Putin Takes Record Election Win to Press Russia’s War in Ukraine

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(Bloomberg) — Vladimir Putin secured another six years as Russia’s president to step up his war in Ukraine and challenge the West, with the Kremlin claiming record public support for him in a vote whose outcome was pre-determined.

Putin won 87%, according to an exit poll broadcast on state television late Sunday, shortly after the end of three days of voting. That exceeded the previous high of 77% support that the incumbent president received in 2018 elections.

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Preliminary turnout was 74.22%, according to Central Election Commission data shown on state TV. That’s the highest since Boris Yeltsin became president in 1991 after the Soviet Union’s collapse, and well above the 67.5% turnout recorded in 2018. At least six Russian regions claimed turnout was above 90%. 

Three other candidates, all from parties loyal to the Kremlin, received no more than 5% support. Nearly 4.5 million people voted online in a system used in 29 of Russia’s regions for the first time in a presidential election, the Interfax news service reported, citing government data.

Russia’s longest-serving leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Putin, 71, is extending his nearly quarter-century rule into a fifth term at a time when his troops are on the offensive in Ukraine. Russia’s pressing its advantage in the third year of the invasion that’s become Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II, as Ukraine struggles to supply its forces with munitions amid delays in military aid from its US and European allies.

The election outcome “gives Putin every chance to implement any, even the toughest, scenarios in Ukraine,” said Pavel Danilin, head of the Moscow-based Center for Political Analysis, which advises the Kremlin. The “historically high result is a guarantee that the majority of the population supports Putin,” he said. 

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The Kremlin is also putting the squeeze on countries such as Moldova, the Baltic States and those in the Caucasus region in the name of protecting Russian minorities. European leaders have warned openly about the risks of a Russian attack on a NATO member state, and fear the US may abandon them if Donald Trump regains the presidency in November.

Putin Eyes New World Order After Crushing Opposition in Russia

An emboldened Putin is preparing for a long confrontation with the West, according to five people with knowledge of the situation. 

Russia’s economy has largely weathered the shock of unprecedented international sanctions since it began the February 2022 invasion, thanks to a continuing flow of energy revenue and a massive injection of government spending to support the defense industry and shield domestic businesses. Trade with China is booming as Russia reorients its economy away from markets in Europe.

The election allowed the Kremlin to demonstrate Putin’s support in the country to Russia’s elites, according to Nikolay Petrov, a visiting fellow at the Berlin-based SWP think tank. “The most important thing for the Kremlin is that Putin is left with the feeling of a beautiful image and a real victory,” however deceptive, he said.

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Long lines formed at noon outside some polling stations, including in Moscow and St. Petersburg, after allies of opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who died last month in an Arctic prison camp, called on people to protest Putin’s election by turning up at that time. 

Their presence represented an understated sign of defiance amid the harshest Kremlin crackdown on dissent in decades. At least 80 people were detained in 20 cities during Sunday’s vote, according to the OVD-Info monitoring group.

Russia organized voting in occupied areas of Ukraine and that claimed turnout far exceeded 80%, even as millions of people have fled the regions since the invasion. The foreign ministry in Kyiv said the “pseudo-elections” were illegal.  

Ukraine waged an intensified campaign of drone attacks aimed at key Russian infrastructure including oil refineries in the weeks leading up to the election that continued over the weekend. Authorities briefly restricted operations at three of Moscow’s airports on Sunday after a drone was downed near the Domodedovo area of the capital.

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Russia occupies about a fifth of Ukraine including Crimea, which it illegally annexed in 2014. Putin in 2022 declared four regions of eastern and southern Ukraine to be “forever” part of Russia, even as his forces don’t fully control them.

Putin dismissed prospects for a halt to the war in a televised interview last week, saying he’s not interested in a “pause” that would allow Ukraine to re-arm. Russia wants written security guarantees to end the fighting and the “realities on the ground” should be the basis for any negotiations, he said.

“In the last two years, the Putin regime has rebuilt every element of itself to adapt to a permanent state of war,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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