Barring the unforeseen, Vladimir Putin is certain to win Russia’s presidential election, which ends March 17. Given the lack of real competition, it’s become common to dismiss the whole process as a meaningless charade.
Yet the Kremlin takes it very seriously. So does the opposition. There are multiple candidates running against Mr. Putin, and the campaign is unfolding according to the terms of Russia’s constitution.
Why We Wrote This
Russia’s opposition once featured an array of political parties, and even some limited space for genuine critics of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. What remains of that today?
The three parties with candidates running against Mr. Putin in the presidential election all hold seats in Russia’s lower house of parliament and claim to have significant differences with the Kremlin. Those differences don’t include the war in Ukraine; the only potential anti-war candidate was excluded from the ballot in February.
Outside this “systemic” opposition, there are few others that have any capacity to pose a political challenge to the Kremlin. Many leading figures have been arrested on grounds of anti-war agitation. Others have joined an exodus into self-imposed exile in the West.
And while thousands risked arrest to pay final respects at the funeral of the best-known anti-Kremlin opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, experts point out that those were acts of individual conscience, not evidence of an organized movement.
Barring the unforeseen, Vladimir Putin is certain to win Russia’s presidential election, which ends March 17. Given the lack of real competition, it’s become common to dismiss the whole process as a meaningless charade.
Yet the Kremlin takes it very seriously. So does the opposition, part of which urges people to boycott the polls and another part advises that people turn out to vote against the incumbent. There are multiple candidates running against Mr. Putin, and the campaign is unfolding according to the terms of Russia’s constitution.
The situation draws into question just what role Russia’s various opposition groups, permitted or otherwise, play in society – and how much influence they really have. And it explains, at least in part, why Mr. Putin is all but guaranteed to continue his rule.
Why We Wrote This
Russia’s opposition once featured an array of political parties, and even some limited space for genuine critics of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. What remains of that today?
Most of Putin’s opposition isn’t actually opposed to him.
Besides the ruling pro-Kremlin United Russia party, there are several parties who style themselves as opposition. This “systemic” opposition takes part in elections and sometimes wins seats in legislatures at various levels.
The three parties with candidates running against Mr. Putin in the presidential election all hold seats in the State Duma (Russia’s lower house of parliament) and claim to have significant differences with the Kremlin. Those differences don’t include the war in Ukraine; the only potential anti-war candidate, Boris Nadezhdin, was excluded from the ballot on a technicality in February.
The right-wing populist Liberal Democratic Party is actually further right than Mr. Putin on foreign policy issues, and generally votes the Kremlin line in the Duma.
The liberal-nationalist New People party surprised everyone in the last parliamentary election by hurdling the 5% barrier to gain representation in the Duma. But it has been accused of being a faux opposition project, one that talks about radical reforms but has so far made no waves.
The only one with a genuine opposition pedigree is the Communist Party, a traditional fixture of Russian politics with its own popular base and a program that sharply criticizes the Kremlin from the left. In the last presidential election in 2018, its candidate got 9 million votes.
But on the war and confrontation with the West, the Communists are also on the hawkish side. Yaroslav Listov, a Communist Party official, says the party is very satisfied that the Kremlin has “been shifting in the direction of our agenda. … We advocated since 2014 for steps against the anti-Russia regime in Ukraine, which our authorities only adopted in 2022.”
And those that are actually opposed to him don’t have enough support.
For at least a decade, the Kremlin has been actively shutting down politically active civil society organizations that receive foreign funding. That includes most groups focused on human rights, the environment, democracy promotion, and LGBTQ+ issues.
More recently, the always fragmented and fractious political opposition has been hollowed out by arrests of many leading figures on grounds of anti-war agitation. Others have joined an exodus into self-imposed exile in the West.
For those who remain, any form of political activity or speech is increasingly dangerous. Dmitry Anisimov, press spokesperson for OVD-Info, a group that helps victims of political repression, says it’s becoming much harder to defend people accused of anti-war activity because the courts no longer listen to legal arguments that might exonerate them.
“Out of 110 cases we were involved in in 2023, we only managed to save 20 people from prison terms,” Mr. Anisimov says. “We consider that a great achievement.”
The death of the country’s best-known anti-Kremlin “nonsystemic” opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, struck another blow by removing the person who seemed able to unify Kremlin opponents of diverse views. Though thousands risked arrest to pay final respects at his funeral, experts point out that those were acts of individual conscience, not evidence of an organized mass movement.
Polls show Putin is still popular, even if they are questionable.
Public opinion polling is a difficult science in the best circumstances. But in wartime Russia, after more than two decades of hardening authoritarian rule, surveys should be read with skepticism.
The independent Levada Center is still conducting political polls, and it currently finds Mr. Putin’s public approval rating near an all-time high of 85%. Much of that may be down to a belief that there is no viable alternative – a situation the Kremlin has assiduously worked to create – or a fear that anything that replaces him might be worse.
But experts note that two years of war has created a “rally round the flag” effect that benefits Mr. Putin, even as it has further alienated the minority of anti-Kremlin activists and war opponents, and subjected them to greater repression.
Mr. Putin also enjoys all the advantages of an incumbent in a heavily state-dependent society. And he has successfully steered his country through a barrage of Western sanctions that threatened to wreck Russia’s economy, and presently even appears to be taking the upper hand in the Ukraine war.
