Vladimir Putin begins a third presidential term in 2012 with an opposition movement in the streets and no clear sense of whether the Kremlin will tolerate it or crush it. The film sets that question against Russia's stagnant economy and entrenched corruption, the two problems most likely to define whether Putin governs as a reformer or simply consolidates power. Roman Dobrokhotov, founder of the protest group Walking without Putin, speaks for the demonstrators pushing for change, while Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-appointed electoral representative, argues the establishment case for continuity. Oxford's Federico Varese supplies outside analysis of how Russian politics actually functions beneath the rhetoric on both sides. The film moves between these three positions rather than settling on one, tracking how the state's response to dissent shifted from relative restraint in December's protests toward something harder as Putin's term begins. It closes without resolving its own title, leaving the tsar-or-reformer question open as an active argument rather than a verdict.