Russian voters forced to extend Putin’s rule
Leader’s true foes are in jail, in exile or dead
Voters headed to the polls in Russia on Friday for a three-day presidential election that is all but certain to extend President Vladimir Putin’s rule by six more years after he stifled dissent.
The election takes place against the backdrop of a ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and prominent rights groups and given Putin full control of the political system.
It also comes as Moscow’s war in Ukraine enters its third year. Russia has the advantage on the battlefield, where it is making small, if slow, gains. Ukraine, meanwhile, has made Moscow look vulnerable behind the front line: Long-range drone attacks have struck deep inside Russia, while high-tech drones have put its Black Sea fleet on the defensive.
Voters will cast their ballots Friday through Sunday at polling stations across the vast country’s 11 time zones, as well as in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine. The first polling stations opened in Russia’s easternmost regions, Chukotka and Kamchatka, at 8 a.m. local time.
The election holds little suspense since Putin, 71, is running for his fifth term virtually unchallenged.
His political opponents are either in jail or in exile abroad, and the fiercest of them, Alexei Navalny, died in a remote Arctic penal colony recently. The three other candidates on the ballot are low-profile politicians from token opposition parties that toe the Kremlin’s line.
Observers have little to no expectation that the election will be free and fair. Beyond the fact that voters have been presented with little choice, the possibilities for independent monitoring are very limited.
Only registered candidates or state-backed advisory bodies can assign observers to polling stations, decreasing the likelihood of independent watchdogs. With balloting over three days in nearly 100,000 polling stations in the country, any true monitoring is difficult anyway.
Ukrainians living in regions illegally annexed by Russia are being coerced to vote, an exercise denounced by Ukraine as an illegitimate effort by Moscow to tighten control over its neighbor.
Many Ukrainians fled these regions — or were deported by Russia — after Putin’s invasion two years ago, and there are reports of people being forced to vote at gunpoint. There are no international election observers in Ukraine.
The Russian government is prodding Ukrainians with billboards and posters to vote “for their president” and to “take part in the future of our country.”
“The elections in Russia as a whole are a sham. The Kremlin controls who’s on the ballot. The Kremlin controls how they can campaign. To say nothing of being able to control every aspect of the voting and the vote-counting process,” said Sam Greene, director for Democratic Resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington.