Russian Elections 2024: Overwhelming Support for Putin
But is it really an election when there is no real opposing voice?
My X feed this morning was littered with blasts from every Russian embassy in the world, showing smiling Russians voting Vladimir Putin for another term as president.
Hey, look at us! Look what a smiling democracy we are!
“We won’t tolerate criticism of our democracy any longer,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a youth conference in Moscow earlier this month. “Our democracy is the best.”
There are no elections observers in Russia, elections are also being held in territories that were illegally annexed from Ukraine, and people there are also forced to vote.
There are technically four candidates for President this year.
Putin, is running as an independent. Leonid Slutsky of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR)—who is designated pursuant to both EO 13661, after Russia invaded and illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, and EO 14024 for Russian malign activities—Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party, who is also sanctioned under EO 14024, and Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, who is sanctioned under the same authority, are also “running,” and I use that term loosely.
Two candidates considered “pro-peace”—Boris Nadezhdin and Ekaterina Duntsova—were kept off the ballot because of “paperwork mistakes.”
Slutsky is a first-class scumbag. In February 2018, four female journalists accused him of sexual harassment. In response Slutsky compared himself to Harvey Weinstein (talk about tone-deaf!), claimed to be the target for defamation and provocation, and threatened legal action.
During an interview, Slutsky allegedly asked journalist Farida Rustamova if she would like to come to work for him. When she declined his offer, he allegedly replied: “You’re trying to get away from me, you don’t want to kiss me, you’ve hurt my feelings.”
When Rustamova told him she had a boyfriend that she planned to marry, Slutsky reportedly said: “Great, you’ll be his wife, and my mistress.”
Rustamova says Slutsky then began “running his hand, the flat of his palm, up against my nether region”.
“I didn’t understand what had happened,” Rustamova said. “I was just lost for words, muttering funny noises, I just went numb. I blurted out something about not coming to him again, that he had felt me up.”
Slutsky is then alleged to have replied: “I don’t feel people up. Well, OK, just a little. ‘Feel people up’ is an ugly expression.”
Slutsky allegedly only earns about $75,000 per year on his Russian legislator’s salary, and yet, he and his wife own land, a house, three apartments, seaside villa at Bodrum on the southwestern Turkish coast, non-residential premises, and several cars, including a couple of Bentleys.
He seems nice. Not corrupt at all!
Kharitonov is a typical communist. Need I say more? He wants a lower pension age, an increase in pension payments and support for large families, and Russia’s exit from international organizations such as the IMF because they apparently “undermine Russia’s economic sovereignty.” He also supports Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Davankov’s New People party initially opposed Moscow's 2022 recognition of the “independence” of Ukraine’s separatist-held Luhansk and Donetsk regions — but ultimately voted in favor. He’s considered about as “pro-peace” as he’s allowed to be and still appear on the ballot. That means, he supports peace talks with Ukraine but “on our terms and with no rollback,” meaning Russia would get to keep the territory it stole.
So in other words, there’s not a single candidate in that election that opposes Putin’s war that has murdered, raped, and tortured thousands of Ukrainians, driven thousands more from their homes, and resulted in more than 430,000 dead Russian soldiers.
But don’t you worry. None of them stand a chance of winning.
The Russian leader’s on course to get more than 80% support when voting concludes on Sunday, based on results from exit polls, regional and government officials said, citing data available to them and asking not to be identified because the information isn’t public.
Worse yet, Ukrainians in occupied territories are being forced to vote at gunpoint, and in my previous job, I remember seeing photos of Russian troops unloading boxes and boxes of pre-filled ballots in occupied Crimea, which have conveniently disappeared from the Intenet. These elections aren’t exactly fair or legitimate.
Yevheniia Hliebova, head of Novomykolaivka village military administration in Kherson region, who has left occupied territory, described it as an “election at gunpoint. That is, violence.”
Election officials were walking around Novomykolaivka, Hliebova said, “in a brigade accompanied by an armed soldier. He was carrying a weapon, so it was a threat, not verbal, but in fact it was a threat of violence.” Those who refused to vote were threatened with repercussions, she said.
Videos can be seen all over the web, showing armed, masked Russian troops standing menacingly near elderly residents of illegally annexed Ukrainian territories, forcing them to participate in this fraud.
In protest of these sham elections, at least four polling stations were set on fire this weekend. An elderly woman was arrested in Moscow for setting fire to a voting booth. I’ve seen paint and zelenka (a very bright green antiseptic) dumped onto Russian ballots. In St. Petersburg, a young woman threw a Molotov cocktail at a polling station and was immediately arrested. I guess not everyone is excited about being forced to vote for Putin.
I don’t have to list every single incident of violence, force, threat of force, or other methods the Kremlin uses to force the impression that Russians love their supreme leader. The corruption, the fraud, the pressure are all pretty clear indicators that not everything is clearly as happy, as Moscow wants the world to see. The Russian Foreign Ministry spam posts from every foreign nation show happy Russian citizens casting their ballots, while domestically, reports of violence indicate that not all is well.
The Kremlin wants the world to see overwhelming support for Putin. Moscow wants to show that Russians support their leader and his war. But if overwhelming support exists for continued aggression, why in the world would the authorities need to force the residents to vote? Why keep true opposition off the ballot? Why allow only candidates hand-picked by the Kremlin to run against Putin?
This is not the first corrupt election in Russia, and it definitely will not be the last.
Protests took place at polling places today, on the last day of the “election.”
In 2011, massive protests—the biggest since the fall of the Soviet Union—took place in Russia to oppose election-rigging.
Tens of thousands of protesters in 2012 took to the streets to oppose Putin.
Thousands took to the streets in 2019 to demand fair elections.
And yet…
Pew research in 2012 indicated significant support for Putin, Medvedev, and their cronies. Putin’s approval ratings during the last decade fluctuated between 65 and 85 percent. These are still strong numbers, so if that is the case, why the force? Why the corruption? Why the efforts to suppress what little opposition there is? Why stifle dissent?
…the poll finds a number of indicators of support for the status quo. Most notably, 72% of Russians voice a favorable opinion of Vladimir Putin, while almost as many hold a positive opinion of Dmitri Medvedev (67%). Putin’s popularity is being fueled more by views of the economy and perceptions of social mobility than it is being hurt by democratic aspirations. Relatively few Russians express favorable views of other prominent political figures. Roughly four-in-ten or fewer have positive opinions of presidential contenders Gennady Zyuganov (39%), Mikhail Prokhorov (36%), Sergei Mironov (36%) and Vladimir Zhirinovsky (28%). Meanwhile, 54% of Russians are unfamiliar with government critic and protest organizer Alexei Navalny.
A recent report by the Insider sheds light on the efforts to quash even the slightest bit of dissent. The outlet has published an interview with Alexey Molchanov, who served as the chairman of a precinct election commission in St. Petersburg from 2013 to 2022.
Molchanov described cheating such as ballot stuffing and other manipulations that allow Russia’s Territorial Election Commissions to coerce precinct commission chairmen into achieving the Kremlin’s desired result - the perception of overwhelming and unwavering support for Putin and his aggression.
Bribes? Yes.
A week before the elections, envelopes with money were handed out right on the premises of the Territorial Election Commission – somewhere around 50,000 to 60,000 rubles. This was done by people from municipalities. It was very carefully justified: “We are working for the good of the fatherland, the party, and this is an incentive related to delivering favorable election results.” I myself, as the chairman, had to distribute the money among the commission members.
Pressure on election officials? Yes.
As another incentive to deliver the desired result, we were getting constant phone calls throughout election day. The chairman of the Territorial Election Commission or commission members would contact you with a plea to increase certain indicators: “We're struggling. Help us out, you'll be a hero. We'll reward you.”
Voter coercion? Falsified results? Yes.
…everyone understood that a particular result had to be demonstrated, and most likely, if it was not met, measures would have to be taken – possibly extensive ones. At some polling stations, the media effectively engaged with the population, or there was substantial support for the candidate. At others, not so much. A shrewd chairman would leave this task to someone in need of money or someone who would stop at nothing. There were chairmen who themselves rushed to show inflated results. But such individuals, as a rule, did not last long. They did not face criminal charges, but they were removed from the commissions. The system greatly dislikes and fears scandals.
Ballot stuffing? Yes.
The only instance when the chairman of the Territorial Election Commission directly suggested that we stuff ballot boxes happened in 2020. I told him outright that I would not do that. Apparently, he was under immense pressure from above. He offered me the chance to leave right in the middle of the elections. I said, “Okay, I'll leave, but who will do the work?” After that, I realized they would be removing me.
Perhaps, support for Putin and his war is a bit more nuanced, age dependent, and less enthusiastic than what Moscow would have us believe. A Levada poll conducted in November 2023 indicated that while nominal support for the invasion of Ukraine remained high at 73 percent, the majority of Russians want to see the war in Ukraine end and oppose mobilization.
Interestingly, only five percent of Russians under the age of 25 regard state TV as an objective source of information, compared to 51 percent of those aged 60 and over. This age breakdown is important if one wants to predict future trends. The patterns evident in media consumption match broader attitudes toward the war, with Levada finding that 56 percent of those aged 65 and above unconditionally back the invasion, with this figure shrinking to just 30 percent for those aged below 25.
I have said this before, and I will say it again. Russia doesn’t care that no one believes its disinformation about the war, its election claims of overwhelming support for Putin, or its allegedly “clean” democracy. Russia needs to get the message out there, because pulling it back will be impossible, and there will always be those willing to spread it, sometimes years after the fact.
Remember the Kremlin’s active measures disinformation campaign—Operation Denver (Infektion)—that claimed the AIDS epidemic was manufactured by the United States as a biological weapon? Even Soviet academicians, such as Viktor Zhdanov of the Ivanovsky Institute of Virology in Moscow and top AIDS expert at the USSR at the time declared that no evidence existed that the AIDS virus was artificially synthesized.
Claims to the contrary did not matter. The disinformation campaign was widely reported both in Russia and the West, as well as in African countries. Some media outlets wittingly published Soviet disinformation for cash payments and local journalists were bribed to place materials in their newspapers. Other outlets were happy to publish any report that was critical of the United States, and as long as the information supported their narrative, little research was done about the veracity of the claims. And once a false story was planted, Russian media gleefully picked it up, claiming it appeared in another outlet.
Imagine how much easier these efforts have become with the advent of the Internet and with useful idiots in the western media willingly spreading these stories!
US efforts to counter the AIDS disinformation were unsuccessful. Once it was out there, there were always individuals and outlets willing to spread it. The United States finally approached the Soviets through diplomatic channels and threatened to stop all cooperation on AIDS research.
But the claims continued for years. Some Americans are more than happy to believe that their government is evil and is trying to murder them.
In 1992, 15 percent of randomly selected Americans considered definitely or probably true the statement “the AIDS virus was created deliberately in a government laboratory.” African Americans were particularly prone to subscribe to the AIDS conspiracy theory. A 1997 survey found that 29 percent of African Americans considered the statement “AIDS was deliberately created in a laboratory to infect black people” true or possibly true. And a 2005 study by the RAND Corporation and Oregon State University revealed that nearly 50 percent of African Americans thought AIDS was man-made, with over a quarter considering AIDS the product of a government lab. Twelve percent believed it was created and spread by the CIA, and 15 percent opined AIDS was a form of genocide against black people.
And Kremlin actors tried the same tactics in 2019, working to blame the United States for the COVID-19 outbreak, claiming that the United States was spreading the virus as a bioweapon.
This is why the Kremlin does not care if the majority of the world considers its elections fraudulent. Moscow does not need widespread support. It needs for just a few acolytes to bring the Kremlin’s message to the world, and as long as the narrative is out there, those whose biases it already confirms will continue to cite it as fact to support their claims.
I assess this is why Russia must quash opposing voices. As long as its narrative about widespread support for Putin dominates, and no real challenges are heard or seen, the Kremlin can continue to point at the numbers and claim popular support.
Democracy my ass...