BREAKING NEWS: Court Dismisses Sobchak Complaint

Our Russian Service reports from the courtroom that the Supreme Court has rejected Sobchak's challenge of Putin's candidacy, which was based on his previous terms as president in light of the Russian Constitution's term limit.

It's a debate that has simmered ever since Putin announced his intention to return to the Kremlin for a third term in 2012.

What Will 'Putin 4.0' Look Like?

To mark today's centenary of Lithuania's declaration of independence, here's a contribution from Vilius Ivanauskas -- senior analyst for the Eastern Europe Studies Center and a senior researcher at the Lithuanian Institute of History -- to the Lithuanian English-language news site Delfi.lt.

There is a clear denunciation of Russia's election:

The upcoming presidential elections in Russia are not real elections. This farcical ritual of ensuring the continuity and legitimacy of Vladimir Putin's rule helps to portray Putin as essential to ensuring the country's stability. However, the government has the basic tools (control of the media, electoral system, "administrative resources," and so on) to ensure Putin's continued popularity while assuring itself a veneer of legitimacy—in which the security services play a disproportionate role. In 2012-2014, public support for Putin actually fell, and anti-Putin forces represented a serious challenge to the president. However, Putin's popularity soared after Russia's actions in Ukraine in 2014.

Ivanauskas goes on to describe how Putinism has sought to further a narrative of a "Russia no longer on its knees." He adds:

One of the biggest remaining questions is whether Russia will be capable of wider re-engagement with the domestic public and of effectively implementing a programme of economic modernization during Putin's fourth term. The latter is especially significant, given that experts believe that economic reforms are needed if the country is to avoid entering a recession in the next few years[10]. Unfortunately, according to the current consensus, the Putin-Medvedev tandem is at best capable of implementing only partial reforms.

And going forward, he cites a likely power struggle, concluding:

Uncertainty about the succession process is adding so much stress to power networks that we may see a return to real negotiations and meaningful politics to the Russian political stage during the Putin 4.0 era. At the very least, we should soon see mafia-style power clans begin identifying some potential candidates for Putin to evaluate personally.

For serious Russia watchers, here's our live stream from Supreme Court proceedings this morning at which the panel dismissed candidate Sobchak's challenge to Putin's candidacy over the presidential term limit.

Is The Russian Election A 'Zombie Horror Show'? A Former Moscow-Based Ukrainian-American Reporter Thinks So

Among the things the election campaign has already been likened to: a movie, a charade, a circus.

Writing in Baffler magazine, Natalia Antonova, a Ukrainian-American journalist who has written from Moscow for The Guardian and The Moscow Times, offers a dose of wit and color as well as this metaphor for the campaign: "a zombie horror show." Or a tired marriage: "Both parties are keeping up appearances, but the smiles are stretched too tight, the atmosphere is so heavy that everyone around wants to shrug it off."

And referring to an infamous moment in the 2014 parliamentary elections, Antonova offers up a variation on the Soviet-era joke: How many Russian election officials does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Exactly 146 percent of all the Central Election Commission members.

Russian Foreign Ministry Asserts West Trying To Interfere In Campaign

This week the chiefs of the United States' main spy agencies asserted that, with congressional midterms looming, Moscow’s efforts to meddle in U.S. elections were continuing unabated.

Moscow has responded with similar accusations of its own but broadened them to include the entire West.

"Unlike the unfounded accusations of all-powerful Russian hackers and some such Russian influence on elections in other countries, we have information and concrete facts concerning the destructive interference of a number of Western countries in our internal affairs” during the campaign, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a February 15 briefing.

She did not offer any evidence to back up the claim.

Communist Schism? Zyuganov Says He Won't Give Up Party To Grudinin

The business newspaper Vzglyad writes that there could be a schism growing in Russia’s Communist Party as internal factions split their loyalties between longtime leader Gennady Zyuganov and the man chosen to be their standard bearer in next month’s election, Pavel Grudinin.

The closest Zyuganov has ever come to the presidency was in 1996, when he challenged then-incumbent Boris Yeltsin. Since then, the once-mighty party has diminished, due in no small part to the party’s older base.

So when party leaders chose Grudinin over Zyuganov to run in this year’s election, many observers were surprised. Zyuganov this week signaled there was behind-the-scenes intrigue, telling a news conference on February 15 that he wasn’t ready to "give up" the party to Grudinin.

Russian Supreme Court Rejects Sobchak's Bid To Strike Putin From Ballot

By RFE/RL

The Russian Supreme Court has rejected presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak’s bid to remove incumbent Vladimir Putin from the ballot in the country's March 18 election.

In a widely expected decision, Judge Nikolai Romanenkov ruled on February 16 that the Central Election Commission acted within the law when it registered Putin as a candidate.

Putin, who was president for two four-year terms in 2000-08 and was elected to a six-year term in 2012 after a stint as prime minister, is seeking a fourth term in the upcoming vote.

His high approval ratings and control over the levers of power make his victory a foregone conclusion in Russia, where government critics say election campaigns and results are manipulated by authorities.

Sobchak, one of seven other candidates on the ballot, contended that Putin continued to serve as de facto chief executive in 2008-2012, when he was prime minister and Dmitry Medvedev was president.

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Election Boycott Of His Own?

Noting that President Putin has declined to participate in campaign debates and canceled many events in recent days citing illness, editorial cartoonist Sergei Yolkin asked on FB: "Has Putin announced a boycott of his own presidential campaign?"

Current Time TV visited with six Russians from different walks of life to hear who they'll vote for and why. (In Russian)

Walker on Putin's 'Quest For Lost Glory'

Guardian correspondent Shaun Walker has published a Russian farewell. Here are the relevant election bits from the always insightful Walker, author of The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past:

For now, political apathy reigns both among the urban elite and the broader population and Putin is sure to win next month’s election. In a remarkable sleight of hand, Putin manages to portray himself as part of the solution rather than part of the problem, even though he has been in charge for 18 years. While his approval ratings are real, much of the support is fragile and predicated on there being no alternative. On my trips around the Russian provinces, people often told me they were unhappy with their lives and despairing of corrupt officials.

And:

The opposition politician Alexei Navalny has emerged as the biggest potential threat. He is never featured on state television, he and his team deal with constant harassment, and his brother has been jailed. On trips to the Siberian hinterlands, I’ve met young, enthusiastic Navalny supporters who are slowly winning around their parents and friends to the cause. Navalny scores low ratings in the polls, but he is a wily politician and a charismatic orator and his message about official corruption in the inner circle is powerful if it gets wide exposure. Putin is on firm ground batting away challengers who want more liberal politics or rapprochement with the west; he has few answers if confronted with hard proof of the obscene wealth of his ministers and his childhood friends.

Putin will win another six-year term on 18 March, but there is no clear ideological message for his next term and nobody knows how – or if – he will relinquish power in 2024. It is hard to imagine Putin simply stepping down, but also unclear for how much longer he can keep control over his courtiers, who are engaged in vicious feuds behind the scenes for money and influence. One high-placed source, who once upon a time would lecture me that I should look at the long arc of history, that countries with the historical baggage of Russia do not democratise overnight and that Putin is moving Russia in the right direction, looked rather demoralised when I last saw him. He admitted that nobody knew what was coming next and that the medium-term prognosis was rocky. He simply shrugged and said: “Countries go through good patches and difficult patches. This is a difficult one.”