Loading
While Russia’s economy might be small(smaller than Italy’s) and the nation increasingly seen as a pariah state,launching cyber attacks and even assassinations in the West,it does retain serious power on the world stage too. It’s been drawing closer to the new superpower,China,and has a formidable military itself,Wilson says. (The US and Russia still hold 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear weapons between them.) Much of Europe also relies on Russia for energy – the country commands huge reserves of oil,gas and coal – although that power is set to wane with falling demand for fossil fuels. Now,when Putin launches more influence campaigns on the West and sends troops into Ukraine and Georgia,or runschest-beating military drills in the Black Sea,he hopes to expand his vertical of power even further,Petrov says.
How do these September elections work then?
Petrov says Russian elections don’t deserve the name “election”. Not only does the Kremlin control most of the country’s media and propaganda networks but it also decides who can run for office. People who pose even a remote threat are barred,and those who do stand in opposition are carefully selected for the job. Fortescue notes,“They have these permitted parties like the Communist Party and the Liberal Democrats but they vote in line,and[the Kremlin] doesn’t even likethemgetting many seats. So then they might do some fiddling with the tallies too. But they like to keep up appearances. They’re not China or North Korea. They still leave a little room for the unexpected.”
“It’s a carefully orchestrated ballet,” agrees Wilson. “To Putin it’s clear a kind of cloak of legitimacy is important.”
Loading
Now,this latest election has been called the country’s least free in decades.
After Navalny’shigh-profile poisoning with novichok in 2020,he stunned the world (and Putin,Petrov says) by returning to Russia to continue his democratic campaigning. His subsequent arrest sparked tens of thousands to protest in the bitter Russian winter. But when he was sent to a prison camp,his movement was outlawed,and many other key figures hunted down or forced out of the country. Since then,the political landscape has become even narrower,even by Russian standards. A suite of new laws has disqualified more than 9 million Russians from voting,as activists are branded extremists. Certainly,no one with even a passing association with Navalny looked set to cast their ballot.
“Russia’s official opposition is like two hands fighting each other. It’s all just done for the show. They’re faking democracy.”
Dr Lenoid Petrov
While Putin’s regime is largely seen as untouchable,Besemeres says Navalny’s pro-democracy movement had raised the stakes for the Kremlin. At the last Duma elections,in 2016,United Russia won a record 343 seats in the Duma,almost 75 per cent. But Navalny has since turned it into the “Party of Crooks and Thieves” and its public support has plunged to27 per cent nationally. Navalny’s tactic of “smart voting” that encourages Russians to vote against the official Kremlin candidate,had already seen United Russia lose a third of its seats in the Moscow assembly in 2019,as well as strong results in other regional elections. A leakedinternal poll revealed 55 per cent of people inMoscow would support opposition candidates.
Putin’s popularity,though still relatively highat 63 per cent as of March, has slumped in recent years following controversial decisions to raise the pension age,ram through constitutional changes to let him run for two more six-year terms,and now the Kremlin’smismanagement of twin economic and pandemic crises.
Meanwhile,from exile overseas,Navalny’s allies have continued to push smart voting at this election,dropping their suggested candidate picks (often from the Communist party) just two days before polls opened on September 17,so they couldn’t be forced off ballots. (On the second day of voting,YouTube blocked access to the video on Russian servers,despite earlier criticising Apple and Google for bowing to Kremlin pressure and removing the Navalny Smart Voting app from their stores.)
When polls closed on September 19,early results showed big gains by opposition parties and even a seat win for a new micro-opposition party,the aptly named New People. But,by the time Russia’s Central Election Commission revealed a nearly full count the next day,many of those gains had evaporated. United Russia had clawed back the qualified majority some experts had speculated it to lose (that allows it to rush through constitutional changes without input from the rest of the Duma).
Within hours,the Communist party joined those crying fraud and a smallprotest gathered in the pouring rain in Moscow. Independent Russian election monitor Golos,itself declared a foreign agent by the Kremlin just a month before this election,says it’s already found thousands of likely violations including ballot stuffing and intimidation – 78,000 more electronic votes appeared in the Moscow tally than were issued,for example. And the European Union has also expressed concern about the results.
There have always been tricks at work in Russian elections. This year a standout was the case oftwo lookalike Kremlin candidates with identical names (and beards) suddenly appearing on the ballot alongside opposition figure Boris Vishnevsky. But Petrov warns that new COVID restrictions to limit crowds have made it even easier for authorities to keep eyes off vote counting. “They’ve spaced the election out over three days,and during those three days they can do many things:inject or get rid of votes,block voters.” Under COVID rules,Russian authorities also limitedthe usual European observation mission of independent monitors,who threw up their hands and decided not to attend at all.
A spokesman for the Russian embassy in Australia noted that COVID safety restrictions have been in force in polling booths around the world,including during recent US elections,and in Australia for expat Russians voting in the latest Duma elections. Back home,voter turnout has hovered between “48 and 63 per cent” for Duma elections for the past 15 years,he said,with the Kremlin running campaigns to encourage turnout.
This time,ahead of Putin’s next presidential election in 2024,experts say he was wanting to look strong in the Duma. The real trick for the Kremlin each election,Fortescue says,is fixing the outcome without being too brazen about it. After all,people are generally more outraged when an election is rigged at the polls,rather than by an early clearing of candidates from the field.
Fortescue was in Moscowin 2011 when the Kremlin was particularly obvious about fixing the Duma elections and recalls how people in their tens of thousands took to the streets in fury. Navalny himself was there. “I’ll never forget hearing him speak,he is so impressive,no wonder the Kremlin have taken him out this time.”
“Whatever he is,Putin is no fool.”
Kyle Wilson,former diplomat
In neighbouring Belarus last year,long an election-fixing capital,serious civil unrest was ignited whenautocrat Alexander Lukashenko’s vote was excessively padded out over that of opposition figure Svetlana Tikhanovskaya,who had attracted enormous turn-out after he allowed her to stay in the race. In that case,a police crackdown didn’t drive people away and Lukashenko instead turned guns on his people to at last wrestle back control of the country over many months. The Kremlin,fearing rebellion contagion creeping over its own borders,helped him do it.
Ahead of polls closing,experts didn’t expect to see such an extreme reaction to Russia’s elections. (“The Kremlin are more clever than that,” Fortescue said.) Still many,including Besemeres,worry that the recent crackdown and imprisonment of Navalny is a sign that Putin is at last done playing at democracy. “Putin had always allowed some leeway,it didn’t matter if a few intellectuals wrote a few clever things here and there if he thought he could keep it all in check. But it’s worse than it’s ever been.”
Loading
Wilson agrees Putin’s rule has become more repressive over his 20 years in power. “We’re seeing theatres,musicians and artists affected now,not just,say,journalists.” But he notes “autocracies tend to become more autocratic over time,like a knot that tightens on itself. If you’re a dictator,you can’t be powerful enough,and Russian history is full of nasty surprises. Even when Putin’s popularity[was riding a high] he set up the national guard,350,000 strong,headed by his personal bodyguard and answering directly to him. Why would a leader so popular need to do that? Now,the way Putin is approaching these elections suggests he’s insecure again.”
But,unlike China,Putin hasn’t drawn the noose completely tight,Wilson says. Work has been underway to further censor Russian cyberspace of late,and more independent media has been forced out. “So that gap is narrowing,” he says. “But I don’t think Putin wantscompletecontrol. Whatever he is,Putin is no fool. He knows people don’t always tell him the bad news.”
How long will Putin’s regime last?
When a regime is built around one man,the question of succession becomes fraught. In 2008,when Putin “was still following the law”,Petrov says,the president swapped roles with his protégé Dmitry Medvedev for one term,demoting himself to prime minister. But Petrov believes Putin later regretted handing the more liberal Medvedev the presidency because he saw him as “as too soft,too easily influenced by Western leaders”. It “taught Putin the country is not in safe hands unless it’s ruled by him”.
While Putin “very clearly harbours serious ambition” to expand his empire,Besemeres thinks it unlikely he will go anywhere or appoint a successor. “I think he plans to be president and live forever.”
Still,some have speculated that Putin,who Fortescue calls “an opportunist but not an idiot”,may not really intend to take advantage of his newly extended presidential window to 2036,that he instead changed the constitution so he would not be seen as “a lame duck”. “But I think he will hang on as long as he can because he’s too afraid to give up power,” Fortescue says.
As Wilson adds,“in the Russian system,once you relinquish power,you’re vulnerable. Yeltsin took a risk and Putin was true to his word and kept him safe,out of jail. But Putin can never be sure someone will honour that kind of deal for him. That’s why he’s obsessive about what he eats and drinks.”
“Russia is divided and people don’t trust each other and what happens in one city may not be supported in the next.”
These days,hiding from COVID and paranoid his machine may one day turn on him,Putin runs the country from a bunker,Petrov says. “There’s that little white cup he takes with him everywhere. No one knows what’s in it,if it’s water or medicine or vodka.” Right now,though,“it looks like the group which put Putin in power is happy with him staying,because they know without Putin,there’s going to be a very tough power struggle.”
There is fierce division among Putin’s elites,Fortescue says,those who want the country more open to the world to lift its prosperity,and those who want it to become even more authoritarian. “Putin is as clever at playing those sides off as he is at handling the general population,” he says.
A successor could turn out to be more progressive,Besemeres muses,such as the mayor of Moscow,Sergey Sobyanin,who is well-liked for his improvements to the city. “Someone like that might bring in some reforms,which others take further and,before you know it,we’ve got the start of real democracy.” But there are no obvious candidates yet. And there would have to be quite extreme circumstances to tempt a rival to “raise their head above the parapet” in Putin’s Russia right now,he says.
Navalny himself,“the obvious figure number two in Russia”,is not wildly popular,Petrov says,but even with Putin’s stranglehold on media and resources,he is popular enough to be an ongoing problem. “Now Putin has the dilemma of what to do next with Navalny because he didn’t die as he was meant to,but he was too big to finish off in hospital. Keeping him[in prison] risks turning him into the Nelson Mandela or Gandhi of Russia. If Putin is weakened,the people could rally around him[Navalny].”
Putin’s decision last year to let long-running demonstrations in the Far East run their course without major police intervention paid off,Petrov says. “Russia is divided and people don’t trust each other and what happens in one city may not be supported in the next.”
Still,when the 2021 protests over Navalny’s arrest then reached even bigger numbers,Fortescue admits he thought it might finally be a game-changer. “But it hasn’t panned out like that. That’s not to say Navalny is done,or forgotten in any sense,but the Kremlin has achieved its goal,he’s not a major player in politics right now.”
Besemeres agrees people are worn out by the crackdown that followed. “They’re thinking[the Kremlin] have got all the aces in the pack. If they protest they’ll just be treated like Belarus. There’s been a surge of Russians fleeing the country. Still,after the dust has settled,they might say,‘We want Navalny back.’”
The stagnation of the economy,and enduring poverty in Russia,may also spark more protests. People are sick of money being spent on guns and not bread and paying taxes to a corrupt state,Petrov says. But “Russians are remarkably patient. They would rather stick with their strong man and put up with crazy things than risk someone new”. Petrov expects Putin’s regime will fall one day;its corruption has made it sick,and it is too big,“a frozen mummy” set up to keep the status quo. “That means there’s no life in it,no real opportunity,no vision.” But much will depend onthe new generation growing older and bolder.
Loading
The last time Petrov visited his homeland was in 2009,on New Year’s Eve,watching the lights dance off the ice in Saint Petersburg. “That’s where Putin is from. It looks like a fairytale. It’s not.”
After two decades,Petrov thinks Putin may have bought into the myths of his own presidency,seeing himself as standing before history,not just his people. The president openly admires many of Russia’s former tsars and dictators,including Stalin,who has now been rewritten as a hero in Russian schoolbooks.
But,for all Putin’s romanticism of history,at the end of the day,Besemeres says his secret service conditioning will win out. “He might see himself as a great man changing Russia but he comes back to the KGB attitude:‘Get them on their knees’.”
This article,first published September 19,was updated on September 21 to reflect developments.