The Election Farce in Russia
Putin's Elaborate Effort to Make His Leadership Look Legitimate
Russia's democracy may be dead, but the regime is sparing neither effort nor expense in staging the presidential election. Large voter turnout is supposed to give Putin's rule the appearance of legitimacy.
By Ann-Dorit Boy und Christina Hebel in Hamburg, Germany, and Moscow
Yulia received her special bonus a few days ago.
"For the election," the supervisors stated bluntly.
The Muscovite, in her early 40s, works in the administration of a state energy company.
The bonus is linked to the so-called "presidential elections" that are slated to be held from Friday to Sunday, marking the first time polls in Russia will be open for three days.
Yulia is set to vote for Vladimir Putin together with her colleagues on Friday in their office using the government portal.
Afterward, she's supposed to send a screenshot to her bosses, she tells DER SPIEGEL.
It's an order that will be difficult to evade.
Lists have been drawn up with the current telephone numbers of the employees, which they use to log into the portal, Yulia explains.
She assumes that checks will be made to see who has logged in and when – and who has not.
Previous elections have also seen pressure exerted on employees of state-owned companies, says Yulia, whose name has been changed here.
But it has been particularly bad this time, she says. Other employees of state-owned companies also shared similar accounts with DER SPIEGEL.
Ella Pamfilova and Vladimir Putin at the Central Election Commission. Foto: Russian Presidency / Kremlin / ZUMA Wire / IMAGOVladimir Putin, in other words, will win this vote too – by a landslide.
Yulia from Moscow is certain of that.
The state opinion research institute VCIOM has predicted that Putin will receive 82 percent of the votes in the three-day election.
The Kremlin-aligned institute is predicting voter turnout of 71 percent.
It is unclear whether these figures have any connection to reality whatsoever.
Yet the numbers are important for Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin is said to have demanded at least 70 percent voter turnout from the election organizers, no matter how they get there.
Putin, despite having turned his country into a dictatorship, wants to maintain at least the appearance of legitimacy internationally.
And that translates to massive pressure on civil servants and employees of state companies, universities, schools and kindergartens.
Putin's Loyal Election Organizer
The electoral authorities are relying on pathos and patriotism to mobilize people.
"Together, we are one – let's vote for Russia," reads the election posters plastered across Moscow and other Russian cities.
They can be found at bus stops, on streets and in house entrances.
Next to it on a white background is a large Latin "V," for victory – and also as a symbol of support for the "special operation" in Ukraine, Russia's war.
The face of Putin's election farce is Ella Pamfilova, the 70-year-old head of the Central Election Commission.
Veteran Russia observers will still recall that Pamfilova was once an upright politician and defender of human rights, a person who stood up with a backbone and decency for protesters, non-governmental organizations and against the expansion of the power of the secret services.
Today, though, Pamfilova is an ardent supporter of the war – and of Putin.
The former Russian human rights commissioner took over as head of the electoral authority in 2016 and is partly responsible for many of the setbacks in recent years.
Today, Pamfilova doesn't shy away from the absurd claim that, unlike elections in Western countries, those held in Russia are "direct" and "democratic."
For this "election," she has at her disposal a budget of at least 33.2 billion rubles, the equivalent of around 331 million euros, almost twice as much as in the last presidential election.
In addition, there are further funds from the electoral authorities in the regions.
The money is used to make the electoral machinery ever more opaque.
The Election Manipulation Toolbox
The Kremlin has greatly expanded its toolbox for election manipulation in recent years, with two-thirds of the articles in the law on presidential elections having been changed.
Here are just a few of the most important points:
- According to the Russian constitution, a president may not rule for more than two terms.
But Putin had the constitution amended in 2020 to annul his previous terms of office.
This means he can theoretically be elected to the presidency two more times for six-year terms and remain in the Kremlin until 2036.
- As part of the constitutional amendment, the rules for the admission of candidates to the presidential election were also tightened.
They must now have lived permanently in Russia for 25 years instead of 10, and must not hold or have held a second citizenship or the right to residency in another country.
There is an exception for Ukrainians from the occupied territories.
- In 2020, Moscow moved to stretch the election from one to three days.
- Voters in Moscow and the country's 28 regions have the opportunity to vote online this time, more than ever before.
However, this form of voting is even less transparent than traditional ballot box votes.
- The possibilities for direct election observation – such as access to video recordings from polling stations, which had existed in the past – were severely restricted.
"What we are looking at here is the most non-transparent election in Russia's history," Stanislav Andreychuk of the independent election observer movement Golos told DER SPIEGEL in an interview.
Golos is an important and well-known voice of democracy in Russia.
Fewer Sham Rivals than Ever Before
The hurdles for independent rival candidates were already high in previous presidential elections.
As a rule, the Kremlin only admitted candidates who weren't really an alternative and posed no threat to the incumbent.
Opposition activist Alexei Navalny, who recently died in a prison camp under murky circumstances, was excluded in 2018 on the grounds that he was a convicted felon.
The Election Commission cited an absurd and politically motivated trial in which Navalny had been sentenced to a suspended sentence.
In the case of the antiwar candidate Boris Nadezhdin, formal errors in the signature lists of his supporters served as a pretext for exclusion this year.
Election Commission head Pamfilova has never screened candidates as rigorously as this election.
Besides Putin, only three puppet candidates will be on the ballot: Nikolai Kharitinov, 75, of the Communist Party, Vladislav Davankov, 40, of the New People party and Leonid Slutzky, 56, with the so-called Liberal Democratic Party, which is in reality illiberal and nationalist.
None of the three is popular with the Russian public, and it would be hard to be any less charismatic than these men.
"None of these candidates even pretended to campaign," says Andreychuk.
Russian "Presidential Elections" in Ukraine
Voting takes place under observation of an armed Russian soldier in the occupied Luhansk region of Ukraine. Foto: Stanislav Krasilnikov / Sputnik / IMAGOIn the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, voting got started before the official election days.
With martial law in force in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, the elections are often held in the form of house-to-house visits.
Civilian election workers accompanied by armed personnel in uniform visit the residents to boost turnout.
In the Luhansk region alone, the regime is said to have employed 2,600 helpers.
Election Observers Largely Shut Out
The Russian regime is once again trying to adorn itself with international "election observers," with around 200 foreigners reportedly taking part in this vote, including members of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
But their work bears little resemblance to real election monitoring.
They are merely there to provide the state media with friendly commentary.
There will be no official international observer mission from the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) this year.
The OSCE stopped sending observers to the Duma elections three years ago because the Russian state had imposed overly restrictive conditions.
There are still the busy activists of the Russian election observer movement Golos, who are continuing their work despite massive repression in order to make falsifications and manipulations visible.
They usually work in secret, maintaining contact with representatives of a few election commissions in the regions.
"It will be very difficult this time because election observation is no longer desired," says Andreychuk, the co-chairman of Golos, who is currently abroad.
His colleague, the other co-chairman of Golos, Grigory Melkonyants, was arrested in August last year.
He had been accused of working with a European election observer association, a collaboration Golos had long since ended.
An Attempt at Protest
The liberal opposition, whose leading figures are now either in exile or in prison, would like to counter Putin's "election" show with at least a symbolic gesture.
Kremlin critics are calling for people to go to the polling stations at exactly 12 p.m. on Sunday, the third and final day of voting.
Navalny was also part of this campaign shortly before his death.
Opposition members want to show that there's another, critical, Russia.
Mourners at Alexei Nalvany's grave in Moscow. Foto: Olga Maltseva / AFP"It's the only thing we can do," says Ilya, 24, who is speaking by phone.
He still holds out hope for a future for Russia without Putin.
For him, it is important to know that there are other like-minded people out there.
"I just want to believe that not everyone here supports this ideology."
He says he will likely invalidate his ballot paper by putting several crosses on it – "that way, I'm voting against everyone."
Ilya says he's not afraid – it's his right to go to the polling station.
The Moscow public prosecutor's office has already threatened those who attempt to take part in the announced 12 p.m. election campaign with up to five years in prison.
Yulia, who lives in Moscow, and her colleagues are hoping that they can fool their bosses into believing that the authorities' internet portal, which she is supposed to vote on, isn't working properly, which actually does happen from time to time.
They would report the alleged error to their bosses – and go to a polling station after work and throw an invalidated ballot paper into the ballot box.
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