Elections in Russia should consolidate Vladimir Putin in power

Russia is approaching a presidential election that will certainly extend Vladimir Putin's rule into the 2030s.

Much of the voting will take place over three days starting March 15, although early and postal voting has already begun, including in occupied parts of Ukraine where Russian forces are trying to assert authority.

But this is not a normal election; the vote is essentially a constitutional exercise that holds no prospect of removing Putin from power.

The president's grip on the Russian electoral system has already been strengthened as the elections approach. The country's only anti-war candidate was barred from running, and Alexei Navalny, the poisoned and jailed former opposition leader who was the most prominent anti-Putin voice in Russia, died last Friday.

Here's what you need to know about the election.

When and where will the elections take place in Russia?

Voting will be held from Friday, March 15, until Sunday, March 17, the first time a Russian presidential election will last three days.

A second round of voting would take place three weeks later if no candidate received more than half the votes, although it would be a big surprise if that happened. Russians are electing only the office of president; the next legislative elections, which make up the Duma, are scheduled for 2026.

Early voting has already begun in hard-to-reach areas, with approximately 70,000 people able to vote in remote areas of Russia's Far Eastern Federal District, according to state news agency TASS. The region represents more than a third of Russia's total territory, but only has about 5% of its population.

Early voting in Zaporizhia, one of four Ukrainian regions that Russia said it would annex in September 2022 in violation of international law, began on Sunday, TASS said.

Russia has already held regional votes and referendums in these occupied territories, a measure considered by the international community to be a farce, but which the Kremlin considers fundamental to its “Russification” campaign.

How long has Vladimir Putin been in power?

Putin signed a law in 2021 that allowed him to run for two more presidential terms, potentially extending his rule until 2036, after a referendum the previous year allowed him to extend his term.

This election will mark the beginning of the first of these two extra terms.

He has essentially been the country's head of state throughout the 21st century, rewriting the rules and conventions of Russia's political system to broaden and expand his powers.

This already makes him Russia's longest-serving ruler since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

Putin's previous efforts to maintain control included a 2008 constitutional change that expanded presidential terms from four to six years, and a temporary job swap with his then-prime minister Dmitry Medvedev the same year, which preceded a quick return. to the presidency in 2012.

Who else is running?

Russian election candidates are strictly controlled by the Central Election Commission (CEC), allowing Putin to run in a favorable field and reducing the potential for an opposition candidate to gain momentum.

The same happens this year. “Each candidate presents juxtaposed ideologies and domestic policies, but collectively they fuel Putin’s goal of consolidating control over Russia during his next presidential term,” wrote Callum Fraser of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank.

Nikolay Kharitonov will represent the Communist Party, which has been allowed to field a candidate in every election this century but has not won a fifth of the votes since Putin's first presidential election.

Two other Duma politicians, Leonid Slutsky and Vladislav Davankov, are also running. Davankov is deputy speaker of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, while Slutsky represents the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, the party formerly led by ultranationalist firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who died in 2022. All are considered pro-Kremlin.

But there is no candidate who opposes Putin's war in Ukraine; Boris Nadezhdin, previously the only anti-war figure, was barred from running by the CEC in early February after the body claimed he had not received enough legitimate signatures to confirm his candidacy.

In December, another independent candidate who spoke out openly against the war in Ukraine, Yekaterina Duntsova, was rejected by the CEC, citing alleged errors in her campaign group's registration documents. Later, Duntsova appealed to people to support Nadezhdin's candidacy.

Writing on social media in early February, opposition activist Leonid Volkov called the elections a “circus,” saying they were intended to signal the masses' overwhelming support for Putin. “We need to understand what the March 'elections' mean for Putin. They are a propaganda effort to spread hopelessness” among the electorate, Volkov said.

Are elections fair?

Elections in Russia are neither free nor fair and essentially serve as a formality to extend Putin's term in power, according to independent bodies and observers inside and outside the country.

Putin's successful campaigns were, in part, the result of “preferential treatment of the media, numerous abuses of power, and procedural irregularities during vote counting,” according to Freedom House, a global democracy watchdog. .

Outside of election cycles, the Kremlin's propaganda machine has targeted voters with occasionally hysterical pro-Putin material, and many news sites based outside Russia were banned after the invasion of Ukraine, although younger, more seasoned voters in technology, have become accustomed to using VPNs to access them.

Protests are also heavily restricted, making public expression of opposition a dangerous and rare occurrence.

Then, as elections approach, true opposition candidates almost inevitably see their candidacies withdrawn or are barred from running for public office, as Nadezhdin and Duntsova discovered during this cycle.

“Opposition politicians and activists are often targets of trumped-up criminal prosecutions and other forms of administrative harassment designed to impede their participation in the political process,” Freedom House noted in its latest global report.

Is Vladimir Putin popular in Russia?

Truly gauging popular opinion is notoriously difficult in Russia, where the few independent think tanks operate under heavy surveillance and where, even in a legitimate inquiry, many Russians are afraid to criticize the Kremlin.

But Putin has undoubtedly reaped the rewards of a political landscape dramatically tilted in his favor. The Levada Center, a non-governmental research organization, reports that Putin's approval rating is over 80% – an astonishing number virtually unknown among Western politicians, and a substantial increase in his ratings in the three years before the invasion. from Ukraine.

The invasion gave Putin a nationalist message around which to rally Russians, and even as Russia's campaign faltered throughout 2023, the war maintained widespread support.

National security is Russians' priority as elections approach. Ukrainian attacks on Russia's border regions have brought war to many people within the country, but support for the invasion – euphemistically called a “special military operation” – remains high.

The Levada Center concluded at the end of 2023 that “rising inflation and rising food prices could have a lasting impact on the mood of Russians”, with an increase in spending cuts by a large part of the population.

But that doesn't mean that Russians expect the elections to change the country's course. Putin benefits enormously from apathy. Russians have never witnessed a democratic transfer of power between rival political parties, and expressions of anger against the Kremlin are rare enough to keep large swaths of the population disconnected from politics.

Putin's former speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov told CNN this week that discontent against the president is rising in Russia. Gallyamov said Putin seeks to eliminate opposition leaders from society to at least ensure that such discontent remains “unstructured,” “disorganized” and “leaderless” before future elections.

How does Navalny's death affect the election?

The timing of the death of Alexei Navalny – Putin's most prominent critic – served to emphasize the control that Russia's leader exercises over his country's politics.

In one of Navalny's last court appearances before his death, he encouraged prison service officials to “vote against Putin.”

“I have a suggestion: vote for any candidate other than Putin. To vote against Putin, just vote for any other candidate,” Navalny said on February 8.

He died on Friday (16) after falling ill during a prison walk and falling unconscious, according to the Russian prison service. The cause of death is unclear and his body was only released this weekend to his mother, after a dispute with authorities.

This cast an ominous shadow over the campaign. Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, called on the European Union to “not recognize the elections” in a speech to the EU Foreign Affairs Council, just days after the death of the Kremlin opponent.

“Putin killed my husband exactly one month before the so-called elections. These elections are fake, but Putin still needs them. For advertising. He wants the whole world to believe that everyone in Russia supports and admires him. Don’t believe this propaganda,” she said.