As of: March 18, 2024, 5:17 a.m
By: Fabian Hartmann
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The elections in Russia are over.
The result of Putin's victory is no surprise.
But what happens next with the Kremlin despot's new term in office?
Moscow – In Russia this weekend, a total of more than 112 million people were called upon to cast their votes in the presidential election.
This includes 4.5 million people in the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, which were annexed in violation of international law.
The election began in the far east of the country, which spans eleven time zones, and ended on Sunday at 7 p.m. local time in the enclave of Kaliningrad, the westernmost part of Russia.
The preliminary result didn't really come as a surprise: Putin was declared the winner with almost 88 percent.
The electoral commission wants to announce the official final result by March 28th at the latest.
But it will not be clear until then that Vladimir Putin, who ruled from 1999 to 2008 and has been president since 2012, will have another six-year term in office.
Immediately after the polls closed, the electoral commission left no doubt that the old president was also the new one.
The only question is: where is Russia heading now?
15 trillion rubles by 2030 – Putin has already presented the budget for the next term
In the run-up to the presidential election, Vladimir Putin presented his budget priorities for 2030 in his State of the Nation address last month.
The expenses to finance the war of aggression against Ukraine and Western sanctions as a result hit the Russian state budget hard, and the current exchange rate of around 90 rubles per dollar is also causing problems for Putin's spending plans until 2030.
According to the US news service
Bloomberg,
Putin wants to invest a total of 15 trillion rubles by 2030 to improve the situation in the country.
This will include, among other things, 1 trillion rubles ($10.9 billion) for hospitals and 400 billion rubles ($4.4 billion) for schools and kindergartens.
Putin's announcement must also be read with reference to the very high spending on the military and police in Russia in 2024.
"2024 will be the first year since the Soviet Union in which the combined military and police budget is larger than the social budget," Russian opposition politician Aleksei Miniailo told
Newsweek.
He pointed out that defense spending will account for a third of Russian government spending this year.
Situation before the presidential election: How destabilized is Putin's Russia?
Despite the potential inevitability of the election outcome, there has been surprisingly little discussion about Putin's next term in office.
Nor about what it could mean inside and outside Russia.
This is all the more surprising since Putin's regime is currently more destabilized than ever before, and an end to Russia's ongoing economic problems or the increasing death toll as a result of the war of aggression against Ukraine is still out of sight.
Ballot boxes in Russian Ryazan on presidential election Sunday © IMAGO/Alexander Ryumin
In June last year alone (June 26, 2023), there was an uprising by the Wagner groups in Russia, led by the renegade Wagner militia around Yevgeny Prigozhin, which almost invaded Moscow.
The war in Ukraine has contributed to making Russia's domestic political situation more unstable than it has been in decades.
And on this basis, many scenarios for Russia's future seem conceivable.
But what exactly are they?
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Russia facing a new term in office for Putin – what could that mean for Europe and the world?
The "biggest and most consequential" event in this context may be the outcome of the US presidential election in November, Ken Osgood, a history professor at the Colorado School of Mines, tells
Newsweek.
Included
Osgood also referred to the signals from Trump and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party to end the war in Ukraine as quickly as possible.
“A withdrawal of US support and American pressure on Ukraine to enter into negotiations with Russia will mean a victory for Putin.
"Even if he only holds the territory that Russia currently occupies, Putin will credibly present this as a victory," Osgood told
Newsweek
.
According to Osgood, the consequences of such a course will be felt for years to come.
However, he believes that Putin will start a war with NATO is “not particularly likely”: “Even if the USA withdraws from NATO, it is still a formidable and nuclear-armed alliance – a direct attack that requires a massive response “It would be reckless,” explains the history professor.
However, he believes it is likely that Putin may introduce aggressive cyber and information warfare tactics to provoke divisions within the alliance: “Putin will likely try to influence the fate of Russia-friendly politicians like Hungary's Viktor Orbán and, to be clear, Donald Trump support financially."
Russia after the presidential election – what scenarios are conceivable?
But what could happen next after Putin wins again in the Russian presidential elections in his six-year term until 2030?
According to
the US daily
Politico, this is least likely
be that democratic tendencies are strengthening in Russia.
However, Putin's "disastrous decisions" in the war of aggression against Ukraine leave endless room for criticism.
And the death of Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny in the Siberian prison camp IK-3 will not per se be able to wipe out democratic movements in Russia, despite all the pressure that Putin is putting on them.
Although
Politico
gives the death of the symbolic figure Navalny the theoretical chance of creating momentum in favor of democracy in Russia, the US daily sees little chance of a resurgence of democratic aspirations in the next six years - and puts the probability of this at 5 to 10 percent.
The US media, on the other hand, sees the possibility of a technocratic reset in Russia as somewhat more likely.
It has now been two years since the invasion of Ukraine ordered by Putin, and the effects in Russia are visible not only in the form of war deaths, but also in the economic consequences.
According to Politico
, the idea that an inner circle of Kremlin officials would impeach Putin
has a probability of 20 to 25 percent.
Potentially another term in office for Putin – will everything continue as usual in Russia?
However, according to Politico
, the best chance is that things will continue as before with Putin in Russia,
with a probability of almost 50 percent .
Navalny's death is likely to have dealt a blow to the democratic opposition.
And the Russian economy has not yet completely collapsed despite the flood of Western sanctions.
Still, there are some factors that could make Putin's potential next term much more difficult than anything seen so far.
How Putin deals with the threat of stagnation on the one hand and rising inflation on the other will also be crucial.
According to Politico
, the West is
therefore advised to increase pressure on Putin whenever possible.
Tightening sanctions, including against Putin's allies in countries such as the United Arab Emirates, could also be a suitable instrument.
(fh)