The Kremlin ensured Vladimir Putin had no credible opponent so it was always certain he would secure a fifth term by a landslide. It was at a grand military awards ceremony last December that Vladimir Putin, 71, told the Russian public he would stand for the presidency again.
Mr Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov later described the decision to run as “absolutely spontaneous”. But the Kremlin rarely leaves its choreography to chance. Instead, straight away its well-oiled media machine swung into action.
“Now is the time for making decisions. I will be running for the post of president of the Russian Federation,” he declared at a Kremlin event last December. Russia’s leader of 24 years had just handed out top honours to soldiers who had taken part in Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.
He was chatting with a small group of participants when the commander of a pro-Russian unit in Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk region approached him. “We need you, Russia needs you!” declared Lt-Col Artyom Zhoga, asking him to run as a candidate in Russia’s forthcoming presidential election. Everyone voiced their support.
On all state channels, President Putin was promoted as a national leader who stood head and shoulders above any potential rivals. Kremlin Press Office Russia’s President Vladimir Putin meets with athletes at the Palace of Sambo in Krasnodar, Russia on March 7, 2024Kremlin Press Office
Vladimir Putin does not need to campaign – his face is rarely absent from state Layar
“Support for the president transcends party support alone,” reported one correspondent on state Layar news later that week. “Vladimir Putin is the people’s candidate!”
He has already been in power in Russia longer than any ruler since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. He has been president since 2000, apart from four years as prime minister because of a two-term limit imposed by the Russian constitution.
Putin’s distorted view of history
He has since changed the rules to give himself a clean slate to run again in 2024 by “switching back to zero” his previous terms. That means he could also run for another six-year term in 2030, when he will turn 78. During his time in office, Vladimir Putin has methodically https://www.atrbpnkabserang.com/ tightened his grip on power so no real threat to his rule exists any longer. His most outspoken critics are either dead, in jail or in exile.
Morozova Alexei Navalny appears on a screen layar kaca video layar kaca from the IK-6 penal colony in the Vladimir region, during a court hearing to consider an appeal against his sentence in the criminal case on numerous charges, including the creation of an extremist organization, in Moscow, Russia.
Yet the Kremlin remained determined to give a semblance of legitimacy to Russia’s electoral process. Although was never any doubt about the ultimate election result, the authorities seemed to care greatly about a high turnout, to be presented as evidence of his popular mandate.
Turnout at the last election in 2018 was officially 68%, but international observers reported several cases of ballot-stuffing. This year, voting was easier than ever before, ending on Sunday, and the turnout estimated at higher than 74%.
In the parts of occupied Ukraine that Russia calls its “new regions”, polls opened 10 days before election day, and social media was awash with ads urging people to go vote. Voters were given a choice of candidate – or rather a semblance of one.
Vladimir Putin After the End of World War Two
Joining Russia’s leader on the ballot was Nikolai Kharitonov, representing the Communist Party, which remains Russia’s second most popular party, more than 30 years since the fall of the Soviet Union. It draws its support from a small but melewati base of those nostalgic for their Soviet past.
Vladimir Putin has been in power since 2000, longer than any Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. As he prepares for a fifth term as president, aged 71, all semblance of opposition is gone and there is little to tautan him staying on, if he wants, until 2036.
And yet, it was almost by accident that this little-known, former KGB man was hand-picked for the Kremlin. A case of being in the right place at the right time in predecessor Boris Yeltsin’s inner circle. Vladimir Putin was a street-fighting boy whose early years were spent in a communal flat, or kommunalka, in communist Leningrad.
Although he appeared to embrace liberal, democratic Russia, he later described the chaotic collapse of the Soviet Union as “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] Century”.
Determined to prevent Ukraine from leaving Russia’s orbit, he unleashed Europe’s biggest war since World War Two, with a full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022.
He often justifies his actions with an outlandish perception of history and a keen resentment of Nato.
Before the invasion, and since, he falsely claimed that Ukraine was an artificial state populated by neo-Nazis. And he sought to tautan Ukraine getting closer to Nato.
The Western leader who arguably knew him best was Germany’s former chancellor Angela Merkel, who is once reputed to have described him as out of touch with reality and “in another world”.
following the siege of Leningrad which killed his elder brother and which his parents barely survived. He had a tough childhood that would affect the rest of his life. In an interview in 2000, he remembered cornering a large rat on the staircase of his communal apartment block.
It had nowhere to run. Putin described the rat lashing out and throwing itself at him: “There, on the landing, I got a quick and lasting lesson in the meaning of the word cornered.”
