MOSCOW: Being president of Russia is often caricatured as being like a tsar, but the powers of President Vladimir Putin are more constrained than the Kremlin’s former autocrats and Politburo chieftains. An obvious sign of this is the amount of time Putin spends on foreign trips with little diplomatic justification. Diplomacy, however, allows a president opportunity to enhance his authority for future domestic battles.
MOSCOW: Being president of Russia is often caricatured as being like a tsar, but the powers of President Vladimir Putin are more constrained than the Kremlin’s former autocrats and Politburo chieftains. An obvious sign of this is the amount of time Putin spends on foreign trips with little diplomatic justification. Diplomacy, however, allows a president opportunity to enhance his authority for future domestic battles.