Quotes of the Day

This is not the way Vladimir Putin wanted 2005 to begin. Since Jan. 10, a sea of angry pensioners has filled the streets of cities across the country to protest cuts in their social benefits: housing and prescription-drug subsidies, and free public transport. Military officers, who have also lost benefits, are angry too. Faced with the most widespread demonstrations of his presidency, Putin tried to blame his cabinet for botching the reforms, then ordered pensions raised. But pensioners are threatening bigger protests in February when a second wave of reductions kicks in. And this week, Putin is expecting a visit from the man to whom he "lost" Ukraine: Viktor Yushchenko, who was set to be sworn in as Ukrainian President last weekend despite Putin's very public support for his Kremlin-friendly opponent, Viktor Yanukovych.

The bad news is piling up so thick and fast, in fact, that some Kremlin insiders speak of high anxiety among presidential staff, and of a President who seems increasingly isolated. Some analysts say Putin, who has worked so hard to project an image of authority and control, has lost his touch. Some even argue that his hold on power — which seems all but unassailable, given his 71% re-election win last year and his all-but-complete control of the Duma, the media and the regional governors — is beginning to slip.

Take Stanislav Belkovsky, president of the National Strategy Institute, a Moscow think tank. Known as a Putin supporter, an advocate of the state-sponsored dismantling of oil titan Yukos, and a reliable bellwether for the nationalist wing of the Moscow élite, Belkovsky turned on Putin last week. In an interview with TIME, he dismissed the President as "a minor clerk" who ended up running Russia "by a stroke of luck." He claimed that "disappointment and irritation" with Putin are growing in the middle ranks of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB and a crucial Putin power base. And he predicted that opposition will continue to grow — and that it could even drive Putin from office before the end of his second term in 2008.

That sort of doom-laden analysis is an extreme minority view — but the fact that it is being aired at all is remarkable. The Russian political system is authoritarian and secretive, but there's no sign that Putin's supporters are preparing to abandon him. In the past, Putin has shown himself ruthless in imposing his authority — as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Yukos founder who tried to challenge Putin's power by funding rival political parties, discovered to his cost. Khodorkovsky has been in prison since October 2003, charged with offenses, which he denies, including tax evasion, embezzlement and theft. So when critical views are expressed, it suggests that somewhere within the country's ruling establishment, questions are surfacing about the President's ability to lead.

Sergei Markov, a prominent pro-Kremlin analyst, dismisses Belkovsky's predictions, recalling his past links with exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky, a Putin nemesis. Markov acknowledges that Putin suffered setbacks in 2004, but says he remains "confident and in charge." But Mikhail Delyagin, a member of the pro-Putin nationalist political movement Rodina, agrees with Belkovsky's diagnosis. Putin's wobbly response to the pensioner crisis "shows he's not capable of comprehending the acuity of the situation," Delyagin says. And even if he was, Delyagin thinks he wouldn't be able to do much about it: "His team is too weak, and the President is a quite primitive person with a limited range."

Lilia Shevtsova, an independent analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, says, "There is no doubt that many intelligence and security specialists share [Belkovsky's] views." Shevtsova thinks things really started going wrong last year. The massacre in Beslan in September, in which over 300 children and adults died after pro-Chechen rebels seized a school in North Ossetia, "underlined the failure of the Kremlin's Chechnya operations," she says. The final destruction of Yukos in December, when Baikal Finance Group, a consortium linked to the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft, bought its main oil producing unit, Yuganskneftegaz, for a knockdown price, "demonstrated the state's unwillingness to guarantee private property." And Yushchenko's victory in Ukraine showed that Russia wanted to pursue "an imperialist foreign policy but couldn't even achieve that." Shevtsova believes Putin is building an authoritarian system that "contains not only colossal menace for Russian society, but could escape from the control of those who created it."

So, are these the first signs that the system is slipping from Putin's control? The poll numbers are not good. Earlier this month, the Romir polling agency reported that 49% of respondents in a nationwide survey felt that the country was heading into a "dead end" — 20% more than the previous year. The Public Opinion Foundation, a polling outfit regarded as well disposed to the President, released a survey last week showing that his popularity has dropped from 48% to 43% in just over two weeks. But the real problem for Putin over the next few years may come from the economy, which could fuel yet more domestic unrest.

The destruction of Yukos coincided with a shift in economic policy, with the Kremlin reasserting state control over key areas of the economy like energy, and gradually backtracking on promises of free market reforms. By the end of last year, even members of Putin's own team — his economic adviser Andrei Illarionov and Trade Minister German Gref — were complaining that reforms had stalled and the President had failed to use the bonanza in oil revenues to shift the economy away from its near total dependence on oil and gas and toward a more diversified set of exports. In December, Illarionov warned that Russia had once again returned to "an interventionist model with dramatic and utterly incompetent interference from the state."

The pensioners could accelerate any economic crisis. Despite Putin's attempts to distance himself from the harsh impact of the reforms, the President was, in fact, strongly behind the law, according to pro-Kremlin analyst Markov, who says he forced it on a reluctant United Russia, the Kremlin-controlled ruling bloc in the Duma. Putin could still distance himself from the reforms and from his increasingly unpopular government — fire a few ministers and reshuffle his Cabinet — and present himself as righting the injustices wrought by his underlings. Senior government ministers promise, so far without details, that they will have solved the benefits mess by next month, when more cuts are due. But suggestions by some members of the government and the ruling political bloc in the Duma that the demonstrations were organized by unnamed enemies of the state seem to leave open the possibility that the Kremlin has not ruled out a crackdown.

By a strange irony, another group of people came out onto the streets last week to publicize their demands: the families of the victims of Beslan. Since Jan. 20, several hundred have occupied a major highway in North Ossetia, cutting off all traffic, to draw attention to their demand for the resignation of Alexander Dzasokhov, President of North Ossetia, whom they hold responsible for last year's tragedy. Some inside the Kremlin fear that Putin's combination of concessions and crackdowns won't be enough to stop the same thing being demanded of him.

• PAUL QUINN-JUDGE/MOSCOW
• As angry Russians take to the streets, President Vladimir Putin's iron grip may be loosening