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CNN
—
As 2023 draws to a close, Russian President Vladimir Putin is oozing confidence as he looks toward his inevitable re-election in March.
The Russian presidential election is perhaps best described as a kind of political theater. President Putin has no serious rivals. His most prominent opponent, Alexei Navalny, is in a prison 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle. And a compliant media portrays the incumbent president as indispensable to Russia. But this spring’s vote is an important public ritual for Kremlin leaders, who are in a position to secure power until the end of the decade.
President Putin announced his candidacy in an almost casual manner. Following the Hero of Russia ceremony in early December, President Putin met on camera with a group of military personnel who had fought in Ukraine, and, unsurprisingly, they implored the president to run in 2024.
“On behalf of our people, the entire Donbass and the united land, I ask you to participate in this election,” said Artyom Zoga, representative of the Russian-occupied Donetsk region. “After all, there is a lot of work to do… You are our president and we are your team. We need you and Russia needs you too. ”
Putin’s terrible response?
“I don’t deny that I had different ideas at different times.” [about this]”,” he said. “But now you are right, it’s time to make a decision. I’m going to run for president of the Russian Federation.”
It was a clearly scripted moment to demonstrate that Putin is a beloved national leader. He also pointed out that Russia has annexed four regions of Ukraine in violation of international law, something President Putin wants to promote as the result of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
But if Putin were to run for wartime president, he would need to justify the facts. Russia does not fully control the areas of Ukraine it claimed in September 2022. The war on the ground came at a very high cost in terms of Russian lives and equipment. And Russia’s Black Sea Fleet suffered a severe blow.
Moreover, the war literally came to Russia. In recent months, Ukrainian drones have carried out strikes deep into Russian territory. Although Kiev maintains a degree of deniability, such attacks have a disturbing psychological impact, particularly when drones breached the airspace around the Kremlin in May.
But the biggest blowback from the Ukraine war came in June, when Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin launched a rebellion amid a feud with Russian military leaders and marched into Moscow.
Alexander Yermochenko/Reuters
In June, Putin faced the biggest threat to his authority in more than two decades when Evgeny Prigozhin led an unsuccessful march on Moscow.
Prigozhin’s Wagner militia was stopped short of the Russian capital in an opaque deal apparently brokered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. But footage of Wagner’s forces advancing virtually unopposed towards Moscow and the shooting down of a Russian military plane by mercenaries dealt a major blow to Putin’s image as the guarantor of stability within Russia.
Within two months of the revolt, Prigogine was dead. The mercenary boss died in a still-mysterious plane crash in late August. President Putin has weathered the biggest challenge to his hold on power in more than two decades, but the uprising has undermined the aura of invulnerability that is one of the key pillars of his rule.
“Many super-patriots were initially embarrassed by the mercy shown to Prigozhin and interpreted it as a sign of the weakness of the state and of President Putin himself,” Russian political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya said shortly after the crash. wrote. “So even if Prigozhin’s death was a genuine accident, the Kremlin will undoubtedly do everything in its power to make people believe that it was an act of retaliation. Putin has called this a response to the strengthening of the Russian state. I see it as a personal contribution.”
By the end of the year, the Kremlin’s public relations machine seemed to have swept the entire Prigozhin affair under wraps. Prigozhin’s name was not mentioned once during Putin’s marathon press conference summarizing the year, but Putin acknowledged “a setback that the Ministry of Defense should have prevented” regarding private military companies.
As usual, the annual roundup was a masterclass in spin, with Putin confidently presenting the message that Russia was once again in the lead, rattling the statistics to strengthen his case. He said the economy was recovering from a 2.1% decline last year and returning to GDP growth, and Russia’s industrial production was also increasing. He boasted that the country’s unemployment rate had fallen to a historic low of 2.9%.
Alexander Zemlyanichenko/Reuters
President Putin speaks at the annual press conference in Moscow, December 14, 2023.
Russia has certainly survived sanctions and its economy is in good shape. According to the US Treasury, defense spending is the main driver of economic growth. And with President Putin pledging to use whatever it takes to wage war against Ukraine, this situation is likely to continue.
And the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine has given Putin a new opportunity to show confidence. Ukraine’s vaunted counterattack has yielded no relief, and the Biden administration’s request for more than $60 billion in aid to Ukraine has stalled in Congress over Republican demands on border security and immigration policy. Hungary has blocked the latest European Union proposal for a support deal for Ukraine.
Putin clearly wants the world and voters to believe he is winning, and is hoping that support for Ukraine will waver. Asked at a press conference when peace would come to Ukraine, Putin offered the same no-holds-barred formula he used to justify the all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“If we achieve the goals you mentioned, there will be peace,” he said. “Now let us return to these goals. They have not changed. Let us recall how we formulated the denazification, demilitarization and neutrality of Ukraine. It is.”
On Friday, the Russian military unleashed the largest missile and drone attack on Ukrainian cities since the start of the full-scale invasion, reminding the world what “denazification” really means.
But persistent attacks on Ukrainian civilians could have unintended consequences. Following the recent series of strikes, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and France have all called for continued aid to Ukraine. What remains to be seen in 2024 is how creative Ukraine’s allies will be in delivering on these commitments.
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