Vladimir Putin secured another six-year term as Russia’s president on Sunday – after more than 18 years in power – which under current term limits should be his last. The presidential election was held on the fourth anniversary of the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.
Mr Putin, who barely campaigned before the election, won more than 76 per cent of the vote, amounting to more than 56 million votes, a personal record. The voting, therefore, was more a referendum on his rule than a choice.
Alexei Navalny, the opposition politician seen as Mr Putin’s most serious challenger, was barred from the race (because of a fraud conviction) and called for a boycott of Sunday’s vote in protest. The closest candidate to Mr Putin was Pavel Grudinin, the millionaire director of a farming enterprise from the Communist party, who took 11.8 per cent of the vote.
The Kremlin had put intense pressure on regional governors to get Mr Putin at least 70 per cent of the vote with turnout of at least 70 per cent. Turnout was 67.5 per cent, missing the target, but higher than six years ago.
Though there were scattered reports of election irregularities, with video cameras catching some ballot-box stuffing, Mr Putin’s victory was never in doubt as his approval ratings are real.
Moscow partly credited Mr Putin’s landslide victory to high tensions in relations with Britain (and other western countries) over the attempted murder of a former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with a military-grade nerve agent in Salisbury, England, on March 4. That was the first use of a chemical weapon on European soil since World War II, which fuelled concerns in western capitals over Russian aggression.
The Salisbury incident has led to a new round of tit-for-tat sanctions.
Britain expelled 23 Russian diplomats last week, the biggest such expulsion for 30 years. Further actions are expected. Moscow, which has rejected London’s accusations that it was behind the attack on Mr Skripal, expelled this weekend 23 British diplomats and ordered the closure of the UK’s consulate in St Petersburg and the British Council’s programme in Russia.
The US, Germany and France have rallied behind the UK, but it remains unclear whether Europe would back new economic sanctions against Russia as some EU politicians see it as necessary to try to repair a difficult relationship.
Last week, Washington accused Moscow of staging a series of cyber attacks on US infrastructure as it unveiled a series of sanctions against Russian individuals and entities, including the Federal Security Service, Russia’s key intelligence organisation, and the Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU.
In his third term in office, Russia’s president promoted conservative values, suppressed liberal opposition and launched a clash with the West. In his March 1 state of the nation speech, Mr Putin boasted about a new generation of “invincible” nuclear weapons. This is part of his agenda, a bid to force the West to respect Russia as it plays well with the electorate nostalgic for Russia’s superpower status. The second part of his agenda is the implementation of reforms needed to improve the economy’s performance and deliver more social justice (the current federal budget projects growth of 2 per cent as isolation deprives Russia investment and know-how).
United Nations photo
