Surprise! Putin just won the Russian elections. But his biggest win was elsewhere

London: There were no shocks in Moscow on Monday when Vladimir Putin’s allies declared victory in elections that gave them almost 80 per cent of the seats in the national parliament.

All the political shocks are elsewhere in Europe. Right now, none are greater than the upheavals in Germany, where voters are deserting Chancellor Friedrich Merz and seeking salvation from the hard right.

And there is a direct link from the ballot boxes to the bombs falling in Europe’s worst conflict since World War II.

In Russia, the election result was predictable for a country ruled so long by an autocrat whose enemies have a habit of falling out of windows from great heights.

If anything, the minor surprise was that Putin’s party, United Russia, only gained 58 per cent of the vote. How could 42 per cent be allowed to choose anyone else? This helped prop up the democratic facade, of course. It did not have any broader meaning because United Russia gained overwhelming control of the parliament, the Duma, with 355 of the 450 seats.

Anyone who seriously challenged Putin, or opposed the war in Ukraine, was simply not on the ballot.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, took all this as proof the people backed their leader.

“These indicators, of course, point to the highest level of consolidation within Russian society around the head of state,” Peskov told journalists in Moscow.

European leaders, however, called it out as a fraud.

“The so-called Duma elections marked another major setback for Russian democracy. Their outcome was never in doubt,” said Kaja Kallas, the former Estonian prime minister and the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs.

“The Kremlin silenced dissent, barred the only registered party that opposed its war in Ukraine, and shut out international election monitors.”

While the election is an unreliable guide to Russian sentiment, there are other ways to measure opinions about Putin. There was, for instance, the revolt led by former presidential favourite Yevgeny Prigozhin, with his Wagner Group mercenaries, three years ago.

Prigozhin failed in his attempt to march on Moscow, and he died in an aircraft explosion a few months later, but his uprising was a reminder of the constant threat to Putin. If the president were adored, he would not need to hide his physical location or send impersonators to act on his behalf at public events.

The election outcome does not change Putin’s long-term strategy of applying pressure on Europe in the hope he will one day absorb Ukraine into his concept of greater Russia.

It is not just that he will approve civilian deaths from Russian drone and missile strikes on Kyiv and other cities. It is that he will intensify “hybrid” warfare on the West, such as a drone attack on a German airport, a cut to internet cables on the sea floor and a drone incursion into Lithuanian airspace.

Putin not only gained strength in the Russian parliament on Monday. He also gained some more support in the American capital.

Donald Trump once again complained about Ukraine as if it were hurting global energy markets. The US president first said this a week ago when he publicly urged his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, to stop attacking Russian oil refineries. “He’s causing a shortage of diesel,” Trump said during a visit to Ireland on September 14.

Trump put the complaint directly to Zelensky in a phone call, according to The Financial Times. Then he took to social media to express his exasperation.

“Russia has unfortunately lost control of its Diesel Oil Industry due to its War with Ukraine,” Trump said. “A large number of their Diesel refineries have been blown up and are, at least temporarily, out of commission. This ridiculous and never ending War with Ukraine must be ended.”

Never mind that Trump launched a war on Iran that sent oil prices soaring.

Trump has gained more power to halt the war in Ukraine if he chooses: the US Congress just passed the Lindsey Graham bill to allow tougher sanctions against Russia and the customers who buy its oil – including India and China. There are times when Trump talks tough about Putin. In most of his actions, however, he clearly seeks to trade away Ukrainian sovereignty in pursuit of a deal, even if that means emboldening Putin and heightening future risks to Western Europe.

Putin will hope for help from the White House in forcing a peace deal in Ukraine on his terms. The question is whether he might one day gain the same help in the European capitals.

For now, most European leaders display total unity against Putin. Leaders from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland will not play nice with the Russian president. On Monday, the European Union disbursed another €3.3 billion ($5.3 billion) to Ukraine to fund military supplies under a €90 billion support loan.

Europe faces electoral shift

The electoral shocks in Germany, however, highlight how European leaders are trying to stand firm as the ground shifts beneath their feet.

German voters rallied to the hard right in state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Sunday, following a similar shift in Saxony-Anhalt two weeks earlier.

The biggest winner in both elections was the AfD, or Alternative for Germany. It argues publicly for a cut to aid to Ukraine and the restoration of trade with Russia. It got 37.9 per cent of the vote in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a region east of Hamburg, and 43.8 per cent in Saxony-Anhalt, in the centre of the country.

Even in Berlin, which held a regional election on Sunday, the AfD gained 16.2 per cent of the vote.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz rightly called this a “disaster” for his party, the Christian Democratic Union. He insists he will stay on, despite speculation about a party spill to install a more popular leader.

But the political upheaval is not about whether Merz stands or falls. It is about the collapse of the old centre parties and the rush by voters to the political edges: to the right (mostly the AfD) and the far left (to Die Linke, which incorporates Communist factions). If the AfD continues its rise in national elections due by 2029, the result will be a dramatic change in policy on Russia.

If this is the future, Putin may hold out hope he can one day negotiate with friendlier leaders in at least some parts of Western Europe.

It is too early to make sweeping forecasts. It was only a few months ago that voters in Hungary swept away Viktor Orbán, one of Putin’s greatest friends in the EU. The elections in Sweden last week and Denmark in March did not lead to softer treatment of Putin.

In France, meanwhile, where the presidential election is due in April, barracking for Russia is looking less fashionable for the right than it was several years ago. The leading right-wing candidate for the presidency, National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, once said she thought Putin was taking Russia in the right direction. Last week, she blamed Moscow for trying to interfere in French politics.

“We will never tolerate a foreign power, in this case Russia, hoping to dictate our country’s policy directly or indirectly through intimidation, threats, destabilisation, or psychological pressure,” Le Pen said in a statement with her party president, Jordan Bardella.

Le Pen seems to be calculating that French voters want a leader who stands firm against Putin. This is very different to the dynamic playing out for the AfD in Germany.

The next big question is how Americans vote in the midterm elections in November and whether that shifts power in the US Congress and restrains Trump on foreign policy.

No matter what Putin’s allies may want to claim, the future is not decided by the elections in Russia. It is being shaped by the elections elsewhere. And the shocks ahead.

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