This re-election of Putin is a shameless charade and nothing to do with voters’ empowerment

Editorial: With little doubt over the ‘winner’ of this weekend’s Russian presidential election, the West should take heart that Putin finds himself isolated – and as his country recedes into Stalinism, so too does its economic prospects. His impoverishing of the Russian people will prove his undoing

Muscovites cast their ballots during Russia’s presidential election (EPA)

It does not take the psephological skills of Professor Sir John Curtice to divine the winner of the Russian presidential election of 2024. Any considerations of swing, differential turnout or the impact of new campaigning techniques may be safely dispensed with. Vladimir Putin’s victory will be achieved – indeed, for all intents and purposes, it is already in the bag – thanks to playing politics the Putin way.

Vote-rigging, fraud, suppression of the opposition, such as it is, control of the media and, above all, intimidation are means by which Putin has maintained himself in power for a quarter of a century. He has caused or permitted the deaths of his main rivals such as Alexei Navalny and, albeit not an electoral opponent, Yevgeny Prigozhin, boss of the Wagner private militia.

It does not take a sophisticated social media offensive to persuade anyone with pretensions to replace President Putin to quietly put the nomination papers away. His main surviving opponent, an anti-war activist, Boris Nadezhdin, has found himself disbarred on a trumped-up technicality and attributes the fact that he is still alive to never crossing “red lines”, such as attacking Putin personally. That is the state of “democracy”.