Putin wins re-election as Russian president

Russian President Vladimir Putin won re-election on
March 18 to his fourth presidential term, earning more than 76% of the vote,
according to the Russian Central Election Commission. Residents of Crimea
participated in their first presidential election, giving Putin 91% of their
votes with 20% of voted counted, the RBC news agency reported. Putin’s victory
was widely expected as a result of his authoritarian rule, widely characterized
as managed democracy. Video evidence of vote fraud surfaced on the Internet and
is widely believed by political experts to have been applied on a mass scale.
“The percentage that we have just seen speaks for itself,” a Putin campaign
spokesman told Russia’s Interfax. “It’s a mandate which Putin needs for future
decision, and he has a lot of them to make.”

Western governments led by France and Germany
condemned the elections held in Crimea and refused to recognize them. “Four
years after the illegal annexation of the autonomous republic of Crimea and
Sevastopol, France reaffirms its support in the most decisive way for the full
renewal of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within the framework
of internationally recognized borders,” said a Foreign Ministry statement.
“France is concerned with the militarization of the peninsula and the worsening
condition of human rights, particularly Crimean Tatars.”

Zenon Zawada: Putin’s
re-election means he will continue his campaign of military aggression and
hybrid warfare against Ukraine. His geopolitical goal is to disintegrate the
unitary Ukrainian state and bring most parts into the Russian sphere of
influence, or bring the undivided unitary state back under the Russian sphere.
Achieving these goals won’t be possible politically (even with the fulfillment
of the Minsk Accords, which we don’t think Putin is interested in) since the
occupation of Crimea and Donbas created a permanent pro-Russian minority in
Ukraine. So we have to consider the realistic possibility of Putin extending
and expanding the violence, possibly to a continental war, as has been warned
by the Ukrainian leadership. This most extreme option is possible if Putin sees
the Western sanctions beginning to severely destabilize the Russian economy.

In the meantime, the Russians will continue to lobby
EU legislatures to relax or remove sanctions imposed for the Ukrainian
occupation. They will have increasing success with the rising tide of
populist-nationalist parties,but Western sanctions will remain in place for at
least the next two years. Yet decisions on sanctions won’t change the Russian
goal of retaking control of the Ukrainian territory. They will merely affect
the tactics and strategy, perhaps taking the continental war option off the
table. The possible emergence of a pro-Russian parliamentary opposition in
Ukraine’s vote next year will also give Putin more options in tactics that
could deter expanded violence.

We believe it’s possible that Putin will opt for a
stalemate, such as a frozen conflict, but only if a new diplomatic compromise
emerges that replaces the Minsk Accords. A force majeure could occur also or he
may “listen to reason” suddenly. Otherwise, we are confident that he will not
withdraw the Russian occupation from Donbas, let alone Crimea, because that
would deal a crippling blow to his image and standing among the Russian public.