Russian Elections 2024

[Forever_Winter]

Russia goes to the polls today.

I wonder who will win?

[BritDownUnder]

It's not so much who will win but what percentage will turn out to vote at all. Vlad is supposedly let it be known that he will be very cross if less than 65% of eligible voters turn out.

[Ralphw2]

Ukrainians in Crimea have been visited by election officials in their homes, with armed guards, and invited to vote on the spot, well in advance of the official poll days.

[adam2]

I have no doubt that the UK left will have congratulated putin on his historic win. "a real victory for the people" a few "extreme right wing agitators" might take a different view.

[invalid]

I have no doubt that the UK left will have congratulated putin on his historic win. "a real victory for the people" a few "extreme right wing agitators" might take a different view.

And how are preparations for the Ukrainian elections going Adam?

[adam2]

I have no doubt that the UK left will have congratulated putin on his historic win. "a real victory for the people" a few "extreme right wing agitators" might take a different view.

And how are preparations for the Ukrainian elections going Adam?

Postponed or cancelled due to the invasion, reasonably in my view.

[Mark]

I have no doubt that the UK left will have congratulated putin on his historic win. "a real victory for the people" a few "extreme right wing agitators" might take a different view.

Adam2 - I hope that was an ironic post ?
I'd be amazed if anybody 'on the left' of UK politics supports Putin - he's on the far right of the political spectrum...
Closer to Hitler/Trump and a whole host of tin-pot dictators all over the world.....

[PS_RalphW]

Putin is becoming more totalitarian by the month. It is no longer enough that he wins elections, it is now no longer acceptable to even express the possibility that anyone else could rule Russia. He is extending the cult of personality to become synonymous with mother Russia herself. This is the equivalent of Stalin as the great leader of the people who became the Revolution and demanded religious devotion.

Of course Stalin ended up paranoid and the people around him so terrified that Stalin largely lost touch with reality. I don't think Putin has gone that far down the rabbit hole (yet), but it would follow a grand tradition if he did, as he gets older and slowly loses his mental powers through the inevitable aging process.

He is taking on this mantle because he needs the people to back him in the war in Ukraine. He cannot win it without the people suffering death and economic decline on a massive scale and he needs them to believe that There Is No Alternative. All very 1984.

That said, Russia would need to get a lot worse before it could be compared to the level of depravity that is North Korea.

The front lines have largely stabilised again in Ukraine, and Ukraine has changed tack and is sending in the "Russian freedom fighters" over the border of Russia itself, and bombing Russian oil refineries very effectively, because these are owned by oligarchs and they have to pay for their own military defense, and have been left as sitting duck targets. This suggests that the recent military leadership change in Ukraine has introduced a bit more imagination and intelligence.

[northernmonkey]

Putin has won by a landslide on a 75% turnout by an 85% majority of that turnout because he is wildly popular with the Russian people because they have confidence in him to make the decisions they want him to make to protect Russia from a dying but dangerous Western Empire thrashing about in its death throes.

Live with it.

[BritDownUnder]

That's pretty good turnout / majority by many countries standards until Kim Jong Un says "Hold my beer"!

Rest assured, Down Under with abundant food, land, sunlight, uranium, gas, coal, mad lunatic people and deadly animals we are living with it very well. A few of our own nuclear weapons would be nice though just to be on the safe side.

[clv101]

A few of our own nuclear weapons would be nice though just to be on the safe side.

One of the best things Australia had going for it, is being located in a nuclear free hemisphere. Adding nuclear weapons to the southern hemisphere world be a monumental bad move. Not just for Australia but for all humanity which will rely on southern latitude to survive nuclear winter.

[BritDownUnder]

They are already here, or have been, in the form of nuclear testing and on nuclear ballistic missile submarines of various countries transiting between the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Also, what else is going to stop shiploads of radioactive, mutant refugees fleeing the Northern Hemisphere for the pleasant South after a nuclear exchange up there.

Australia should have a policy that once Iran gets nukes, or North Korea tests any more, or Chinese nuclear submarines are detected in the Southern Hemisphere waters that they should withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. One major party that is currently in opposition now has introducing nuclear power as a policy.

[northernmonkey]

The Western ruling class media tells you that the elections were a fraud and it would appear quite a few on here believe it.

From a humiliated nation to a superpower going toe-to-toe with the entire western "defensive" alliance and economic bloc.

And winning.

Is there really any wonder why Russian people deeply respect this man and his team?

[Mark]

NM, it's all built on exploiting fossil fuels - Putin hasn't exactly built a 'diverse' economy...
I'm sure that similar data could be produced for other oil based economies - Saudi, Qatar, Kuwait etc. etc.
The only thing that saved Maggie from an economic meltdown was the timely arrival of the North Sea bonanza...

The Russian people are obviously very divided at the moment...
What %age are genuinely supportive of Putin is very hard to tell...

[PS_RalphW]

Over the 20 years Putin has been in charge life has got a lot better for a lot of Russians (but by no means all). This is due largely to the economic reforms and rebuilding of their extractive industries. Of course vast amounts of this vast wealth have been stolen by oligarchs, and most of that has been spirited out into the banks of the West, not least London. Putin took control and reduced the level of theft and got the oligarchs under control, and managed to steal himself a vast amount of oil and gas wealth in the process. If he had limited himself to this level of corruption he would still be the darling of the West. However, he has over the years developed grand ambitions to reclaim control over the former Russian empire known as the USSR, to exploit its natural resources, and their cheap labour populations. This the West turned a bind eye to for as long as it could, but Ukraine is definitely the 1939 invasion of Poland moment. As the invasion failed completely in its initial aims, Putin had the choice of admitting defeat or doubling down for a long brutal war. As the former would have severely limited his life expectancy he chose the latter and he was forced to accelerate the country's dive into outright totalitarianism in order to keep control of his people in the face of economic hardships and mass war deaths.

Of course we are individually just some guy on the internet, but I am over 60 and have been keeping track of geopolitics since the middle of the cold war, and I have enough memory of what both sides were saying over the last 45 years to have a reasonably good idea when each side is lying.

The West, and the US in particular, are not particularly good guys, but Putin is undoubtedly a Bad Guy and very dangerous to the whole of Europe.