World Affairs Brief, March 22, 2024. Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief (http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com).
PUTIN’S FRAUDULENT LANDSLIDE ELECTION VICTORY
No one wins an election with 88% of the vote, except in Communist-controlled countries. And as I’ve long documented, Russia is still a communist country, which controls a lot of fake “independent” parties to make it appear as a democracy. The “fall of Communism” and the Soviet Union in 1989-91 was a carefully crafted deception. [See the March 3, 2023 WAB in the archives for the evidence]
Considering all the massive protests in Russia against Putin’s leadership just last year, the world is rightly skeptical of Putin’s claimed election victory with 88% of the vote in this weekend’s election. His banning, arresting, or even killing all the most popular opposition leaders does tend to have a chilling effect on Russian politics—though it should have the opposite effect on the voters. If the skewed results hold, we’ll know Russian elections are about as fraudulent as our own in the West. The Daily Mail filed this report:
Vladimir Putin declared an unsurprising victory tonight calling for a ‘stronger and more effective Russia’ as he continues to eye up a new world order [under his control, not for liberty] and unleash plans to challenge Western dominance.
Despite ‘Noon Against Putin’ protests being held in Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Russian embassies across the world, the despot took to the capital to celebrate the “landslide vote” and call for those who spoilt their ballots to be prosecuted.
The election win – which could have been declared before a single ballot box was checked – means the Russian President’s reign of domestic repression and confrontation with the West will continue until at least 2030.
If he is allowed to rule the next six years, it means that history-buff Putin will be the longest serving Russian leader since Catherine the Great in the 18th century.
Putin is no historian—he is a KGB security hack, now in full power over Russia. He simply made it look like he was historically fluent by carefully crafting a falsified view of Soviet and Ukraine history that easily overwhelmed a naive and unschooled Tucker Carlson during his interview with Putin in Moscow.
Ever since the little-known KGB agent secured victory on New Year’s Eve 1999 he has consolidated power by bringing oligarchs to heel and banning any real opposition – turning Russia into an authoritarian state.
“Bringing to heel” is putting it mildly. He brutally put down any and all challengers including his mentor, Chief Oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who was assassinated in London. Putin has arrested or exiled all the other original Oligarchs who brought him to power—making him the new Stalin of the “Continuing Soviets” as the late Christopher Story used to call them after the phony fall.
Appointed by his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, his first few years in office saw an economic boom in Moscow as the country cashed in on its vast energy resources before he started cracking down and outlawing all forms of dissent.
Energy resources that finally became profitable after the Western nations rebuilt Russian energy companies from the ground up—part of the “aid and trade” Russia sought that was the real reason for the phony fall—not “peace and cooperation” as Putin lied about to Carlson.
His landslide election comes after his most prolific critic Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic prison colony last month under suspicious circumstances – with many, including his grieving widow, claiming Putin was to blame.
Ukrainian president Zelensky led the world condemnation of Putin’s crushing victory in what he called a “sham Russian Presidential election.” Kyiv says the Russian despot is “sick from power and wants to rule forever” [like Xi Jinping in China] after rivals were exiled, jailed or killed.
Of course, Zelensky and Ukraine are no strangers to rigged elections either.
His grip on power tightened further after he invaded Ukraine in February 2022, with public dissent against the war effectively silenced through court proceedings and imprisonment.
He risks becoming defined by the war in Ukraine which has cost many thousands of lives – including Russian troops – and led to unprecedented Western sanctions that have created major tensions within the Russian economy.
Large anti-war protests were held in the days after he ordered troops into Ukraine in the early hours of February 24 2022 but these were quickly quashed. Demonstrators began to rise again, however, after the government was forced to announce a part mobilisation when it failed to topple Ukraine’s government in the opening of the offensive. With all his major critics dead, in prison or exiled, Putin sees Russian society as united behind him.
They are not all united behind him—but just as powerless to throw off the shackles of state power as in Soviet days, because they have no private arms for self defense or rebellion against tyranny in Russia.