VOX: Russia's President Vladimir Putin reelected in a landslide with a little help from the west

VOX: Russia's President Vladimir Putin reelected in a landslide with a little help from the west
Russian president Vladimir Putin voting / kremlin.ru
By Ben Aris in Moscow March 19, 2018

bnePeople Russia Tom Blackwell CEO and founder of EM CommunicationsRussia's President Vladimir Putin was as expected reelected in a landslide for his fourth non-consecutive six-year term on March 18, extending his rule until at least 2024.

The president won the votes of 76.66% of the Russians that participated in the election with a turnout of 67.5% — conveniently that means slight more than 50% of the entire population voted for Putin, which has been taken as a deliberate poke in the eye for the US as Putin can now claim he was elected by a simple majority of citizens, something that US President Donald Trump cannot.

However, despite the documented ballot box stuffing and the inevitable 99.999% for-Putin vote in the army and in places like Chechnya (a regular feature of Russian elections), there was a genuine groundswell of support for Putin, partly driven by London’s increasingly hysterical reaction to the spy poisoning scandal in the UK that began on March 14.

Even liberal Russians are shocked at the “shut up and go away” vitriol of the western reaction, and sided with the Kremlin’s call for the British government to provide some evidence before it acts to “punish” Russia for the alleged assassination attempt. There is a growing weariness amongst regular Russians with the demonising of Russia as a Bush-eque “evil empire” that has also filtered into the more sensible commentary.

“Putin’s main ally and progenitor is the weak, atomised, selfish and visionless 21st century West, which has no message for Russians other than shut up and get lost. The lack of the West as a beacon and a viable role model leaves pro-democracy forces in Russia in limbo,” journalist Leonid Ragozin, who is no friend of the Kremlin’s, tweeted the morning after the vote. 

Putin has masterfully sold the idea of “fortress Russia” to the people, and he has delivered on prosperity. Now that Russia is facing an increasingly and openly hostile west as far as the man in the street can see, he has genuine support, even among the Russians who don't like his methods.

“I’m going to vote for Putin,” said Tatiana Aleexeva, who runs her own small recruitment agency. “It’s not that he is the best person for the job but there is no alternative. And things have been getting better. The country is going in the right direction. It is not going as fast as I would like, but this is Russia – it has never gone fast!”

Putin has always been popular with the masses, even when the rest of the government is not. At the same time, Russians have become a little tired of the opposition, as although they have been squashed and harried they have also been ineffective in offering a real alternative set of ideas, says Tom Blackwell, founder and CEO of EM Communication.

“But what is on people’s minds is what is happening in the UK at the moment and that is a much bigger issue in these elections,” Blackwell adds. “Even the most hardened anti-Putin liberals are baffled by the UK response as it looks outrageous to them – completely over the top with the complete refusal to talk about evidence.”

While the average Russia would be happy to admit that the state is culpable, they expect the UK — with its insistence on values — to behave in a grown-up way, but instead have the feeling that London is simply lashing out. A recurring theme from the conversations with regular Russians in the days before the poll was “We are tired of being lectured to. The west can keep its values. We don't need them. We are Russia.”

“The rhetoric has become so aggressive. There is talk about kicking children out of schools – a reference to rich Russians. Forget Putin. Forget corruption. When it gets to that level of anti-Russia hysteria, this is hard to explain to people here,” says Blackwell.

Opposition undermined

The upshot is that it undermines the anti-Putin opposition, who have already been effectively undermined by the Kremlin.

“The lack of a creditable opposition can be attributed to the way the country is governed and the state ownership of the media, but at sometime you have to say it is what it is and to think about how do we go forward,” says Blackwell.

These elections were different from previous ones as anti-corruption blogger and opposition activist Alexei Navalny stirred up the regional population with a string of protest rallies starting last summer. The rallies were not big but the state was extremely careful not to react with too heavy a hand.

“This is the one thing that worries the government more than anything else in the world. New candidates or parties, they are fine with that, but when people come onto the streets that is something they don't know how to swallow,” says Blackwell.

Notably the state didn't send in the OMON riot police, and they let the rallies happen even if they were not officially sanctioned.

“They don't have a silver bullet solution to make the protests go away. The fact they didn't send in the OMON shows they know they have to be very very careful around this issue,” says Blackwell.

Another new theme was the involvement of young people. On the one hand, young people who have never known another president other than Putin were going to the protests. But at the same time there is a Generation P that could vote for the first time in these elections who were born after Putin took office, who are strong supporters of the president and have very conservative views.

“The west is deeply concerned who is in power and presents its views on who is in power. But they do it extraordinarily badly and have managed to alienate the people who should be the most receptive to that message,” says Blackwell.

Business as usual 

There is an element of western politicians seeing whipping Russia as a way earning political capital by looking tough at no political cost, but it is increasingly clear that there is a cost. However, the new measures imposed on Russia specifically avoided anything to do with business. The same day as UK Prime Minister Theresa May announced the sanctions to parliament, Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom got a €750mn Eurobond away to high demand and the state followed with a $3bn sovereign issue.

“The companies have had four years to get used to sanctions and this is not the first time Russia has had big problems with the west. Businesses on the ground have had to develop strategies to push the issue of sanctions aside. And they have had to develop these skills and got reasonably good at,” says Blackwell.

Last year EM Communications helped organise two IPOs and this year it already has several more in the pipeline. The irony is that US investors were big players in both the IPOs. A gap has always existed between the way international investors look at Russia and how it is portrayed in the press, but that gap has become even wider.

“The shareholder register of the deals that happened last year looked similar to the register in the pre-Crimea crisis with a lot of European and US investors participating. That was a sign that Russian companies were getting back to the position they had prior to these problems,” says Blackwell. “There are still investors that are willing to buy good stories.”

Blackwell points out that Obuv Rossii, a regional shoe store chain, pulled off a very successful IPO and is growing faster than any of its European peers. The other companies that are due to come to market have similar fast-growth stories and as a result will find investors in the west too.

 

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