Present-day Russia and the Future of the World
Petro Kopka, Principal Expert and Strategic Adviser at COSA
The world has ticked another box in the global election plan 2024. Russia has once again voted for its perennial president. The results are exactly as required. The only question keeping observers in suspense was whether or not Russia’s new old leader would receive 80% of the votes or more. Evidently, popular support for Putin has grown 7% (over 1% more than what Aleksandr Lukashenko faked back in 2020).
Thus, the prospects for the next six years are clear. We should expect Putinism to thrive and Russia to devolve further.
Preliminary notes
When it comes to the Russian election, the first question is why 87%? When analysing current processes in Russia, some experts make an unfortunate mistake. They forget that this is not an election in the conventional sense of the word. Neither is it a choiceless election or voting under pressure. It is not even a plebiscite, as some experts insisted.
The 2024 presidential election in Putin’s Russia is an exercise in collective confirmation of the leader’s charisma, aimed at legitimising his unquestionable right to rule the country. It has nothing to do with democratic procedures. Any analysis of the process must be based on this principle.
After all, it is exactly the way the ostensible election is viewed in the Kremlin. In August 2023, Putin’s press secretary Peskov said that a Russian election “is not so much democracy as it is expensive bureaucracy”, adding that he expected more than 90% of votes in the upcoming election to support the perpetual leader. Peskov’s statement has prepared the way for what we see today.
Since the final tally in 2018 was 76.69% for Putin, this time the result had to be no less than 80%. That was Moscow’s baseline, and the rest was the overly zealous local elites.
Regional group leaders took that objective and ran with it. Clearly thinking it was better to be safe than sorry, they pushed the results way over the Kremlin’s 80% goal. The average outcome was more or less what Ella Pamfilova announced.
Moreover, the Russian leader’s charisma must be beyond all doubt. Therefore, Putin got 87.29% of the votes, whereas the communist Nikolay Kharitonov only received 4.31%. (For comparison, communist candidate Pavel Grudinin came second with 11.77% of votes in the 2018 election). Meanwhile, Boris Nadezhdin was not even allowed to run.
What do the 87.29% mean?
According to unbiased Russian experts, there has never been such widespread falsification in any of the previous elections. Where before it was only the numbers that were manipulated (the turnout and the number of votes for the main candidate), it is the people who are being manipulated now, to a staggering degree, experts say.
The Russo-Ukrainian war has wrought a profound change in the Russian society. On the one hand, it has divided the people into its supporters and opponents. On the other hand, the supporters of war are also the faithful followers of the Russian leader. They like his triumphant rhetoric and they firmly believe that might is right, as embodied by their strong chieftain.
The war has also multiplied the opportunities for pro-Putin propaganda to a never-before-seen degree. There are no longer any ethical limitations when it comes to the survival of the current regime and its leader. He is fighting the enemies of Russia. He has solved all economic problems, and he is winning on the battlefield, or so the Russians believe. That is why they think they are on the right path and support Putin with everything they have.
An average Russian is faced with pro-Putin rhetoric wherever he or she goes, and the support for the leader is growing. In the absence of opposition, even those who were undecided before start to believe the propaganda. Anyone who does not become an outright supporter at least starts to think like one.
Thus, a simplified view of the election results that invites us to consider those 87.29% as nothing but fake votes is wrong and dangerous. It should be avoided at all costs. The situation on the ground is much worse. One might even say, alarming.
According to preliminary estimates by Russian sociologists, up to 80% of the voters who participated in the election (not taking into account the occupied Ukrainian territories) did support the perennial president without any falsification. That makes about 60 million in actual numbers.
They are the foundation the Russian leader will be relying on over the next six years of his reign. They are the triumphant, aggressive majority that will gradually turn into his fanatics, which has been the ultimate goal of the Russian propaganda in recent years. “Putin’s babushkas” started out small, but their numbers have grown, becoming an army.
According to independent experts, the 2024 imitation voting is a clear sign of the total degradation of the Russian election system, which is now rapidly turning into an electoral sultanate. Earlier, the term could be used to describe just a few subjects of the Russian Federation that regularly reported unrealistically high turnouts and vote counts in support of the ruling party and pro-government candidates. Now, we can safely say that most of the subjects of the Russian Federation have become electoral sultanates.
Elections in Russia are no longer a competition, or God forbid an opportunity to choose a new president, but an instrument of strengthening the leader’s position and recruiting fanatics among the local population and acolytes abroad.
Having turned his back on the West, Putin is now looking firmly to the East.
Back to the future
A mockery of a democratic process, the Russian presidential election is now over, with predictable results. Supported by the majority of the population, Russia’s new old leader is certain that he has chosen the correct political course, both domestically and abroad.
Not that he doubted his choices before, but now he knows his voters share his views. The announcements he made throughout his election campaign regarding the measures to be implemented over the next six years were aimed at enticing the electorate.
Of all his propositions, the most interesting one concerned the creation of a new elite and redivision of property, as the ones who had seized it in the 1990s were thieves and should be stripped of what they had stolen, according to the Russian leader. Putin believes the property should be given to those who are fighting for Russia on the battlefield.
Evidently, a new form of social hierarchy is being formed in Russia. It is the “new aristocracy” Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev promoted. The children of the current leaders of the Russian Federation are ready to take up the positions prepared for them. The appointment of the son of the Russian oligarch Yuri Kovalchuk to a position in the presidential administration is a case in point. Nepotism is becoming even more widespread.
Putin intends for the future elite to be recruited from among the military currently fighting against Ukraine. They will not bother the ruling new aristocracy unnecessarily or ask undue questions. They will be docile and dutiful in accomplishing the tasks assigned to them.
In other words, the pace of negative selection increases in a dictatorship, as predicted by sociology. We will have an opportunity to observe the process as it unfolds in real life.
Russia’s economy will become increasingly militarised. As funds deplete, the dilemma of guns vs butter will grow even more urgent, and that is where the Russian leader will need fanatics the most. However, only time will tell how long their patience can hold.
Thus, there is no longer any doubt that the war will continue. The Russians gave their leader the carte blanche he wanted. It is only natural, as the number of physical and legal persons interested in the war’s continuation is growing daily both inside and outside Russia. According to the estimates of Russian economists, the number of war beneficiaries in Russia ranges between 15 and 16 million, which is more than 10% of the population. Of course, they all support their leader in all his military initiatives.
The longer the war continues, the more beneficiaries it finds beyond the Russian Federation’s borders. After the chaos of the early days and months of Russia’s open aggression against Ukraine, foreign businesses gradually recovered and saw the benefits of working with Russia under official sanctions. At present, we can see that some foreign firms and companies are quite comfortable using new schemes to circumvent the prohibitions and continue doing business as usual. Their numbers will grow with time.
After all, tempered by its endless struggle against the government, the Russian business is proving to be astonishingly creative when it comes to establishing useful contacts. As a result, we can observe a classic situation on the market where supply increases to satisfy demand. In their current form, the international sanctions are unlikely to be able to stem the growing business interest on both sides. A new approach is required, where quantity (adding new sanctioned products, physical persons, and legal entities to the lists) is complemented by quality (increasing control of the sanctions already in place, implementing effective indirect limitations).
In lieu of a conclusion
Thus, the Russian sham election has shown the following:
- with this final stage of the transformation complete, Russia has now become a classic dictatorship with everything that it entails;
- the world must realise the gravity of the situation, and the global leaders must finally recognise that a relationship with Putin’s Russia that is based on conventional international norms is no longer possible; moreover, Moscow cannot be treated as an equal partner, as the Kremlin perceives any attempt to do so as weakness and acts accordingly;
- therefore, a separate international algorithm, balancing between democracy and serious confrontation, must be developed to deal with Russia;
- French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposals may be used as a basis for such an algorithm that may also entail the creation of a temporary international alliance (perhaps even outside NATO and the EU) of the countries that support a tougher approach to dealing with Moscow, while (temporarily?) putting aside the considerations of national egoism;
- such an alliance may jointly develop a plan of action against Putin’s Russia.
Our time is short. We have to act together. The aggressor and its allies must have no reason to doubt the West’s determination to defend its democratic values.