Posted on 03/17/2024 3:46:44 AM PDT by Chad C. Mulligan
Voting in the Russian presidential election began this morning and will end Sunday. At that point, Putin's victory will be announced and he will start his 5th term as president. The vote tally doesn't really matter. It will be whatever the Kremlin decides it should be. Having killed off his only two real opponents in the past year, Navalny and Prigozhin, he probably feels like he earned it.
The presidential vote in Russia, which began Friday and lasts through Sunday, features the trappings of a horse race but is more of a predetermined, Soviet-style referendum.
President Vladimir V. Putin, 71, will undoubtedly win a fifth term, with none of the three other candidates who are permitted on the ballot presenting a real challenge. The main opposition figure who worked to spoil the vote, Aleksei A. Navalny, a harsh critic of Mr. Putin and the Ukraine war, died in an Arctic prison last month...
Two candidates opposed to the war were disqualified. A veteran politician, Boris Nadezhdin, alarmed the Putin administration when tens of thousands of people across Russia lined up to sign petitions required for him to run. The Kremlin invalidated enough signatures to bar him.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
It takes them three days to vote.
Even the reported 300,000 or so who have fled the country to avoid conscription into Putin's Mistake? Very doubtful.
You eat with that mouth?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.