Don’t think that America is the only giant nuclear-armed nation with a presidential election featuring repeat candidates. Russians start voting in their presidential election today. The contenders are, once again, Vladimir Putin and some other guys who will lose as surely as the Washington Generals fall to the Harlem Globetrotters, it just won’t be as close.
Putin, as acting president following Boris Yeltsin’s resignation, ran and won in March 2000 for a four-year term. After that it was just for show.
He ran in the March 2004 election and won another four-year term.
In the March 2008 presidential election, due to term limits, Putin ran his stooge Dmitry Medvedev, who won, like term-limited George Wallace successfully ran his wife in 1966 for governor of Alabama. Putin, like Wallace, then spent the next four years really being in charge, as prime minister.
In March 2012, Putin was back on the presidential ballot, but he changed the term to six years.
In March 2018, he won another six years.
In 2020, he altered the term limits, so they don’t kick in for him until 2036.
And so now he’s running again. The requirements are similar to the U.S., being at least 35 years old, and being a resident of Russia for at least 25 years (it’s 14 years for this country).
There are also some other rules, like the one that knocked Alexei Navalny off the ballot six years ago. This year Navalny was just murdered instead. And there’s another requirement that the winner must be Vladimir Putin.
Should he complete this new term and make it to 2030, Putin will have served 30 years as czar, which equals Stalin’s time holding power and is approaching the longest reign of any Russian leader, Catherine the Great, who was empress of Russia for 34 years.
But he can beat Catherine. Putin is 71 now, so in six years, he’ll still be younger than Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be this November, and he’d still be eligible for another six years. He can undo term limits when he gets to 2036.
For decades, his despotism and depravity was limited to the long-suffering Russian people. But for the past two years he has brought war to the whole of Ukraine, not satisfied with just seizing its eastern regions and Crimea 10 years ago.
Just this week, Putin mused about possibly using nukes, even as his old buddy Trump says he’d hand over NATO allies to Putin.
But Trump is not president now and Ukraine is fighting for liberty and democracy and looks to America for help and support. Their battle is our battle, but House Speaker Mike Johnson, fearful of Trump, has blocked a vote, even though it would pass with a large majority. As we suggested, Democrats and some right-minded Republicans are pushing discharge petitions to force the Ukraine aid package to the floor. The pressure is working as Johnson recognizes that there will be a vote.
Some day Russia may be free, but that day is seemingly far away, with Navalny buried in the ground and Putin readying another coronation. But Ukraine must remain free.
An observer of the czars long ago said that the Russian system of government was “absolutism tempered by assassination,” which is apparently the only check. And dictators beware, as today is the Ides of March.
