(CNN) 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% 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."
It may have been Putin's bellicose rhetoric and shirtless photo opportunities that grabbed headlines overseas, but the fact is, his popularity was fundamentally based on the perception of growing prosperity for Russian citizens. The problem for Putin now is that the remarkably felicitous combination of economic factors that fueled his popularity for so long seems to be crumbling around him. […]
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