The optimists and pessimists are both right. Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia is indeed changing for the better in many ways. But there is so much to change, and the pace of change will be so slow at best, that prospects must be measured in decades rather than years.
Barely past the starting point, the main results so far are these. The federal government is showing more focus at the policy level, if no more efficiency at the bureaucratic level. Regional governments have, by and large, accepted that they cannot go on grabbing power from the centre and turning Russia into 89 separate countries. There are plenty of economic reforms on the drawing board, but few in place
so far.
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