Putin, in special session outlined what would be the most sweeping political restructuring and his most striking single step to consolidate power in Russia in more than a decade. Critics immediately said it would violate the constitution and stifle what political opposition remains.
Under Putin's proposals, which he said required only legislative approval and not constitutional amendments, the governors or leaders of the country's 89 regions would no longer be elected by popular vote but rather by local legislatures and only after the president's nomination.
In addition district election of the lower house of the parliment would be suspended and replace with national party slates which he could control.
"The electoral changes require the approval of parliament, but because the party loyal to Putin, United Russia, controls more than two-thirds of the 450 seats, that is almost a foregone conclusion. Mitrokhin said that although Putin's proposals "contradict the letter and the spirit of the constitution," challenges to them would be futile."
Signed, sealed and delivered...Comrade Putin, here's your empire.
Vladimir Putin: Stalin in a suit?
The mass murder of school children has given Russia's president a pretext to become Russia's dictator. Vladimir Putin is seizing that opportunity.
Already the dominant politician in a country accustomed to autocrats, the chilly former KGB man is offering his fearful people security in exchange for servitude – not that he can keep his end of the bargain.
Mr. Putin's brutal and clumsy war to suppress the Chechen independence movement almost guarantees the creation of more terrorists who will stop at nothing, not even the murder of children. Yet Mr. Putin vows to persist in that bloody folly, claiming, with little evidence, that the underlying problem is Islamic terrorism.
Nor is there reason to believe that Mr. Putin's corrupt and incompetent military and security forces can protect Mother Russia's children, any more than they protected the children of Beslan.
Yet the politicians Mr. Putin orders around seem ready to give him vast additional powers. Essentially, he would control the national legislature and the governors of all 89 regions. The people would lose the right to vote for those local officials. Yet Mr. Putin says no constitutional amendments are needed, only the consent of his obedient legislature.
Mr. Putin and his buddies already control much of the news media and try to intimidate the rest. He is refusing to allow an independent investigation of the government's lies and failures at the doomed school. He is calling for the banning of organizations and religions his government doesn't like. One Russian critic says, "we are coming back to the U.S.S.R."
The lash, the Siberian exile and the bullet in the back of the head may not be coming back, but centralized power in the hands of one man seems to be.
The United States can't control what happens in Russia, but it can speak out against what appears to be the imminent disappearance of anything that resembles democracy.