Considering that the main goal of the Putin regime is not war but the consolidation of power, where the annexation of foreign territories is merely a tool, it seems that Russia is once again approaching "difficult times" and "challenging decisions," directly related to the preservation of this power. We are talking about the most crucial presidential elections in Putin's life. It's March 2024.
For the first time in modern history, Moscow is facing the threat of a precipitous fall on all fronts, with humiliating international isolation, economic stability collapse, and a shameful military defeat on the horizon. And, most importantly, the dictator's authority is crumbling, from being on the list of the world's most influential politicians to becoming an international fugitive.
Despite an unprecedented level of Kremlin propaganda, this is palpable even in Russia itself, prompting a series of unprecedented measures to tighten the regime and eliminate dissenters, even including the spectacular downing of a civilian aircraft by the air defense system on August 23.
The authorities are consolidating all efforts not just to win the presidential race but to create conditions where any other course of events is virtually impossible. It's essential not only to showcase a handsome "figure" of accumulated votes but also to demonstrate to Russian society and the world that this is a completely legitimate outcome, one that dispels any doubts and avoids provoking discontent.
As a test of the capabilities of the electoral machine, the venue chosen is a unified voting site for the Russian government bodies on the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine on September 10, 2023, where the socio-political and social situation emulates the most unfavorable scenarios during the 2024 elections.
The methods that the Central Election Commission of Russia plans to employ in these pseudo-elections are illustrative. First and foremost, it's an extended voting window from August 31 to September 10, designed not only to obscure the actual turnout, create a series of propaganda stories, and make any analysis impossible but also to implement all methods of coercion and result manipulation with the punitive system of wartime.
To achieve this, according to eyewitness accounts, everything is being used: home visits with Kadyrov's men for intimidation and ballot box stuffing, confiscation of documents with their return to the polling station, forced voting on the streets among random passersby, special days for organized expression of will by public sector workers, and much more.
Notably, the expansion of the list of voters beyond Russian citizenship(!) is allowed, allowing anyone present here to vote for local government bodies: Russian citizens, Ukrainian citizens, including those from the de-occupied regions, as well as occupying military personnel and migrant workers, based on any documents, including driver's licenses.
With regard to the planned presidential elections, a similar step is expected: the "enrollment" into the electoral base of Ukrainians, hypothetically those who have moved to Russia or are "participating" in the voting from Ukrainian territory, even if they don't possess Russian citizenship "due to special circumstances," which by various estimates could reach up to 8 million people.
A special role is assigned to online voting, successfully tested in the Moscow elections in 2019 and the State Duma in 2021, as a modern system for falsifying votes, whereby the majority of opposition candidates who were clearly leading in the vote counts lost after the tally of "remote expression of will."
And if all other coercive measures aimed to demonstrate massiveness and create a propaganda image, this innovation will actually bring real votes in line with the declared ones. In the 2023 elections, "United Russia" received from 80% to 89% of the votes. In the 2024 presidential elections, as Dmitry Peskov kindly revealed, calling it "not democracy but expensive bureaucracy," more than 90% of the votes will be for Putin.
To ensure that the well-oiled electoral chaos mechanism doesn't malfunction, the occupation administrations have already announced that after the 2023 elections, the "pre-election headquarters" will continue to work in preparation for the 2024 presidential elections.
However, in the midst of all this pre-election frenzy, there is one weak point. Russia has become entangled in a major war, clearly demonstrating the disintegration of its political system. Will it survive the winter, given the growing support from Ukraine's partners, the appearance of F-16s on the battlefield, and the mass proliferation of Ukrainian-made drones? As Ronald Reagan noted, "There is no substitute for victory in battle."
And no matter how much the Kremlin laments, instead of expanding its influence on the geopolitical stage, it seems to be producing nothing more than the treacherous sound of rapidly escaping air from the soap bubble of Russian power and the inflated ego of a paranoid dictator—simply a loud hiss.
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