March through for the Kremlin candidates. In the local and regional elections in Russia, most governors and the ruling United Russia party recorded significant vote gains. The Kremlin celebrates this as a sign of Putin’s strength.
In votes that were widely criticized as a farce, the Kremlin party United Russia significantly strengthened its power base ahead of the presidential election in March. In the Russian capital, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, a confidant of Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, was confirmed in office with an increase in votes of almost millions.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov viewed the election results as a vote of confidence in Putin. He sees the president strengthened.
Peskov said that Putin has not yet been nominated as a candidate for the presidential election in March 2024: “But if we assume that the president declares his candidacy, then one thing is obvious: no one in our country can really compete with him in the current situation make.”
Kremlin sees elections as a successful mood test
For the Kremlin, the regional elections, a good 18 months after Putin ordered the start of the war of aggression against Ukraine, are seen as a successful test of sentiment – and as a sign that the power apparatus is controlling the situation in the country. Putin achieved 76.69 percent in the 2018 election, with a turnout of 67.54 percent. Political observers assume that the presidential administration will do everything in its power to significantly exceed this result. The results announced by the election management for the generally less popular politicians in the regions gave a foretaste of this.
In Moscow, 65-year-old Sobyanin received 76.39 percent of the vote, according to the Russian Central Election Commission. That was a good six percentage points more than in the 2018 vote (70.17 percent). Sobyanin ran for the Kremlin party United Russia, which was also declared the winner in most other regional votes in Russia.
In total, around 2.5 million people voted for the head of the town hall in Europe’s largest city, almost a million more than five years ago. The voter turnout was significantly higher at 42.5 percent after 31 percent in 2018. In second place with 8.11 percent was the communist Leonid Zyuganov, a grandson of the head of the Russian Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov. The other three candidates each received even fewer votes.
Result in Moscow was average at best
The result in Moscow was at best average by Russian standards. The head of the northwest Russian Pskov region, Mikhail Wedernikov, achieved the best result among governors with 86.3 percent. But in the Moscow area, Governor Andrei Vorobyov also achieved a score of 83.68 percent, which was common in the communist Soviet dictatorship more than 30 years ago.
The returning officer Ella Pamfilova was pleased with the “high voter turnout,” which she said was 43.5 percent across Russia. This was the most active participation at the regional level since 2017, she said.
Experts fear that voter turnout figures could be artificially inflated due to the multiple votes that have been repeatedly complained about in the past. In addition, the Russian leadership relied on online voting, the counting of which is even more difficult to control independently than the traditional polls with ballot papers.
The ease with which the Kremlin received its desired result is likely to lead to euphoria there and accelerate Putin’s decision to run again, suspects political scientist Abbas Galljamov.
Experts describe elections as a farce
But experts see other reasons for the results than real support for the Kremlin candidates. They called the elections a farce and neither fair nor free. The reasons given were a lack of media freedom, a lack of diversity in parties with real political programs and unprecedented repression against dissidents.
Despite international protests, the Kremlin also held sham elections in the occupied territories of Ukraine. As expected, United Russia declared itself the strongest force there too. In the Zaporizhzhia region, which is only partially occupied by Moscow, it is said to have received 83 percent of the vote; In the three remaining areas annexed after the start of the war, in the regions not controlled by Kiev it was between 74 and a good 78 percent. Independent observers were not allowed there.
The Ukrainian leadership has described the illegal elections in the territories as worthless. The EU and the USA had also announced that they would not recognize the results in the occupied territories. Local citizens reported that they had been coerced into voting.
The head of the Kremlin party, Andrei Turchak, spoke in the morning of a “convincing general victory” despite political pressure on voters, the non-admission of opposition candidates and manipulation by the authorities and state television.
Experts had previously complained that there had been essentially no election debates in view of Russia’s war against Ukraine. There was no sign of an election campaign in Moscow either.
The independent election observer organization Golos announced this morning that among the approximately 4,000 different votes, representatives of the liberal opposition party Jabloko made it into only five city parliaments or village councils.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
