Russian President Vladimir Putin and his nation look more invincible than at any other time in his 18 years in power.
Since he last faced election in 2012, Russians have invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea, blanket-bombed Syria, been accused of meddling in the US presidential election and claimed to have a scary new nuclear arsenal.
“No one listened to us. You listen to us now,” Putin said earlier this month in boasting about those new weapons.
Putin will overwhelmingly win re-election as president on Sunday, again. So why bother holding a vote at all?
He disdains democracy as messy and dangerous — yet he craves the legitimacy conferred by an election.
He needs tangible evidence that Russians need him and his great-power vision more than they worry about the freedoms he has muffled, the endemic corruption he has failed to eradicate, the sanctions he invited by his actions in Crimea and Ukraine.
“Any autocrat wants love,” Carnegie Moscow Center analyst Andrei Kolesnikov said, and Putin gets that love “from high support in elections.”
Expected to win as much as 80 percent of the vote, Putin would further cement his authority over Russia, a czar-like figure with a democratic veneer.
In 14 years as president and four years as prime minister of the world’s largest nation, Putin has transformed Russia’s global image, consolidated power over its politics and economy, imprisoned opponents, offered asylum to US whistle-blower Edward Snowden, quieted extremism in long-restive Chechnya, hosted phenomenally expensive Olympic Games and won the right to stage this year’s FIFA World Cup.
He is now 65 and he is not planning to leave anytime soon.
The election is to confirm Putin’s argument that to improve life in Russia, the nation needs continuity more than it needs drastic change, independent media, political opposition, environmental activism, or rights for homosexuals and other minorities.
Russia remains disproportionately dependent on oil prices and its 144 million people will stay poorer than they should be.
They will also still be convinced that the world is out to get them.
Putin’s most important mission in the next six years is working out a plan for what happens when his next term expires in 2024: Will he anoint a friendly successor or invent a scheme that allows him to keep holding the reins?
Today’s all-powerful Putin bears little resemblance to the man who took his tentative first steps as president on the eve of the new millennium.
Catapulted to power on former Russian president Boris Yeltsin’s surprise resignation, Putin walked into his new office on Dec. 31, 1999, in a suit that seemed too big for his shoulders.
His low-level KGB background made him seem shifty and many Russians regarded him as little more than a puppet of the oligarchs then pulling the strings in the Kremlin.
Russia was still emerging from a tumultuous post-Soviet hangover.
Contract killings dominated the headlines, its army could not afford socks for its troops and its budget was still dependent on foreign loans.
Eighteen years later, Putin’s friends run the economy and Russia’s military is resurgent.
An entire generation has never known a Russia without Putin in charge and an increasing number of other leaders — US President Donald Trump among them — are emulating his nationalist, fortress mentality.
The once-feisty Russian media has fallen silent.
Kremlin propaganda now has a global audience, via the far-reaching networks RT and Sputnik.
Yet while Putin looks invulnerable on the surface, he has reason to worry.
The Kremlin is lashing out at opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s recent investigations of corruption, fearing they could spur a public uproar, and the battle for succession threatens to cause damaging splits within Putin’s inner circle.
Meanwhile, Russia’s disillusioned youth could turn against him.
Some have joined Navalny’s protests; others just will not bother to vote, quietly sapping his power.
As Putin faces challenges at home, expect more Russian chest-thumping abroad.
“The international environment is an instrument for him in managing those domestic challenges first and foremost,” Washington-based Kennan Institute director Matthew Rojansky said. “He can declare something like a Syria intervention or something in the post-Soviet space.”
A newly elected Putin is also likely to continue the Cold War-like relationship with Trump’s US.
Russia sees the investigation into alleged meddling in the US election as concocted — but also as a sign that Russia is important again and that Americans are obsessed with weakening Russia at all costs.
“Does the US treat Russia equally? Does it take Russia seriously? That’s an enormously important benchmark” for Russians, Rojansky said. “They are not benchmarking themselves against China.”
Ever since a leading US diplomat was recorded giving instructions to Ukrainian opposition figures, Russians have been convinced that Washington caused the Ukraine conflict by messing in Russia’s backyard and that the US bears responsibility for the ensuing fighting.
It has killed thousands and remains unresolved.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea prompted US and EU sanctions, sending Putin’s popularity skyrocketing.
Crimea is framed as Russia’s biggest victory in the Putin era, a restoration of might and righting of historical wrongs.
To drive the message home, the election is being held on the fourth anniversary of the takeover.
The last time Putin faced voters, he also was guaranteed victory, but was on shakier ground.
A movement led by Navalny had brought masses to the streets of Moscow and other cities, as the educated middle class chafed at Putin’s backward-looking vision.
Since then, Navalny has been arrested repeatedly and is barred from running for president for criminal convictions that are seen as politically driven.
Other opposition figures have also been sidelined, such as former billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent 10 years in prison for tax fraud charges seen as punishment for political ambitions.
He now lives abroad.
Meanwhile, Russia’s problems persist.
Putin has barely bothered with campaigning. When he does, he promises a brighter future, implicitly acknowledging a lackluster present.
With about 20 million Russians currently living below the official poverty line of about US$180 a month, he pledges higher wages and pensions.
He wants better healthcare to boost life expectancy from 73, several years below European levels.
Recent space launch failures have drawn attention to troubles with the struggling aerospace industry, once a pillar of Soviet pride, and he wants Russia to catch up on robotic technologies and artificial intelligence.
“To put it mildly, Putin will have plenty to do in his next term,” Kolesnikov said.
Notably, he must ensure that his nation can outlast him.
“Sooner or later there will be no Putin and at that point, what will we do with Russia?” political scientist Dmitry Oreshkin asked.
Additonal reporting by Angela Charlton, PARIS
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