RUSSIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION MARCH 2018

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by Morley Evans

Dmitry Orlov analyses yesterday's Presidential election in Russia and arrives at the central issue that faces the Russian people from the Black Sea to the Pacific Ocean. In case you missed it, I'll repeat what I said the other day.


RUSSIAN PEOPLE (the Slavs) have overcome constant attacks for centuries by uniting and fighting for survival. Russians were demonized and underestimated by the Teutons, the Mongols, the Turks, the French and the Nazis. Washington is making the same mistake today. At five foot seven, Putin stands head and shoulders over the pygmies who lead the enemies of the Russian Federation. Stalin saved the Soviet Union. (More than twice.) Putin is much better than Stalin. Listen to Mikhail Gorbachev. He couldn’t save the Soviet Union from unravelling, but he did set Russia on a new path. Russians will lead the world into the bright, peaceful, prosperous and harmonious future that the U.S.A. promised but didn’t deliver. Instead, American leaders gave us hatred, death, destruction and lies. Just watch what is going to happen.

President Vladimir Putin

A DRY RUN FOR RUSSIAN DEMOCRACY

by Dmitry Orlov

WARNING: THE FIRST PART OF THIS ESSAY may sound like a jubilant hymn to Russia and a paean to Vladimir Putin. Rest assured that I am not expressing opinions here; these are the facts. It just so happens that these facts accentuate the positive. But I have no wish to eliminate the negative and will get to all of that in due course.

On March 18 Russia held presidential elections. Everybody (with a brain) fully expected Putin to win, but hardly anyone expected him to win this big or with this high a turnout: 67.47% of the eligible voters turned up at the polls; of them, 76.67%76.69% voted for Putin. In case you are still wondering whether Crimea is part of Russia (trust me, it is) the turnout there was 71.53%, of whom 92% voted for Putin. And in the once separatist republic of Chechnya, the turnout was 91.54%. Record turnouts were also observed outside of Russia, among the very large Russian diaspora. Over half of all Russians voted for Putin.

[Putin’s United Russia recorded a higher percentage of votes in predominantly Muslim Chechnya, where federal troops fought two wars since the fall of the Soviet Union than anywhere else in the country. Official results show support at 99.5 percent and the voter turnout of 99.4 percent. (Reuters)]

Equally notable was the manner in which the elections were run: the process was public and transparent, using paper ballots counted by hand. Polling places were equipped with video cameras. Ballot-stuffing, which was a problem with previous elections, was detected in a couple of places, and the tainted results were disqualified. While during previous elections people could only vote where they were registered, now they could declare their location and vote wherever they found themselves, even at airports if they happened to be travelling. While the previous presidential elections in Russia were followed by a wave of protests, with numerous people complaining about fraud at the polls, this time these voices were scarcely heard. And while in previous elections opposition candidates got considerable traction among the Western-leaning educated elites in Moscow and St. Petersburg, this time the entire country was quite uniformly pro-Putin.

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