Though Putin might little doubt interact in some electoral chicanery to make sure that he’s re-elected with a big majority, he’ll, nevertheless, be looking for to be backed by a major mandate. He desires the election to look like a free and truthful poll.
He wants the election to be seen as “clear” as a method of cementing his legacy as Russian state chief. He doesn’t need historical past to recollect him as a frontrunner who might solely stay in energy as a dictator.
And evidently he can be re-elected by a transparent majority of the Russian folks. As chief, Putin has frequently been recorded as having fun with fashionable assist. He just lately had an 80 per cent approval score.
The caveat is, in fact, that the state-sponsored Russian media has all the time backed Putin and painted him in a really flattering gentle.
Additionally, in recent times, and particularly because the 2022 conflict in Ukraine started, any information retailers that had been crucial of both Putin or extra broadly of state coverage have been severely clamped down on and even pressured in a foreign country. Russia has a media that’s now completely in Putin’s palms.
Putin additionally must win, and win handsomely, to chase away any challenges to his rule from inside his supposed energy base. Since coming to energy, he has developed a major internet of patronage hyperlinks involving folks within the varied “energy ministries” and senior political figures, oligarchs and navy leaders.
In essence, all of them rely for their very own main – and wealth-creating – positions on the truth that Putin’s hand stays regular on the Russian state tiller.
But when the voters seems to resolve that Putin doesn’t get pleasure from their fashionable assist – and that he’s due to this fact a weak chief – then a major variety of these folks in positions of energy – the “siloviki” (strongmen) – might really feel that they must act. They might wish to unseat him as a way to retain the state stability that serves their pursuits.
