Putin's Win Isn't Just a Sham. It's a Danger.

As a democratic exercise, Vladimir Putin’s 87% victory at the polls this weekend was a travesty, meaningful only as a defining chapter in the tragic story of opportunities lost and destruction caused that his 24 years in power have become. Yet to judge a Russian election by the standards of liberal democracy is today a dangerous self-indulgence.

Putin’s victory should be seen through the eyes of the Kremlin, because Russia’s story is no longer one of a wayward transition from communism. He has established a new and yet familiar style of autocracy for Russia that – not for the first time – defines itself against the West. In those terms, this weekend’s charade was a wholly successful piece of political theater that will provide a crucial backdrop for Putin’s comeback from the deep military humiliations that Russia’s military, including its commander-in-chief, suffered in Ukraine two years ago.

From this vantage point, Putin can now expect at least another six years in office that would make him Russia’s longest-serving leader since Catherine the Great, the empress who first seized the lands Putin is fighting over in Ukraine. Having vastly miscalculated the willingness of Ukrainians to fight back, and of the West to support its defense, Putin’s intuition that he would be able to outlast both looks to be panning out. He didn’t even have to wait for November’s presidential election in the US for Donald Trump to turn off the spigot of aid from Washington. Trump’s grip on the Republican party already ensured that.

Europe, meanwhile, seems at last to have grasped just how profoundly a Russian victory in Ukraine would change the continent’s future, but it’s struggling to do much about it. The war is by no means over; the Ukrainians will fight on as long as they can, even without adequate ammunition, and it’s still possible that the US and Europe rediscover their resolve. But failing that, Putin can hope to prevail – in his eyes and those of many others – over the collective might of a wealthy, arrogant and inconstant West.

Just as important, the Russian economy has weathered the heaviest sanctions that Ukraine’s allies could muster. Unemployment rates are low, wages are rising and the economy is well on the way to transiting from the dollar and toward reliance on arms production and non-Western energy markets. Putin’s authority is unchallenged.

I say all this with a heavy heart, having lived in Moscow for about seven years and seen the potential for a different outcome. This return to aggressive authoritarianism wasn’t preordained by fate, or for that matter by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It was merely the default setting for a country with little other historical experience.

After four terms in office as president and two as prime minister, Putin has by now crushed the potential for Russia to develop democratic institutions, such as independent courts or a free media, for the foreseeable future. He has built in their stead a crony kleptocracy. He squandered, too, the enormous advantages of linguistic, economic and personal ties that Russia had with its ex-Soviet neighbors by treating them all, mafia-don style, as his to own, rather than as partners.

The result has been to incite through economic and military wars, rather than bonds of investment and trade. Russia’s greatest assets after its vast mineral and energy resources -- a hugely talented younger generation of mathematicians and software engineers -- have fled repression or the draft by their hundreds of thousands, giving a different meaning to those high employment figures.

For now though, Putin runs a functioning society in which the middle classes can live well in Moscow and other major urban centers, while in more remote areas he can pay multiples of their tiny salaries to go fight in Ukraine. Most Russians seem accepting of this trade, as well as of his offer to exchange greater personal liberty and prosperity for restoring Russian power and pride.

Speaking in a victory address late on Sunday, Putin reveled in what he clearly sees as his survival in a contest with the West in Ukraine as he told supporters that all of his sometimes “grandiose” plans will now be achieved. That’s a pledge that he doesn’t need free elections or respect for human rights to fulfill, only Western naivete and weakness.