Key Points
- Vladimir Putin has won 87.8 per cent of the vote in Russia’s election, where he faced no genuine competition.
- The US has said Russia’s elections were “obviously not free nor fair”. The UK has also criticised the voting process.
- An expert has told SBS how the win will impact the war in Ukraine and the chances of Donald Trump being re-elected.
President Vladimir Putin said Russia would not be “intimidated” as he hailed an election victory that paves the way for him to become the longest-serving Russian leader in more than 200 years.
All of the 71-year-old’s major opponents are dead, in prison or exiled, and he has overseen an unrelenting crackdown on anybody who publicly opposes his rule or his military offensive on Ukraine.
“I want to thank all of you and all citizens of the country for your support and this trust,” Putin said early on Monday morning at his Moscow campaign headquarters, hours after polls closed.
“No matter who or how much they want to intimidate us, no matter who or how much they want to suppress us, our will, our consciousness — no one has ever succeeded in anything like this in history.
“It has not worked now and will not work in the future. Never,” he added.
With more than 80 per cent of voting stations having submitted results, Putin had secured 87.2 per cent of all votes cast, official election data showed — a record victory in a presidential election where he faced no genuine competition.
So what does the win mean for the war in Ukraine, international politics and an increasingly “dysfunctional” Russia?
How will Putin’s win shape the war in Ukraine?
The Kremlin had cast the election as a moment for Russians to throw their weight behind the full-scale military operation in Ukraine.
Having secured victory, Putin will double down on his efforts to win the war in Ukraine, said William Partlett, an associate professor at Melbourne Law School.
“We are likely to see a lot more of the same in terms of continued aggression in Ukraine,” he said.
“If any change, we’re going to see more activity and really trying to push for a victory, whatever that means, in Ukraine.”
Putin singled out Russian troops fighting in Ukraine for special thanks in his post-election speech in Moscow.
He repeatedly claimed his forces had a major advantage on the battlefield, despite a week of significant Ukrainian aerial attacks on Russia and pro-Ukrainian militias launching armed raids on Russian border villages.
“The initiative belongs entirely to the Russian armed forces. In some areas, our guys are just mowing them, the enemy, down,” he said.
Partlett said Putin will consider using non-military levers of influence to win the war, such as attempting to influence the outcome of the US election.
Will Putin seek to help Trump win the 2024 US election?
Putin will also try to help Trump get re-elected, Partlett said.
“There will be a really strong attempt to interfere and help Donald Trump win … because Putin and the regime see a Trump win as almost decisive in Ukraine,” he said.
“It’s very likely that Trump would withdraw a lot of support for Ukraine and would force the Ukrainians to the table to make a deal.”
The impact of another Putin term inside Russia
Short term, there will be a minor reshuffle of government and an escalation of “repression against anyone who opposes the regime”, Partlett said.
In the long term, decades of centralised power will continue to further erode the quality of life across Russia.
“In reality, the system will only get worse at providing basic goods to people, particularly in the regions,” Partlett said.
“There’s been a lot of government spending on the military, so obviously less money is going to health care, less money’s going from roads to housing to schools.
“Those types of things aren’t going to cause an uprising immediately, but they will create problems, particularly for post-Putin Russia.”
The effect of Putin’s concentration of power
Concentrating power in Putin’s hands has led to increasingly bad policy decisions from weakened public institutions, Partlett said.
He explained that people around Putin have strong incentives to provide faulty information back to him and the Kremlin or otherwise risk their careers.
An example of this was Russia’s response to COVID-19, when governors refused to report real case numbers as they feared losing their jobs.
“The Kremlin just doesn’t really understand what’s happening in the rest of Russia. So policymaking is based on poor information,” he said.
Partlett said the skewed information “makes it very difficult to predict what Russia will do”.
The centralisation of power and the facade of authority in other positions have often led to paralysis when making policy changes, which all have to go through Putin.
“What you get is a system that kind of at least looks externally strong in handling [things], but is actually slowly degrading into a very poor quality form of governance.”
How leaders are reacting to Putin’s win
Kyiv and its allies slammed the vote — which was also held in parts of Ukraine under Russian control — as a sham.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lashed out at Putin as a “dictator” who was “drunk from power”.
“There is no evil he will not commit to prolong his personal power,” Zelenskyy said.
UK foreign minister David Cameron on Sunday dismissed early results from Russia that indicated Putin had been comfortably re-elected.
“The polls have closed in Russia, following the illegal holding of elections on Ukrainian territory, a lack of choice for voters and no independent OSCE monitoring,” he posted on X, formerly Twitter.
The White House said Russia’s elections were “obviously not free nor fair” given how Putin has imprisoned opponents and prevented others from running against him.
– with additional reporting from AFP and Reuters
Source Agencies
