Never have the votes of the electorate been more worthless than now. The larger part of the Russian population, however, is not enthusiastically behind Putin, but rather goes along passively. That won’t be enough for the warlord.
When Vladimir Putin thanked his colleagues on Sunday evening, he immediately recalled the warlike origins of the word. Fellow campaigners are not just like-minded people, he says on stage, surrounded by campaign workers whose sweaters read “Putin. Russia. Victory.” was standing. In ancient Russia, the president said, comrades-in-arms were simply warriors who defended the fatherland together. War was Putin’s campaign theme, except there was no real campaign. What happened over the weekend just shows how much more brutal the regime, how much more militarized society, and how much more ideological Putin’s rule could become.