Botoxic Putin faces either resignation or palace coup

The daughter of former Soviet Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev, Nina, professor of international affairs at The New School in the US and senior fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York, published in the magazine New Europe an article entitled "Russia's botoxic president returns", where she in particular points out: "When a tsar is treated with mockery, rather than regarded with awe, it is time for him to consider retirement, or to prepare for a palace coup. Putin, who intends to stage a glorious return to the Kremlin as President in the election scheduled for March next year, should reflect on that choice. This year began with a vigorous (by Russian standards) Internet petition urging Putin to take the first option.

 
Putin's extravagant vanity has severely undermined the strongman image that he has spent the last 12 years building. After all, narcissistic publicity stunts and facelifts - which worked well for his friend Silvio Berlusconi in Italy (until they didn't) - don't inspire fear, or even respect, among Russians, where an iron-fisted ruler is always the preferred choice. So now Putin's image as the hard man of politics has been lost forever. It is difficult to assume a despotic countenance when you can't move your eyebrows.
 
Indeed, Russians heckle Putin not because he has turned Russia into an industrial banana republic, where exports of oil and other commodities sustain a quasi-authoritarian state, but because he no longer inhabits his role convincingly.
 
Indeed, Russians heckle Putin not because he has turned Russia into an industrial banana republic, where exports of oil and other commodities sustain a quasi-authoritarian state, but because he no longer inhabits his role convincingly. All the same, the origin of discontent with Putin is irrelevant; the desire for freedom has to start somewhere. So long as Russians feel empowered to confront the regime, even if only with contempt and laughter, there is hope for change. And now, with the election results inciting the largest protests since the collapse of the Soviet Union, that hope is growing. When a tsar loses his image of omnipotence, he eventually loses his grip on authority.
 
After Putin's long-running melodrama, the Kremlin's options for a sequel are quite limited. Everyone expects that the current president, the puppet Dmitry Medvedev, to switch roles with Putin after the March elections. But waiting in the wings is former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who could replace Medvedev should Russia need a factotum of sincerity about economic reform. Kudrin's reputation for placid competence might just buy Putin some extra time.
 
But, in Putin's eyes, this is an unlikely scenario. The once and future president argues that he has already made Russia stronger, and that, as financial uncertainty grips much of the developed world in 2012, the country has become an island of stability envied by many. Perhaps, but it is difficult to be a heroic leader and the butt of popular jokes simultaneously.
 
Putin is often compared to Joseph Stalin, but nowadays, as the 20th anniversary of the Soviet Union's collapse at the end of 1991 approaches, he looks increasingly like Leonid Brezhnev - the symbol of a political system that is well past its expiry date. All that is missing are the jowls".