Can Putin Make Russia Great Again?

A promised surge in government spending may not be enough to halt the economy’s slide

- Andrey Biryukov and Evgenia Pismennaya

Six years ago, when President Vladimir Putin last ran for president, workers at the UralVagonZavod factory in Nizhny Tagil volunteered on national television to come to the capital to confront the Muscovites who’d taken to the streets to protest his continued rule. In early March he was back at the Ural Mountains plant for a campaign stop, telling employees, “I tried not to let you down.”

While no one in a hand-picked group of listeners there challenged him, the mood among some of their colleagues in the gritty city isn’t nearly so upbeat. Layoffs and wage cuts have swept the state owned company, a Stalin-era giant that churns out battle tanks and other heavy equipment. “Salaries are down 40 percent,” says Alexei Dimitrov, who heads a small union at the factory that’s filed a suit challenging the wage cuts. “They left us no alternative but to go to court.”

Putin may have cruised to a landslide win in the March 18 election, but the Kremlin is worried that pocketbook issues are a growing liability. Never mind that a credit rating company elevated Russia out of the “junk” category in February. For many, the pain of the most recent recession—which at seven quarters was the longest of Putin’s rule—lingers.