Putin reelected president; will Biden survive?

In 2024 over two billion voters are expected to vote in over eighty countries around the world and as part of this process the Russians came out from 15 to 17 March to vote in their presidential elections. On 17 March, Russian Consul General in Karachi Andrey Viktorovich Fedorov invited media representatives to witness the voting process at the Russian Consulate in Karachi. Arrangements for voting were made in a hall where the staff at the consulate came to vote under a process which seemed very transparent and fair. They carried their passports and after registering themselves they would carry the ballot paper to stamp it in a small booth that was curtained. I happened to be there and had an opportunity to ask the Consul General about the voting process and he explained that not only the consulate staff but anyone with Russian nationality would be able to vote at the consulate as the arrangements for voting would stay in place until a stipulated time in the evening. On inquiry he also informed that an individual vote can be cast online as well. In fact, President Vladimir Putin did that on the morning of the voting to demonstrate both domestically as well as to the global audience that no cyber-attacks can interfere with the voting process in Russia.

President Putin first came to power 24 years ago and having won his fifth term as President he will be in power till 2030 and if he wins the 2030 elections as well then he will become the longest running ruler in Russia breaking the record of Catherine the Great who ruled Russia for 34 years. Russia is a giant country and when one mentions the name of Catherine the Great one is forced to mention one of her big achievements — extending Russia’s borders in the largest territorial gains since Ivan the Terrible. The empress secured the northern shore of Black Sea, absorbing Crimea, the North Caucasus, Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. President Putin has demonstrated that he has a deep sense of Russian history and he knows how Ukraine was coerced and led astray by Poles in the 16^th century, the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 19^th century and the Nazis in the World War II. There is no way President Putin would ever allow another attempt by the West to let Ukraine, a country that Russia has ruled for over 300 years, go astray again — not under his watch. I am glad that I have mentioned this because the special operations in Ukraine and what the West calls war in Ukraine dominated the agenda of Russian elections. How?

The great Western assumption under the US leadership was that its sanctions along with the human toll of war would ignite a societal opposition to President Putin’s rule, which will translate into public voting against him thus resulting in his ouster. That didn’t happen not because the elections were rigged as most of the Western world popularly believed and reported. In fact, a reporter from NBC, a US TV Network, asked Putin whether his re-election was democratic. To this the President aptly replied, “Is it democratic to use administrative resources to attack one of the candidates for the presidency of the United States… using the judiciary amongst other things?” He was referring to the criminal cases filed against Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Putin won the Russian election for the very reason that the Western world assumed he would lose it — the War in Ukraine. People in Russia are convinced that Putin was right to stand up to the West and execute special operations in Ukraine. If it was a leadership test, people in Russia consider that the President didn’t blink when it came to making that choice. People in Russia see in President Putin a leader that stood up and defied Western onslaught, its sanctions and military aid and conveyed in no uncertain terms to the Western world that an emboldened Russia will stand and face their combined aggression. Russia believes that their President will persevere and prevail as he doesn’t relent which is quite obvious when he himself says, “No matter who wants to intimidate us, suppress us — nobody has ever succeeded in history, they have not succeeded now and they will not succeed in the future.”

People of Russia consider Putin as the great defender of Russia’s national interests. He has already called the dismemberment of Russia as the greatest catastrophe of 20^th century. He even contests the Western narrative that the Soviet Union disintegrated because of its defeat in Afghanistan or nationalist uprisings in its constituent republics and the military pressure by the United States and European countries. Contrary to this, the Russian President thinks that it was the misguided Soviet economic policies as well as the political missteps by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that caused the great Soviet Union to self-destruct. Perhaps, the people of Russia are in absolute conformity with their President’s viewpoint and no wonder they no more want a weak leader who bows under Western pressures and takes their dictates.

The Western world may call Russian elections stage managed. They are expected to do that but the world must wake up to the one big reality — the war in Ukraine has not weakened President Putin; in fact it has strengthened his hold on power. The resurgent and sovereign Russia, one that is proud of its history and that considers itself under the Western aggression is not the giant in chains that the West considers it is; instead it is a revisionist Russia that wants to break the chains and challenge the unjust Western world order and together with China as its partner is ready to compete with the US and the Western world under the balance of power system in the world.

History tells us that Russia had leaders that faced debacles in wars yet they survived politically. Tsar Nicholas II survived the 1904-05 loss of war against Japan and Stalin survived the disastrous war against Finland in 1939-40. Unlike these leaders, President Putin is not likely to lose this war as all battlefield indicators show that it is Ukraine that is under political and military pressure and constraints. The war didn’t damage President Putin’s political future, but can we say the same for President Joe Biden? World should now keep its fingers crossed for the American elections — so much to look up to so much that can change.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 24^th, 2024.

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