 Hello, I'm Andres Martinez, Vice President and Editorial Director here at the New America Foundation. I'm joined today by Steve Levine, one of our senior fellows, who's also the author of the Oil and the Glory blog on Foreign Policy Magazine and the author of Putin's Labyrinth, a book that came out about three years ago. A lot has changed in Russia in those three years, and now Sunday, Prime Minister Putin, having to keep track of what job he's currently holding, but he is now running to assume the presidency once again. Last year, people who don't follow Russia as closely as you did had a tendency to look at what was happening on the streets of Moscow in December as the latest iteration of this process that we saw play itself out in the Middle East with the protest movements fueled by social media that toppled Mubarak, and it felt like this was just the latest chapter. But that might be overly simplistic for people who don't understand the Russian context as much. Talk a little bit about whether that is the correct framing and whether there's a danger for Putin, opportunity for others, that Russia might be in for a Russian spring. There is a sense of unreality in how we're viewing what's going on in Russia. Russians came out into the streets not as an outflow of the Arab Spring, but indignation over Putin's presumptuousness in deciding, I'm coming back to the Kremlin and putting in motion all of the political steps in order to make that happen. So it was just sort of too much that it was clear that he just had Medvedev kind of keep his seat warm for six years and the pretense was just something that people couldn't stomach? Was that the trigger? Everyone knew what the situation was, that Medvedev was his frontman. But it was one thing Medvedev being his frontman and Putin standing up on stage and saying, Incidentally, Medvedev has been my frontman and now I'm coming in. And every so often it seemed like Medvedev would make sounds about wanting a rule of law in Russia and there was always hope, spring's eternal in Washington in terms of the natively dressed Russian leader who seems to be talking to a Western audience. But we're kind of back to a more traditional script, I suppose. Right. It was, in fact, Medvedev, even though he had no power and one presumes that these statements, although they appear to be independent of Putin's position, had been vetted through Putin before they were made, it still served Putin well to have that figure in front. He could say things credibly that Putin could not. But when Americans have watched what's going on in Russia, it's not just misperceiving what's going on. We hope he's going to fall. And Putin picks up on that. And so in terms of unreality, just playing that out, Putin also has a sense of unreality. The reason that he's lashing out, the way that he is against Americans, and we've seen that in the past weeks about the American response to the Arab Spring, is he feels a threat. He feels the danger of the Arab Spring. So he does really feel that there could be some contagion and a domino effect. Absolutely. You can see that in his speech that he recently made in which he said, countries want to invade us. We will impede any invader we always have. And he drew an analogy to Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. I saw the Woody Allen movie about that. So talk a little bit about it seems clear he's going to prevail on Sunday in the election and barring any kind of mass mobilization protest. He will be the president for at least another term. What should the Obama administration do in terms of dealing with this reality, given the need to work with Russia on a number of fronts? And famously there was an attempt to reset the relationship. That process seems very broken. What would your advice be? Well, one thing this is correct, that reset, if not dead, is way on the back burner. Second thing is to not make the mistake of viewing Putin's rhetoric today as electioneering. He is giving a signal as to how he's going to rule. He hopes for the next six years he's setting in motion the platform on which he's going to rule. And it's a xenophobism. We are surrounded kind of a paranoia. He's showing that in his opposition to the policies in Syria, for example, that he's unhappy not just with how the United States has gone ahead with its opposition to Assad, but with all of the Arab Spring. It demonstrates that he needs to be brought more closely to the tent. We need Putin on the UN Security Council. I think that the last three years of reset has shown that he calms down when he's brought into the tent. It's just about stroking his ego. It is. Can I ask you, when you talk about the platform that he's trying to build for himself in this next term, how important, I mean you're a specialist on energy markets and oil in particular, and that's what you blog about in foreign policy. So how important, right now we're seeing surging oil prices again. We tend to think perhaps simplistically about the stability of certain regimes being dependent on oil prices, I'm thinking of say Chavez in Venezuela. But how important is that for Putin's prospects going forward? Oil is the main prop underneath his rule and underneath his ability to rule as he wants to. So to the degree that the price of oil, the international price is over $100 a barrel, he's going to be able to continue the kind of full-throated, Russia is here, listen to us policies that he currently is. And it looks like oil is going to remain above that price through this year and next. If it falls, especially if it goes below $80 a barrel, he's going to be in trouble and conversely you're going to see a much friendlier Putin. So $80 is the magic number. So just to end this nice chat, putting you on the spot, will Putin prevail Sunday and finish out his term? Yeah, I think he will and he is trying to make people comfortable with the idea that he's going to rule for the next six years and he hopes 12. The opposition is trying to make people comfortable with the idea that he may win or that he will win. But his term is going to be short and it's going to be shorter than six years. He's definitely going to serve for six years. There is no scenario in which his term is cut short. The only question mark is whether he serves an additional six years after that. Interesting. You heard it here first. Thank you very much. We'll keep watching. Thank you.