President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia emerged from the three-day presidential vote that ended Sunday saying his landslide victory represented a public mandate to act as needed on the war in Ukraine as well as on various domestic issues, fueling concern among Russians about what will follow.
Mr Putin said the vote represented a desire for “internal unification” that would allow Russia to “act effectively on the front line”, as well as in other areas such as the economy.
The government dismissed a protest organized by Russia’s beleaguered opposition, in which people expressed their dissent by flooding polling stations at midday. A correspondent for the state-run Rossiya 24 channel said that “the challenges at the polling stations were nothing more than mosquito bites.” Official commentators suggested that the lines indicated a zeal for democratic participation.
Mr Putin, 71, will now be president until at least 2030, entering a fifth term in a country whose constitution ostensibly limits presidents to two. The vote, the first since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, was designed both to create a public mandate for the war and to restore Mr Putin’s image as the embodiment of stability. However, Russians are somewhat nervous about the changes the vote may bring.
Here are five suggestions:
While victory was a foregone conclusion, Putin’s numbers exceeded expectations.
There is a pattern in presidential polls involving Mr. Putin: his results get better each time. In 2012 he received 63.6 percent of the vote and in 2018, after the presidential term was extended to six years, he received 76.7 percent. Experts had expected the Kremlin to peg the result at around 80 per cent this time, but Mr Putin got an even higher figure, close to 90 per cent, although the tally was not yet final.
Loyal opposition parties barely registered. None of the other three candidates allowed on the ballot received more than five percent of the vote.
Presidential votes in Russia have long served as a means to make the entire system appear legitimate. But such a wide margin of victory for Mr Putin — who rewrote the constitution to let him stay in the Kremlin until 2036, when he will be 83 — risks undermining it. It could raise questions in an increasingly authoritarian Kremlin about why Russia needs such an exercise in imagination.
The Kremlin did not fully achieve the image of national unity it sought.
Mr. Putin has always sought to project an image of political stability and control, which the carefully choreographed presidential votes are designed to mask. But there were three events connected to the opposition that tarnished that picture this time.
The first was in January, when thousands of Russians across the country lined up to sign petitions needed to put Boris Nadezhdin, a previously low-profile politician opposed to the war in Ukraine, on the ballot. The Kremlin kept him at bay.
Then Alexei A. Navalny, Mr. Putin’s staunchest political opponent, died suddenly in an Arctic prison in February. Thousands of mourners who turned up at his funeral in Moscow chanted against Mr Putin and the war, and even during the vote, mourners continued to place flowers on his grave.
Navalny’s organization had backed the plan for voters to turn out in large numbers at midday in a silent protest against Mr Putin and the war. Mr Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, who voted at the Russian embassy in Berlin, said she had written her husband’s name on her ballot and thanked everyone who had waited in long queues as part of the demonstration.
But it was hard to see how the protest could translate into any kind of sustained movement, especially in the face of crackdowns that have grown steadily tougher since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022. Mr. Putin’s government, for example , arrested hundreds of people as they publicly mourned Mr Navalny.
Mr Putin will claim a popular mandate to continue the war in Ukraine.
Mr Putin’s campaign and the vote itself were framed by war. His announcement in December that he would seek another term came in response to a question from a war veteran urging him to run. The election symbol, a checkmark in the blue, white and red of the Russian flag, resembled the V sometimes used to show support for Russian soldiers.
The vote was held in occupied regions of Ukraine, even though Russia does not fully control the four regions it annexed. There was evidence of coercion, with poll workers sometimes bringing ballot boxes to people’s homes accompanied by an armed soldier. In the occupied territories, Mr. Putin’s margin of victory was even higher than in Russia itself.
Mr. Putin has never admitted that he started a war by invading Ukraine. Instead, he says he was forced to carry out a “special military operation” to prevent the West from using Ukraine as a Trojan horse to undermine Russia.
He described the election turnout, which stands at over 74 percent of over 112 million registered voters, as “due to the fact that we are forced in the literal sense of the word, with weapons in our hands, to protect the interests of our citizens , Our people.”
War will continue to be an organizing principle for the Kremlin.
In his annual address to the nation in February, which served as his main campaign speech, Mr. Putin promised both guns and butter, assuring that Russia could pursue its war aims even as it invests in the economy, the infrastructure and long-term goals such as strengthening the Russian population.
With an estimated 40% of public spending earmarked for military spending, the economy grew by 3.6% in 2023, according to government statistics. Production of munitions and other material is booming.
Mr Putin also suggested that war veterans should form the core of a “new elite” to run the country because their service proved their commitment to Russia’s best interests. The proposal is expected to accelerate a trend of public officials expressing muscular patriotism, especially as Mr. Putin seeks to replace his older allies with a younger generation.
The Russians are worried about what will happen next.
The period after any presidential election is when the Kremlin usually introduces unpopular policies. After 2018, for example, Mr. Putin raised the retirement age. Russians are speculating about whether a new military mobilization or increased domestic repression could be around the corner.
Mr Putin has repeatedly denied that another mobilization is needed, but recent small territorial gains in eastern Ukraine are believed to have cost tens of thousands of casualties. Although Mr Putin has suggested he is open to peace talks, neither side has so far shown much flexibility.
Russia has annexed more than 18 percent of Ukrainian territory and the battle lines have been static for months. Any new Russian offensive is expected to take place during the hot, dry summer months, and the Russian military may try to increase the area it controls ahead of any future negotiations.
“Decisions will be more likely to be about war than peace, more likely to be military than social or even economic,” said Ekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist in exile in Berlin.
Milana Mazaeva contributed to the report.
