Short:

1. Let’s put it bluntly, there were no elections in Russia on March 15-17. In fact, elections have never been held in Russia. Throughout its history, the Russian people never elected their Leader it has never changed its supreme ruler through democratic elections. Russians don’t even know how it will happen, whether to really elect someone who will lead the country, or to remove him from office when they no longer need him, whether he is still alive, or whether it was not done by the closest circle of the Kremlin authorities. Do not push him down the stairs with a resignation letter in hand, like the first two presidents in Moscow (Yeltsin in 1999 and Gorbachev in 1991).
2. In accordance with the Russian tradition, the state police apparatus approves the existing Leader in the position in the Kremlin, in a pluralistic simulacrum.. Citizens have no choice. And Vladimir Putin took de facto power in August 1999, when an exhausted, sick, alcoholic and blackmailed president, Boris Yeltsin, appointed him prime minister only to, according to the Constitution, upon his supposed resignation a few months later, in December 1999 year, the ambitious young leader Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin Acting President of the Russian Federation. From this privileged position, in which he has already received executive power, without ever having been elected by the people to any public office, he will be confirmed by the system in the so-called spring 2000 elections as the “president elected by the people.” Just like Yeltsin in 1992, just like Gorbachev in 1990. No real choice made by the Russian people. Only internal designations made by the authorities around the Kremlin.
3. The Kremlin election militia reconfirmed him in office with 87% for his fifth and final term (theoretically, six years will probably be less), about the Great Leader, who will turn 72 this year, 25 years in power in Russia. How do we know this is the deadline? simple Because Putin has already started to make typical mistakes of dictators at the top of power, who always announce begining of the end. No one has escaped the mistakes of too much power and too little opposition when they cross an invisible line.
4. In his new and final term, just begun, Putin has already been thoroughly humiliated by the catastrophic terrorist attack on March 21 in Moscow, which spoiled his entire audacious, triumphant speech and, moreover, embarrassed her after the United States warned Russia on March 7 of an imminent terrorist attack, “probably in a crowded place, at a concert, etc.” So the blame lies with the Great Leader and his security apparatus, effective only to suppress political opposition, stupid when it comes to protecting the safety of Russian citizens in the face of four terrorists who have come to kill in mass, armed with machine guns, bombs and incendiary devices and calmly park an ordinary car in front of the shopping center.
5. Any internally humiliated dictator has a primitive tendency to increase his aggression. Vladimir Putin will soon do the same. This is the only way the dictator knows how to “restore his prestige and credibility”, so shamefully destroyed.
6. Putin will unleash the final offensive against the West in this mandate, whom he hates with a passion of faith, all his life (especially after he experienced, as a KGB officer in Dresden, the defeat of the Soviet Union before the United States and the West), hoping in his morbid delusion , emphasized by age and the cult of personality, to leave his the image of the Great Leader in Russian history, along with what he considers the “glory of Stalin IV” or Peter the Great. It is the obsession of all criminal dictators in power, when they feel their biological end is approaching, to force something and leave behind “epic achievements”. This is where his long and bloody dictatorship will come to an end. Obsession with a great legacy which they must leave behind, sooner or later digs a political grave for all dictators. They do not know when and how to stop, to continue their rule.
7. What will be the ultimate goals of this looming hybrid attack in the coming years? The final and complete subjugation of Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova to the Russian world (with the installation of Russophile regimes in Kyiv and Chisinau), the dissolution of NATO and the withdrawal of US troops from Europe, the disintegration of the European Union, the revision of the world order with the involvement of Europe in the geopolitical compact of Eurasia, the restoration of Moscow’s sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and its status as a global great power. 16 years after the start of the war against the West (due to the invasion of Georgia in August 2008) Putin did not achieve all its strategic objectives. But this is the last assault.
8. I will not tire of repeating, although it may seem that I am persistent on this topic (about which I periodically write and talk about in detail since January 2022[1]before the invasion of Ukraine, about which I already had no doubts) that Russia will lose Putin’s war against the West in the long run. Not in the short term, when it may have some territorial gains in Ukraine, but in the long term, from the point of view of cost-benefit analysis and economic and social development, in which Russia, for example, will be far behind Ukraine. In 2030, as a symbolic reference point, it will be clear to everyone – both to us, to Russians, and to Ukrainians. A pro-Western Ukraine has a future, but the ideological phantasms of Putin’s Russia do not.

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Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is on the height of power and his ideological delusion. In front of him, bowing their heads, sits a crowd of people who have been kneeling for a very long time. And this is where the decline begins, precisely when he gets the impression that no one and nothing can prevent him from fulfilling his will.

State and police apparatus of The Kremlin created and delivered – 87%. To be honest they have exceeded my expectations, two months ago I would have said 75%. However, to those in the System, it appeared to be related to Russia’s great leader waging a “holy and just war” of Moscow’s revenge against “US hegemony, abuses, and the West’s historic injustices against Russia.” The story with the “Ukrainian Nazis” is secondary, coloratura, for the dumbest part of the stupid public of Russia, that is, that segment that can swallow everything. Central to Putin’s strategy are his anti-Western and revisionist goals. He sought revenge for the defeat in the Cold War and the collapse of the Russian Empire.

How was the Big Chief going to get under the 70% they decided in the papers last time? This would mean a drop in confidence in the Kremlin, which was unacceptable, especially now, during the war. It was necessary to confirm massively not only Putin himself, but also especially the idea of ​​war against the West (his ideological mantra), during which Putin enlisted the country to invade pro-Western Georgia in August 2008 as a means of blocking the small post-Soviet republic that dared to join NATO.

Formally, the Kremlin ensured the transmission of a political message internally and externally – “there is strong public support of the Russian people” Putin’s war against the West. Russians follow him, support him, want him.

Putin is Russia. Russia is Putin. This was the main purpose of the election masquerade. That is why it took three days (the first in the history of Russian “democracy”) – not only for Putin’s victory, which was no longer even a bet, but also to ensure a huge turnout and wild approval of the war.

What will he do now? With or without the terrorist act of March 21, he would still have been provoked the last assault. V.V. Putin wants to quickly and brutally cut in his favor, because the war will soon begin to have visible and painful costs for Russia and the country, although huge, will not be able to wage this war for more than 1-2 years. Neither military, nor economic, nor social. China no longer wants to drag out the war too much, with even higher stakes than Putin.

A ceasefire on terms imposed by Russia is all that Putin wants for 2025, after several more important conquests – Kharkiv, Odesa, Transnistria/Republic of Moldova. Not necessarily a peace treaty with Ukraine, but only a truce with recognition by Kyiv and the West of new territorial realities, perhaps a frozen conflict that will allow Russia to breathe again, sell hydrocarbons to the West, import technologies, subject to restoration. as we know Armistice does not mean peace, only the end of war. Perhaps in 10-15 years another Great Ruler from the Kremlin will again attack Eastern Europe, continue the work started by his glorious predecessors, and make Russia great again. Therefore, it is necessary to stop the war, and not to finally extinguish the conflict. As was the case with the Second Minsk Agreement of February 2015, it is just good for lulling naive Westerners and preparing a grand invasion for seven years. This is the Kremlin’s vision and hope. Infinite expansion with strategic pauses. So, the armistice on the terms imposed by Russia, with the recognition of the fact that took place at the front. This is what the Russians have always done throughout their history.

President Putin knows that in 12 months at the most he will have to stop the offensive and talk. Even if Donald Trump returns to the White House, he, in turn, will want to quickly associate his name with the political-diplomatic “great success” of peacemaking. Next year, Russia will run out of available troops (even if Putin soon conducts another partial mobilization), crushed by the Ukrainians, and economic resources exhausted by the military machine. Although the Western economic sanctions are silent and modest in their apparent impact, they are powerful in depth, eroding the foundation of the Russian economy. We see on the surface a proud house, brightly painted, but with an increasingly shaky foundation. We know what happens to buildings whose foundations are collapsing.

But now, in the spring of 2024, more than ever after February 24, 2022, the context appears favorable to maximize territorial gains in Ukraine. So he will press the gas pedal all the way.

Ukrainians they have run out of ammunition and are somewhat hopelessly, almost desperately defensive, Europeans and Americans face a difficult and difficult choice, anti-liberal revisionism grows social networks they also confuse the atmosphere in the West as much as they can, intoxicate the minds of people with low-quality and fragmented education in countries that enjoy “freedom of speech”, are exploited from the outside by the enemies of the West and from the inside by useful idiots. It seems to be Putin’s moment of glory before the West and liberal democracies. It just seems.

However, even for the deceptive Kremlin, it is clear that in a few months, if they comply, the Ukrainians will begin to balance the military situation at the front, after they start receiving ammunition from the West again and begin to increase their own production of weapons and ammunition under Western licenses. But now is the weakest moment, now they are exposed and vulnerable. And even now, in 2024, the elections are troubling and dividing Western democracies. This is the most dangerous year of this decade, on which much will depend in the years to come.

Yes, we expect it the war escalates in the coming weeks and months. This is a predictable move by Putin at the height of his power. He feels that the stars have aligned in his favor and he will win. – Read the rest of the article and comment on Contributors.ro