Andrew C. Kuchins: Will economy be Putin’s downfall?

In some ways, it's not surprising that Russians were happy to vote Vladimir Putin back into the presidency in 2012. After all, the economy grew by an average of 7 percent from Putin's emergence in 1999 as a national politician, through his first two terms as president until May 2008, while real incomes more than doubled. Pensions were paid, and Putin had been able to brag in his last annual address to the Federal Assembly that "not only has Russia now made a full turnaround after years of industrial decline, it has become one of the world's ten biggest economies."