JOIN USVladimir Putin's landslide victory in Russia's presidential elections is not surprising. The Russian President is popular in his country. Besides, none of the other candidates were genuine rivals with any credible chance of winning against him. The recent election was not so much a contest for the presidency as it was a referendum on Putin. And this, Putin won handsomely, securing 77% of the vote. His nearest rival was the Communist candidate, Pavel Grudinin, who trailed far behind with less than 12% of the vote. Other candidates mustered single-digit support. Alexei Navalny, an anti-Putin and anti-corruption activist, who was barred from the electoral race, had called for an election boycott. However, voter turnout was strong.
Russians have voted for Putin in large numbers because he has restored Russian national pride, returned Russia to the global stage as a major player and improved living standards for Russians. One has to only compare Russia today to where it was for a decade after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. In addition to the humiliation of losing the Cold War to the United States, Moscow lost millions of square kilometers of territory to 15 new countries that emerged from the Soviet Union's disintegration. For almost a decade thereafter, Russians had to endure the mortification of having Boris Yeltsin as their president. They suffered shortages and inflation at home, and watched helplessly as NATO expanded eastward. After assuming the presidency, Putin brought change. Russia stood up robustly to NATO, even pushing it back in Crimea. It countered America's global hegemony and has staved off western efforts to engineer regime change in Syria. Russia has returned as a major power on the world stage and Russians have Putin to thank. The stature of Russia during Putin's fourth term can be expected to grow further. The Russian President's efforts in this direction will be helped, no doubt, by US President Donald Trump's antics in the White House and on the global stage. However, Putin must avoid needless muscle-flexing as militaristic policies will bleed the Russian economy.
As Putin begins his fourth term as President, he needs to work on Russia's relationship with India, which has frayed in recent years. Concerned over the implications of the rise of the Islamic State (IS) in Central Asia and perceiving IS to be more dangerous than the Taliban, Russia is changing its policy towards Afghanistan, bringing it closer to Pakistan's position. Understandably, India is worried. The Narendra Modi government must accelerate its engagement of Putin to ensure that he remains India's friend. A strong and stable Afghanistan requires India, Russia and Iran to pull together in the same direction.