Is Vladimir Putin losing his grip?

Sorry but this article is a loads of bollocks. Here's why:

Putin has backtracked on both social and economic freedoms

Which socio-economic freedoms and reforms has he backtracked on? In one of the annual Q&A's held in 2015, he promised to bring the country back from recession within next 2-3 years and drastic affects of sanctions in place.

Come 2017, Russian economy has rebound: GDP growth projections point to positive figures in 2018 Q1, domestic industry has strengthened, with oil prices rising as the cherry on top.

Companies have been restricted from operating abroad unless they can fulfill foreign policy objectives,

I fail to see which 'foreign policy objectives' author talks about that company couldn't fulfill and were restricted from operating abroad? Without going into concrete details, citing facts and figures or examples, the article presents a fluffy hypothesis and bases an entire argument around it.

Arguments in this article are so fallible that I actually had to google Anders Aslund only to be surprised that he is a renowned Swedish economist.

For every 100 individuals, there are 1,2 SMEs and 2 individual entrepreneurs (chastniy predprenimatel') SMEs account for over 30% of revenues in entire Russia for sales of services/goods and this figure is nowhere far from average OECD numbers. Interestingly, numbers that I am quoting are a couple years old already. According to a research done by a Moscow-based incubator, number of entrepreneurs and start up applications has grown by 28% already in past 2 years. All this I am aware of as a person with interest in Russia. If author had had any conceivable interest in a balanced review of the state of industry and economy in Russia, I believe he'd have dig in deeper.

TL;DR: Betteridge's law of headlines applies here.

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