putin (who swapped into the Prime Minister position) because they have laws on how long a President can sit for.
You know, democracy and all that jazz.
This all kicked off when Vladimir Putin proposed some amendments to the Russian constitution that would make the Prime Minister’s position far more powerful while taking away some power from the President. On the surface it sounds like Putin is sharing power around which would be nice, but it’s probably not what it seems.
The assumption is that Putin is getting ready for his Presidential term to be up in 2024, and is planning to swap back into the Prime Ministership and continue ruling from there.
After announcing these proposed reforms, Putin and Medvedev headed off to a meeting, which looked like this:
… and when they came out of the meeting, Medvedev and the entire government immediately threw in the towel. Turns out some of the ministers didn’t even know they were resigning until they were Medvedev announced it on TV.
Speaking to state media, Medvedev said “it’s obvious that we, as the government should provide the President of our country with the opportunity to make all the decisions necessary for this. And in these conditions, I believe that it would be right, in accordance with Section 117 of the constitution” to resign.
Putin thanked everyone in the Government before saying that “not everything worked out.” Do with that what you will.
So what happens next? The current Russian constitution lets the President choose all deputies and ministers. Putin has already nominated a guy named Mikhail Mishustin for the Prime Ministership – he’s the head of the Federal Taxation Service, and has no political profile to speak of. Putin has also asked everyone in the Cabinet to keep working until he chooses replacements for them.
It’s all a very suspicious mess, and we don’t really know what’s going to happen. As for now, I’m eagerly awaiting Trump’s congratulatory tweet, cause I’m calling it now: there will be one.
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