With Russian presidential election, Vladimir Putin may cement longest reign since Stalin

Sasha Skochilenko's crime was swapping supermarket price tags with anti-war messages. Oleg Tarasov was locked up because of the name he gave his Wi-Fi network. Aleksey Moskalyov was convicted of discrediting the Russian military for a drawing his 13-year-old daughter made at school.

Vladimir Putin, 71, Russia's longest serving leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, will almost certainly emerge victorious in the nation's eighth presidential election. The vote takes place Friday to Sunday, and the winner will be inaugurated in a lavish ceremony in May at the Grand Kremlin Palace, former residence of tsars and empresses.

If, as widely expected, Putin cruises to another six-year term ? the former KGB officer has held continuous positions as Russia's president or prime minister since 1999 ? opponents say it will be because he has used all facets of the state to weaken every threat to his authority, because he has spent a fortune implementing rigid control over Russia's political system, and, well, because the vote is rigged.

"This is not an election, it's a selection," said Alena Popova, a Moscow-based human rights activist.

Popova failed to win a seat in parliamentary elections in 2021. She ran on a platform that put women's rights and highlighting domestic violence at the center of her political campaign. Authorities said her feminist views were "extremist" and could lead to the "destruction of traditional values." She was designated a "foreign agent," a quasi-legal classification that is tantamount to being called a spy or traitor.

Popova compared Russia's presidential vote to Stalin's "fictive electoral process," when it was obvious to many that it wasn't Russia's voters who decided anything but Russia's vote counters who decided everything.

"Putin has criminalized the expression of any alternative opinions," she said.

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Skochilenko, 33, an artist from St. Petersburg, was jailed for seven years for replacing small supermarket labels with messages that read, "The Russian army bombed an art school in Mariupol (in Ukraine's South East)" or "My great grandfather did not fight in World War II for four years so that Russia could become a fascist state."

College student Tarasov, 22, was given a 10-day prison sentence for labeling his Wi-Fi network with the pro-Kyiv slogan "Slava Ukraini! ("Glory to Ukraine)," according to court records.

Moskalyova's school south of Moscow called the police after she drew a picture depicting missiles flying over a Russian flag toward a woman and child. A police investigation revealed that her father had criticized the Kremlin in social media posts. He was jailed for two years.

His daughter was sent to an orphanage.

"While the war is going on and the current president is in power, we can hardly do anything to hasten her release from prison," Sonya Subobina said of her girlfriend Skochilenko.

"But I emotionally support her and tell her that we will get through everything together."

Why is Putin bothering to hold a vote at all?

As part of Putin's clampdown on dissent, authorities in Russia have in recent years adopted a slew of laws restricting human rights, including freedom of speech and assembly, as well as the rights of minorities and religious groups. Putin has made it illegal to call Russia's invasion of Ukraine a war.

Putin changed Russia's constitution in 2021 to allow him to rule until at least 2036 if he wants to. In another sign of the president's tight grip, he has allowed only a few handpicked candidates who cooperate with the regime to run against him in this year's vote.

Leonid Slutsky is an extreme nationalist from the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. Nikolai Kharitonov will represent the Communist Party. Vladislav Davankov, a national centrist, will take part for the New People Party.

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None are against the war in Ukraine. Like Putin, all three are on Western sanction lists. None have committed to bringing independent observers to voting stations. All three support anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, including the decriminalization of domestic violence and bills outlawing gender-affirming procedures.

The death last month of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, whose family and supporters believe he was murdered in prison, and the many Putin opponents like him who over the years have died or been seriously injured in mysterious circumstances, shows that Putin may also not be above state-sponsored assassinations.

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The Kremlin denies any part in these violent episodes.

Still: If Putin can effectively do what he wants in Russia, why is he even bothering to hold a vote?

Sam Greene, a professor of Russian politics at King's College London who lived and worked in Moscow for many years, described Russia's election as a "ritual" to make sure "everyone's singing from the same hymn sheet."

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He said Putin "doesn't want to risk telling Russians their vote doesn't count because they need to be able to look around and think ? plausibly ? that the majority of Russians support Putin even if they don't."

Greene said that because "authoritarian leaders tend to get pulled down not by the streets but by the elite," the election is also about Putin demonstrating he is a leader who can "keep control of the masses."

Marina Litvinenko, the widow of a former Russian spy who was poisoned to death with radioactive polonium in London in 2006, a killing the British government concluded was likely done on Putin's direct orders, said she's convinced that even though Russia's vote is taking place in what she called a "fake" system, for Putin it's real.

"He lives in this fake world that he has created," she said, where the president accepts his own government's lies as reality. "I think he really believes in it. When somebody from the West criticizes Putin, he gets very emotional. I think he would be really disappointed to hear that people aren't actually supporting him or that he somehow isn't following the rules."

'We believe change will eventually come'

Russia’s exiled opposition is now led by Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, who called on Russians to show up at the polls en masse at noon Sunday to overwhelm voting booths in a sign of protest.

"This is a very simple and safe action, it cannot be prohibited, and it will help millions of people see like-minded people and realize that we are not alone," Navalnaya said. "We are surrounded by people who are also against war, against corruption and against lawlessness.”

Several people were detained for vandalism at voting stations on Friday, according to reports. One woman was caught on a video throwing a Molotov-cocktail-style bomb at one voting booth near St. Petersburg. In another, green paint could be seen being poured into ballot boxes at various polling stations in Moscow.

But even minor displays of dissent in Putin's Russia are easier said than done.

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Almost 20,000 people have been detained, often brutally, across Russia in various anti-war protests and demonstrations since Putin ordered the military to invade Ukraine a little over two years ago, according to OVD-Info, a Moscow-based independent human rights group and information service that focuses on political persecution in Russia and offers legal advice to people who have been imprisoned.

Navalny was Russia's highest profile political prisoner. But there are more than 500 more in Russia’s penal colonies, according to the U.S. State Department. They face a grim reality of physical and psychological pressure, sleep deprivation, insufficient food, poor health care and a dizzying set of arbitrary rules.

Authorities have shut down or blocked independent media outlets and banned books by bestselling authors who espouse anti-war opinions. Independent artists have been harassed with invasive home searches.

After Navalny's death, Russia's security services have moved quickly to stamp out any signs of mass gatherings or hints of criticism. About 400 people were detained by Russian police as they tried to lay flowers and hold vigils for Navalny, including on the day of his funeral.

"I don't think that asking people to come out on the streets is necessarily a good idea because the police are heavily armed, and if there's an actual mass protest I'm pretty sure people will get fired on," said Ksenia Maximova, a Moscow-born opposition activist who heads the London-based Russian Democratic Society.

Maximova said her sources in Russia have told her that specially trained national guards who report directly to Putin took part in combat-style exercises ahead of the election.

"We understand that the democratic forces inside Russia are not strong enough to topple Putin," said Vladimir Ashurkov, a friend of Navalny's who helped found his Anti-Corruption Foundation.

"But we believe democratic change will eventually come."

A 'state of quasi-martial law'

Russia's Central Election Commission says there are about 112 million eligible voters inside Russia and Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. Another 1.9 million voters live overseas.

Callum Fraser, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London, said Russia's election could turn out to be "the most rigged" in the country's history.

Fraser said Putin will need to ensure high support and turnout, both around 80%, in a climate of severe voter apathy to give the perception that his mandate is clear and convincing. He said voter turnout in Russia, as in most authoritarian states, is "notably poor" ? typically 40% to 60%.

"Authoritarians are not great at showing they have the mandate of the people," Fraser said.

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One Russian who won't be giving Putin, or anyone else for that matter, his mandate is Boris Vishnevsky, a veteran liberal politician in Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg. Vishnevsky said he intends to deliberately spoil his ballot by writing the word "peace" on it, with an exclamation mark in front of Putin's name.

“We live in the state of quasi-martial law, so the election result is absolutely predictable," he told USA TODAY.

Another is Lev Shlosberg, deputy leader of the socially liberal Yabloko party, Navalny's party before he was kicked out in 2007 for his then "nationalist views" and racist and xenophobic statements.

Schlosberg plans to cross out every name on the ballot.

"The opposition exists in Russia, but it is not political ? it's a moral opposition," said Elena Panfilova, who founded the Russia chapter of Transparency International, an organization that tracks and fights corruption.

Panfilova lives in Moscow.

"It is not collective but individual opposition. It is deeply inside people," she said. "Not in these clowns in power."

Subobina, whose girlfriend Skochilenko was jailed for seven years in a penal colony for replacing supermarket labels with anti-war messages, said: "The only thing I can say about the elections in my country is that I don’t believe in their integrity. And I am very afraid they will be followed by increased repression."

Contributing: Anna Nemtsova

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: In 2024 Russia election, Putin may cement longest reign since Stalin