Putin applauds conquests in Ukraine during spectacle on Red Square
His most beloved crooner sang a nationalist ballad with an appeal to the Russians: “The Motherland is calling. Don’t abandon her.”
His favorite band sang a moody song about sacrifice in wartime.
And then he took the stage, under a banner celebrating the tenth anniversary of the conquest of Crimea from Ukraine, to remind thousands of Russians on Red Square that his struggle to add territory to Russia was not over.
President Vladimir V. Putin, a day after declaring victory in a performative election, signaled Monday that the war against Ukraine would continue to dominate his rule and called for unity to return the people of eastern Ukraine “to their home family.”
“We will move forward together, hand in hand,” Putin told the crowd, boasting of a restored railway line that he said would soon connect to Crimea through territory taken from Ukraine. “And this is exactly what really makes us stronger – not words, but actions.”
The display of nationalist fervor capped a three-day election whose foregone conclusion prompted comparisons of Putin’s Russia with other authoritarian dictatorships. On Sunday evening, state news quickly declared that he had won more than 87 percent of the vote.
Underscoring the artificial nature of the election, Mr Putin brought the three puppet competitors the Kremlin had chosen to face him onto the stage in Red Square and offered each a turn at the microphone, saying they all had “different approaches,” but “one motherland.”
The communist candidate, who was placed second by Russian authorities with just over 4 percent of the vote, praised Mr Putin for bringing Crimea back to his “home port”.
The nationalist candidate said Crimea would forever be part of Russia on world maps and cheered: “To Russia, to our great future and to the president of a great Russia!”
The latest candidate, from the New People’s Party, said he would never forget the pride he had in Putin when he annexed Crimea in 2014.
“Happy Holidays!” Mr Putin shouted. “Long live Russia!”
The crowd erupted into the Russian national anthem before men in military uniforms with pre-war ‘Z’ patches and medals took the stage and joined a singer in a war ballad. “Give him the strength to win,” went the chorus.
Mr. Putin, 71, showed little of the emotion he has sometimes shown at similar events in the past, such as when he burst into tears during a victory speech after the 2012 election. He delivered the words of the national anthem with relatively little enthusiasm and quickly left the event.
The celebration made clear that the war against Ukraine had become the organizing principle of Putin’s rule, and was held as Russians braced for what was to come in a country still fighting on the battlefield and led by a new , encouraged leader.
The huge crowd that gathered in Red Square was made up in part of government workers, students and others who were given tickets and in some cases asked to attend, a common practice at pro-Kremlin rallies in Russia.
A 59-year-old social worker who gave her name as Nadya and arrived waving a giant Russian flag and wearing a folk headdress known as a koolhnik, said she did not want war but that the West should stop antagonizing Russia. Russia, she said, must be respected, and ending hostilities is not up to Mr. Putin.
“It doesn’t depend on us,” she said. ‘It’s the West. England, America – they want to divide us and turn us into little colonies.”
For many Russians, the big concern now is new military conscription as Putin expands his invasion even further.
A 29-year-old government analyst at the celebration, who gave his name as Maksim, said that because he saw no other candidates as strong as Putin, he voted for him. But he expressed his condolences for the people living in Ukraine, as well as the Russian soldiers fighting on the front lines, and acknowledged that he feared a new conscription.
“I worry about it, I worry about it every day,” he said. “We don’t even know what will happen tomorrow.”
There are other jitters too, from the expectation of higher taxes to the possibility of greater repression. Mr. Putin, recently elected to his fifth term, could reshuffle his Cabinet, a typical post-election procedure that some analysts believe he could use this time to elevate the most hawkish members of the ruling elite. to take.
Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, predicted that Mr. Putin would try to revamp the personnel in his “power vertical,” the blanket term for the political system he has honed and that of post-Soviet Russia created a global economy. autocracy. She said he could try to promote young, loyal, pro-war bureaucrats over the older generation of civil servants – mainly men born in the 1950s – who now dominate the upper echelons of his system.
“In times of war, there may be increasing demand for the ‘young hawks’,” she says wrote.
Mr Putin’s inauguration is scheduled for May – a moment of pomp and circumstance that the Kremlin has turned into a televised ritual demonstrating his grip on the Russian state, and an occasion when he is likely to deliver a speech outlining his vision for the next six years.
But in the hours after polls closed on Sunday, Putin quickly made it clear that his top priority was to continue his invasion of Ukraine until Kiev and the West agreed to a peace deal on his terms.
He said at a press conference after midnight that Russia wanted talks to build “peaceful, long-term neighborly relations,” and not an agreement that would allow Ukraine to “pause for a year and a half to two years to rearm.”
Repeat a warning he made Last summer, Mr. Putin said Russia could try to create a “security zone” on Ukrainian territory, which Russia currently has no control over.
He gave no details, but analysts believe such a buffer zone would require an attempt to seize parts of Ukraine’s Kharkov region – an attack that could require new military service.
But analysts also warned that given the opacity of Putin’s government, it is difficult to predict how much will actually change. To the extent that Mr. Putin replaces some of his top officials, his priorities will be “their loyalty first and their effectiveness second,” said Grigorii Golosov, a political scientist in St. Petersburg.
Monday’s orchestrated outpouring of support for Putin in Red Square, which was broadcast across the country on state television, was intended to make clear that supporting the Russian leader was a patriotic, everyday activity.
Before the invasion of Ukraine, political scientists studied Russia found it that the perception of Putin’s popularity helped to actually win him support and keep him in power. Many Russians felt that everyone around them supported the Russian leader.
“People like to go with the crowd,” says Noah Buckley, professor of political science at Trinity College Dublin and co-author of the study. “People like to be on the winning side.”
That kind of support can quickly collapse as perceptions of popularity erode, Mr. Buckley noted. But he said, “I certainly don’t predict that around this election or anytime soon.”