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Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in a ceremony launching the construction of infrastructure objects via video link from a residence outside Moscow, Russia, March 14, 2024.
25 years on, is Putin unstoppable?
Surprising zero people, Vladimir Putin on Sunday "won" his fifth term as Russia’s president.
The result was not close: Russia's electoral authorities say Putin took 87% of the vote with 77% turnout. A landslide was never in question, as Putin has systematically eliminated any opposition to his rule.
Putin has now ruled Russia for 25 years. When he first became president, no one had ever heard of "YouTube,” Italy’s economy was still bigger than China’s, and Britney Spears ruled the Billboard with “One More Time.” But now, a quarter of a century later, is Putin more powerful than ever?
Consider:
- His economy has largely weathered sanctions and is humming again — on a war footing.
- He faced down an insurrection from his own warlord protege last year.
- He dispatched his most eloquent and charismatic critic to the grave.
- The war in Ukraine wasn’t the four-day cakewalk to Kyiv he imagined, but Russia again has the upper hand in a grinding war of attrition as Ukraine scrambles to find more military aid.
- The Putin-curious Donald Trump leads the polls ahead of this fall’s US presidential election.
To be clear, there are plenty of reasons to believe that Russia is a long-term loser as a result of Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. Willis Sparks recently outlined them here.
And Russia today is a far cry from the booming country of 2006-2012 that was pumping oil at $120 a barrel and winning bids for the World Cup and the Olympics while Putin gallivanted around on a horse, in an F1 car, or in a giant Siberian crane disguise.
But Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin currently has virtually unfettered control over the economy, society, and war machine of a nuclear superpower. The big question now is what he’ll do with that power next, and who might stand in his way.
Russian President Vladimir Putin tours an exhibition as part of the Strong Ideas for a New Time forum held by the Agency for Strategic Initiatives, an autonomous non-profit organization in Moscow, on Feb. 20, 2024.
Viewpoint: Russian authorities seek strong election showing for Putin
Amid tight control of dissent, a crackdown on the opposition, and a big pressure campaign to get voters to the polls, there is little doubt President Vladimir Putin will win another term in office in elections being heldon March 15-17. Still,the Kremlin is working hard to ensure a strong showing for the 71-year-old leader who has ruled the country for 25 years. Displays of public support are important for his legitimacy.
Eurasia Group expert Alex Brideau says one important watchpoint will be whether the followers of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who recently died in a Russian prison, can organize a symbolic protest vote. We sat down with Alex to learn more about what to expect in the election and the strength of the Putin regime.
What steps is the Kremlin taking to ensure Putin’s victory?
The Kremlin is not worried about Putin losing the election, but it doesn’t want any big surprises. The authorities have ensured that voters have few options when choosing the president. Along with Putin, three other candidates represent loyal opposition parties that lack substantial public support. The state’s repression of critical politicians and activists through arrests, bans on activities and fundraising, exile, or killings has been so strong that there were few real opposition candidates capable of rallying large numbers of voters. Those who tried this time to get on the ballot failed to get past the Central Election Commission.
Putin’s team also has been working with regional and local officials to ensure that both turnout and support for the president will be high. It is aiming for 70%-80% of the vote, according to independent Russian media outlet Meduza. Government employees, soldiers, and people working for state-owned companies will be under pressure to vote and ensure others vote for Putin, too.
Will Navalny’s death have any impact?
The crowds that gathered in Moscow to say farewell to Navalny showed that people will show their opposition to Putin, if very cautiously. Still, there is no candidate on the ballot to rally those voters. Navalny’s organization has been hounded by the security services since his arrest in 2021, making it hard for them to have an effect. But they will nevertheless try. Navalny’s widow Yulia has encouraged people to vote for anyone other than Putin, while others have encouraged opponents to do this together at noon on the 17th. The tactic won’t stop Putin from winning, but it could embarrass the regime if enough voters follow their advice.
What do you make of the level of support garnered by anti-war candidates before they were barred?
Two candidates running on anti-war messages tried to get on the ballot: Ekaterina Duntsova and Boris Nadezhdin. This offered an imperfect gauge of anti-war sentiment in January, when thousands of people lined up in cities across the country to give Nadezhdin the needed signatures to become a candidate. But Russian authorities stepped in and both politicians were barred from the ballot on technicalities widely seen as a way to ensure their anti-war campaigns would not continue.
Nonetheless, it is important to note that Putin has not shied away from talking about the war while campaigning. Instead, he has expressed optimism about continued success in the invasion and has not dialed back his previously declared objectives for the war. He has also played up his narrative of a threat from NATO and the West.
What other indications do we have about the true level of public support for Putin and the war in Ukraine?
Experts continue to debate the reliability of opinion polling in Russia, especially as repression has increased. At the very least, polls like those from the independent Levada Center have shown Putin gets consistently high backing in the upper-70% to mid-80% range. Putin’s apparent high popularity has long been an important part of how he demonstrates his legitimacy and manages Russia’s elites.
Polls also show the public’s consistently strong support for Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. However, they also show contradictory views on the issue. A majority support negotiations to end the war, but a majority also opposes giving back any occupied Ukrainian land to secure peace. Mobilization is not popular, something seen during the partial mobilization drive in the fall of 2022. Putin appears sensitive to this and has stated multiple times that a new mobilization won’t be necessary.
How would you place the level of repression in Russia now in a historical context?
Dissent in Putin’s Russia has always carried some risk, but the last three years have seen the highest level of repression in Russia’s post-Soviet existence. It started in the wake of Navalny’s 2021 imprisonment and expanded as Russian authorities used the war to further clamp down on dissent. The public now has very few legal outlets to protest government actions.
It’s hard not to see some similarities to the Soviet era's use of the security services, and their tactics, to squash opposition to the regime. But the societal control Russian officials can muster today through arrests, intimidation, and censorship is not nearly on the same level as what the Communist Party exerted over the everyday lives of Soviet citizens.
What would it take to loosen Putin’s grip on power?
Putin enters this election confident about the war and an economy that has grown despite major Western sanctions. But the war and the economy present a risk to him if they falter down the road. Moreover, some of the biggest protests during Putin’s time in power have been reactions to corruption or the abuse of power. The lack of outlets to oppose the government without fear of jail or fines creates a danger for the Kremlin: that an incident triggers spontaneous unrest that spreads nationwide. That said, Putin will enter his next term quite firmly in power, with little to suggest that he is under threat of losing control anytime soon.
Edited by Jonathan House, Senior Editor at Eurasia Group
A man casts his ballot at a polling station during the Slovenian parliamentary elections in Lobnica.
Hard Numbers: Slovenia votes, global defense spending soars, gridiron culture war at SCOTUS, guess who flouted the Russian arms embargo?
11: Marine Le Pen wasn’t the only rightwing Euroskeptic who took an L on Sunday — Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša’s SDS Party lost by 11 points to the Freedom Movement, an upstart green party, which won 34% of the vote. Janša, like Le Pen, noted that his party still got more votes than ever before.
2 trillion: Global military spending topped $2 trillion for the first time last year. Nearly two-thirds of that came from the US, China, India, UK, and Russia. Washington’s world-leading $800 billion tab dipped slightly from 2020 but still outstripped the next nine countries combined.
273 million: Speaking of the arms trade, Germany and France reportedly made a combined 273 million Euros selling arms to Russia, flouting an embargo that the EU slapped on the Kremlin after Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Critics say some of those weapons are now being used in Ukraine.
50: Another US culture war battle begins this week as the US Supreme Court takes up the a case of a public high school football coach praying with his players at the 50-yard line after games. Coach Kennedy says it’s a matter of his private religious freedom, but the school board feared it would be seen as an inappropriate endorsement of one religion over others. The justices will decide.
What is Putin so worried about?
There is little intrigue about the outcome of Russia's elections to the Duma (the lower house of parliament) on 17-19 September. The pro-Kremlin United Russia party has won every national election in Russia under President Vladimir Putin, dating back to 2003, and this time will be no exception.
Still, in recent months, the Kremlin has dialled up various forms of political repression against opposition figures, those connected to them and independent media.
We asked Eurasia Group Russia analyst Jason Bush what this escalating repression tells us about Putin's hold over public opinion, and what questions it raises about Russia's long-term future.
How is the regime clamping down on dissent?
Perhaps the first major signal that the authorities' attitude to political dissent was hardening was the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny last year, followed by Navalny's arrest and imprisonment this year.
The authorities have also enacted new legislation that criminalizes anyone associated with Navalny, branding them "extremist," a label previously used for terrorist groups and that can entail stiff prison sentences.
The crackdown has gone much further than Navalny's immediate allies. Some more moderate opposition politicians have also been banned from participating in the election because they have expressed support for Navalny or taken part in political protests. Pavel Grudinin, a Communist businessman who was runner-up in the 2018 presidential election, has also been barred, supposedly because of undeclared assets abroad.
Meanwhile, the authorities have initiated a wide-ranging clampdown on independent media. Several publications have been designated "foreign agents," which damages their ability to attract advertising and business. The authorities went further in the case of one magazine, Proekt, which had investigated high-level corruption, forcing its immediate closure by branding it an "undesirable organization."
Is the crackdown this time significantly worse than in the run-up to previous elections?
Outlawing opposition political organizations for "extremism" is a new development, as is the concerted use of the "foreign agent" label for a broad swathe of independent media publications. So yes, this is a heavier crackdown than in previous elections. This is not to say that previous Russian elections were free and fair: they were far from that. But the methods used to exclude candidates or control media coverage were somewhat subtler than we are seeing now.
Is this just about the election or is there something bigger going on?
The timing, ahead of the elections, suggests that the Kremlin wants to exclude or deter critical voices that could influence voters. However, the crackdown also has deeper roots. The Navalny-led protests had been getting bigger since 2017. And the Kremlin's concern was undoubtedly fueled by the demonstrations last year in neighboring Belarus, which underscored that political unrest can sometimes appear with surprising speed and suddenness.
Technological and generational changes are also fueling the Kremlin's paranoia of Western-backed plots to undermine Russia. New internet publications (sometimes based abroad) are harder for the Kremlin to control than traditional newspapers and television channels. Meanwhile, opinion polls in Russia show that public enthusiasm for Putin is declining, especially among the young.
That doesn't sound good for him, what do the polls say?
According to one, run by the Levada Center in February, only 31 percent of 18-24-year-olds wanted to see Putin stay in power for another presidential term after 2024, compared with 57 percent among this age group who opposed this. Russians aged 25-39 were only a little more enthusiastic, with 39 percent favouring Putin staying on and 51 percent opposed. These were almost mirror images of attitudes among the age groups over 40.
Even so, Putin remains significantly more popular than United Russia. Recent opinion polls show around 30 percent of respondents preparing to vote for the party, down from around 45 percent in similar polls ahead of the last Duma election in 2016. Its support among likely voters is higher than such raw poll data may suggest though, given that Russians who are skeptical about Putin or United Russia are also less likely to vote.
What are Russian voters concerned about right now?
As in many other countries, the election follows a difficult economic period related to the pandemic, with problems such as high inflation now troubling voters more than usual. Russia's economy has been recovering over recent months, however, and the virus appears to be again receding after a brief resurgence in the summer. The bigger problem for Putin and his party is that growth in the economy and living standards have been lackluster for several years.
So, the big question: what is Putin so afraid of?
He is probably more afraid of political unrest, similar to what occurred in Belarus last year or in Ukraine in 2014, than he is of voters. Russia still lacks well-organized and independent political parties with broad public appeal that are capable of mounting an effective electoral challenge. Small parties typically face barriers registering, have limited media access and face an unfavorable electoral system, with requirements to collect signatures from supporters long used to weed out unwelcome candidates.
But Russia has seen sizable political protests in the not-too-distant past (the Duma elections in 2011 were followed by several months of protests), and election-related disorder has been fairly frequent in other post-Soviet states, most recently Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus. Russian history has also been characterized by chaotic political disorder much more often than peaceful transitions of power via the ballot box. For Putin, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire was a formative political experience.
Does the increased repression carry risks?
The main risk is that the heavy-handed tactics intensify discontent and dissent, thereby accelerating the political trends the regime is trying to prevent. This is exactly what happened in the dying months of the Soviet Union.
But repression is not necessarily a flawed strategy politically, as there are also examples of it proving quite effective. In truth, there is not much evidence at present that the Kremlin is sowing the seeds for an eventual public backlash.
Some other risks are probably more immediately relevant. A society in which critical voices are cowed into silence is unlikely to be effective at addressing problems such as corruption. Original thinkers will shun politics and business. Further strains on relations with the West will serve as an additional deterrent to foreign investment.
How secure is Putin's grip on power?
The escalating repression gives the impression that he is feeling vulnerable. Yet this is still a very one-sided political conflict in which the Kremlin still holds most of the cards.
Putin's public approval rating still remains around 60 percent. It is also surprisingly resilient, changing remarkably little over the last three years despite the many societal difficulties caused by the pandemic. In general, Russian public attitudes change very slowly. According to opinion polls, most Russians still express very little interest in political freedoms or civil rights. They are also generally skeptical about whether protesting can make any difference.
So Putin probably does not yet have a great deal to worry about — for now, at least.
Putin has a solution for US democracy
Are you tired of elections that are confusing, meddled with, or disputed? Renowned US democracy expert Vladimir Putin knows there is a better way!
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