What happened
Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrated his preordained victory Monday, after Russia’s Central Election Commission reported he won 87% of the stage-managed vote. Long lines materialized at noon on Sunday at voting places across Russia and abroad, in a silent protest endorsed by late opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
What said what
Putin said his landslide victory shows a “common will of the people,” and he dismissed the opposition’s evidently successful “Noon Against Putin” protest as praiseworthy “calls to come vote.” Clearly “all these people came to our demonstration at noon,” Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said after voting at Russia’s Berlin embassy (pictured above), “and I thank them all.”
The commentary
Undoubtedly “Putin will use the outcome as proof of mass support” and democratic legitimacy, Eva Hartog said at Politico, but the obviously fraudulent margin of victory makes him look weak, so Putin “might be the biggest dupe of his own rigged vote.”
What next?
Russians are “uneasy” now because “the period after any presidential election is when the Kremlin habitually introduces unpopular policies,” The New York Times said. This time they expect a military mobilization for Ukraine.