{"id":16948,"date":"2024-03-14T12:46:57","date_gmt":"2024-03-14T12:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/14\/putin-is-coasting-towards-another-term-in-power-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-russias-presidential-election\/"},"modified":"2024-03-14T12:46:57","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T12:46:57","slug":"putin-is-coasting-towards-another-term-in-power-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-russias-presidential-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/14\/putin-is-coasting-towards-another-term-in-power-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-russias-presidential-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin is coasting towards another term in power. Here\u2019s what you need to know about Russia\u2019s presidential election"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Russia is holding a presidential election that is all but certain to extend\u00a0Vladimir Putin\u2019s\u00a0rule throughout this decade and into the 2030s. <\/p>\n

The vast majority of votes will be cast over three days from 15 March, though early and postal voting has already begun, including in\u00a0occupied parts of Ukraine\u00a0where Russian forces are attempting to exert authority. <\/p>\n

But this is not a normal election; the poll is essentially a constitutional box-ticking exercise that carries no prospect of removing Putin from power. <\/p>\n

The president\u2019s dominance over the Russian electoral system has already been reinforced as the election looms. The country\u2019s only anti-war candidate has been barred from standing, and Alexey Navalny, the poisoned and jailed former opposition leader who was the most prominent anti-Putin voice in Russia,\u00a0died last month. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what you need to know about the election. <\/p>\n

When and where is the election taking place?<\/h2>\n

Voting will be held from Friday March 15 until Sunday March 17, the first Russian presidential election to take place over three days; early voting was underway earlier, including among Russia\u2019s ex-pat population around the world. <\/p>\n

Voting has also been organized in the four Ukrainian regions Russia said it would annex\u00a0in September 2022,\u00a0in violation of international law. Russia has already\u00a0held regional votes and referenda\u00a0in those occupied territories, an effort dismissed by the international community as a sham but which the Kremlin sees as central to its campaign of Russification. <\/p>\n

A second round of voting would take place three weeks after this weekend if no candidate gets more than half the vote, though it would be a major surprise if that were required. Russians are electing the position of president alone; the next legislative elections, which form the make-up of the Duma, are scheduled for 2026. <\/p>\n

How long has Putin been in power?<\/h2>\n

Putin signed a law in 2021 that allowed him to\u00a0run for two more presidential terms, potentially extending his rule until 2036, after a referendum the previous year allowed him to reset the clock on his term limits. <\/p>\n

This election will mark the start of the first of those two extra terms. <\/p>\n

He has essentially been the country\u2019s head of state for the entirety of the 21st century, rewriting the rules and conventions of Russia\u2019s political system to extend and expand his powers. <\/p>\n

That already makes him Russia\u2019s longest-serving ruler since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. <\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s previous\u00a0efforts to stay in control\u00a0included a 2008 constitutional amendment that extended presidential terms from four years to six, and a temporary job swap with his then Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev the same year, that preceded a swift\u00a0return to the presidency in 2012. <\/p>\n

Is Putin popular in Russia?<\/h2>\n

Truly gauging popular opinion is notoriously difficult in Russia, where the few independent think tanks operate under strict surveillance and where, even in a legitimate survey, many Russians are fearful of criticizing the Kremlin. <\/p>\n

But Putin undoubtedly has reaped the rewards of a political landscape tilted dramatically in his favor. The Levada Center, a non-governmental polling organization, reports\u00a0Putin\u2019s approval rating\u00a0at over 80% \u2013 an eye-popping figure virtually unknown among Western politicians, and a substantial increase on the three-year period before the invasion of Ukraine. <\/p>\n

The invasion gave Putin a nationalist message around which to rally Russians, boosting his own image, and even as Russia\u2019s campaign stuttered over the course of 2023, the war retained widespread support. <\/p>\n

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National security is top of mind for Russians as the election approaches; Ukrainian strikes on Russian border regions have brought the war home to many people inside the country, but support for the invasion \u2014 euphemistically termed a \u201cspecial military operation\u201d by Russia\u2019s leaders \u2014 remains high. <\/p>\n

The Levada Center found at the end of 2023 that \u201cincreased inflation and rising food prices may have a lasting impact on the mood of Russians,\u201d with the proportion of Russians cutting back on spending increasing. <\/p>\n

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But that is not to say Russians expect the election to change the direction of the country. Putin benefits heavily from apathy; most Russians have never witnessed a democratic transfer of power between rival political parties\u00a0in a traditional presidential election, and expressions of anger at the Kremlin are rare enough to keep much of the population disengaged from politics. <\/p>\n

Who else is running?<\/h2>\n

Candidates in Russian elections are tightly controlled by the Central Election Commission (CEC), enabling Putin to run against a favorable field and reducing the potential for an opposition candidate to gain momentum. <\/p>\n

The same is true this year. \u201cEach candidate fields juxtaposing ideologies and domestic policies, but collectively they feed into Putin\u2019s aim of tightening his grip on Russia during his next presidential term,\u201d\u00a0wrote\u00a0Callum Fraser of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank. <\/p>\n

Nikolay Kharitonov will represent the Communist Party, which has been allowed to run a candidate in each election this century, but has not gained as much as a fifth of the vote share since Putin\u2019s first presidential election. <\/p>\n

Two other Duma politicians, Leonid Slutsky and Vladislav Davankov, are also running. Davankov is deputy chair of the Duma, Russia\u2019s lower house of parliament, while Slutsky represents the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, the party previously led by ultra-nationalist firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who died in 2022. All are considered to be reliably pro-Kremlin. <\/p>\n

But there is notably no candidate who opposes Putin\u2019s war in Ukraine; Boris Nadezhdin, previously the only anti-war figure in the field, was\u00a0barred from standing\u00a0by the CEC in February after the body claimed he had not received enough legitimate signatures nominating his candidacy. <\/p>\n

In December, another independent candidate who openly spoke out against the war in Ukraine, Yekaterina Duntsova, was rejected by the CEC, citing alleged errors in her campaign group\u2019s registration documents. Duntsova later called on people to support Nadezhdin\u2019s candidacy. <\/p>\n

Writing on social media in February, opposition activist and Navalny\u2019s former aide, Leonid Volkov, dismissed the elections as a \u201ccircus,\u201d saying they were meant to signal Putin\u2019s overwhelming mass support. \u201cYou need to understand what the March \u2018elections\u2019 mean for Putin. They are a propaganda effort to spread hopelessness\u201d among the electorate, Volkov said. <\/p>\n

Volkov was attacked outside his house on Tuesday in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. Lithuania\u2019s intelligence agency has said it believes the attack on former Navalny aide Leonid\u00a0Volkov\u00a0was likely \u201cRussian organized.\u201d <\/p>\n

The\u00a0Kremlin\u00a0on Thursday declined\u00a0to\u00a0comment\u00a0on\u00a0the\u00a0assault\u00a0on\u00a0Volkov. <\/p>\n

Are the elections fair?<\/h2>\n

Russia\u2019s elections are neither free nor fair, and serve essentially as a formality to extend Putin\u2019s term in power, according to independent bodies and observers both in and outside the country. <\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s successful campaigns have been in part the result of \u201cpreferential media treatment, numerous abuses of incumbency, and procedural irregularities during the vote count,\u201d according to\u00a0Freedom House, a global democracy watchdog. <\/p>\n

Outside of election cycles, the Kremlin\u2019s propaganda machine targets voters with occasionally hysterical pro-Putin material, and many news websites based outside Russia\u00a0were blocked\u00a0following the invasion of Ukraine, though more tech-savvy younger voters have grown accustomed to using VPNs to access them. <\/p>\n

Protests are also tightly restricted, making the public expression of opposition a perilous and rare occurrence. <\/p>\n

Then, as elections come into view, genuine opposition candidates almost inevitably see their candidacies removed or find themselves prevented from seeking office, as Nadezhdin and Duntsova discovered during this cycle. <\/p>\n

\u201cOpposition politicians and activists are frequently targeted with fabricated criminal cases and other forms of administrative harassment designed to prevent their participation in the political process,\u201d Freedom House noted in its most recent global report. <\/p>\n

How did Navalny\u2019s death affect the run-up to the election?<\/h2>\n

The timing of the\u00a0death of Alexey Navalny\u00a0\u2013 Putin\u2019s most prominent critic \u2013 served to emphasize the control Russia\u2019s leader exerts over his country\u2019s politics. <\/p>\n

In one of Navalny\u2019s final court appearances before his death, he urged prison service workers to \u201cvote against Putin.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI have a suggestion: to vote for any candidate other than Putin. In order to vote against Putin, you just need to vote for any other candidate,\u201d he said on February 8. <\/p>\n

His death cast an ominous shadow over the campaign. Navalny\u2019s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, urged the European Union to \u201cnot recognize the elections\u201d in a passionate address to its Foreign Affairs Council a few days after she was widowed. <\/p>\n

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\u201cPutin killed my husband exactly a month before the so-called elections. These elections are fake, but Putin still needs them. For propaganda. He wants the whole world to believe that everyone in Russia supports and admires him. Don\u2019t believe this propaganda,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Thousands then gathered for\u00a0Navalny\u2019s funeral\u00a0in Moscow despite the threat of detention by Russian authorities. <\/p>\n

Navalnaya has urged Russian people to turn out at noon on the final day of the elections, March 17, as a show of protest. In a video posted on social media, Navalnaya told Russians they could \u201cvote for any candidate besides Putin, you can ruin your ballot, you can write\u00a0Navalny\u00a0on it.\u201d <\/p>\n

She added that Russians did not have to vote, but could \u201cstand at a polling station and then go home\u2026 the most important thing is to come.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia is holding a presidential election that is all but certain to extend\u00a0Vladimir Putin\u2019s\u00a0rule throughout this decade and into the 2030s. The vast majority of votes will be cast over three days from 15 March, though early and postal voting has already begun, including in\u00a0occupied parts of Ukraine\u00a0where Russian forces are attempting to exert authority. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16949,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16948","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}