Putin Basks In Election Win On Anniversary Of Crimea Annexation

(Bloomberg) -- A day after Vladimir Putin claimed a record victory in presidential elections tightly controlled by the Kremlin, Russia is marking the 10th anniversary of his annexation of Crimea that began the march to war in Ukraine.

Putin may address a rally Monday on Moscow’s Red Square for the 2014 takeover of Crimea, according to an official with knowledge of the matter, after the election that handed him a fifth term to step up his invasion of Ukraine and confrontation with the West.

“No matter how much anybody wanted to suppress us, our will, our consciousness, nobody in history has ever succeeded, they have not succeeded now and they will never succeed,” Putin, 71, told supporters in Moscow late Sunday after the election that gives him another six years in power. All the major “and in some areas grandiose plans” that he set out before the vote “will certainly be achieved,” he said.

Russia’s longest-serving leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Putin extended his quarter-century rule after winning 87.3% of the vote with no serious challenger in the election. On a 77.4% turnout that the Central Election Commission said was the highest in Russia’s post-Soviet history, Putin’s support far exceeded the 77% he won at the last election in 2018.

In a sign of how tightly officials controlled the vote, Putin secured 85% in Moscow and 82% in St. Petersburg, both cities that have traditionally been strongholds of opposition to the Kremlin leader. 

“For as long as Putin lives, like Stalin before him, the only question put to Russian citizens is how long they will be content to let Putin rule,” Sam Greene, professor of Russian politics at King’s College London, said in a commentary on the election.

Allies of opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who died last month in an Arctic prison camp, had called on people to protest Putin’s election by turning up at noon on Sunday. Long lines formed at that time outside some polling stations, including in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in a symbolic show of defiance amid the harshest Kremlin crackdown on dissent in decades.

Putin told reporters late Sunday the election protests had no effect and people who spoiled ballot papers should face investigation and criminal punishment. He confirmed he’d been willing to swap Navalny for unidentified people in Western jails shortly before the Kremlin critic’s death.

Three candidates from parties loyal to the Kremlin offered Putin little competition. Communist Nikolai Kharitonov took 4.3%, Vladislav Davankov from the New People, a party created in 2020, had 3.9% and Leonid Slutsky, leader of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, received 3.2% with all ballots counted, the election commission announced Monday. 

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The outcome put the Russian president on par with other regional autocrats, including Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev, who was reelected last month with 92% of the vote to extend his two-decade rule.  

Global reaction to Putin’s victory divided along much the same lines as the response to his war in Ukraine. The US, the European Union and nations including France, Germany and the UK all condemned the Russian election as neither free nor fair. 

“The result was clearly set beforehand,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s deputy spokeswoman, Christiane Hoffmann, told reporters in Berlin. “Russia is a dictatorship and is ruled by Putin in an authoritarian way.”

China, Iran, North Korea and an array of leaders from former Soviet states in central Asia all congratulated Putin on his victory. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose country has been key to Russian efforts to ease the impact of international sanctions over the war, said in a message to Putin on Monday that Beijing attached great importance to the development of bilateral relations.

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Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, who allowed his country to be a staging post for Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, called Putin’s election result “stunning,” according to his press service.

Russia occupies about a fifth of Ukraine including Crimea, which Putin seized after the Moscow-allied president in Kyiv, Viktor Yanukovych, was ousted by protesters seeking closer ties with the European Union. Putin in 2022 declared four regions of eastern and southern Ukraine to be “forever” part of Russia, even as his forces don’t fully control them.

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His troops are on the offensive in Ukraine as Russia presses its advantage in the third year of the invasion that’s become Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II. Ukraine is struggling to supply its forces with munitions amid delays in military aid from its US and European allies.

Any direct conflict between Russia and the US-led NATO alliance would be “one step away from a full-scale third world war,” Putin said Sunday.

Putin is “addicted to power and is doing everything he can to rule forever,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address. “There is no evil he will not commit to prolong his personal power. And there is no one in the world who is safe from this.”

Russia organized voting in occupied areas of Ukraine and claimed turnout far exceeded 80%, even as millions of people have fled the regions since the invasion. The foreign ministry in Kyiv said the “pseudo-elections” were illegal, and the EU said the voting in those territories was “null and void.”

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Putin dismissed prospects for a halt to the war in a televised interview earlier this month, saying he’s not interested in a “pause” that would allow Ukraine to rearm. Russia wants written security guarantees to end the fighting, and the “realities on the ground” should be the basis for any negotiations, he said.

The election outcome “gives Putin every chance to implement any, even the toughest, scenarios in Ukraine,” said Pavel Danilin, head of the Moscow-based Center for Political Analysis, which advises the Kremlin. The “historically high result is a guarantee that the majority of the population supports Putin,” he said.

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