Putin on the blitz
RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has won a landslide reelection victory, extending his rule over the world’s largest country for another six years at a time when ties with the West are on a hostile trajectory.
Putin’s thumping victory will extend his total time in office to nearly a quarter of a century until 2024, by which time he will be 71. Only Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ruled for longer.
Putin has promised to use his new term to beef up Russia’s defences against the West and to raise living standards.
Putin yesterday thanked voters for their support at a victory rally, saying Russia had a great future ahead of it provided its people stayed united.
Speaking from a stage just off Moscow’s Red Square in front of a cheering audience, he said the election result was a recognition of what had been achieved in the past few years, despite difficult conditions.
Before leaving the stage to applause, he led the crowd in a chant of “Russia, Russia!”
Backed by state TV and the ruling party, and credited with an approval rating around 80 per cent, Putin’s victory was never in doubt. It was his best- ever election performance, winning more than 76 per cent of the vote, with none of the seven candidates who ran against him posing a threat and opposition leader Alexei Navalny barred from running.
Critics alleged that officials had compelled people to come to the polls to ensure that voter boredom at the one-sided contest did not lead to a low turnout.
However, Russia’s Central Election Commission is likely to declare the result legitimate.
The immediate question is if and when opponents like Navalny organise protests, cit- ing widespread fraud, and how large and sustained those protests will be.
Putin, 65, has been in power, either as president or prime minister, since 2000.
Allies laud the former KGB agent as a father-of-the-nation figure who has restored national pride and expanded Moscow’s global clout with interventions in Syria and Ukraine.
Critics accuse him of overseeing a corrupt authoritarian system and of illegally annexing Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, a move that isolated Russia internationally.