The Russian punk protest group Pussy Riot – whose members served time in prison camps after criticizing the Moscow government – is rejecting President Vladimir Putin’s re-election.
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Sunday’s rally was the culmination of a low-energy reelection campaign, in which Putin himself was an oddly absent figure.
Seemingly in response to this boycott, Russian authorities’ main goal in Sunday’s election was not necessarily to secure Putin’s victory (that was seen as a given), but rather to push turnout as high as possible to make the elections appear legitimate, both at home and overseas.
Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of pro-Kremlin network RT, wrote that Putin had turned from president to “our leader”, or vozhd – a word with medieval roots that Soviets once used for Stalin.
Vladimir Putin now has a stronger hold on Russian Federation – and stronger place in the world – thanks to an overwhelming mandate for yet another term as president.
NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly, reporting from Moscow says Russia’s Election Commission put out a report on Sunday “claiming that their website was hit by a cyberattack overnight and saying the cyberattack originated overseas -in 15 countries overseas”.
Putin, on the other hand, highlighted Russia’s return to the world stage as an independent actor that could stand up to US hegemony. While the Kremlin has to find a President for 2024, Mr Putin’s challenge is to rebuild Russian Federation as a global power to challenge the West. Russian top brass have done their best to follow up with confirmations of forthcoming tests, but most of Putin’s March 1 video-show to the parliament depicted fanciful weapons systems created to break through the non-existent U.S. missile defense “shield” (TASS, March 15).
But Mr Putin, 65, used a Kremlin meeting with the candidates he soundly defeated in Sunday’s election to signal his desire to focus on domestic, not global, matters, and to try to raise living standards by investing more in education, infrastructure and health while reducing defence spending. With leading rival Aleskei Navalny kept out, the election was a formality.
Runner-up Pavel Grudinin said the elections had been “dishonest”. “There will be a state council governed by the president”.
French leader Emmanuel Macron telephoned Mr Putin to wish Russia and its people success, and the Russian leader is understood to have responded by denying his country’s involvement in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. Olympic doping, Syria, Ukraine, hacking, and election interference all fall into that category, too. He said it’s unacceptable that the election was also conducted in annexed Crimea.
Voter turnout for the Russian presidential election reached 67.49%, according to preliminary data. In his March 1 state of the nation speech, Mr Putin boasted about a new generation of “invincible” nuclear weapons.
“From these heights, Putin will now be able to do everything he deems necessary”, Komsomolskaya Pravda said.
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Putin’s victory will take his political dominance of Russian Federation to almost a quarter of a century until 2024, the longest rule since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, by which time Putin will be 71. Macron wished Russian Federation and its people success in modernising the country, while Erdogan spoke with Putin about joint efforts by Moscow and Ankara to resolve the Syria crisis.
