Eight years of Putin in the Russian Presidency: A balance

As for the supposed lack of independence of the judiciary, Petro shows that 71% of the proceedings enacted by citizens against the state benefited them, and that the population more and more shows confidence in and uses the justice system to resolve conflicts. Most of the Russian media are independent, being that the participation of the state in the printed environment is only 10%, electronic almost non-existent, and it is important only in television, though there are also private sectors with national reach, only recently opened. Finally, as for the nomination system of the governors of republics and autonomous regions, it works from 2004 the following way: after legislative elections, the parties that gained seats in the parliament sends the names of their candidates to a presidential commission, which revises them (principally to detect cases of serious corruption or involvement with organized crime, which are still common in the local authorities) and, with this endorsement, nearly always governors nominate the member of the party who obtained the biggest number of votes. Undoubtedly it is a measure that reduces local autonomy, but it is not an arbitrary nomination by the president, as the process depends more than anything of the parliament and of the local voters primarily.

	Eight years of Putin in the Russian Presidency: A balance
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Finally, much is said on the Russian military escalation during the Putin government. Really, there was an important increase of defense expenses, and finally Russia managed to reverse the decline that its armed forces were suffering from the end of the USSR. But it is not possible to speak in terms of escalation, because the growth of defense expenses has been caused by the economy, and the proportion of soldiers / GNP expenditures has remained stable, between 2,5 % to 2,8 %. On the other hand, the USA spends much more not only in absolute values, but also in relation to the GNP: 4,06 %. Russia is not returning to the times of the cold war nor does it intend to, conscientious of the serious problems that immense Soviet military expenses had caused to the economy of the country.

External policy

As for external politics, for Russia Putin has the objective to restore the country as a worldwide power, and the economic recuperation has facilitated reaching this end. Following is a short summary of the evolved relations of Russia with different countries in the last eight years. Russia and China are the principal members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, created in the decade of the 90s which also has as full members almost all the countries of old Central Soviet Asia (except Turkmenistan), and as observers India, Pakistan and Iran. These countries cooperate economically and militarily, and there are plans of turning the SCO into a military alliance and an area of free commerce.

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