Politics have returned to Russia, with a vengeance. The contested December 2011 parliamentary elections, which were supposed to be an inconsequential stepping stone on Vladimir Putin's triumphant return to the presidency and the Kremlin, instead gave birth to a serious challenge to the ruling regime. A Putin victory in the March presidential elections, although still likely, is no longer a boring inevitability. The post-election protest demonstrations of December have shown that the Russian populace is not as inert as many supposed, and that Putin's mastery of the political system is increasingly shaky.
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