The idea that Putin wants to wield supreme power from behind the throne is questionable

Maybe the theory of a power-hungry leader is correct. But it is not the only explanation that would be compatible with his proposed amendments to the constitution

It is hard to imagine what more Russia’s president could have done to confirm that he was leaving office – yes, really leaving office – when his current term expires in 2024 than what he said in his state-of-the-nation address this week. Yet the instant consensus of western Kremlin-watchers, Russian opposition figures and jaded members of Russia’s chattering classes was that what he had actually meant was that he intended to go on and on.

“We have a new Brezhnev,” was one comment – an allusion to the decrepit Soviet leader whose death in office in 1982 offered an early symbol of the doomed USSR. Russia’s “new system – and a new Putin”, said another, should be in place by 2021, while a BBC correspondent spoke of a “jigsaw” that, “when complete, will show Putin still in power”. Far from preparing for a transition, they agreed, Vladimir Putin was actually devising an elaborate scheme to stay on.

How the drama that then unfolded fits into this scenario – the resignation of the Russian government en masse, the sideways move of the long-serving prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, to become deputy chairman of the Security Council (a body modelled on its US counterpart) – and the appointment of the head of the tax service, Mikhail Mishustin, as interim prime minister – was not at once obvious. But a favoured explanation was that Medvedev had been upset by the constitutional changes broached by Putin earlier in the day and tendered his and his government’s resignation in response.