The elections in Russia earlier this month were widely condemned as a performance somewhere between tragedy and farce. Although President Vladimir Putin enjoys substantial public support, the mood was staged to ensure that he would be “re-elected” with more than 87 percent of the vote.

And the outcome was decided long before Russians even arrived at the polls: political opposition has been ruthlessly crushed, independent media silenced, and public protesters given draconian prison sentences. Russia’s most prominent opposition politician, Alexei Navalnydied in prison last month.

All of this raises an interesting question: why do autocratic leaders even bother organizing rigged elections?

Fake results, real messages

It may be useful to view elections in autocratic states as a propaganda exercise, aimed at multiple audiences. Fixing a vote can be a way for an incumbent like Putin to demonstrate his control over the instruments of power: there is value in demonstrating that bureaucratic bodies, local governments, security forces and the media are loyal (or intimidated) enough to to participate in such elections. a substantial, expensive and complex project.

This scrutiny can also serve as a warning to the opposition and all its potential allies, underscoring the apparent futility of protest. “When you have an 87 percent victory you think: ‘Do I really want to die, when this is just pointless because he has such an iron grip on power?’” Brian Klaas, a political scientist at University College London and co -author of the book “How to manipulate an election.” “Part of that is actually showing dominance over the domestic sphere and deterring opposition.”

The public may know that the election was rigged, but may not know to what extent. So even rigged elections can contribute to the image of a leader’s popularity, especially if the press is already fiercely loyal, Klaas said.

The foreign audience is also important. Just as states that violate human rights often create mock courts To create the illusion of accountability, making it less embarrassing for allies to continue supporting them, autocratic regimes sometimes use rigged elections to make their allies claim that they support an “elected” government.

That’s probably less of a consideration for Russia, it was heavily sanctioned by Western countries after the country launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and is now looking to autocratic states like China and North Korea for support. But for countries that rely more on help from democratic allies, holding some form of election could be a crucial element in maintaining that support.

Knowledge is power

Elections can also be an essential source of information. “Dictators are victims of their own repression because no one tells them the truth,” Klaas said. “So one thing dictators do is they use elections as a proxy to find out how popular they really are.”

Allowing some campaign and a few other names on the ballot can provide insight into a leader’s actual appeal — even if the government then adjusts the results to prevent the real information from ever becoming public.

The process can also help leaders identify opposition figures who could pose a threat. For example, Putin has cracked down on the emerging opposition and protest movement that formed around the 2011 Russian elections, using arrests, forced exile, and other repressive methods to further concentrate power in his own hands.

But that method can sometimes backfire. Researchers have found that simply holding elections can open the door to eventual regime change, even if these elections were intended to do the opposite.

The risk for autocrats

Research by Beatriz Magaloni, a political scientist at Stanford, shows that stolen elections can sometimes lead to “citizen revolutions,” where the attempted manipulation leads to mass protests, which then lead to the military and other elite allies abandoning the incumbent regime and calling it a day. force office. That was, for example, what happened during the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine in 2004, and the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia in 2003.

That, of course, remains a fairly unusual outcome. Ukraine and Georgia, for example, had much more substantial political opposition than in Russia, where Putin has ruthlessly prevented opposition figures like Navalny from even getting to the vote. Attempts to spark a similar revolution in Russia after the 2011 elections failed, and the crackdown on dissent that followed would now make such a movement much more difficult to form.

Sometimes, when the opposition unites, a vote that is intended as a rigged achievement can become a real battle. Yahya Jammeh ruled Gambia for decades, using repression and torture to silence dissent and crush political opposition. He was used to ‘winning’ elections with more than 70 percent of the vote and expected the same result in 2016. But instead he lost.

The opposition managed to unite around one candidate, Adama Barrow, owner of a real estate company. The large Gambian diaspora abroad gave his campaign the resources it needed, and some of the manipulation methods Jammeh apparently relied on failed: a warehouse believed to contain fake voter IDs intended to facilitate election manipulation was burned down in the event of an arson just before the elections, leaving too little time to make more. When it became clear that the votes were in favor of the opposition, the head of the election commission reported the results, despite government pressure to stop.

And while foreign allies may be willing to look the other way when elections are manipulated or rigged, they are much stronger standards against actually nullifying results. Jammeh’s appeal to other African leaders to keep him in office fell on deaf ears, and they supported Barrow. A few weeks after the elections, foreign troops from ECOWAS, a regional organization of West African countries, entered the country to help force him out of office.

But such electoral revolutions are rare, and may become increasingly rare. Recent decades, Klaas said, have led to a period of “authoritarian learning,” in which autocratic leaders have become increasingly skilled at election manipulation.

“Only amateurs steal the election on Election Day,” he said. “The professionals really do it up front, through a series of much smarter, subtler ways.”

What I read

• “The War Lawyers: The United States, Israel, and Legal Warfare”, by Craig Jones, is a deeply researched examination of the role lawyers play in warfare, particularly aerial bombardment. Although the book, published in January 2021, predates the current military operation in Gaza, the legal and operational issues Jones discusses remain highly relevant.

• “Rules of politeness,‘By Amor Towles. Somehow I’d never read anything by Towles, despite devoting an entire summer to snobbish novels last year. (Many of you recommended his work, so I have only myself to blame.) I really enjoyed the prose and gently winding storyline, but in the end it felt a bit hollow. Maybe that was the point?

What are you reading?

I want to thank everyone who wrote to tell me what you’re reading. Keep the entries coming!

I’d like to hear about things you’ve read (or watched or listened to) that you recommend to the interpreting community

If you want to participate, You can fill in this form. I may publish your response in a future newsletter.

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.”

President Vladimir V. Putin on Sunday extended his rule over Russia until 2030, using a heavily staged presidential election without real competition to win overwhelming public support for his domestic dominance and his invasion of Ukraine.

Some Russians tried to turn the undemocratic mood into a protest, forming long lines at polling stations at a predetermined time (noon) to express their dissatisfaction. At the same time, Ukraine tried to cast its own vote of sorts by firing a volley of exploding drones at Moscow and other targets.

But the Kremlin brushed aside these challenges and released results after polls closed claiming Putin had won 87 percent of the vote – an even higher number than in the four previous elections in which he participated.

Then Mr. Putin took a long televised victory lap, including a boastful post-midnight press conference at which he commented for the first time on the death of jailed opposition leader Alexei A. Navalny, calling it an “unfortunate event.” incident.”

Mr Putin is now poised to use his new six-year term to further consolidate his control over Russian politics and continue the war in Ukraine. If he lasts the term to the end, he will become the longest-serving Russian leader since Catherine the Great in the 18th century.

Western governments quickly condemned the elections as undemocratic. Adrienne Watson, spokeswoman for President Biden’s National Security Council, said that “the election was clearly not free or fair.”

But as Putin prepares for a fifth term as president, he appears as invigorated as ever. He deepens his confrontation with the West and shows a willingness to continue escalating tensions. Asked at the news conference whether he believed a full-scale conflict between Russia and NATO was possible, Mr Putin replied: “I think anything is possible in today’s world.”

Despite condemnation from the West, the Kremlin sees these elections as a ritual crucial to Putin’s portrayal of himself as a truly popular leader. Analysts now expect him to elevate hardline pro-war supporters within the Russian government, betting that Western support for Ukraine will eventually crumble and the Ukrainian government will be forced to negotiate a peace deal on Russian terms.

Asked about his priorities for his next term, Mr Putin began by referring to his invasion of Ukraine. “We have to carry out the tasks in the context of the special military operation,” he said. The results, he said, have helped “consolidate society around his leadership,” a refrain also repeated on state television.

The extent of the Russian public’s actual support for Putin in the election was difficult to assess, given that opposition candidates were not allowed to run and that voter fraud and other cases of fraud were common in recent Russian elections. This was also the least transparent election in recent Russian history, with the work of independent pollsters reduced to levels not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It was reported that more than five million votes came from Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine, where people were sometimes ordered to cast their votes under the watch of armed Russian soldiers; in the occupied Donetsk region of Ukraine, Putin is said to have received 95 percent of the votes.

In the last presidential election, in 2018, Putin’s official result was 78 percent of the vote – some 10 points lower than this weekend.

Grigorii Golosov, a political scientist in St. Petersburg, said in a telephone interview that he was surprised by the high share of votes the Kremlin claimed, describing it as “characteristic of extremely closed autocracies.”

“They can announce whatever results they want as the process is not transparent,” Mr Golosov said. “All these results speak to is the degree of control over the electoral system and electoral process that Russian authorities have achieved.”

For the first time in a Russian presidential election, voting lasted three days, from Friday to Sunday — a longer period that made it easier for the Kremlin to boost turnout and harder for everyone else to detect fraud.

Since Russia’s massive invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian authorities have waged a campaign of repression not seen since Soviet times, effectively criminalizing any form of anti-war speech.

And some voters interviewed in Moscow said they were proud to have voted for Putin, repeating a narrative that is a staple of Russian state television. The president, they said, had turned Russia into a prosperous, respected world power that had been forced into military conflict with Western-armed Ukraine.

“I am proud of my country and my president,” said 59-year-old Irina near a polling station on Kutuzovsky Avenue in central Moscow. She declined to give her last name when speaking to a Western reporter. “He has elevated us worldwide to such an extent that he will not be offended by anyone.”

Ukraine has repeatedly tried to undermine Putin’s image as a leader who protects Russia by carrying out attacks during the voting period.

On Sunday, Russian officials said Ukraine had attacked seven regions of the country with exploding drones, and the Russian military said it had shot down 35 of them. An oil refinery was set on fire in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia and air defense forces shot down two drones flying towards Moscow, Russian officials said.

But there was little evidence that the attacks – which were largely ignored by state media – had succeeded in puncturing Putin’s aura among his supporters.

Pyotr, 41, a marketing specialist in Moscow, expressed pride that Mr Putin could outsmart Western adversaries and outlast them. “Against the background of these vice-presidents, the Macrons and so on,” he said, referring to President Emmanuel Macron of France, Mr. Putin looks like such a heavenly being.”

The other three candidates for the presidential election were all members of the Duma, Russia’s parliament, and had voted for the war in Ukraine, for more censorship and for laws restricting gay rights.

While Putin’s best-known critics were in prison or in exile, a little-known opponent of the war, Boris B. Nadezhdin, managed to collect tens of thousands of signatures in an effort to get on the ballot. But the government last month invalidated enough signatures to ban him, citing what it called “irregularities.”

Yet Russia’s embattled and largely exiled opposition managed to use the election to spark an unusual protest: Putin’s opponents were encouraged to gather at their polling station at noon local time on Sunday. While it was difficult to gauge how many voters chose that moment to express their dissatisfaction, a polling station near Moscow’s famous Tretyakov Gallery was relatively quiet before a long line suddenly formed around noon.

“This is our protest – we have no other options,” said Lena, 61, who showed up at a polling station in central Moscow before noon with the intention, she said, of spoiling her ballot. “All of us decent people are hostages here.”

Like other voters interviewed, she declined to give her last name for fear of reprisals.

The afternoon lines were even longer in cities with large Russian diasporas – such as Belgrade, Serbia and Yerevan, Armenia – where the Russian embassy served as a polling station. At 1 p.m., the line to vote in Berlin snaked about a mile through the city streets, ending just past where a sign marked the location of Hitler’s World War II bunker.

Yulia Navalnaya, Mr Navalny’s widow, waited in line for about six hours, making one of her first public appearances since declaring she would continue her husband’s political work after he died last month. After leaving the Russian embassy, ​​she said she wrote “Navalny” on her ballot.

Ms Navalnaya hugged and took photos with supporters who approached her, some of them in tears.

Yulia Lozovskaya, 29, who moved to Germany from St. Petersburg after Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, said she sought out Ms. Navalnaya after learning through social media that she was in a queue somewhere.

“You feel that you are not alone,” Ms. Lozovskaya said, referring to the size of the crowd. “And that gives enormous power.”

Reporting was contributed by Alina Lobzina, Valerie Hopkins, Anatoly Kurmanayev And Milana Mazaeva.

President Vladimir V. Putin described the death of jailed opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny as an “unfortunate incident” and claimed he was willing to release him in exchange for Russian prisoners held in the West.

Mr. Putin said at a news conference after Russia’s presidential election that “some people” had told him before Mr. Navalny’s death “that there was an idea to exchange Mr. Navalny for some people held in prisons in Western countries .”

“I said, ‘I agree,’” Mr. Putin said. “Only with one condition: ‘We’ll trade him, but make sure he doesn’t come back, let him stay there.’”

He added: “But this happens. That’s life.”

The comments, in response to a question from NBC News, were Mr. Putin’s first on Mr. Navalny’s death in an Arctic penal colony — and a rare moment, if not the first, when the Russian president used Mr Navalny spoke out in public.

Aides to Mr Navalny claimed after his death that he was about to be released in a prisoner swap. A Western official told The New York Times at the time that “early discussions” about the possibility of such a swap were underway when Russian authorities reported on February 16 that Mr Navalny was dead.

The Western official said the discussions involved swapping Mr. Navalny with two Americans imprisoned in Russia — Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Paul Whelan, a corporate security manager and former Marine — in exchange for Vadim Krasikov. Mr Krasikov is currently imprisoned in Germany and was convicted of killing a former Chechen separatist fighter in Berlin in 2019.

“This is a sad event,” Mr. Putin said of Mr. Navalny’s death. “But we have also had other cases where people have died in prisons. And what, didn’t this happen in the United States too?”

When Mr. Navalny was alive, Mr. Putin’s dislike for him was such that he never said his name in public, according to the Kremlin’s archive of Mr. Putin’s interviews and speeches.

Mr Navalny almost died in 2020 after he was poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent during a trip to Siberia. Western officials described the poisoning as an assassination attempt by the Russian state.

Putin extends his rule after a predetermined vote

President Vladimir Putin demanded a new six-year term in a presidential contest in which he faced no real competition. He is expected to hold a rally in Red Square to formally declare victory – portraying the vote as a public show of support for his invasion of Ukraine.

Here’s the latest.

Some Russians quietly expressed their dissent yesterday. They turned the rubber-stamp election into a high-profile protest, with many forming long lines at polling stations to express their dissatisfaction with Putin as he prepares for his fifth term as president.

Aleksei Navalny, the opposition leader who died in prison last month, had urged his supporters to vote at noon local time. Lines quickly formed at polling stations in major cities, and several people in Moscow told The Times they had come to show their support for Navalny.

One woman, who gave her name as Dayana, 22, said she found it encouraging to stand among fellow Putin critics and feel “that I am not alone, that there are many of us.”

But there was no sign the protest would deter Putin, who has ruled Russia since 1999. He extended his rule until 2030 and, if he stays until the end of his next term, will have the longest term of any Russian leader since Catherine the Great. Great late 18th century.

A predetermined outcome: Even Putin’s spokesman said last year that the elections were “not really democracy” but “costly bureaucracy.” In the occupied territories of Ukraine, armed soldiers watched as people voted for a president.

What’s next: Many fear that a new wave of mobilization will soon follow the elections.

Updates from the war:

With limited aid, malnutrition in Gaza continues

A maritime aid shipment reached Gaza’s northern shores this weekend, the first in nearly two decades, and another shipment of aid is expected to leave Cyprus soon.

But experts and aid groups said diversifying delivery methods had failed to alleviate hunger and widespread malnutrition. They said that the main method had to be by land, and that the best way to prevent a famine was a ceasefire.

There could be some movement towards a lull in the fighting after Hamas weakened its demand for a permanent ceasefire. The new proposal would allow the release of hostages in exchange for a phased withdrawal of Israeli forces.

Risks: At least twenty people were killed in an attack on aid trucks in Gaza on Thursday. Officials in Gaza accused Israel of a “targeted” attack; Israel blamed Palestinian gunmen. The UN human rights office this month documented 10 attacks on Gazans waiting for aid.

The United States: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded yesterday to Senator Chuck Schumer’s criticism: “We are not a banana republic.”

Has Australia caught a Chinese spy?

In 2020, Di Sanh Duong became the first person to be charged under Australia’s foreign interference laws. Late last month, he was sentenced to nearly three years in prison, although he is expected to serve a year.

In the case, the government battled Duong, a suburban tombstone maker, over interpretations of two words (“us Chinese”) and a $25,000 donation to a hospital that — prosecutors said — would at one point be the base become a pro-China pitch to a lawmaker. The question at stake: Was Duong a shrewd operator for Beijing, or just a bombastic braggart?

In his only in-depth interview since his arrest, Duong – who is ethnically Chinese – told The Times he was a scapegoat for the geopolitical tensions. He said his prosecution was intended to send a message: “Don’t get too close to China. ”

MORE TOP NEWS

An 82-year-old retired professor in California found a new calling: offering free driving lessons to women from Afghanistan. His waiting list is 50 deep and he sometimes teaches five consecutive classes, some up to two hours long.

“Our lives have completely changed,” said one student after she and her sister passed their mock exam.

The Australian letter: The country devotes significant time and resources to feral cat management. Domestic issues are a more difficult problem.

Conversation starters

• Dangerous pet: Authorities seized a blind alligator from a New York man who had kept it for 34 years and let people into swimming pools with it.

• Look after: There may be a potentially dangerous cat on the loose in Fukuyama, Japan. (It fell into a chemical tank.)

• To discover: A treasure hunter found a Viking sword in an English waterway. It is probably more than 1000 years old.

ARTS AND IDEAS

Phoebe Philo’s first interview

British designer Phoebe Philo, who has been called ‘the Chanel of her generation’, transformed both Chloé and Celine. Then she left the industry almost seven years ago and virtually disappeared from view.

Late last year, Philo returned to start a brand in her name. The sky-high expectations were faltered by complaints about the prices, the vision and the impossible returns policy. As she prepared for her second drop, she spoke to our top fashion critic in her first formal interview in a decade.

“Maybe there was an expectation that I could have offered everything to everyone right away,” Philo said. “And that is simply not possible. It takes time and effort to create most things that have meaning. You have to stand for something.”

Recommendations

Maria and her husband, Aleksandr, are confident that President Vladimir V. Putin will secure a fifth term as Russia’s leader in this weekend’s presidential election.

But the couple, who live in Moscow with their three children, are not so sure what will come next. Foremost in their minds is the fear that Mr. Putin, emboldened by winning a new six-year term, could declare a new mobilization for soldiers to fight in Ukraine. Aleksandr, 38, who left Russia shortly after Putin announced the first mobilization in September 2022 but recently returned, is even considering leaving the country again, his wife said.

“I only hear about mobilization – that there is a planned offensive for the summer and troops need to change,” Maria, 34, said in a WhatsApp conversation. She refused to allow the couple’s surname to be used, fearing government repercussions.

Many Russians have been concerned about a host of issues ahead of the vote, which started Friday and will last three days. Although Russian authorities have denied that a new mobilization for the war is planned, a sense of unease remains.

The concerns appear to be based on the possibility that Putin will use his unlimited power to implement changes he avoided before the election. Denis Volkov, the director of the Levada Center, one of Russia’s few independent pollsters, said these concerns are still felt mainly by the minority of Russians who oppose the government.

Although a possible mobilization remains the biggest source of concern, there is also unrest about finances and the economy. Some Russians fear the ruble has been propped issued by the government after last year’s slump could depreciate again, raising import costs. Business owners worry about higher taxes, and opposition activists expect more crackdowns on dissent.

“People are very worried,” said Nina L. Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at the New School in New York City who regularly visits Russia. “Uncertainty is the worst, just as the Russian people are used to uncertainty.”

The concerns reflect the current mood in Russia, where many have learned to hope for the best but expect the worst. The uncertainty has been exacerbated by a government that experts say has become increasingly authoritarian.

After more than two decades in power, Mr. Putin is no longer held back by an opposition party in parliament or a strong civil society. He is therefore relatively free to do what he wants.

Some experts say the Kremlin could use the outcome of the vote – which is expected to be a landslide victory for Putin – to further crack down on dissent and escalate the war in Ukraine, which was intended to be a tough one special military operation’. ‘, but has become a slog that has caused hundreds of thousands of victims.

“In authoritarian elections, the results are predictable, but the consequences are not,” said Yekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist, in response to written questions from The New York Times. “If the system decides it has done a good job and all is well, the post-election period could be the time to make unpopular decisions.”

Ms Schulmann cited Putin’s last re-election in 2018 as an example, which was followed by a highly unpopular increase in Russia’s retirement age.

Russia’s elections are tightly controlled by the Kremlin, thanks to its near-total control of the media and state-owned companies, whose employees are often pressured to vote. The election machine is filtering out unwanted candidates, and opposition activists have been forced to flee or end up in Russian prisons. The country’s most prominent dissident, Aleksei A. Navalny, died last month in an Arctic penal colony where he had been imprisoned.

Although the outcome of the vote is not in dispute, the Russians are still preoccupied with the process. The vote will be the first since Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022.

A Moscow consultant who works with Russian companies said some of his clients had deliberately planned new stock offerings on the Moscow stock exchange to take place during what they expected to be a relatively quiet period before the election. He requested anonymity to avoid jeopardizing his relationship with his clients.

Russian consumers also rushed to buy cars early this year, following auto market analysts suggested that the period before the elections may be the best time to buy, as the ruble could be devalued once the elections are over. The number of new cars sold in Russia increased by more than 80 percent in January and February compared to the same period last year. according to to Avtostat, a news website about the Russian automotive industry.

Businesses are concerned that the government will increase taxes after the elections. On Wednesday, Mr Putin said the government would set new tax rules for individuals and private entities, and experts said this most likely meant taxes would rise for both groups.

Yevgeny Nadorshin, chief economist at consultancy PF Capital in Moscow, said companies are mainly concerned about tax increases and higher labor costs. “That would endanger Russia’s competitiveness,” he said.

Mr Nadorshin also pointed to widespread rumors of a new troop mobilization which, if it were to occur, could further restrict the labor market for companies, he said.

Mr. Volkov of the Levada Center said that after the initial shock of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine and the mobilization that followed seven months later, most Russians were adapting to the new world. Much of this was the result of government efforts to boost morale by ensuring the country’s economy remained healthy and by injecting money into the industrial sector.

“There has been a serious redistribution of resources in favor of the majority, who feel that they can now lead a normal life without being directly involved in the war,” he said, referring to salary increases for factory workers and various social benefits.

Still, he pointed to what he said was a growing polarization between supporters and opponents of Putin.

“The mutual misunderstanding today is greater and more acute than before,” Volkov said.

Many Russian anti-Kremlin activists – those who remain in the country and those who left – fear a new crackdown on dissent.

Yevgeny Chichvarkin, a Russian businessman and opposition activist in London, said he believed dissidents would face a stark choice between fleeing or jail after the election.

“Nothing will help; the choice will be to go to jail or leave the country,” he said in an interview interview with Zhivoy Gvozd, an independent Russian news channel.

But some analysts have expressed doubt that Putin will do much more than he has already done to stamp out dissent.

‘The system cannot remain in a state of mobilization and stress forever’ said Aleksandr Kynev, a Russia-based political scientist who specializes in regional politics. “If you give too much power to the security services, they can take you out of power tomorrow,” he said. “Vladimir Putin understands it well.”

Alina Lobzina reporting contributed.

Maria and her husband, Aleksandr, are confident that President Vladimir V. Putin will secure a fifth term as Russia’s leader in this weekend’s presidential election.

But the couple, who live in Moscow with their three children, are not so sure what will come next. Foremost in their minds is the fear that Mr. Putin, emboldened by winning a new six-year term, could declare a new mobilization for soldiers to fight in Ukraine. Aleksandr, 38, who left Russia shortly after Putin announced the first mobilization in September 2022 but recently returned, is even considering leaving the country again, his wife said.

“I only hear about mobilization – that there is a planned offensive for the summer and troops need to change,” Maria, 34, said in a WhatsApp conversation. She refused to allow the couple’s surname to be used, fearing government repercussions.

Many Russians have been concerned about a host of issues ahead of the vote, which started Friday and will last three days. Although Russian authorities have denied that a new mobilization for the war is planned, a sense of unease remains.

The concerns appear to be based on the possibility that Putin will use his unlimited power to implement changes he avoided before the election. Denis Volkov, the director of the Levada Center, one of Russia’s few independent pollsters, said these concerns are still felt mainly by the minority of Russians who oppose the government.

Although a possible mobilization remains the biggest source of concern, there is also unrest about finances and the economy. Some Russians fear the ruble has been propped issued by the government after last year’s slump could depreciate again, raising import costs. Business owners worry about higher taxes, and opposition activists expect more crackdowns on dissent.

“People are very worried,” said Nina L. Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at the New School in New York City who regularly visits Russia. “Uncertainty is the worst, just as the Russian people are used to uncertainty.”

The concerns reflect the current mood in Russia, where many have learned to hope for the best but expect the worst. The uncertainty has been exacerbated by a government that experts say has become increasingly authoritarian.

After more than two decades in power, Mr. Putin is no longer held back by an opposition party in parliament or a strong civil society. He is therefore relatively free to do what he wants.

Some experts say the Kremlin could use the outcome of the vote – which is expected to be a landslide victory for Putin – to further crack down on dissent and escalate the war in Ukraine, which was intended to be a tough one special military operation’. ‘, but has become a slog that has caused hundreds of thousands of victims.

“In authoritarian elections, the results are predictable, but the consequences are not,” said Yekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist, in response to written questions from The New York Times. “If the system decides it has done a good job and all is well, the post-election period could be the time to make unpopular decisions.”

Ms Schulmann cited Putin’s last re-election in 2018 as an example, which was followed by a highly unpopular increase in Russia’s retirement age.

Russia’s elections are tightly controlled by the Kremlin, thanks to its near-total control of the media and state-owned companies, whose employees are often pressured to vote. The election machine is filtering out unwanted candidates, and opposition activists have been forced to flee or end up in Russian prisons. The country’s most prominent dissident, Aleksei A. Navalny, died last month in an Arctic penal colony where he had been imprisoned.

Although the outcome of the vote is not in dispute, the Russians are still preoccupied with the process. The vote will be the first since Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022.

A Moscow consultant who works with Russian companies said some of his clients had deliberately planned new stock offerings on the Moscow stock exchange to take place during what they expected to be a relatively quiet period before the election. He requested anonymity to avoid jeopardizing his relationship with his clients.

Russian consumers also rushed to buy cars early this year, following auto market analysts suggested that the period before the elections may be the best time to buy, as the ruble could be devalued once the elections are over. The number of new cars sold in Russia increased by more than 80 percent in January and February compared to the same period last year. according to to Avtostat, a news website about the Russian automotive industry.

Businesses are concerned that the government will increase taxes after the elections. On Wednesday, Mr Putin said the government would set new tax rules for individuals and private entities, and experts said this most likely meant taxes would rise for both groups.

Yevgeny Nadorshin, chief economist at consultancy PF Capital in Moscow, said companies are mainly concerned about tax increases and higher labor costs. “That would endanger Russia’s competitiveness,” he said.

Mr Nadorshin also pointed to widespread rumors of a new troop mobilization which, if it were to occur, could further restrict the labor market for companies, he said.

Mr. Volkov of the Levada Center said that after the initial shock of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine and the mobilization that followed seven months later, most Russians were adapting to the new world. Much of this was the result of government efforts to boost morale by ensuring the country’s economy remained healthy and by injecting money into the industrial sector.

“There has been a serious redistribution of resources in favor of the majority, who feel that they can now lead a normal life without being directly involved in the war,” he said, referring to salary increases for factory workers and various social benefits.

Still, he pointed to what he said was a growing polarization between supporters and opponents of Putin.

“The mutual misunderstanding today is greater and more acute than before,” Volkov said.

Many Russian anti-Kremlin activists – those who remain in the country and those who left – fear a new crackdown on dissent.

Yevgeny Chichvarkin, a Russian businessman and opposition activist in London, said he believed dissidents would face a stark choice between fleeing or jail after the election.

“Nothing will help; the choice will be to go to jail or leave the country,” he said in an interview interview with Zhivoy Gvozd, an independent Russian news channel.

But some analysts have expressed doubt that Putin will do much more than he has already done to stamp out dissent.

‘The system cannot remain in a state of mobilization and stress forever’ said Aleksandr Kynev, a Russia-based political scientist who specializes in regional politics. “If you give too much power to the security services, they can take you out of power tomorrow,” he said. “Vladimir Putin understands it well.”

Alina Lobzina reporting contributed.

A few kilometers from the front line, a new sign was recently placed on the large billboard of an occupied city in Ukraine’s Luhansk region.

“Vote for our president. Together we are strong,” said a resident of Anastasiia on the sign in the white, blue and red colors of the Russian flag.

The message was clear to her: that the President was Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, not Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, and that Mr. Putin was the only choice in the Russian presidential elections that have taken place in the occupied parts of Ukraine over the past three years. took place. to soften.

Mr. Putin long ago turned Russia’s elections into a predictable ritual designed to convey legitimacy to his rule. In the occupied territories, this practice has the additional purpose of presenting the occupation as a fait accompli and identifying dissenters, according to political analysts and Ukrainian officials.

“Elections in these regions confirm the idea that they have the same laws and procedures as the rest of the country,” said Ilya Grashchenkov, a Russian political scientist who is advising a long-running candidate running against Putin. The result, he said, is that they become woven into the fabric of the Russian state.

For many in the occupied territories, the election ritual takes place under the watchful eye of armed soldiers.

Wearing face coverings, the soldiers have escorted poll workers door to door through the occupied parts of the four Ukrainian regions that Russia annexed after invading the country two years ago, according to local residents, statements by Russian officials and videos on social media. media.

Occupation officials say the show of force is necessary to protect those collecting votes.

The pollsters are calling for votes that would give Putin, who has no serious challenger on the ballot, his fifth term as president and another six years in office.

Ukrainian officials, Western allies and rights groups have called the election an illegal sham. They say the vote is marred by widespread intimidation and coercion and is part of a broader campaign of repression against residents of the occupied territories.

“They promote it even though it is not a real election,” said Anastasiia, a resident of the Luhansk region. “Everyone knows who is going to win.”

Anastasiia, 19, left the occupied territories earlier this month to build her life outside the war zone. Fearing retaliation, she asked to be identified only by her first name and to omit the name of her city to protect relatives left behind.

Few if any countries are expected to recognize election results in the occupied territories, including the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed in 2014 after earlier Russian aggression in southeastern Ukraine. The United Nations considers the entire territory to be part of Ukraine.

Analysts say the coercion, numerous electoral machinations and the exodus of pro-Ukrainian residents mean that Putin will almost certainly have an even bigger landslide in the occupied territories than in the rest of Russia.

For the Kremlin, it is the electoral process itself, and not the margin of victory, that furthers its cause.

Holding elections, however orchestrated and unfair, in the occupied territories allows Putin to strengthen his claim. It also allows him to portray himself as a champion of democracy and draw contrast with Ukraine, which suspended its presidential elections this year because of the war, said Mr. Grashchenkov, the political analyst.

Russia has already held two previous elections in the four regions in eastern and southern Ukraine that it has partially occupied since invading the country. The Kremlin claimed that 99 percent of residents of Donetsk, the most populous of the occupied regions, opted to join Russia in 2022. Putin’s party candidates won a landslide victory in local elections in the occupied territories last year.

Ukraine and Western countries have called these elections a sham.

Beyond such voices, Russia has eradicated Ukrainian identity and language with Russian curricula in schools, requiring Russian passports for work and cracking down on people with pro-Ukrainian political views.

Russia’s attempts to simulate a normal electoral process often collide with the realities of war, sometimes in farcical ways.

For starters, Russia does not have full control over the regions where it claims to vote. And just months after the country held a sham referendum to declare the city of Kherson part of Russia, its forces were forced to surrender the city to the Ukrainian army. (Russia continues to maintain control over the southern part of Kherson province).

A similar dissonance emerged as this month’s presidential election approached.

For example, little is known about how many voters there are. The constant shifting of the front lines, the flight of local residents and the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers and workers have dramatically changed the demography of the occupied territories. The full effect of this transformation remains largely unknown due to strict Russian censorship and ongoing fighting.

But the few available estimates indicate a drastic decline in the occupied population. Figures from Russia’s election commission show that the occupied Kherson region, for example, lost 13 percent of its registered voters, or 75,000 adults, in the last three months of last year.

In total, Russia’s election body claims that the four Ukrainian regions annexed in 2022 have 4.5 million voters. This would represent a 33 percent drop from the last voter list published by the Ukrainian government before the large-scale invasion. Ukrainian officials say the actual number today is likely even lower.

The picture is further complicated by the Russian government’s decision to allow hundreds of thousands of soldiers stationed in the occupied territories to vote there. Russian propaganda videos published on social media have shown election workers dodging grenades and diving into ditches to deliver ballot boxes to stoic soldiers in the trenches.

Russian authorities have not published the locations of polling stations or the names of members of local electoral commissions. It has also used the system to the state’s advantage.

Occupation officials have labeled the occupied territories as “remote,” a label previously reserved for places like the reindeer herding communities of the Arctic. This allowed Russia to extend the voting period there by three weeks, making the process even more difficult to monitor. Polling stations in two of the occupied regions, Zaporizhia and Donetsk, opened on February 25 and will close in March. Voting ends in Russia on December 17.

The “remote” designation has also given pro-Russian election officials the ability to go door to door soliciting votes from residents of the occupied territories. And because voting takes place there under martial law, these officials are accompanied by armed soldiers.

“Dear voters, we care about your safety!” the electoral commission for occupied Zaporizhia said wrote in one Telegram message earlier this month, where camouflaged voters with blurred faces cast their votes. “You don’t have to go anywhere to vote – we will come to your home with the ballots and ballot boxes.”

The Russian Election Commission claimed there were almost 1.4 million votes was released in remote areas on March 11. In the last Russian presidential election in 2018, remote areas in the far north and east of Russia accounted for just 180,000 votes.

Ukrainian officials say this rise is being achieved through intimidation.

“Voting is taking place at gunpoint,” Dmytro Lubinets, the human rights ombudsman in the Ukrainian parliament, said in a statement this month. “Participating in such ‘elections’ is a matter of survival.”

The actual wishes of the majority of residents are indecipherable. No independent opinion polls have been published in the occupied territories since the invasion. And the exodus of pro-Ukrainian residents means that many of those who remain often support the occupation, or at least have resigned themselves to it.

Russian officials have justified extraordinary voting procedures in the occupied territories as a security necessity. Ukrainian forces and partisans have regularly targeted Russian collaborators and occupation officials, including electoral workers.

Most recently, a deputy mayor of Berdiansk, on the coast of the Azov Sea, was killed in a car explosion on March 6. Ukraine’s military intelligence took responsibilitysays the official, Svetlana Samoilenko, was killed for forcing residents “to participate in illegal, fake voting.”

Ukrainian officials say Russia also uses elections to identify residents unhappy with the regime. The government in Kiev says Ukrainians are routinely jailed, tortured or summarily executed by invading forces as part of a campaign of forced “Russification” of the occupied territories.

“If you vote, you are loyal to Russia and you have opportunities,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, a Kyiv-based political analyst. “If not, you are under pressure. You are being investigated.”

Alina Lobzina contributed reporting from London.

Vladimir V. Putin’s vision of Russia – successful, innovative and borderless – is on display at one of Moscow’s biggest tourist attractions, a Stalin-era exhibition center that currently houses a sleek display called Russia 2024. The exhibition promotes what the Kremlin portrays as Russia’s achievements over the past two decades, roughly the period Putin has been in power, and his promises for the future after he secured a new six-year term in rubber-stamp elections this weekend.

The exhibition is in many ways a microcosm of a country whose people are largely averting their gaze – at least publicly – from the great and bloody war in Ukraine that Mr Putin started more than two years ago.

The centerpiece is a large hall with pavilions containing all Russian regions, including five illegally annexed regions from Ukraine. Visitors to one pavilion are greeted by two LED screens attached to robotic arms that display tulip fields portraying the Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, as calm and peaceful.

This is increasingly at odds with the reality of regular air raid sirens deadly Ukrainian missile and drone attacks in the city, including one on Thursday that killed two people and injured 19.

At the Crimea pavilion, crowds of visitors pose with men dressed as Roman legionnaires next to a video boasting about the bridge connecting the peninsula, which was illegally annexed in 2014, to the Russian mainland. There is no mention of the Ukrainian attack in 2022 that blew a hole in the bridge, or of the multiple threats that led to the closure of the bridge for hours.

It is a cognitive dissonance that many Russians have adopted in celebrating the motherland and accepting the government’s triumphant narrative – even as Mr Putin has become a pariah in much of the Western world, domestic prices are rising and the economy is suffering Russian military a staggering number of casualties in the Western world. Ukraine.

“People have spent these two years in this strange state where you basically have to choose to ignore a great tragedy,” said Greg Yudin, a Russian sociologist and researcher at Princeton University. “Most people understand what’s going on, but they still have to act like nothing’s going on. This is a deeply traumatic experience.”

Neither the war nor the recently annexed Ukrainian territories were mentioned by visitors to the expo who were recently contacted by a New York Times journalist.

“It may not be a masterpiece, but it showed Russia as it is,” said Maria, a 42-year-old water purification engineer, who attended the exhibition with her colleague Elena, 63. Both women were exuberant about what they saw, but were hesitant to share their full names with a foreign journalist for fear of reprisals.

Mr Putin has visited the exhibition four times, and his presence is evident throughout the quotes displayed in many of the pavilions.

“Russia’s borders end nowhere,” read a quote from the exhibition about the occupied Kherson region in Ukraine. On a recent afternoon, a woman posed for the quote, flexing her biceps as a man photographed her.

With Russia’s electoral apparatus controlled by the Kremlin, Mr Putin is confident he will be declared the landslide winner over three other candidates in the voting that starts on Friday and ends on Sunday evening. Putin, who has been in power since 1999, will become Russia’s longest-serving leader since Empress Catherine the Great in the 18th century if he completes his term.

The vote comes as the Russians are winning on the battlefield, while support for Ukraine in the United States is declining. Mr Putin has adopted a tone of confidence of late, reassuring Russians that life will be normal, while taking an increasingly hostile stance towards the West, which he portrays as a threat to the survival of Russia.

The exhibition Russia 2024 is part of what leaked Kremlin documents obtained by Delfi, an Estonian news channel, speak of a domestic ‘information war’, the budget of which is at least $690 million.

The documents, shared with The Times and other news organizations, reveal extensive spending on media and film projects aimed at building support for the war, known in Russia as the “special military operation,” and the occupation of parts of eastern Ukraine.

For now, the Kremlin’s “information war” appears to be paying off. Attendees expressed awe and joy at the exhibition, a sign that the selective view of Russia put forward by the Kremlin two years after its massive invasion of Ukraine continues to appeal to many ordinary citizens.

Last month, 75 percent of respondents in a poll by the independent Levada Center said the country is moving in the right direction — more than at any time since the question was first asked in 1996.

Another Levada poll found that fewer than one in five Russians “believe they have the power to change” in their country. Yet most Russians “still believe they live in a democracy,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Moscow.

One of the few reminders of Russia’s 2024 war was a pavilion that linked two of the Kremlin’s main policy priorities: the militarization of society and “patriotic education” for school-age youth.

“The Army for Children” welcomed children with cartoon animals in uniform. Children were invited to practice piloting state-of-the-art drones, sit in a virtual reality flight simulator and play a video game called Counter-Strike.

Nationally, the Kremlin has tried to turn both the trauma and drama of the war into opportunity. Military parades and school programs featuring war veterans are organized to enhance national pride and patriotic spirit.

Mr Putin has pledged to prioritize servicemen and women, announcing a new program called “Time of Heroes” in his annual State-of-the-Union address last month. The goal is to give veterans and soldiers the opportunity to be part of a “special workforce training program” for developing professionals.

As Russia reorients its economy to serve the war effort, the Kremlin is “creating a new middle class,” said Carnegie analyst Kolesnikov.

Still, Russians remain concerned about the war, said Mr. Yudin, the Princeton sociologist. It’s an uncertainty that strangely tends to draw voters to Putin.

“There is fear about what will happen if we don’t win: we will be humiliated, everyone will be persecuted, we will have to pay huge reparations – and essentially be under foreign control,” Mr Yudin said. “These fears are fueled by Putin, who has also positioned himself as the only one who can end the war.”

That’s in large part because the Kremlin has suppressed every candidate who has called for an end to the war. One of them, Yekaterina Duntsova, a former TV presenter, was disqualified from the end of last year. Boris B. Nadezhdin, another anti-war candidate, collected more than 100,000 expressions of support but was disqualified due to what the election commission called “irregularities.”

The vote this weekend will also take place without any independent supervision; The country’s main election monitoring group, Golos, has been designated a “foreign agent” by the Justice Ministry and its co-founder, Grigory Melkonyants, has been jailed.

Putin’s biggest rival, opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, died under mysterious circumstances on February 16 in a penal colony in the Arctic.

His grave on the outskirts of Moscow has become a place of pilgrimage for an estimated tens of thousands of Russians who chose his vision of the “beautiful Russia of the future” over Putin’s war, mobilization and nuclear threats.

Many anti-war Russians, both at home and in exile abroad, are unsure whether to participate in sham elections that are neither free nor fair.

Before his death, Mr Navalny called on opposition-minded people to go to their polling stations at noon on Sunday to protest. The turnout will be the first test of his legacy and of the anger and momentum that has built up since his funeral – whether the desire to protest outweighs the fear of reprisals.

On Thursday, the Moscow prosecutor’s office warned that the protests were illegal and that organizing or participating in them would be considered acts punishable by up to five years in prison.

Back at the Russia 2024 exhibition, Elena, the water treatment engineer, said she was ambivalent about voting. “Maybe I’ll vote, because things are going really well now,” she said, before quickly stopping herself.

“But of course we hope that this will all end well,” she said in an indirect reference to the war. “People really want this to stop.”