Putin celebrates his re-election in Red Square, presented as support for the invasion of Ukraine

The coincidence of dates is not coincidental. The presidential election which should return Vladimir Putin to power for six years, thanks to the result as impressive as it was suspicious of 87.2% of the votes, had been deliberately scheduled for March 15 to 17. That is to say, the day before March 18, marking the anniversary of the annexation of Crimea, exactly ten years ago, during a referendum organized in conditions that were anything but transparent! An attachment of the peninsula to Russia which constitutes the founding event of the Putinian gesture for a decade and which the head of the Kremlin celebrated, Monday evening, in Red Square, at the same time, therefore, as his electoral victory. According to almost final results, his score exceeds by 10 points that he obtained in the 2018 election (76% of the vote), as does the participation rate (77.4%, compared to 67% ago six years).

Monday evening, the usual host of “Z-patriot” stars, all unconditionally supporting the military intervention in Ukraine, took to the stage set up in front of the Kremlin walls. In his speech, Vladimir Putin, visibly in great shape, welcomed the “return to the homeland of the Ukrainian territories annexed by Moscow”. “We did it,” he said, announcing that a railway line connecting Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia to the cities of Donetsk, Mariupol and Berdyansk in the annexed regions of Ukraine, had been put into service, and that it would “soon” reach Sevastopol.

The day before, speaking after the vote, Vladimir Putin praised, in the same vein, the image of a “united” and inflexible country in the face of “those who want to crush us”. Clearly, the Western enemy, whom the head of the Kremlin, perked up like never before, once again warned, by going shortly after the announcement of the first provisional results to his campaign HQ. A somewhat unreal designation, moreover, no campaign having actually taken place. Faced with Putin, the three other candidates in the running played the role assigned to them - that of simple extras. Businessman Vladislav Davankov, expected to receive some of the opposition votes, came in third place (3.85% of the vote), behind communist Nikolai Kharitonov (4.3%) and only ahead of the candidate from the nationalist LDPR party, Leonid Slutsky (3.2%). Abroad, Russian voters were able to express somewhat different choices: in Paris, for example, Davankov beat Putin (38% against 36%), with 20% of the ballots having been invalidated.

Monday evening, the three “rivals” were greeted by Mr. Putin, before all going on stage together. “We share the same goals,” the winner told the three candidates, while the latter nodded. By midday, groups of supporters of the Russian president had begun to gather near the Kremlin, in central Moscow, some wearing windbreakers crossed out with slogans such as “Our loyalty to the homeland gives us strength ". Many of these participants, however, dragged their feet somewhat, particularly those mobilized in the provinces and transported in groups to Moscow to show off.

Hailed by his allies, Chinese, Indian and North Korean in particular, Mr. Putin's re-election was criticized by Western capitals (read below), who denounced a simulacrum of democracy. According to the organization OVD-Info, 85 people were arrested on the last day of voting, when the opposition called on voters to report to polling stations at midday as a sign of protest. For political scientist Alexander Baunov, the result of these elections “marks a definitive break with Western practices”. According to a statistical study carried out by the newspaper Novaya Gazeta Europe, around half of the 64.7 million votes cast by the presidential candidate were also falsified. “Never has a presidential campaign (in Russia, editor's note) been so far from constitutional criteria,” denounced Golos, an independent election monitoring organization, pointing out the absence of observers worthy of the name, manipulation and intimidation from the police, who watched voters over their shoulders as they put their ballots (without envelopes) in the ballot box.

Among countless examples, Golos cites the case of a Moscow polling station where a police officer had the ballot box opened to recover a ballot voluntarily invalidated by a young voter who was arrested. The results were also driven up by territories where elections are traditionally split, such as Chechnya (97% of the vote in favor of Putin). This “Chechenization” of voting was also observed in Crimea (89%) and other annexed territories of Ukraine – in Donetsk (95%), Luhansk (94%), Zaporizhia (92%) and Kherson 88%). Conversely, the Novosibirsk region, for example, relatively few went to the polls (63% participation), while strangely this rate by electronic voting rose to 93%...

Emboldened, Putin even went so far on Sunday evening as to pronounce for the first time in public the name of his bête noire, the opponent Alexeï Navalny, who died a month before the election in his Arctic prison. A “sad event,” said the head of the Kremlin, who assured that he was in favor of exchanging Alexeï Navalny with the West shortly before his death, on the condition that he “does not return” to Russia.

There is no doubt that the result of the elections will be interpreted by those in power as unconditional support for continuing the “special military operation” in Ukraine at all costs, according to political scientist Alexander Baunov. However, underlines the expert, “such support for war until victory only exists among the oldest sections of the population”. But, obviously, the electoral verdict was deliberately endorsed by Vladimir Putin as a blank check granted to the warlord.

While Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory have increased in recent days, particularly in Belgorod, Vladimir Putin indicated on Sunday evening his intention to react, which raised fears in kyiv of an escalation of military operations. “Given the tragic events taking place (near the border), we will be forced at some point (…) to create a kind of “sanitary zone” in the territories subordinate to the Kiev regime,” said the Russian president . “It is a question of creating a security zone that the enemy will only be able to overcome with difficulty with the means at its disposal,” he added, without further details.