Russian Lawmakers May Extend Putin’s Rule

Leaders of the lower house of Russia’s parliament agreed Thursday to consider a constitutional amendment lengthening the presidential term to seven years, a step that could enable President Vladimir V. Putin to maintain power far beyond the current limit.

It is unclear whether the amendment can be enacted before the March 14 balloting that Putin is likely to win. But that may not be the main purpose of the initiative, which some see as a trial balloon for changes to be implemented during Putin’s expected second term.

Putin, who has previously said the length and number of presidential terms should not be extended, repeated his opposition to such an amendment Thursday. But he did so in a way that praised its intent.

“I can understand why some people come forth with initiatives like this,” Putin said on state-run television. “As far as I can understand, it is aimed at creating more stable conditions for the country’s development, at creating conditions under which the country and its citizens would feel more stability in their own lives and a more stable development along the main policy lines which are formulated by the head of state and which, as it seems to me, are supported by the majority of the people.”

Putin added, however, that he cannot support the proposal because “stability in this case will be achieved by means of destabilizing the foundations of our statehood, namely, the constitution.”

Regardless of the fate of this proposal, the legislative action reinforced the fears of critics that the resounding victory of pro-Putin forces in December’s parliamentary election means he may remain in office long past 2008, when the constitution requires that he step down.

“Putin is not a czar yet, and he personally may not even want to become one, but he is being pushed into becoming a czar from all possible sides,” Vladimir A. Ryzhkov, an independent parliamentarian, said in an interview.

“I am very much afraid that today’s initiative of the parliamentarians is designed to probe the ground and figure out what the attitude will be toward amending the constitution and extending the president’s term of office on the part of Russian society, political parties and the West,” Ryzhkov said.

“The combination that is likely to be played out is quite transparent,” he added. “The president may be against the extension, but everything will be done allegedly against the will of the president. But these games are easy to see through.”

To amend the constitution to change the length or number of presidential terms requires a two-thirds majority in the State Duma, or lower house of parliament, and a three-quarters majority in the Federation Council, or upper house. It also needs the president’s signature and approval by two-thirds of Russia’s regional legislatures.

Observers generally believe that pro-Putin forces have the strength to meet all those requirements, although winning a sufficient number of approvals from regional legislatures by March 14 will be extremely difficult.

“It does not even matter whether the president’s term gets extended before the coming elections in March. The main thing has happened: The mechanisms have been set in motion,” said Pavel I. Voshchanov, a political analyst who served as former President Boris N. Yeltsin’s spokesman.

“It is obvious that things have taken a pretty serious turn. The extension of the term is no longer some lobby talk, not some noncommittal chit-chat,” Voshchanov added. “This is a real issue that will be voted on by the lower house of Russia’s parliament. And given the composition of the present Duma, one shouldn’t doubt for a second that the issue will be passed by the Duma with flying colors.”

Andrei Kabanov, a deputy of the legislature in Ivanovo, a region about 150 miles northeast of Moscow that presented the proposed amendment to the Duma, said on NTV television that “the people want stability” and implied that Putin needs more time to do his job. “The country is huge, and it is extremely difficult to implement any serious changes in this country in a matter of four or five years.”

Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, a flamboyant ultranationalist who is a vice speaker of the lower house of parliament, expressed unreserved support for the proposal and claimed some credit for it.

“In fact, we are the ones who have brought this issue up before many times, regardless of who is in the Kremlin,” he said in televised remarks.

Speaking at a news conference, Dmitry Rogozin, another vice speaker of the Duma, declared: “In our time -- a time of universal obsequiousness and barefaced toadying -- something like this would simply look ill-mannered and improper. So I think the president himself does not want this.”

Irina Khakamada, who is challenging Putin in the March contest on a pro-business and pro-democracy platform, blasted the proposed amendment in comments to NTV as reminiscent of the politics of Turkmenistan. The rule of that country’s president serves in Russia as a symbol of a dictatorship driven by a personality cult.

“Things may look fine in the national economy, but the situation in the political sphere is getting worse every day,” Ryzhkov said. “The process of erosion of the already flimsy Russian democracy born in the 1990s has acquired the nature of an avalanche.”

Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.