Russia Election: Putin Says Russia Won't Be Stopped

There was very little doubt that this would be the result. How then does the Kremlin adapt to these results? What is the message that arrives? So what does this tell us about Putin's goals and objectives going forward, Tony? Is now. Good day. Well, I mean, it certainly far surpasses anything we've seen in Russia's post-Soviet history. And it really puts Putin in the company of certain Central Asian autocrats in terms of the electorate's supposed devotion to him. If you want to put it in context, it's ten percentage points higher than his last result in 2018, which in itself was a record.

And turnout was estimated at something not seen since 1991, when Boris Yeltsin won the

election

after the collapse of the Soviet Union. So it's a completely different league and its goal is to convey the message that Putin has a united country behind him. But clearly there are many doubts. There are many doubts about some of the results that have been seen in the country. Well, Tony, expand on that a little. You're giving us the context in terms of how significant or at least the size of this apparent support in that historical context going back to 1991. In your view, is there any real sense of opposition reaction?

What can we extract from what happened in recent days? Yes. I mean, I think in many regions what are called administrative resources were deployed to ensure that, for example, state workers showed up and voted the right way. And places like Moscow and St. Petersburg, which have historically been hotbeds of opposition to Putin, got extremely high votes and turned out in his favor. All that said, there is very little real opposition on the ground since Alexei Navalny's death in prison, although there were protests at some polling stations, so they were fairly marginal. And opposition to Putin has been effectively suppressed by the Kremlin, which has been suppressing dissent for virtually the entire war period.

Well, Tony, thank you very much for that important story, of course, outside of Russia in which the Russian president

says

that he is committed to pursuing his objectives, of course, after that

election

victory. But of course, with all the contacts, he was very, very controlled and essentially not in doubt.