March 4:
According to opposition activists, Russia's presidential election - which now has once again elevated Vladimir Putin to the country's top post - was even more elaborately rigged than were last year's parliamentary polls. Independent watchdog group "Golos" has reported over 1,000 violation complaints so far, London's Guardian reports. These include abuses of absentee voting and the use of carousels, in which voters were bussed all over cities in order to vote numerous times. “It is not an election,” commented opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov. “It is a disgrace.” Putin’s campaign chief, however, maintained that claims of fraud were “ridiculous” and even “laughable,” and called the election “the cleanest in Russian history.”
March 5:
Hundreds of people have been arrested in Moscow after a state-approved rally. According to the Wall Street Journal, 20,000 people were permitted to gather in a Moscow square to protest Vladimir Putin’s election until prominent opposition members, including blogger Alexei Navalny, vowed to camp in and around the square’s central fountain until Putin stepped down. The protest was fueled by allegations of widespread voting fraud in the election, which gave Putin a victory that watchdog group "Golos" called “unrealistic by any measure.” The head of the OSCE observer mission agreed with the evaluation, adding that “there was no real competition, [and] an abuse of government resources ensured that the ultimate winner of the election was never in doubt.”
March 6:
The latest poll from the Levada Center suggests that Vladimir Putin will not have an easy path to a fourth presidential term. According to the Wall Street Journal, the independent pollster found that 24 percent of respondents believe that this should be Putin's final term as president. A little over half said they hadn't decided, while 19 percent responded that they expected to see Putin remain in office through 2024. The President-elect insists that he hasn't decided yet what he'll do.
[Editor’s Note: Given the effect of Russia’s increasingly authoritarian political climate on pollsters and respondents alike, the results of public opinion surveys in Russia should be viewed with some caution.]
March 7:
A recent UNICEF report on the high rate of teenage suicides in Russia has thrown a spotlight on the troubling trend. Russia has the third highest rate of teen suicides in the world, reports the Washington Post, behind Belarus and Kazakhstan. Alcohol abuse, domestic violence, and rigid parenting all contribute to the problem, as does the country’s stigma against mental health issues. Under the Soviet Union, suicide was considered an insult to the state, and psychiatry was more closely associated with punishment than therapy. Meanwhile, efforts to introduce mental health services in schools have been “absolutely ineffective,” according to one of the country’s few child psychologists. Statistics show that suicide rates among teens are higher for boys than girls, and more prevalent in the Far East and northwestern Russia.
March 8:
December’s political protests did not drive Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials out of office, but they did provoke a sharp rise in the number of participants in local politics. About 200 independent candidates ran in Moscow’s municipal elections this year, the New York Times reports, and more than 70 actually won seats. There are over 1,500 total seats, and municipal councils generally have very limited influence, but as one young activist put it, “If you see a breach in the iron wall, it makes sense to go through it.”
March 9:
Many experts believe that Putin’s return to the Russian presidency will mean further progress toward a Eurasian Union. Shortly after announcing his interest in a third presidential term, Voice of America reports, Putin wrote an editorial for Izvestia expounding upon his desire for an economic union to rival the EU. Only two weeks later, he hosted the prime ministers from Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, and Ukraine, and emerged with an agreement to form a free trade zone. With his presidency now assured, observers suggest that the project could gain even greater momentum.