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The world is changing. Russia is not. And Vladimir Putin would like things to stay that way. Stability has been his No. 1 selling point ever since he came to power 12 years ago. Even prosperous Muscovites—people who don’t much care for their president’s brand of Soviet nostalgia, his macho nationalism, or his KGB-style crackdowns on dissent—mutter among themselves that for all his regime’s flaws, its predictability is still preferable to the wild upheavals of the 1990s.