'Real' And 'Show' Democracy

Russia's embassy in South Africa quotes President Putin campaigning in annexed Crimea: "You showed with your historic decision at the 2014 referendum what real democracy is, as opposed to show democracy."

They did indeed, but it wasn't in the way that Russia's diplomatic account appears to be suggesting.

The United Nations overwhelmingly rejected the validity of the Crimean vote that Moscow organized under Russian occupation, passing Resolution 68/262, titled Territorial Integrity Of Ukraine, in March 2014. ​Here's the UN's press office on the vote:

In a vote that reaffirmed Ukraine’s unity and territorial integrity, the United Nations General Assembly today adopted a measure underscoring that the mid-March referendum in Crimea that led to the peninsula’s annexation by Russia “has no validity” and that the parties should “pursue immediately a peaceful resolution of the situation.”

And here's Moscow's take via Pretoria:

Raw Nerves Ahead Of Russian Election -- Even In La-La Land

The lack of any drama over the outcome of the election itself didn't prevent a Russian pre-election skirmish when Russian emigres confronted each other in southern California.

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Amnesty Warns Russia Is Escalating Opposition Crackdown As Election Nears

Amnesty International has accused Russia of mounting a "fierce crackdown" on political activists ahead of this week's presidential election, systematically violating their rights through "arbitrary" arrests and detentions.

The London-based rights group said on March 15 that Russian authorities are using a draconian law on public assemblies to "deliberately" target activists calling for an election boycott. In addition, many prominent opposition voices have been arbitrarily detained and charged with politically motivated offenses.

"The Kremlin’s agenda is crystal clear -- the loudest protesters and vote-boycotters must be cleared from the cities' streets during the final stages of the presidential campaign," Denis Krivosheev, deputy director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia at Amnesty International, said in a statement.

"While various methods are used, the authorities usually turn to their favorite one: arbitrarily throwing dissenters behind bars."

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Early Voting In Arctic Russia

Voting has begun in the flat, snow-covered expanses of the Siberian Arctic, home to the nomadic Nenets people who herd reindeer. These arresting images are from Reuters.

Russia holds a presidential election on March 18 but voting started early in the flat, snow-covered expanses of the Siberian Arctic, home to the nomadic Nenets people who herd reindeer.

Putin And The 'Emperor's Moment'

Contributor Ivan Krastev writes in a New York Times op-ed titled Welcome To The Era Of Presidents For Life that "the consensus, forged over centuries," that "rulers should not be encouraged to outstay their welcomes and that their power must always be constrained" is being "called into question."

Krastev cites Chinese President Xi Jingping's example in light of what another writer (Ken Jowitt) has previously dubbed the "Versailles Effect" -- "how power can be best measured by the eagerness of others to imitate one’s institutions and lifestyles."

"After the end of the Cold War, imitating the West signified being on the right side of history," Krastev writes, including by adopting at least a sort of ostensible democracy and constraints on a ruler's power, for instance through term limits.

Krastev writes:

That’s why many undemocratic governments insisted on maintaining democratic trappings, in particular elections and term limits. In 2008, for example, Vladimir Putin of Russia resisted the temptation to change the Constitution to allow him a third consecutive term as president because he did not want his country to look like one of the Central Asian republics where presidents never leave their palaces. Even though the system was rigged, undemocratic governments knew it was important to at least pretend it wasn’t. This — rather than the spread of liberal democracy — is the real evidence of democracy’s hegemony. Even China played along.

Until now.

In this sense, the Chinese Communist Party’s decision to abolish presidential term limits will resound far beyond China. One could imagine Mr. Putin convincing himself that leaving the Kremlin in 2024, when his next term would conclude, is no longer necessary.

Words Fail Me

In an essay for The Weekly Standard, Garry Kasparov, world chess legend and staunch opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, discusses the difficulties in writing about "elections" in Putin's Russia. Worth a read...

On March 18, the popular leader of Russia, Vladimir Putin, will be reelected to another six-year term as president. This is both a plain statement of fact and a complete falsehood. In American political parlance, this statement can be taken literally, but not seriously.

The conundrum is due to the weakness of language and how we allow even the simplest words to be manipulated and distorted. That simple sentence about Putin and the Russian presidential election on March 18 is wrong in every possible way aside from the date and Putin’s name.

Before we unpack the many fictions in that statement, let us begin with what will happen, literally, on March 18 in Russia. Many people will go to polling stations and cast votes for different candidates. Putin and the other candidates will be shown on television dropping their paper ballots into boxes and smiling as the cameras flash. Vladimir Putin will receive a healthy majority of the vote, likely around the 64 percent he got in 2012.

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All Eyes On Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin's campaign spokesman says more than 10 percent of the Russian population has viewed a two-hour online documentary profiling the Russian leader ahead of his all-but-guaranteed reelection on March 18.

The spokesman, well-known television journalist Andrei Kondrashov, said in an interview with the news portal riafan.ru that the film, aptly titled "Putin," has garnered 16 million views since its online release on May 11.

The documentary is based on several interviews between Kondrashov and Putin, as well as associates of the Russian president. It was released online by Russian state-media executive and fiercely anti-American television personality Dmitry Kiselyov.

It is the third in a series of films about Putin distributed ahead of the March 18 ballot. One, called World Order 2018, was released online on March 7 and features a wide-ranging interview with Putin conducted by Kremlin-friendly television host Vladimir Solovyov. In February, state-run Channel One began airing a four-part documentary about Putin produced by American director Oliver Stone whose original broadcast in Russia occurred last year.

Liberal candidates Grigory Yavlinsky and Ksenia Sobchak complained that the Stone filmed violated campaign laws, and Channel One canceled the broadcast of the final part of the documentary at the request of election officials, Meduza reported.

Putin consistently receives fawning media coverage that election watchdogs say has violated campaign laws ahead of the election.

Russia Brands European Vote-Monitoring Groups 'Undesirable'

The Russian government has blacklisted two European organizations involved in election monitoring, days ahead of the March 18 presidential vote.

On March 13, the Justice Ministry listed Germany's European Platform for Democratic Elections and Lithuania's International Elections Study Center as "undesirable organizations."

The ministry said the designations were based on legislation on "measures against individuals involved in the violation of basic human rights and freedoms" and on a March 12 decision by a deputy prosecutor-general.

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Monitor The Vote Online

The independent election-monitoring group Golos -- which has been branded a foreign agent by the Kremlin -- has set up a website that will enable the interested to see how each polling station reports its results in the March 18 presidential election.

The site will use official information from the Central Election Commission.

Nizhny Novogorod Also Working To Get Out The Vote

Officials in Nizhny Novogorod are offering a package of incentives to get people to turn out for the March 18 presidential election, including tickets to World Cup warm-up matches.

The enticements also include tickets to an election-night concert and free tickets to the Nizhny Novgorod municipal museum.

The Kremlin worries that low turnout in the election will mar the appearance of legitimacy for the heavily managed process. As a result, officials around the country have come up with dozens of ways of drawing or pushing voters into the voting booths.

Opposition leader Aleksei Navalny has dismissed the election as "the reappointment of Vladimir Putin" and is calling on Russians to boycott.