This re-election of Putin is a shameless charade and nothing to do with voters’ empowerment

Editorial: With little doubt over the ‘winner’ of this weekend’s Russian presidential election, the West should take heart that Putin finds himself isolated – and as his country recedes into Stalinism, so too does its economic prospects. His impoverishing of the Russian people will prove his undoing

Muscovites cast their ballots during Russia’s presidential election (EPA)

It does not take the psephological skills of Professor Sir John Curtice to divine the winner of the Russian presidential election of 2024. Any considerations of swing, differential turnout or the impact of new campaigning techniques may be safely dispensed with. Vladimir Putin’s victory will be achieved – indeed, for all intents and purposes, it is already in the bag – thanks to playing politics the Putin way.

Vote-rigging, fraud, suppression of the opposition, such as it is, control of the media and, above all, intimidation are means by which Putin has maintained himself in power for a quarter of a century. He has caused or permitted the deaths of his main rivals such as Alexei Navalny and, albeit not an electoral opponent, Yevgeny Prigozhin, boss of the Wagner private militia.

It does not take a sophisticated social media offensive to persuade anyone with pretensions to replace President Putin to quietly put the nomination papers away. His main surviving opponent, an anti-war activist, Boris Nadezhdin, has found himself disbarred on a trumped-up technicality and attributes the fact that he is still alive to never crossing “red lines”, such as attacking Putin personally. That is the state of “democracy”.

Nadezhdin claims that he would have won about 30 per cent of the vote in a free (if not entirely fair or well-informed) election, which sounds plausible. For all his monstrous ways, some Russians really do favour their president, or at least can’t see a worthwhile alternative. When the three days of polling across 11 time zones is complete, Putin will be formally confirmed in office for a further six years – at which point he will still be younger than Joe Biden and Donald Trump are now. On paper at least, there is no sign of an end to the Putin era.

Still, the early voting has not been without modest signs of dissent. One protester poured green ink into a ballot box, others have set off fireworks, and one bomb has been lobbed at a polling station. Others may be brave enough to stay home or spoil their ballot papers, but even voting for one of Putin’s hand-picked paper opponents carries its risks. The president may not care to go through the 70 million or so ballot papers, but his more zealous minions certainly do, and everyone knows it.

In occupied Ukraine, electoral officials flanked by soldiers go from house to house to collect the vote; and in the other occupied territories of Transnistria and in Georgia, support for Russia’s leader is also expected, and dissent duly marked down. It is a cynical perversion of democracy, made all the more offensive by its blatancy.

How should the West respond? The first formality is to refuse to recognise the election and thus the legitimacy of Putin’s rule. It would be diplomatically rude, but given the state of geopolitical relations, it would scarcely make matters worse. Legally, it would help strengthen the case for freezing Russian assets held abroad, whether or not they are to be liquidated to fund the Ukrainian war effort.

More practical, and urgent, America in particular needs to send Ukraine the money and arms it needs to halt the present Russian advances, minor as they are, and, as spring arrives, push the invaders back towards the established international order. It is down to the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives, and their speaker, Mike Johnson, as to whether Putin wins or loses this war, and the future security of Europe and the West rests on how that conflict turns out.

Under the malign influence of Trump, it seems that America will, for the first time since the Atlantic Charter signed in 1941 by Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, turn its back on the free world in favour of appeasing a dictatorship. It represents a blunder of epochal proportions, but it is looking more likely that if America does eventually send aid to Ukraine, it will be too late to turn the war around in 2024.

It has also become apparent in recent months that Russia is becoming more adept at evading sanctions. From luxury motorcars for its corrupt elites, to advanced drones for its wars, Russia has few problems getting hold of what it wants; it has proven agile in circumventing restrictions in imports and exports via helpful neighbouring states such as Azerbaijan, the connivance of China and India, and the extensive sanctions-busting expertise and armament factories of North Korea and Iran.

Europe, North America, Japan, South Korea and allied nations represent a formidable alliance, but it is faced by Putin’s network of friends. Something much closer to a full-on economic war against Russia will be required if it is ever going to disgorge occupied Ukraine.

Nonetheless, Russia is isolated, and as it recedes back into Stalinism, so too does its economic prospects. The Russian economy is growing fast – but only because it is being converted to a war economy; the increased output cannot be eaten or enjoyed by civilians, and it is inflationary.

Russia is propped up by energy exports, and by China allowing it to run up a hefty enough debt to ensure Beijing is the more powerful partner in the emerging axis. Whether this will help Russia prevail in Ukraine is one thing, but these trends and Putin’s policies more widely are impoverishing the mass of the Russian people, even as Putin’s favoured oligarchs and the president himself amass more power and riches, and they struggle to defeat a much smaller opponent in Ukraine.

As Russians should understand better than most, those are pre-revolutionary conditions.