Vladimir Putin's
election for a fifth six-year term puts him on track to becoming the longest-serving
Russian leader in modern times, surpassing Joseph Stalin. In a tightly controlled election the incumbent Russian president won a massive 87% of the votes cast. That represented, in his words, a desire for "internal consolidation" that would allow the country to "act effectively at the front line" as well as in other spheres, such as the economy. The election, the first since the , was designed to "both create a public mandate for the war and restore Putin's image as the embodiment of stability", said (NYT). "Still, Russians are somewhat edgy over what changes the vote might bring." Subscribe to Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives. Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox. What did the commentators say? "Putin 5.0 may not be so different from Putin 4.0," said the 's
Russia editor Steve Rosenberg. Don't expect an "Abracadabra moment", he said, where "with a wave of a magic wand, the hawk suddenly turns into a dove". Instead, the "chances are that President Putin will continue along his current path of conflict abroad and crackdown at home". With high-profile opposition figures such as and former Wagner Group chief both dead, Putin's new mandate sends a clear message to Russia's political elite. In a with
Kremlin propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov the president remained coy about whether a government shake-up could be on the cards, but he has hinted that war veterans should form the core of a "new elite" to run the country. That proposal is "expected to accelerate a trend of public officials expressing muscular patriotism", said the NYT, "especially as Putin seeks to replace his older allies with a younger generation". in January found that 83% of Russians want their government to focus on in future. But, with an estimated 40% of public expenditure going towards
MILITARY spending, the war in
Ukraine has become a "central organising principle of the
economy, and [Putin's] rule", said . Putin has rejected as "complete nonsense" the claims by US President
Joe Biden that he has his eye on other countries after Ukraine but, said the news site, it is "unclear what the Russian leader might try to present to his people as a victory if the war stops". He has already indicated any attempt to involve troops on the ground in Ukraine could trigger an all-out war with the West and even nuclear escalation. His fourth term may have been defined by the invasion of Ukraine and quashing of political competition at home but, said the (FT), "a fifth term for Putin is a threat to Europe, and the world". What next? The period after any presidential election is when the Kremlin "habitually introduces unpopular policies", said the NYT. After 2018, for example, Putin raised the retirement age, sparking some of the largest public
protests seen during his 25 years in office. This time round "Russians are speculating about whether a new military mobilization or increased domestic repression could be around the corner". The Russian leader has, in the short term, "sanction-proofed his economy", said ; "his ammunition factories are outproducing the US and its European allies and the political landscape has been cleared of all competition. "But war is always unpredictable. And whatever Putin's efforts to spin things in his favour, Russia's longer-term problems – demographic decline, the cost of war and sanctions, and the inherent brittleness of one-man rule – are not likely to disappear before Putin stands for a sixth term in office." The long-term damage from lasting
sanctions and losing Western markets for Russian energy will be "immense", said the FT. But the ultimate "failure of his misbegotten war remains the one thing most likely to prevent his fifth term from extending into a sixth". Winning 87% of the votes, said Rosenberg, is also "a great confidence booster". But there is a fine line between confidence and hubris. "Critics point out that political confidence in a leader – especially over-confidence – can be dangerous," said the BBC's Russia editor. This is especially true "in the absence of checks and balances in a country's political system" and "there are few of those in today's Russia".