Russian election

[sprintcyclist]

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has won a landslide re-election victory, extending his rule over the world’s largest country for another six years at a time when his ties with the West are on a hostile trajectory.

The vote was tainted by widespread reports of ballot-box stuffing and forced voting, but the complaints will likely do little to undermine Mr Putin.
His thumping victory overnight will extend his total time in office to nearly a quarter of a century, until 2024, by which time he will be 71. Only Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ruled for longer.

Mr Putin has promised to use his new term to beef-up Russia’s defences against the West and to raise living standards.

He addressed thousands of people who rallied outside the Kremlin to thank them for their support and promised new achievements. Speaking to a crowd who attended a pop concert near the Kremlin marking his election victory, Mr Putin hailed those who voted for him as a “big national team,” adding that “we are bound for success.” He said that the nation needs unity to move forward and urged the audience to “think about the future of our great motherland.” He then led the enthusiastic crowd to chant “Russia!”

Results from more than half of precincts showed Putin winning over 75 percent of the vote, with Communist candidate Pavel Grudinin and ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky trailing far behind with about 13 and 6 percent, respectively.

Vladimir Putin casts his vote in Moscow. Picture: AFP/Sergei Chirikov
Vladimir Putin casts his vote in Moscow. Picture: AFP/Sergei ChirikovSource:AFP



An exit poll by pollster VTsIOM showed Putin, who has already dominated the political landscape for the past 18 years, had won 73.9 per cent of the vote. Backed by state TV, the ruling party, and credited with an approval rating around 80 per cent, his victory was never in doubt.
None of the seven candidates who ran against him posed a threat, and opposition leader Alexei Navalny was barred from running.

Mr Navalny, who oversaw a campaign for a vote boycott and sent over 33,000 observers across the country with manual counters to see how official turnout figures differ from those of monitors, said there had been “unprecedented violations”.

His supporters and the non-governmental election monitor Golos reported ballot stuffing, repeat voting and Putin supporters being bussed into polling stations en masse.


Critics alleged that officials had compelled people to come to the polls to ensure that voter boredom at the one-sided contest did not lead to a low turnout.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a rally near the Kremlin in Moscow on Sunday. Picture: AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a rally near the Kremlin in Moscow on Sunday. Picture: AP Photo/Alexander ZemlianichenkoSource:AP



People wave flags in front of a huge screen displaying preliminary results of the presidential election. Picture: AFP/Mladen Antonov
People wave flags in front of a huge screen displaying preliminary results of the presidential election. Picture: AFP/Mladen AntonovSource:AFP


Russia’s Central Election Commission recognised that there were some irregularities but was likely to dismiss wider criticism and declare the overall result legitimate.

Putin loyalists said the result was a vindication of his tough stance towards the West.

“I think that in the United States and Britain they’ve understood they cannot influence our elections,” Igor Morozov, a member of the upper house of parliament, said on state television. “Our citizens understand what sort of situation Russian finds itself in today.”


A Russian soldier at the voting booth. Picture: AP/Dmitri Lovetsky
A Russian soldier at the voting booth. Picture: AP/Dmitri LovetskySource:AP



The immediate question is if and when opponents like Navalny organise protests, citing widespread fraud, and how large and sustained those protests will be. A senior opposition politician has warned they could descend into street clashes if police crack down too hard on demonstrators.

The longer-term question is whether Mr Putin will soften his anti-Western rhetoric now the election is won.

At odds with the West over Syria, Ukraine, allegations of Russian election meddling and cyber attacks, and the poisoning in Britain of a former Russian spy and his daughter, relations between Moscow and the West are at a post Cold War low.

Vladimir Putin waits to get his ballot at a polling station during Russia's presidential election. Picture: Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
Vladimir Putin waits to get his ballot at a polling station during Russia's presidential election. Picture: Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via APSource:AP



Mr Putin, 65, has been in power, either as president or prime minister, since 2000. Allies laud the former KGB agent as a father-of-the-nation figure who has restored national pride and expanded Moscow’s global clout with interventions in Syria and Ukraine.

Critics accuse him of overseeing a corrupt authoritarian system and of illegally annexing Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, a move that isolated Russia internationally.

The Russian leader’s popularity remains high despite his suppression of dissent and reproach from the West over Russia’s increasingly aggressive stance in world affairs and alleged interference in the 2016 US election.

Vladimir Putin casts his vote. Picture: AFP/Sergei Chirikov
Vladimir Putin casts his vote. Picture: AFP/Sergei ChirikovSource:AFP



Mr Putin’s main challenges in the vote were to obtain a huge margin of victory in order to claim an indisputable mandate. The Central Elections Commission said Mr Putin had won about 72 per cent of the vote, based on a count of 22 per cent of the country’s precincts.
Russian authorities had sought to ensure a large turnout to bolster the image that Mr Putin’s so-called “managed democracy” is robust and offers Russians true choices.

He faced seven minor candidates on the ballot. Mr Putin’s most vehement and visible foe, anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, was rejected as a candidate because he was convicted of fraud in a case widely regarded as politically motivated. Mr Navalny and his supporters had called for an election boycott but the extent of its success could not immediately be gauged.

A portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin at a jewellery shop in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. Picture: AFP
A portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin at a jewellery shop in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. Picture: AFPSource:AFP

The election came amid escalating tensions between Russia and the West, with reports that Moscow was behind the nerve-agent poisoning of a former Russian double agent in Britain and that its internet trolls had mounted an extensive campaign to undermine the 2016 US presidential election. Britain and Russia last week announced diplomat expulsions over the spy case and the United States issued new sanctions.

Russian officials denounced both cases as efforts to interfere in the Russian election. But the disputes likely worked in Mr Putin’s favour, reinforcing the official contention that the West is infected with “Russophobia” and is determined to undermine Mr Putin and Russian cultural values.

Many Russians haven’t voted in protest against Vladimir Putin’s “inevitable” win. Picture: AFP/Tobias Schwarz
Many Russians haven’t voted in protest against Vladimir Putin’s “inevitable” win. Picture: AFP/Tobias SchwarzSource:AFP


Mr Putin has come to embody Russia’s exceptionalism, the sense of the state and culture as an extraordinary entity that is nonetheless under constant attack from outside.
The election took place on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, one of the most dramatic manifestations of Putin’s drive to reassert Russia’s power.

Crimea and Russia’s subsequent support of separatists in eastern Ukraine led to an array of US and European sanctions that, along with falling oil prices, damaged the Russian economy and slashed the rouble’s value by half.


Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny observes the election progress from his Moscow office. Picture: AP/Pavel Golovkin
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny observes the election progress from his Moscow office. Picture: AP/Pavel GolovkinSource:AP



But Mr Putin’s popularity remained strong, apparently buttressed by nationalist pride. In his next six years in office, Mr Putin is likely to assert Russia’s power abroad even more strongly. Just weeks before the election, he announced that Russia has developed advanced nuclear weapons capable of evading missile defences. The military campaign in Syria is clearly aimed at strengthening Russia’s foothold in the Middle East.
Russia eagerly eyes possible reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula as a lucrative economic opportunity.

Presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak arrives at a polling station to cast her vote. Picture: AP/Pavel Golovkin
Presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak arrives at a polling station to cast her vote. Picture: AP/Pavel GolovkinSource:AP

At home, he will be faced with how to groom a successor or devise a strategy to circumvent term limits, how to drive diversification in an economy still highly dependent on oil and gas and how to improve medical care and social services in regions of the sprawling country far removed from the modern glitter of Moscow. Casting his ballot in Moscow, Putin was confident of victory, saying he would consider any percentage of votes a success.

“The program that I propose for the country is the right one,” he declared.
About 107 million Russians were eligible to cast ballots and turnout was nearly 60 per cent an hour before polls closed in Moscow at 5pm local time (1am AEDT) according to figures displayed in the central electoral commission information centre.


A woman votes at the Russian embassy in Berlin. Picture: AFP/Tobias Schwarz
A woman votes at the Russian embassy in Berlin. Picture: AFP/Tobias SchwarzSource:AFP




Authorities pulled out all the stops to boost participation, with selfie competitions, cheap or free food and entertainers organising games for children at polling stations.

Employees of state and private companies reported coming under pressure to vote, while students have been threatened with problems in their exams or even expulsion if they do not take part, according to the opposition-leaning Novaya Gazeta newspaper.



Putin loyalists celebrated the victory. Picture: AFP/Kirill Kudryavtsev
Putin loyalists celebrated the victory. Picture: AFP/Kirill KudryavtsevSource:AFP


One election commission worker in the republic of Dagestan, which traditionally registers extremely high official turnout figures, told AFP around 50 men entered the station where he was working and physically assaulted an independent observer before stuffing a ballot box.

But the electoral commission dismissed most concerns, saying monitors sometimes misinterpret what they see.

PUTIN ‘A HERO’

Mr Putin, who has run under the slogan “a strong president — a strong Russia”, declined to take part in televised debates and shot no new material for his own campaign advertisements.

He is standing against seven other candidates, including millionaire communist Pavel Grudinin and former reality TV host Ksenia Sobchak, but none are polling more than eight per cent.
One of the more memorable moments from the campaign came during a debate when Sobchak threw a glass of water over the ranting ultranationalist candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky, prompting him to call her a “prostitute” and a “mad fool”.

Since first being elected president in 2000, Mr Putin has stamped his total authority on the world’s biggest country, muzzling opposition, putting television under state control and reasserting Moscow’s standing abroad.



A man and his child leave a polling booth after voting in the Russian election. Picture: AP/Pavel Golovkin
A man and his child leave a polling booth after voting in the Russian election. Picture: AP/Pavel GolovkinSource:AP


The 65-year-old former KGB officer has sought to use the campaign to emphasise Russia’s role as a major world power, boasting of its “invincible” new nuclear weapons in a pre-election speech and continuing Moscow’s support for the Syrian regime in a bloody civil war.

Casting his ballot in Moscow, Putin said he would be pleased with any result giving him the right to continue as president.

“I am sure the program I am offering is the right one,” said the man who is already Russia’s longest-serving leader since Stalin.



Vladimir Zhirinovsky, ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party leader, speaks as he prepares to vote in the presidential election. Picture: AP/Pavel Golovkin
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party leader, speaks as he prepares to vote in the presidential election. Picture: AP/Pavel GolovkinSource:AP


Most people who spoke to AFP said they voted for Mr Putin, praising him for lifting the country out of the post-Soviet quagmire.

“Of course I’m for Putin, he’s a leader,” said Olga Matyunina, a 65-year-old retired economist.

“After he brought Crimea back, he became a hero to me.” Sunday marks four years since Putin signed a treaty declaring Crimea to be part of Russia in a move that triggered a pro-Kremlin insurgency in east Ukraine, a conflict that has claimed over 10,000 lives.


Ahead of the vote, a new crisis broke out with the West as Britain implicated Mr Putin in the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal with a Soviet-designed nerve agent.

In response, London expelled 23 Russian diplomats, prompting a tit-for-tat move by Moscow. Also this week, Washington hit Russia with sanctions for trying to influence the 2016 US election.

Mr Putin’s previous Kremlin term was marked by a crackdown on the opposition after huge protests, the Ukraine conflict, military intervention in Syria and the introduction of Western sanctions that contributed to a fall in living standards.


But he seems certain to extend his rule to 2024 despite a lacklustre campaign and a litany of domestic problems such as widespread poverty and poor healthcare.

State-run pollsters predict Putin will take about 70 per cent of the vote, with the independent Levada Centre — branded a “foreign agent” -- barred from releasing any polls.

“I will not go to vote. What for?” Boris Limarev, a 39-year-old manager, said as he walked his dog near a polling station in Saint Petersburg.

“It’s clear to everyone who will be elected.” “And the rest of the candidates are clowns,” interjected his wife Anna, 35.



“Another six years of slavery,” said a piece of paper made up to look like a ballot which was spotted on a Moscow street — in an apparent reference to Mr Putin’s next term.

Mr Putin’s Kremlin-approved challengers include millionaire communist Pavel Grudinin and former reality TV host Ksenia Sobchak, but none was expected to win more than seven per cent.

Election officials flew to far-flung regions to collect votes from indigenous herders, while cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov — the only Russian currently aboard the International Space Station — cast his ballot by proxy.

With the vast country stretching across 11 time zones, polls close in Kaliningrad, the exclave on the EU border was the last province to cast their votes, as official results were issued throughout the night.

the world is good

[Rorschach]

When is an election NOT and election...

[Neferti]

Did anyone expect Putin to lose?

[sprintcyclist]

Putin is the best leader in the world

[Black Orchid]

OMG did Putin win?

Colour me surprised

[sprintcyclist]

Great, isn't it ?

I love Putin

[The Mechanic]

Congratulations Vladimir..

[BigP]

Great, isn't it ?

I love Putin

He certainly learned from Hitlers mistakes

[sprintcyclist]

[imgwidth=700height=500]https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image ... omy-v2.jpg[/img]

[Rorschach]

LOL Sprint.... you gotta get some new idols...

Skripal attack: Putin knows he can get away with murder
The Australian
12:00AM March 22, 2018
Greg Sheridan
Foreign Editor

Vladimir Putin’s overwhelming victory in Russia’s presidential election was not a triumph of democracy, but it illustrates one central fact in the geostrategic environment. The attempted assassination of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury and the controversy when the British government accused the Russians of responsibility have not done Putin any harm.

But first let me take you back a few years. When the former agent was handed over to London as part of a prisoner swap in 2010, Putin commented that Skripal would not be able to enjoy “his 30 pieces of silver”.

The attack on Skripal with the nerve agent novichok is the first chemical weapons attack in Europe since World War II, just as Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea was the first such territorial conquest in postwar Europe.

The British government believes Moscow ordered the operation against Skripal, and the US has endorsed this finding, as have other NATO allies. A band of Putin apologists in the West points to the obviousness of the attack as evidence that it wasn’t an operation mounted by the Russians, who are immensely sophisticated in these things.

It is worth pausing for a second to note the extraordinary nuttiness of the extreme pro-Putin apologists in the West. I do not mean here sophisticated realists such as Tom Switzer, for whom I have the greatest respect but with whose views on Russia I disagree. I refer instead to that hardy band of nutters on the far right in the West who see Putin as a champion of the West, presumably because he kills Muslims, empowers the Russian Orthodox Church and uses nationalistic rhetoric.

This bizarre vision of Putin is not really grounded in reality, however. It recalls more the John Birch Society conviction that conservative Republican president Dwight Eisenhower was really a communist, or the Lyndon La­Rouche movement’s view that the Queen is involved in the international drugs trade. These are ideas so dotty that they are beyond rational refutation.

But back to Putin. Why would Moscow conduct such an easily detected operation?

A critic of Putin, Alexander Litvinenko, was killed by radioactive poisoning with polonium in London in 2006. It took brilliant forensic work by the Brits, assisted by the fact Litvinenko survived for some days after the poisoning and as he was dying told the British authorities everything he knew, to establish that polonium was used at all. It is very hard to trace. The British government, after exhaustive inquiries, concluded Litvinenko was poisoned on Moscow’s orders. Richard Kerbaj, formerly of this newspaper, produced a superb television documentary on the case, making public some of the evidence.

Whereas polonium is a stealth poison, novichok is a blaring, screaming public announcement.

There are three compelling reasons Putin’s government might have been motivated to authorise such an operation, in the almost certain knowledge it would become public.

First, to terrorise the regime’s Russian critics. Not only Litvinenko and Skripal have been attacked in Britain. A substantial number of Russian dissidents and regime opponents living in Britain have died mysteriously and sometimes violently. There is no reason to assume they were all assassinated. There is no reason to assume that none of them was assassinated.

Consider the psycho-political effects of this. If the hand of Moscow state terror can reach out and kill a dissident or declared enemy of Russia even in London or ­Salisbury, how much more terrifying must that be for any dissident or regime opponent living in Russia? All autocracies need to terrify their opponents, especially their potential opponents.

Carrying out such operations in the West demonstrates an ideological proposition the regime holds — that the West has nothing to offer Russians. Britain occupies a special place in the affections, almost the mythology, of Russians, especially middle and upper-class Russians. Britain is seen as the most successful European nation. Its popular culture — from Manchester United to Downton Abbey — has immense appeal to Russians, who often harbour a romanticised conception of British traditions, a conception that embodies a kind of mourning for lost Russian traditions. So does Britain’s reputation for orderliness, for the rule of law.

The Litvinenko and Skripal cases carry a powerful message to Russians — do not think for a moment that any of this, under any circumstances, can ever put you beyond the reach of Russian state power.

The second powerful reason for Moscow to conduct the Skripal operation is to humiliate the West. Britain’s reaction — of expelling a few diplomats and threatening some vague sanctions against a few rich, pro-regime Russians in London — was kind of pathetic. And yet I am not really critical of the May government. It has very few options short of potentially provoking a more dangerous confrontation.

The Russian economy is doing poorly under Putin. Despite its vast land mass, large population and huge natural resource endowments, Russia has an economy about the size of Italy.

When he first came to power in 1999, Putin certainly did arrest the free fall of the economy and restore order, which was the basis of much of his early legitimacy. Since then, Russian living standards have risen. Russia did particularly well during the resources boom.

Now, its economy is stagnant and there has been little or no meaningful economic reform. But like all resource economies, it is somewhat insulated against any but the grossest of sanctions, and these sanctions inevitably hurt the nations that apply them, as western Europe is such a big consumer of Russian energy exports.

Ivo Daalder, who was a senior US official under Barack Obama, argues that Moscow has brilliantly evolved a variety of “hybrid warfare” tactics, heavily reliant on cyber capabilities and information warfare as well as kinetic operations, which are typically deniable in their early phases. This is exceptionally difficult for the West to deal with.

For Moscow, humiliating the West as it has done in the Skripal case adds to Putin’s lustre and reputation as a hard man who doesn’t lose.

Which brings us to reason three. Autocrats who have reversed previous trends of liberalisation, such as Xi Jinping, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Putin, have used hyper-nationalism very effectively as their primary ideological drive.

Moderate nationalism, balanced by other civic virtues, is constructive. It embodies social solidarity and meaningful accountability. Nationalism has been the dominant ideological force for the past 200 years. But hyper-nationalism needs enemies. The rhetorical confrontation with the West over Skripal has surely helped Putin at home and may well encourage Moscow to do more of the same.

Putin... in case you missed it is stating he is, like China, reasserting Russia's place in the world, he childishly and arrogantly allowed the claim that Russia is a Nuclear power and should not be messed with....