Today The Republic published an interview with the 40-year-old Denis Volkov, director of the Levada Center, famous for being the only independent polling institute in Russia. This is a very interesting analysis of the elections that crowned Putin again: according to Volkov, who is considered a “foreign agent” by the Putin regime, the Tsar’s consensus from Moscow to Siberia is truly Bulgarian. In short: the elections will be “neither fair nor free”, they were certainly peppered with episodes of violence, but the former KGB agent – as Ludmila Ulitskaya, a great Russian author sadly explains – “is the president that the country deserves : neither worse nor better”.
Putin’s consent
The dissidents divided
The only unknown was the turnout, but “we were certain that the figure would exceed that of 2018 because Putin’s intense campaign to bring people to the polls worked”. Also thanks to the voting system, which extended the voting days to three and also allowed online or remote participation. And the opposition? There are puppet candidates, of course. But for Volkov, although dissent against the regime is around 25%, there are many divisions within it. Half defined themselves as “liberal” and sympathized with Navalny. The other half, however, identifies with the Communist Party or the Liberal Democratic Party, which are anything but pro-Western.
Support for the war in Ukraine
The sanctions flop
Not to mention, however, that while the topic of the Ukrainian conflict pervades every day here, in reality the life of most of the millions of Russian inhabitants proceeds as usual. Only a small slice of the population was affected by the “war mobilization”. The others, paradoxically, have seen economic conditions improve.”thanks to the indexation of pensions and salaries and the expansion of social benefits, there was a great redistribution of wealth“. And the Western sanctions, the ones that were supposed to destroy Moscow’s economy and lead to the collapse of the regime? A total flop: “There were even people who thought from the beginning that they were a good thing, because after years of dependence on the West the government would finally invest in national infrastructure and industries.”
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