In Russia, voters went to the polls on Friday for a three-day presidential election that is almost guaranteed to prolong President Vladimir Putin’s tenure in office by six more years following his suppression of opposition.
Putin now has complete control over the political system, and the election is taking place against the backdrop of a brutal crackdown that has destroyed independent media and well-known rights organizations.
It also occurs as the third year of Moscow’s campaign in Ukraine approaches. On the battlefield, where it is making marginal, if gradual, progress, Russia is ahead. Meanwhile, Ukraine has exposed Moscow’s weakness behind the lines: sophisticated drones have forced Russia’s Black Sea fleet to take defensive measures, and long-range drone strikes have targeted far inside the country.
Voters in the eleven time zones of this large country, as well as in unlawfully occupied territories of Ukraine, will cast their ballots at polling places from Friday through Sunday. At 8 a.m. local time, the first polling places opened in Chukotka and Kamchatka, the easternmost territories of Russia.
As Putin, 71, is practically unopposed in his bid for a fifth term, there is little reason for excitement around this election. His political rivals are either imprisoned or living abroad in exile; the most ferocious of them, Alexei Navalny, just passed away in an isolated prison colony in the Arctic. The other three contenders on the ticket are obscure lawmakers who support the Kremlin and come from token opposition parties.
There is very little hope among observers for a free and fair election. In addition to the restricted options available to voters, there are relatively few opportunities for impartial oversight.
The possibility of independent watchdogs is reduced because observers can only be assigned to polling places by registered candidates or state-backed advisory groups. Any real monitoring is challenging in any case, as voting takes place over three days in roughly 100,000 polling places nationwide.
“The Russian elections are a fraud overall. Who is on the ballot is controlled by the Kremlin. How they can campaign is controlled by the Kremlin. Not to mention having complete control over the voting and vote-counting procedures,” stated Sam Greene, the Center for European Policy’s director of Democratic Resilience.
Russia has also come under fire from the West and Ukraine for conducting elections in areas of Ukraine that its soldiers have captured and taken over.
Political analysts and representatives of the opposition argue that Ukraine is essential to this election in many ways. They claim that Putin wants to show that the conflict and his leadership are widely supported by pointing to his all but certain political triumph. Meanwhile, the opposition wants to show that they are against the war and the Kremlin by using the vote.
According to political expert Abbas Gallyamov, the Kremlin barred two candidates from the race who attempted to run on an antiwar platform and garnered significant support, albeit not overwhelming one. This prevented the voters from having a choice on the “primary issue of Russia’s political agenda,” said political analyst Abbas Gallyamov, who used to work as Putin’s speechwriter.
Russia’s opposition has called for dissatisfied citizens to attend the final day of voting on Sunday, the final day of voting, in protest against President Putin. The strategy was endorsed by former President Yulia Navalnaya, who urged voters to vote for any candidate except Putin. However, the effectiveness of this strategy remains unclear. Russia’s independent election observer group, Golos, has described the campaign ahead of the vote as “practically unnoticeable” and “the most vapid” since 2000. The group also noted that state media dedicated less airtime to the election than in 2018, when Putin was last elected. The watchdog’s co-chair, Grigory Melkonyants, is in jail awaiting trial on charges seen as an attempt to pressure the group ahead of the election. The opposition claims that the current elections will not reflect the real mood of the people, as the distance between citizens and decision-making about the country’s fate has become greater than ever.
(AP)
