Yesterday, Vladimir Putin announced his re-election bid.
It happened a full week ahead of the projected date.
The rumor mill surrounding his announcement was awash with various scenarios,
including a posh large forum in northern Moscow and a live-streamed Q&A talkathon.
But no one got it right.
People were expecting it to be an occasion of great pageantry
and almost a dress rehearsal of the inauguration.
Instead, he just replied to the question
posed by Artem Zhoga, “speaker of the DPR’s legislative assembly.”
The exchange was filmed behind the scenes home-video style at an award ceremony.
It looked like Putin spilled the beans about his plans and then hushed everyone.
The autocrat seemingly shilly-shallying about his next move
is nothing new as he appears to reluctantly agree to run again.
That’s always been the case.
In 2012, Putin agreed to Medvedev’s swap deal.
In 2018, he humbly announced his presidential bid
to the workers of a provincial car plant.
This time, Mr. Zhoga begged him to run.
He just couldn’t say no to a guy clad in a military uniform, could he?
True, seeking a fifth term in office (or maybe sixth
if we add his stint as a PM under Medvedev or maybe even seventh
if we consider his initial terms were four-year stints) is super crazy.
Everyone and their grandma know it is crazy.
It’s an awkward situation, sorta. So, they all start acting humble.
Like, me, I don’t want to rule forever.
But they just won’t give me a break and insist that the old guy run again.
Note that I didn’t say anything. They asked me to do it.
Sometimes words don’t match the definitions offered by a dictionary.
And yet, people say them.
The two lovebirds don’t really mean they’ll be binge-watching
a TV show at home, but they say they will.
The same goes for a modern-day autocrat.
Everybody just knows the drill.
The pro-war community has suddenly perked up.
Like, those who thought the war would be pushed out
of the public eye during the campaign were dead wrong.
It’s the military guys who are endorsing his bid.
Except, here it’s not the character cast but the context that’s more important.
So what was the context?
They did it like it was nothing out of the ordinary.
The front-runner announced his re-election as if he’d been giving directions to a lost tourist.
Like, he was running late for an appointment, and it was something immaterial.
The spin doctors’ idea here had little to do with the army’s endorsement.
Rather, they wanted the country’s most anticipated news
announcement to be swept under the rug.
So that, by the time Putin has started his live-streamed Dec. 14 Q&A,
it’s no longer a headline and not even a worthwhile talking point.
No pageantry, no drumroll, no nothing.
Just “Putin’s Bid Confirmed,” a page 3 news story.
Both Putin and his spin doctors realize that
no one will be particularly elated about the guy
whose tenure has lasted for a quarter of a century running again.
Even pro-Kremlin pollsters and research firms can’t fake this elation coming from the public.
That being said, now is different.
Putin’s first two terms in office were 100% legal.
His terms number three and four could be explained
by his shrewd interpretation of the law.
But this time, his new term comes on the heels of the butchered Constitution.
The bizarre awkwardness of the situation is even obvious to Putin supporters.
The fresh term is already steeped in petty thievery
as displayed by pickpockets on rush-hour public transport.
UNDERCOVER ELECTION
The announcement was made in a way that,
during his next week’s pompous Q&A, where he’ll be waxing poetic about family values
and feigning preoccupation with unheated housing,
his re-election bid will be ancient history.
His spin doctors were looking into ways for him to run without actually announcing it.
And they got it started. Like, he said it, but did he really?
This format shows us that we were right on the money
trying to figure out the style of his upcoming campaign.
Putin’s job will be to slither his way back into the incumbency
in a stuffed Christmas tree stocking so that the election goes unnoticed.
The campaign platform will be immaterial whether it’s going to be
about the Ukraine war or the demonic anti-LGBTQ+ crusade.
There’ll be no real platform.
It’s like, everyone who’s interested will show up to the ballots.
Everyone whose votes they’ll need badly will be cattle-prodded,
while everyone else can keep staying in the dark about the election
and the voter’s chance to weigh in on the future.
It’s super hard to pinpoint the actual sentiment of the Russian voters
as they are grappling with the pollsters’ questions to the tune of,
“Do you want a nuclear war or a prison sentence?”
Anything can happen.
True, the election will last for three days.
True, the e-voting will be riddled with electoral fraud.
But you can’t rig a presidential election 100%.
They need some realistic numbers that’ll look compelling
But if you keep yelling around,
“Hey, we’re headed for a presidential election.
Don’t you want Mr. Putin for another six years in the office?”,
people may realize they have a say.
They can just tick a different box and refuse to give him a nod.
You don’t want to make them think it’s a possibility at all.
You need to remain tight-lipped about the subject.
On Dec. 14, they’ll be discussing all sorts of stuff.
Putin’s every quote will make headlines,
We must admit that it’s a clever strategy they’ve picked.
Any election campaign, however rigged and predictable,
politicizes the public, like it or lump it.
People suddenly feel something’s going on, and they can take part in the drama.
They suddenly start talking politics and discussing the contenders,
even though the rest of the candidates have been hand-picked.
The political talk will be inevitable.
You can’t campaign in the atmosphere of the underground secrecy.
The polling stations won’t be classified information that,
once compromised, will lead to people’s arrests.
But what they can do and what they’ll try to do is keep a low profile
What’s in it for us?
First, it’s rather good news for us.
Our archrival announced his bid almost in a conspiratorial whisper as opposed to a big event,
a campaign rally, or a televised address to a crowded hall packed with high-profile officials.
Nope! He just mumbled it behind the scenes.
There’s only one takeaway, and it’s this. Our rival has no self-confidence.
That’s not the way of telling someone good news.
That’s akin to a mortgage disclaimer typed in a bank font,
warning the borrower of potential lifelong risks.
We can’t say for a fact what makes him nervous.
Perhaps it has to do with the poll numbers from recent months
showing that the writing is on the wall for him.
And even the odds of Putin dropping out of the race don’t upset anyone.
Maybe, after all, we’re all breathing the same air on both sides of the Kremlin fence.
And there’s no indication that Putin dying in office
is our only acceptable scenario of the future.
The bad news is that if this presidential campaign is going to be
a headline sandwiched between the news
of a cute baby elephant in a zoo cage and a commercial for a law firm,
we’ll have to bust our chops
to propel the election back to the top of Russia’s agenda
and reach not just our audience but the Russian general public.
Like, folks, another stupid joke spewed by Putin means nothing compared
to his attempt to scurry back into the office for another six years.
The Kremlin strategists will do their utmost to trivialize the election.
So, when it comes to raising people’s political awareness, they aren’t our friends.
It’ll be only up to us to trundle this train to the top of the media hill.
It’ll be a tough task.
We’ll be having to squeeze our way through a slew of bogus talking points
and news stories intended to distract the public.
The worst-case scenario for us will be realizing, a week ahead of the big day,
that we’ve been discussing the savage new laws, the official statements, and other
background noise-worthy stuff instead of campaigning against Putin.
THE SYSTEM’S FEARS
For over 15 years now, the Russian opposition has been regurgitating the old mantra:
the government needs high voter turnout figures.
Like, they’ve been manipulating public opinion to a point where it’s driving the voter numbers.
This myth has yet to be backed by some evidence, but it persists.
We now must all realize that it’s our side that needs high voter turnout numbers
Crowds turning up for this three-day election that’ll include
e-voting won’t boost the winner’s legitimacy.
If someone asks them how they’ve managed to get the alleged 80% turnout
given the lack of people at the ballots, they’ll always say
most came the day before or voted online.
They’ll point to their continuous urge for people to sign up
for a public service account and submit their e-votes.
The kind of voters they need—government-dependent employees, government-run company staff,
and retirees—will be escorted to the voting booths.
Our job is to have everyone else show up as well.
We’ll be fighting for the turnout numbers.
They’ll be trying hard to keep the election out of the public eye
and make our audience feel disgusted,
which will be no big deal naturally.
This procedure is indeed disgusting.
But we should bear in mind that the disgusting procedure veils an appalling future.
Six years ago, we said that if Putin were to call it a career,
paving the way for positive change, we’d all be better off.
Our decade-long stagnation would be replaced by accelerated growth.
Today, any talk of political competition, an independent judiciary,
and human rights being instrumental for a better life make no sense.
Vladimir Putin has physically killed dozens, if not 100s,
of thousands of Russians, turning millions more into refugees.
We know for a fact he’s not going to stop.
The only stop factor he now has is precisely the three-day election in mid-March.
He’ll keep following his sick dream of capturing Ukraine and thus showering
the charred fields near some whistlestop Ukrainian villages with more and more dead bodies.
No one seems to deny this fact.
Putin is certain that he has endless financial
and human resources to keep the war going till the end of time.
If he breezes through this campaign, cruises to an easy victory,
and gets away with the past two years and a chilling death toll,
he’ll keep killing more and more people.
Impunity leads to more crime—that’s the way it works, sadly.
If you can win the wrecked Bakhmut at a cost of dozens of thousands of lives
and get away scot-free, you can do literally anything.
You can ramp up the cannon fodder numbers
and have human bodies scattered all over the place.
If this war has no political implications for you, you’ve got a blank check.
If you get away with everything that’s happened since Feb. 24, 2022,
you can do whatever sick stuff you can conceive of, going beyond this war.
Your system is so sustainable, it’ll survive your darkest whims.
Apparently, the system isn’t convinced, though.
It’s not romping through the competition loud and proud, looking forward to the big day.
No, it’s treading cautiously.
Granted, Putin’s entering his fifth election campaign.
It should go without as much as a hitch.
And yet, the system has never been that stressed out, going into the election.
They’ve always tried to calm people down in the run-up to the elections.
No bad news, no excessive savagery.
This kind of an election used to be a referendum supposed to secure the status quo.
It shouldn’t smack of madness.
Few people are capable of living amid total uncertainty
where every news story may threaten their well-being.
This time, there’s only so much they can do.
That’s our reality.
All of the polls are pointing to people’s fatigue against
no positive outlook looming in the distance.
This election won’t be a nation-wide fest, the way it’s meant to be for an autocracy.
Their definition of success is now riding out the storm and suffering through it.
They seek to hit their KPIs without making much of a splash.
Our sense of what’s going on is pretty much in line with the Kremlin’s, and that’s good.
It means we aren’t entirely disconnected from reality and aren’t enmeshed in our echo chamber.
If Putin has to mount a campaign worthy of a scared rodent amid a hostile field,
trying to scare away those who don’t look like they may be loyal, he’s in trouble.
At the end of the day, there may be more disloyal Russians that we can even think of.
See you tomorrow!