Does Putin even need an election?

Being “elected” to office, even if by dubious means, holds its own allure for dictators and other types of authoritarian leaders. That is why Saddam Hussain held a referendum in 1995, two decades after seizing power, in which his presidency was endorsed by 99.96% of the voters. In 2002, he was elected by 100% of the voters. Vladimir Putin's election as the President of Russia for a fifth term, with 88% of the votes cast, may be more modest in comparison, but it was entirely pre-determined. Putin's control over the political opposition and dissidence has not been total, but his control over State institutions is complete. That much was clear from the recent death of Alexei Navalny, his most potent political opponent to date. Boris Nemtsov, the other politician who might have posed a challenge to Putin, was shot dead on a Moscow street in 2015. Other dissenters and potential political challengers, too, met their premature deaths in Russia or elsewhere. The Russian media is tightly controlled. The Central Election Commissioner, who announced the results and said the country was “united” behind Putin, is window-dressing in such a system. 

But it would be erroneous to assume that Putin has no popularity of his own. Like all leaders who use the trope of a glorious national past, Putin has a vast constituency of believers in the imminent return of Russia's greatness. He is seen as the leader who pulled Russia out of its “decade of humiliation” after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His annexation of Crimea was hailed in Russia. Contrary to the impression that the Western media has been trying to drum up, his war in Ukraine has not dented that constituency. And Western sanctions do not seem to have hit the Russian economy as badly as expected, at least in the short-term. 

Predictably, Putin has thanked the country for the “support and trust” that voters have reposed in him. The 71-year-old leader, who has now ruled over Russia for close to 25 years, played this election as a referendum on the war, asking the country to support his revanchist ambitions. He inaugurated his new term by promising to press ahead in Ukraine, declaring that Russia “will not be intimidated” and that all efforts to suppress “Russian consciousness” had failed. The war looks set to continue at the same stalemated level, unless a possible change in the White House later this year brings about a policy shift on US support to Ukraine, or European powers lose interest in it for their own economic and political reasons. In Russia, unless a new challenger emerges against all odds, Putin's hold over the country is now at its strongest.