Russian President Vladimir Putin achieved a significant victory in the presidential elections, which saw no competition, thereby solidifying his grip on power. The results indicate that Putin, at 71, will easily secure another six-year term, surpassing Joseph Stalin to become the longest-serving leader of Russia in over 200 years. Stalin ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist for nearly a quarter of a century until his death in 1953. Latest results show that after counting 99.5% of the votes in the Russian presidential elections nationwide, Vladimir Putin led with 87.33%, followed by Nikolai Kharitonov with 4.31%, Vladislav Surkov with 3.79%, and Leonid Slutsky with 3.19%. The United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and other countries have stated that the elections were neither free nor fair due to the imprisonment of political opponents and censorship.
The elections came just over two years after Putin ignited the most violent European conflict since World War II by ordering the invasion of Ukraine. Although Putin’s re-election was not in doubt due to his control over Russia and the absence of any real competitors, the former intelligence officer wanted to demonstrate overwhelming support from Russians. The West portrays Putin as a tyrant and murderer. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Putin wants to rule forever and that the elections were illegal. Putin has established one-man rule, the leader of both the nation and the multi-ethnic state, and has managed to contain all centers of power and tailor them to reinforce his absolute rule after restructuring the balance of power, turning it into tools complementary to his authority, known today as the “oligarchy and siloviki” duality.
This duality has re-floated the system of individual autocracy that ruled Russia before the Communist revolution, which derived its legitimacy from ideological justifications that combined Orthodox identity and the divine right of the Tsar to rule. This equation cost the last of the Russian Tsars, Nicholas II, dearly after he refused to consider the social and cultural transformations in Russia affected by the great Industrial Revolution and the fundamental shifts experienced by neighboring Europe in its cultural, religious, and political structure. In his accession speech in 1894, the last Tsar asserted he would adhere to the path of absolute monarchy, considering the people had been led astray by meaningless dreams of participating in governance, and announced his commitment, following the advice of the radical right wing within the Romanov royal family, to the rule of an individual who consolidates all powers. However, the failure of the economic reform and development plans Putin set out to accelerate reforms in 2008, named “The Long-Term Social and Economic Development Concept of the Russian Federation until 2020,” has been notable.
Under Putin’s rule, Russia has become merely a state that hardly adds anything new to the world in culture, arts, industry, technology, and science. Indeed, Putin’s Russia, with its entourage of businessmen and security officials, is nearly becoming one of the third-world countries in governance style, societal marginalization, hindering political, economic, and social development, and lacking the liberal democracy characteristic of Western countries. This Russia has become akin to a poor country; despite its large size, being the largest country in the world with 17 million km², and its small population relative to its vast geographic area, and despite its mineral and oil wealth, the standard of living is low, and the levels of education, health services, and infrastructure are poor. It depends more than anything on its exports of oil and gas, and its arms exports. The average per capita annual income in Russia is 23,000 dollars.
More specifically, in politics, Russian democracy has eroded, noting that it does not have a rich democratic heritage. Observe in this regard the swap game between Putin and Medvedev, the absence of civil society, the decline of the press, and the disappearance of the opposition. Also, note that the role of the Russian Duma has become ceremonial, much like the Syrian People’s Council, and that this assembly unanimously approved military intervention in Syria, which was blessed by the Orthodox Church, and that the military forces hastened to act without any hesitation or question. The implication is that today in Russia, no one says no to Putin or objects to what he does.
The hybrid nature of Russia’s political system is evident due to accusations of election rigging that spurred most of the so-called “colored revolutions,” such as the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia in 2003, and the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine in 2004, as well as the Russian protests of 2011 and 2012, which were concentrated in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Indeed, like other hybrid regimes, Russia has created specific dilemmas for itself. For example, although Russia has not completely excluded independent media, it has pushed critical viewpoints to the margins. When state media, which flatters the regime, dominates, political leaders receive little feedback on their citizens’ opinions of them, making it difficult for them to determine the point at which society collapses and how close they are to reaching this point. This is why the size of the anti-corruption protests came as a surprise to Russia’s leaders.
Putin’s regime faces many corruption accusations, especially credible claims of massive corruption among senior government officials, posing a challenge to both the political legitimacy of the regime and the wealth of its rulers. The disclosure of illicit wealth held by government officials poses a profound problem for the Russian leadership; they operate under a system where political power is the only real guarantee of property rights. Putin’s dreams collapsed at the end of 2014 with the fall of global oil prices. Since then, the economy has been faltering, and popular grievances have been accumulating. While many Russians struggle to meet their basic needs, accusations of illicit wealth gain more weight. Putin survived the protests of 2011 and 2012 by labeling the protesters as liberals from the professional class, living in major cities and detached from real Russians and their traditional values. But at that time, Russia was enjoying economic growth supported by oil, and that growth has expired.
Regarding the war in Ukraine two years later, a U.S. intelligence assessment revealed that the Russian forces suffered massive human losses from late February 2022 until the end of last year, amounting to up to 315,000, about 90% of the Russian forces, which numbered 360,000 before the war. The intelligence assessment presented to Congress also stated that the Russian military also lost 2,200 out of 3,500 tanks it had before the conflict erupted. In contrast, to compensate for the severe losses, Moscow resorted to “extraordinary measures” such as recruiting released prisoners and sending them to the front.
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