Insecure, weak Putin craves the popular vote, but uses violence to guarantee it | Observer editorial
www.theguardian.com
This parody of an election will be remembered for the cynically methodical manner in which he and his cronies stole the people’s right to freely choose Russia’s leader

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/10105218

This parody of an election will be remembered for the cynically methodical manner in which he and his cronies stole the people’s right to freely choose Russia’s leader.

Putin is not a fit person to lead Russia. He portrays himself as a man of the common people yet wholly lacks common decency, integrity and honour. He should be standing in the dock of the international criminal court in The Hague, where he faces war crimes charges over the abduction of Ukrainian children, not standing for re-election as president for another six years.

Putin’s victory in the election, which concludes this weekend, is a foregone conclusion. He faces no credible rival. The Kremlin has spent an estimated $1.2bn (£1bn) on “information management” (meaning lies and propaganda), vote-fixing in occupied Ukraine, and unopposed nationwide campaigning. Lavish state funding, including a reported 20-fold increase in spending on internet projects, platforms and media, has a single aim: a Putin landslide.

  • Shdwdrgn@mander.xyzEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    Wow that sounds so much like Trump… So desperate for the vote that he encouraged his followers to intimidate people at polling places known to have high turnouts for the opposing party. So insecure that his team had to photoshop pictures of when he was sworn in to greatly increase the visible crowds. And he is once again working up his followers to inflict violence on anyone that might vote against him in this year’s election (targeting people of color and the LGBTQ+ crowds especially). I think Trump sees Putin as his idle, someone to live up to. If only his followers weren’t so blinded by adoration maybe they could see that when Trump says he’s helping people like them, what he really means is rich people who are nothing at all like his followers.

          • Shdwdrgn@mander.xyzEnglish
            0·
            8 months ago

            Thanks, I appreciate that. I’ve been doing some searching and finding a lot of discussions about a lot of CIA agents being killed around 2021, and how that might be related to all of the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. And I do recall there being some discussion about Trump’s visit with Putin, what might have been said behind closed doors, and his propensity towards blabbering intelligence secrets to other hostile nations in the past.