[W]hat they saw in... [Putin] was that he had protected Sobchak. And as they said, "He didn't give up Sobchak, and he's not going to give us up." - Karen Dawisha

It is a system that was created with a purpose by intelligent design from the very beginning of the Putin regime. ...[E]ven the 2000 election was fraudulent. Putin would not have won in the first round without massive fraud.

The and its supporters use the courts to scare off researchers who want to expose the corruption at the core of this regime.

Putin will not go gentle into the night. ...[L]ess flexible and more bombastic in his public appearances ...those in his inner circle suggest that after the 2011–12 election demonstrations, there is ...fear. Gleb Pavlovskiy, his PR guru... believes that Putin will never leave power and ...hampered by the idea that Russians will always decide ...by violence. Pavlovskiy ...heard Putin say, "We ...know that as soon as we move aside, you will destroy us. ...you'll put us to the wall and execute us. And we don’t want to go to the wall."