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By Joshua Yaffa
On the face of it, Vladimir Putin’s re-election as Russia’s president is a superfluous oddity, a ritual devoid of substance. Putin ruled the country for about a quarter of a century, just a few years before Stalin’s historic control over the Soviet Union. For two decades, no genuine opposition candidate has been allowed to participate in presidential elections. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Putin’s authoritarianism has accelerated into something akin to a full-blown military dictatorship. The only credible foreign politician with genuine domestic support, Alexei Navalny, was killed in a crime in Russia’s Arctic.
However, the most recent elections, which end on Sunday, provide an opportunity to assess the state of Putin’s regime and how it has weathered two years of war. For much of its existence, Putin’s formula has depended on a disconnected population. Unless you were one of the few people stupid enough to challenge the state, politics remained out of your life. The war, in theory, may have simply been a pretext to galvanize Russian society. According to Western estimates, around 350,000 Russian infantrymen have been killed or wounded in Ukraine. In September 2022, Putin introduced what he called a “partial mobilization,” a military conscription that, so far, has mobilized some 300,000 Russian men. Meanwhile, a series of repressive laws criminalized not only publicly complaining about the war, but also speaking honestly about the invasion. The sanctions have left the Russian economy isolated. After the invasion, the ruble plummeted, inflation soared, and real wages plummeted.
However, two years into the war, Russia’s position in Ukraine seems more advantageous than ever and Putin’s control of force seems, at least for the time being, entirely secure. A member of the country’s political elite told me that Putin was worried about the Ukrainian military’s counteroffensive last year. “You may simply not be sure that the front will not collapse as it did in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions,” the user said, referring to Ukraine’s retaking of its territory since the summer and early fall of 2022. But, until 2023, Russian lines largely held up, and Putin concluded that, given shaky Western support, Ukraine was unlikely to gain more effects on the battlefield in the near future. “He’s in a good mood,” the elite member said of Putin. “He’s waiting for the moment when the West will say, ‘Enough is enough, let’s stop this war,’ but he thinks there’s nothing urgent. Every month the situation in Ukraine will get worse. “
In Russia, the surprise of the invasion has long passed. Konstantin Remchukov, editor of a newspaper close to the Kremlin, told me that “there are no longer any doubts” within the country’s ruling class: “Everyone has understood that it is better to do what you are told. After the West sanctioned many prominent businessmen and cut economic ties with Russian companies, the country’s economic elite saw their customers dwindle or even disappear altogether. In Russia, however, the war effort created new money-making opportunities: Assets as varied as auto plants, once owned by Toyota and Renault, and franchises by Starbucks and IKEA, were either seized outright or forcibly sold at deeply discounted costs and distributed among unwavering followers. “Putin was smart,” an influential Russian businessman told me. “Their message was, ‘You see, they’re not satisfied with you, but you’re welcome here. ‘Victorious outcasts instead of losers. “
The reaction to the war among the Russian elite may not be so remarkable: “This is not an elegance of very ideal people,” Remchukov said, but the change in the attitude of the general public has been more complex and surprising. A mission conducted through an organization called the Public Sociology Lab has been tracking public opinion since the beginning of the war. One report asked respondents (knowledgeable, pro-Russian citizens of major cities) if they were worried about the invasion. It was a terrible mistake, that we were bad,” said a Russian computer scientist. said the specialist, describing her feelings in the days after the start of the war. But 8 months later, he said: “I see this as something inevitable and a very painful, very complicated, but inevitable decision. He justified Russia’s invasion as the latest in a long series of human conflicts: “It turns out that there is still war, that it still exists somewhere on the planet. “
A business owner first said she was looking to avoid news from Ukraine. “If I had the opportunity to influence the situation in any way, if anything was up to me, of course, I would do everything I could to put an end to it. “But tying knots, researching everything, discussing it with everybody, I don’t need to do that either. What is it for? My duty is very simple: take care of myself and my family. and those around me. Six months later, their prospects had hardened. I feel like my country is being unfairly bullied,” he said. “Now I’m even more patriotic than ever. “
Russia’s GDP grew more than the world average last year, although a disproportionate percentage of its economic activity was loyal to the war: in 2024, it is estimated that the State will devote more than 8% of its GDP to war. in the army and national security, more than double the percentage of GDP. that the United States had allocated for defense during the Iraq war. At the same time, lavish public spending led to a large-scale redistribution of resources that strengthened Putin’s aid base among the poorest and most peripheral sectors of society. These teams have benefited from populist measures, such as increased subsidies and other bills to families, as well as the expansion of the war industry. In its dependence on state largesse, this emerging middle class differs from that which emerged over the following decade, which tended to be more educated, more urban, likely more oriented to work in the private sector, and, it turned out, more mobile. — its members were overrepresented among the thousands of Russians who left the country after the invasion. (Putin likely would have had that procedure in mind when in March 2022 he spoke of a “self-cleansing” of Russian society. )
Alexandra Prokopenko, a former adviser to the Central Bank of Russia, calculated in a forthcoming newspaper that, since the beginning of the war, the average monthly salary of a welder in a production plant has risen by 25,000 rubles, or about 200,000 rubles. Seventy U. S. dollars, compared to today’s hundred thousand rubles. Those who paint in similar jobs in Russian-occupied Ukraine can earn 300,000 rubles a month. “These other people have never noticed so much cash in their lives. He added that the Kremlin can only maintain such an economic policy for about another year, after which it will face difficult choices: Will the state cut the salaries of army and security personnel, or will it lower salaries?”It’s politically very hard to imagine,” Prokopenko told me. But in the long run, economic imbalances will only get worse, as will the prospect of a full-blown crisis. “
But for now, as Denis Volkov, director of the Levada Center, an independent polling agency, told me, insights from the poll suggest that Russians have a more positive view of their country than at any time before Putin’s presidency. who say they can make discretionary purchases, such as TVs and appliances, is rising. The percentage of respondents who say Russia’s economic outlook will continue to improve over the next five years has increased by around 35 percentage points since 2022. “If you take a look at knowledge,” Volkov said, “you get the feeling that other people have never lived better. “
The darker facets of the war, along with the deaths of tens of thousands of soldiers, are largely kept secret, dealt with individually and outside the public sphere. The Kremlin has promised to send five-million-ruble bills, or about $55,000, to the families of those killed in combat, a significant sum, especially in the poorest regions where the largest number of Russian conscripts come from. At an assembly organized with mothers of Russian soldiers, Putin revealed his own attitude toward the war. “Some other people die because of vodka and their lives go unnoticed,” he told a woman whose son was killed in Luhansk. “But his son lived and fulfilled his step. He did not die in vain.
Putin, for his part, sees himself not as an autocrat holding the country hostage, but as a steward of Russia’s former destiny. After decades in power, Putin’s logic is intended to be a tautology, a closed circuit in which he never has to question or doubt. the price of their political decisions. According to him, he acts in the interest of the country and therefore enjoys the benefits of the country; it has the right to govern as it sees fit because, in fact, it serves and protects the state. “Of course, this is a very convenient position for Putin,” said Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speechwriter and now a Putin critic. “Considering that, right now, it’s the state. “
However, in recent months, Russia has witnessed two unexpected, high-profile political developments and, tellingly, neither Putin nor war. The first took place in January, when lines of others spontaneously appeared across the country to offer their signals on the candidacy of Boris Nadezhdin, a shy, harmless and unknown liberal politician. Nadezhdin made the end of the “army special operation” the focal point of his crusade and called for the release of political prisoners. In the end, the Kremlin refused to accompany him in the presidential election, a sign that he was shaken by photographs of other people’s plight in the cold, cold battle to express his choice over Putin. According to Meduza, a foreign-founded Russian media outlet, internal Kremlin signals expect Nadezhdin to have received up to 10% of the vote. This would have contradicted Putin’s rhetoric about a unified country. A source close to the Kremlin told Meduza that such final results “would suddenly give the impression that a significant component of the population is eager to see the end of the special military operation. ”
The second occasion was Navalny’s funeral. Navalny was not necessarily popular in the electoral sense. His approval rating in Russia peaked at twenty percent in 2021, shortly after he was poisoned by Kremlin agents. But it had a strong resonance in Russian society. With his outspoken denunciation of official corruption, his sense of humour and his remarkable lack of fear, he has become the avatar of a more positive future with options. He built a nationwide network of ticket offices and consistently drew thousands of people to protests around the world. “Autocracies like Russia’s don’t like the concept of progress,” Ekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist based in Berlin, told me. “They focus heavily on the past, they have a cult of history, and they use those concepts. “Navalny reproached the opposite, which made his life unbearable for the state. “His overall position focused on how we can be different from today if we all stick to consistent action,” Schulmann said.
On March 1, crowds lined a Moscow street as the hearse carrying Navalny’s figure passed by. Thousands more flocked to Borisovsky Cemetery, where they covered Navalny’s grave with a pile of bulging flowers. People chanted “Russia without Putin”, “No to war”. ,” and even “Ukrainians are smart people”: a remarkable demonstration of civic courage given that in the past two years, police have arrested other people who held signs with asterisks in the position of the symbol. ” No to war”, and even the “Those who have blank posters without any words. Analysis of the Moscow metro formula through Mediazona, an independent news site, showed an influx of twenty-seven thousand passengers to the station closest to the cemetery. I talked to a friend who was there. ” “We’ve been among so many other people who think like us,” the friend said. “The opportunity is terrible, but the atmosphere is full of energy. “
The Russian online investigative website Proekt, which the Russian state has labeled “undesirable,” recently tracked the number of other people who have been criminally prosecuted in politically motivated cases during the six years of Putin’s current presidential term. There were more than ten thousand, surpassing comparable numbers under Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. “In addition to the widely discussed repression against belligerent parties and pacifist activists, Russia has a formula of social tension in which citizens are seriously punished for the most trivial crimes,” says Proekt. the report says. Still, the existing repressive measures are serious enough for everyone to get the message, but not so serious as to undermine the public’s sense of normalcy. Aleksei Minyailo, an activist and co-founder of a sociological studies task called Chronicles, who chose to remain in Moscow, told me: “If this were really a Stalinist era, I would have been shot a year ago. He continued: “This regime is based on 99% repression and ninety-nine percent propaganda. “
The lack of dissent does not deserve honest support. The Kremlin can’t fill stadiums with rabid, committed supporters (possibly dragging them or twisting the arms of state employees, but a real hobby is incredibly complicated to pull off). ) Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, referred to Putin’s annual State of the Union address in late February, during which she spoke of other people “destroying letters and packages, outerwear and camouflage nets to “Putin, she said, will have to see the war not as something that started alone, as is the case, but as a business supported and demanded through other people. Stanovaya quoted the Soviet war hymn “Holy War,” known for its opening line: “Arise, wonderful country!But now, Stanovaya said, “The country doesn’t need to rise up. “
Last fall, in a moment of rare candor, Valery Fedorov, director of a state-run polling agency, admitted that the so-called war party — hawks who advocate victory at any cost — represents only 10 to 15 percent of society’s voters. “Most Russians are not calling for the capture of Kyiv or Odesa,” he said. “They don’t like to fight. If it were up to them, they wouldn’t have started a military operation, but the scenario has already evolved. This is not genuine opposition to war, but it is much less than enthusiasm for it.
Putin has largely accepted this reality. His government has set out to rewrite the history books to portray Russia as a country protecting itself from external enemies and linking the war in Ukraine to the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II. Today, Russian troops fight for “goodness and truth,” simply like their grandparents. But generally speaking, as Volkov of the Levada Center puts it, “the state will make the rest of us live as they want. “Putin has tried to allay fears of a new order of mass mobilization. “You don’t have to,” he said last summer. If other people are as moved, as he pointed out, to sew camouflage nets for foot soldiers on the front lines, the state will salute their efforts. But if other people need to tend to Moscow’s playgroups and children’s restaurants — Remchukov, the newspaper’s editor, talked about new supply chains sourcing exquisite crab legs and sea urchins from Murmansk, in the Barents Sea; That’s okay too.
There is no grand strategy or vision; Unlike the ideology of the Soviet period, Putinism offers no general values through which to measure specific movements or policies. This, coupled with Putin’s disinterest in the main points of governance, means that there is more and more room for improvisation and independent paintings at the national level. many levels of the state apparatus. Many high-profile arrests of people and prosecutions of criminals are introduced without Putin’s wisdom; for a long time, the FSB has had carte blanche to do as it pleases. Last fall, Putin found himself in a slightly awkward position when regional governments limited abortion rights and Putin, aware of society’s general malaise at such limitations, stepped in to block them.
But when the formula faces a real crisis, the state establishments and their so-called protectors remain silent. This was the case, for example, last June, with the brief mutiny led by Eugene Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenaries. Many regional government and security officials froze and watched Prigozhin and his men rush toward Moscow. A similar dynamic played out last October, when an anti-Semitic mob raged at a Dagestan airport, and it took hours to drive them off the tarmac. In such situations, no one needs to claim their duty or rush to defend the regime. “How can you claim to be in general control,” the elite member said, “and still seem so powerless?”
To the extent that war Putinism has an identifiable doctrine, it is that Russia is engaged in a protracted struggle with the West. In the February speech, Putin said: “The so-called West, with its colonial practices and its tendency to incite ethnic minorities into conflicts around the world, seeks not only to impede our progress, but also to imagine a dependent and decaying Russia and a dying zone where they can do whatever they want. Remchukov told me: “He has made up his mind. If at the beginning of the war, in the clash there were other scenarios and timetables for resolving the problems, today we are witnessing a qualitative change: it has been decided that the confrontation between Russia and the West will last for a while, at least several decades. “Now, Remchukov continued, the state will have to tell the public that Russia is not the West, hence the emphasis on classical values and Putin’s growing interest in culture war issues such as same-sex marriage and trans rights.
Schulmann, the political scientist, told me, “We see a picture of the global in which the West hates Russia and attacks it because its values are incompatible. “He continued: “And those values are innate and immutable. The West will never prevent attacks. “. Russia will never be defeated. The confrontation is eternal. Conveniently for Putin, unlike a “special military operation,” there is no end to this kind of fighting. This will go on forever, which means his reign will have to too.
In reality, Putin will be sworn in for a fifth term in the spring. But is it popular? And does that matter? A recent poll conducted by the Levada Center shows his approval rating exceeds 80 percent. But Miniailo, of the Chronicles Project, cautioned against taking those figures too seriously. “There’s no point in trying to understand what other people need through I just ask them which candidate they’re going to vote for,” he said. “In Russia, politics simply doesn’t exist, so this factor is of little importance. “
Miniailo relayed the effects of a recent poll conducted through his organization that showed a growing disparity between policies other people would like to see (more spending on social programs) and policies they expect from Putin (more military spending). the question of concluding a truce with Ukraine, for example, or restoring relations with the West; About 20 percent more respondents favor such long-term policies for Russia than Putin expects them to implement. For now, that knowledge only suggests a latent and passive dissatisfaction that may or may not turn into something greater.
The continued stability of Putin’s regime is not based on his popularity, but rather on the lack of mechanisms available for others to respond to his unhappiness, discontent, and frustrations. Over the past two decades, the Kremlin has dismantled those instruments: there are no longer independent and disgusting media outlets to hold the state to account; there are no credible opposition parties to channel discontent into genuine politics; And there is no judicial formula capable of checking power. And so, if the emotions of resistance don’t have a credible outlet, then the emotions themselves are repressed. ” I hear in my speeches in the West: If other people are not happy, then there would be crowds in the streets,” Greg Yudin, a Russian political philosopher at Princeton, told me. “But what are those crowds going to do?
Yudin spoke about Navalny’s funeral and the crowds that continue to arrive, day after day, to lay flowers. “Of course, in a country of 140 million people, there are a lot of brave people,” he said. “But that’s never the case. The maximum applicable point is that there is surely no concept of what to do with this courage, where to direct it, and for what purpose. People are not stupid or suicidal, he stressed; By the way, this scenario is not exclusively Russian.
Thus, the long-term of Putin’s formula depends largely on the emergence – or continued absence – of tools or means to challenge it in any meaningful way. “It’s not about changing your attitude and then taking action,” Yudin said. If he sees an opportunity to act, then he might reconsider his attitude. “Yudin and I discussed the idea, widely accepted by most Russian sociologists and political scientists, that the Russian public would react with relief, even joy, if Putin declared that he was ending the war. (The elite member noted that Putin could do this quite easily: “He will say that we have gained 4 new territories, secured a land bridge to Crimea, and defeated NATO. What if Putin gave the impression of announcing on television, for example, that the West still leaves him no option to launch nuclear warheads aimed at Washington, London and Berlin?”People would also take it with enthusiasm,” Yudin said. A CNN report revealed that in the summer of 2022, Biden’s leadership was “rigorously preparing” for a Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine.
Since then, the situation on the Ukrainian battlefield has been progressing, especially for Russia. Putin now believes that Ukraine’s leaders – or, indeed, their Western supporters – deserve to have come to their senses and capitulated long ago. But that is not happening, and probably will not happen, regardless of the precise composition of the long-term aid packages from the United States and Europe. “Putin believes that Russia rules the West in Ukraine,” Stanovaya said. “And now there deserves to be a threshold beyond which they can begin to act reasonably. ” On the contrary, according to Putin, Western capitals are opting for escalation. “This is an escalation that you don’t need yet and that you feel you’ll have to react to,” Stanovaya said. For an autocratic regime like Putin’s, the strength of the president depends on everyone’s confidence in that strength. In the absence of strong public opinion, elections – even those of a completely undemocratic nature – provide a symbol of team spirit and undisputed power. “He wants certification of this worldview,” Stanovaya told me. “Proof that he can stand firm and say once again: ‘I am the country. ‘” ♦
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