© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Russian President Vladimir Putin walks to ship his annual tackle to the Federal Meeting, in Moscow, Russia, February 29, 2024. Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Kremlin by way of REUTERS/File Picture
By Man Faulconbridge
MOSCOW (Reuters) -In a Russia at struggle, there is just one actual candidate and just one winner: Vladimir Putin.
As Russians started casting their ballots within the March 15-17 election throughout the nation’s 11 time zones, the 71-year-old former KGB lieutenant colonel’s recognition is excessive amid sturdy help for the struggle in Ukraine.
“I help Putin and, in fact, I’ll vote for him,” stated Lyudmila Petrova, 46, who was purchasing for Chinese language-made counterfeit New Steadiness sneakers in southern Moscow at considered one of Russia’s largest wholesale markets.
“Putin raised Russia up from its knees. And Russia will defeat the West and Ukraine. You can’t defeat Russia – ever,” Petrova stated. “Have you ever within the West gone fully mad? What’s Ukraine to do with you?”
The West views Putin as an autocrat, a struggle felony, a killer and even, as U.S. President Joe Biden stated final month, a “loopy SOB” who U.S. officers say has enslaved Russia in a corrupt dictatorship that results in strategic destroy.
However in Russia the struggle has helped Putin tighten his grip on energy and enhance his recognition with Russians, based on polls and interviews with senior Russian sources.
“Have no doubt: it is a job for all times,” stated one highly effective Russian who’s acquainted with pondering on the high ranges of the Kremlin. He spoke to Reuters on situation of anonymity to voice his views on political points.
“Putin has no opponents – he’s at a totally completely different stage. The West made a really critical mistake by serving to to unify a big a part of the Russian elite and the Russian inhabitants round Putin with its sanctions and its vilification of Russia.”
One other senior Russian supply stated Putin’s tenure as chief was not a query of politics however of his well being which appeared strong. He has no seen successor.
Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of battle in japanese Ukraine between Kyiv’s forces on one aspect and pro-Russian Ukrainians and Russian proxies on the opposite.
Tens of hundreds of troopers have been killed and plenty of extra wounded on either side, hundreds of Ukrainian civilians are lifeless and Ukraine’s economic system and infrastructure have suffered injury price lots of of billions of {dollars}.
The West, which says Putin is a risk nicely past the previous Soviet Union, has equipped Ukraine with lots of of billions of {dollars} price of assist, weapons and top-level intelligence. Western leaders accuse Putin of waging a brutal imperial-style struggle geared toward restoring Russia’s world clout.
WAR WITH THE WEST
Putin casts the struggle as a part of an existential battle with a declining and decadent West which he says humiliated Russia after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 by encroaching on what Putin considers to be Moscow’s sphere of affect, together with Ukraine.
That appeals to many Russians who’re suspicious in regards to the West’s politics and intentions, if not its client items. High Kremlin officers, some sporting sweatshirts bearing the phrases “Putin’s Group”, communicate overtly of struggle with NATO.
Putin’s approval ranking is presently 86%, up from 71% shortly earlier than the invasion of Ukraine, based on Levada Centre, a revered Russian pollster. Putin’s ranking additionally jumped throughout the 2008 struggle with Georgia and the 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
Russian tv and a complicated social media operation venture Putin as a strong patriot and deride Western leaders resembling Biden as weak, silly and deceitful.
“For a lot of Russians, who’re partly impressed by propaganda however most significantly by their very own inside convictions, Russia is in an age-old wrestle with the West – and what’s presently taking place is an episode on this wrestle,” Alexei Levinson, head of sociocultural analysis at Levada, instructed Reuters.
“Those that categorical such emotions in our surveys take into account themselves to be individuals not directly on this wrestle with the West. They’re like soccer followers who think about they’re individuals within the soccer match.”
Whereas some inside Russia’s elite are sceptical in regards to the prosecution of the struggle, they don’t have anything to achieve and far to lose by opposing the Kremlin – because the failed mutiny of Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of the mercenary Wagner group, confirmed in 2023.
Prigozhin’s aircraft crashed on Aug. 23, two months to the day because the mutiny.
Putin is leaving little to probability. For the reason that full-scale invasion, authorities have cracked down on any signal of dissent. Tons of of individuals have been arrested for expressing their opposition and protests are banned.
State media, which dominates Russia’s airwaves, is staunchly loyal to Putin. The duty of the three rival candidates is to lose. None of their approval scores are above 6%.
One electoral official instructed Boris Nadezhdin, an anti-war candidate who was barred regardless of garnering tens of hundreds of signatures to register, that he ought to deal with his personal failings reasonably than complaining.
The Kremlin’s principal concern is guaranteeing a excessive turnout. Some managers at state firms have ordered workers to vote – and submit pictures of their poll papers, six sources instructed Reuters. Even money machines remind Russians to vote.
The leaders of Russia’s fragmented opposition are both overseas, in jail, silent, or lifeless.
Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most outstanding opposition chief, died on Feb. 16 within the “Polar Wolf” Arctic penal colony, the jail service stated. His widow, Yulia, has known as on Russians to show up at polling stations at midday on March 17 to point out their opposition.
Navalny had characterised Putin’s Russia as a brittle felony state run by thieves, sycophants and spies who care solely about cash. He had lengthy forecast Russia may face seismic political turmoil, together with revolution.
Requested if Putin was sturdy or weak, Leonid Volkov, considered one of Navalny’s high aides stated: “Dinosaurs have been very sturdy earlier than they have been extinct.”
Shortly after talking to Reuters in Vilnius, Volkov stated he was assaulted with a hammer in an assault Lithuania blamed on Russia. The Kremlin declined to touch upon the incident.
From court docket, the place he was sentenced final month to 2-1/2 years in jail for “discrediting the armed forces”, veteran Russian rights activist Oleg Orlov in contrast Putin’s Russia to one thing out of a Franz Kafka or Vladimir Sorokin novel.
“Those that led our nation into the pit which it’s now in signify the previous, the decrepit, the out of date,” Orlov stated.
“They don’t have any sense of the long run — solely false photos of the previous, solely mirages of ‘imperial greatness’. And they’re pushing Russia backwards, again into the dystopia.”
BLOOD AND TREASURE
The struggle has value many hundreds of Russian lives, the Russian military and safety companies didn’t execute a brief victorious struggle and the mobilisation of 2022 spooked sections of the inhabitants.
However Western sanctions have to this point didn’t sink Russia’s economic system, Putin has been profitable in contracting lots of of hundreds of Russian troopers, and has tilted Russia sharply in direction of the superpower of China.
Russia’s war-focused economic system, grew 3.6% final yr and actual wages rose 7.8%, nevertheless it faces labour shortages, funding shortages and inhabitants decline, knowledge exhibits.
Putin believes he has extra endurance in Ukraine than the US and he can preserve Russia within the battle for a lot of extra years, based on three Russian sources.
“Warfare just isn’t essentially dangerous for an economic system within the quick time period,” stated one Russian supply who requested not be recognized.
“Putin can battle on for so long as he desires.”