Russia: Pamfilova Takes Daghestan’s Leaders To Task Over Vote-Rigging | RFERL

Reporting to Russian President Vladimir Putin last September on the conduct of the State Duma elections, Ella Pamfilova, chair of Russia’s Central Election Commission, singled out Daghestan as one of the federation subjects where irregularities were most blatant and prevalent. Pamfilova elaborated on that assessment during meetings in Makhachkala two weeks ago with the republic’s leaders, journalists, and representatives of various political parties, publicly warning republic head Ramazan Abdulatipov that “we do not need inflated statistics” that undermine voters’ trust in the electoral process. Daghestan was one of several Russian regions where elections to the regional parliament and local councils were held concurrently with those to the State Duma. According to official statistical data, at all three levels voter turnout was significantly higher than for Russia as a whole, and candidates representing the ruling United Russia party won with a disproportionately large percent of the vote (88.86 percent in the State Duma election compared to 47.8 percent nationwide, and 75.51 percent in the regional parliamentary ballot.)

Russia: Government asks energy companies to provide PR info ahead of election | Reuters

The Russian government summoned energy companies last week to give it advance notice about developments that could influence public opinion in the period up to May next year, when President Vladimir Putin’s term ends. The meeting suggests that Russia’s government has enlisted firms to help plan its public relations strategy ahead of the presidential election, due to take place in March 2018 with a second round if needed the following month. Most Kremlin-watchers expect Putin to seek another term, and polls suggest virtually no danger that he could lose: despite three years of difficult economic times, his approval rating hovers around 85 percent. But as in past Russian elections where the overall outcome was in little doubt, the authorities are expected to carefully manage the campaign, seeking a strong mandate with high turnout. Putin’s last presidential election in 2012 was accompanied by opposition protests, and turnout at parliamentary elections last year hit a record low of 48 percent.

Russia: Putin opponent Navalny determined to run for presidency of Russia | Financial Times

Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s most dogged political opponent, has vowed to force the Kremlin to allow him to run in next year’s presidential elections, in a move that will test the Russian leader’s confidence in his ability to hold on to power. The lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner said his latest criminal conviction, which under Russian law bars him from running for public office, could not prevent his presidential bid. “We will try to grow support in society until the Kremlin understands that it is necessary to admit me to the elections and the consequences of not admitting me will be even worse,” Mr Navalny said in his first interview since he was convicted of embezzlement last week. “This is a political campaign for a change of power.” Even Mr Putin’s critics think it unlikely Mr Navalny would pose a serious threat, given the president’s support ratings of about 80 per cent. But observers believe the way the Kremlin deals with the opposition politician will reflect how safe the Russian leader feels.

Russia: Alexei Navalny: Russian opposition leader found guilty of embezzlement | The Guardian

The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been found guilty at a retrial of embezzlement and given a five-year suspended prison sentence, putting his proposed presidential run in 2018 in doubt. Election rules say candidates cannot have felony convictions, but the anti-corruption activist vowed to appeal and said he would continue his campaign “no matter what happens in court”. “What we saw was a telegram from the Kremlin saying that they consider me, my team and those people whose views I express too dangerous to allow us into the electoral race,” Navalny said in the courtroom after the verdict. “This verdict will be overturned. I have the full right under the constitution to participate in elections, and I will do so. I will continue to represent the interests of people who want Russia to be a normal, honest, not corrupt country.”

Russia: Alexei Navalny wins his case in Strasbourg | Deutsche Welle

Alexei Navalny has recorded another success. On Sunday, in several proceedings, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg condemned Russia for the arbitrary arrest of the Russian opposition politician. The judges ruled that Navalny had been arrested without sufficient justification at peaceful demonstrations and rallies in Moscow seven times between 2012 and 2014, and in some instances held for many hours. Navalny’s rights to the freedom of protest and expression as well as his right to freedom had been repeatedly violated, they said. The judges also ruled that there had been a violation of his right to a fair trial, as the Russian courts had dismissed all Navalny’s objections to the arrests. The court awarded the complainant damages of 64,000 euros.

Russia: European court rules Russia violated opposition leader’s rights | Reuters

Russia violated the rights of opposition politician and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny by breaking up demonstrations and detaining him on seven occasions between 2012 and 2014, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Thursday. Navalny, who has said he plans to run as a challenger to the Kremlin candidate in a presidential election next year, rose to prominence in 2012 as one of the leaders of the biggest protest movement of President Vladimir Putin’s 17-year rule. The protests, sparked by allegations of vote-rigging, prompted a crackdown by law enforcement. The court in Strasbourg said the treatment of Navalny had been meant to sent a message to other Russians.

Russia: Three cyber arrests, one suspicious death, and a new chapter in the US election hack | Quartz

In the eerie world of international espionage, nothing of late has topped the official US accusation that Russian president Vladimir Putin plotted to put US president Donald Trump in power. Now, the tale has become even more salacious with the reported arrest of three Russian cyber experts, one of whom was perp-walked out of a meeting with a bag over his head, and the suspicious death of a former KGB general. Russia experts say the episode suggests a possible purge related to the US election hack. In a twist of Kremlinology, others say Putin may only be pretending to have arrested and killed cyber operatives. Or, say still others, neither observation may be true. “Can we really trust Russian news?” asks Dave Aitel, a former analyst with the US National Security Agency, and now CEO of Immunity, a cyber intrusion protection firm. The story of the arrests appears to have broken at the Russian newspaper Kommersant on Jan. 25. The paper reported (link in Russian) the arrests of Sergei Mikhailov, who heads the Center for Information Security, an arm of the Russian intelligence agency known by the acronym FSB; and Ruslan Stoyanov, a senior researcher with Kaspersky Lab, the computer security company.

Russia: Kremlin Spokesman: U.S. Intelligence Report on Russian Hacking ‘Ridiculous’ | NBC

A Kremlin spokesman is blasting U.S. intelligence reports claiming Russia is behind the election hacking as “ridiculous” and branding an unverified memo connecting Donald Trump with Moscow as “pulp fiction.” In a sit-down interview Thursday with NBC News, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov forcefully denied Russia had tried to influence the presidential election in an effort to help Trump win the White House. The report “is a ridiculous thing, nothing else … it does not contain any proofs, any evidence,” Peskov said.

Russia: U.S. election meddling claims strip Trump win of luster for Russia | Reuters

The Kremlin says U.S. intelligence agency allegations it ran an influence campaign to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House are false. But if U.S. spies are right, Moscow may wish it hadn’t bothered to meddle in the first place. The belief, widely held in the West, that the Kremlin helped discredit Democratic rival Hillary Clinton by orchestrating embarrassing media leaks, has relegated U.S.-Russia relations to a post-Cold War low and stoked fears Russia will try to subvert French and German elections this year. And true or not, the bipartisan view that Russia tried to help Trump, supported by a classified U.S. intelligence report, may make it harder, not easier, for Trump to make common cause with President Vladimir Putin, something both men say they want. In the latest wrinkle, U.S. officials said on Tuesday that Trump has been presented with claims that Russia had compromising information about him. The accusations are uncorroborated and denied by the Kremlin.

Russia: Kremlin slates ‘baseless, amateurish’ US election hacking report | The Guardian

The Kremlin has hit back at a US intelligence report blaming Russia for interference in the presidential election, describing the claims as part of a political witch-hunt. “These are baseless allegations substantiated with nothing, done on a rather amateurish, emotional level,” Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists on Monday. “We still don’t know what data is really being used by those who present such unfounded accusations.” US intelligence agencies released the joint report on Friday, a day after a Senate armed forces committee hearing on foreign cyberthreats, convened over fears of Moscow’s interference in the election. The report assessed that the Russian president had ordered a multifaceted campaign to influence the election, with a clear preference for a Donald Trump victory. “We are growing rather tired of these accusations. It is becoming a full-on witch-hunt,” Peskov said, in an echo of Trump’s own assessment and disparagement of the US intelligence agencies.

Russia: RT: The Network Implicated in U.S. Election Meddling | The New York Times

RT, a state-run Russian television network that broadcasts around the world in English, was implicated in a recently declassified United States intelligence report that accused the Russia government of meddling in the American presidential election to tip the vote in favor of Donald J. Trump. The Russians are accused of hacking the email systems of the Democratic National Committee and conducting a widespread disinformation campaign that included the propagation of fake news stories on the internet and the airwaves. RT’s coverage of Hillary Clinton “throughout the U.S. presidential campaign was consistently negative and focused on her leaked emails and accused her of corruption, poor physical and mental health and ties to Islamic extremism,” the declassified intelligence report said. RT, formerly called Russia Today, was founded in 2005 as part of the state-owned news agency RIA Novosti. The network describes itself on its website as the first “Russian 24/7 English-language news channel which brings the Russian view on global news.” President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said the network was created to “break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the global information streams.”

Russia: Moscow’s cyber warriors in Ukraine linked to US election | Financial Times

CrowdStrike, a cyber security firm, has found evidence of alleged Russian government hacking in Ukraine that boosts its confidence that Russia orchestrated the hacking of Democratic National Committee servers in the US before the presidential election. The firm, which was hired by the DNC to rebuild its cyber defences after the attack, said Fancy Bear — a code name it assigned to hackers that it believes are associated with Russian military intelligence, the GRU — had implanted malware in an Android mobile phone application used by anti-Russian forces operating in eastern Ukraine. Dmitri Alperovitch, the co-founder and chief technology officer of CrowdStrike, said it had concluded that the hackers who installed the malware were the same perpetrators of the hack that siphoned the DNC emails and penetrated the personal email account of John Podesta, who was the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton. Identifying the perpetrators of cyber intrusions is notoriously difficult as sophisticated attackers can conceal their identity or make it appear that other parties are behind the activity. But Mr Alperovitch said his confidence level that the DNC hack was the work of the GRU had risen from “medium” to “high” because of the actions that appeared to occur in eastern Ukraine from 2014 to 2016.

Russia: Russia’s View of the Election Hacks: Denials, Amusement, Comeuppance | The New Yorker

By now, the basic facts of the case appear largely settled: hackers working in coördination with—or on direct orders from—Vladimir Putin’s government broke into the e-mail accounts of the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, passing the contents to WikiLeaks, which published them in slow drips over the summer and fall. Clinton, of course, lost last month’s Presidential election; Democrats quickly seized on the hacks, and the media coverage of them, to help explain the outcome. Anonymous sources at the C.I.A.—and, later, the F.B.I. and other intelligence agencies—told the Washington Post that aiding Trump’s candidacy was exactly the point of the Russian operation. Yet many important questions remain unanswered. What was the ultimate effect of the Russian hacks? Why did the Russians do it, and how, in his final days in office, should Barack Obama respond? The first question may ultimately be unknowable. Clinton, who won the popular vote by 2.86 million votes, lost the Electoral College thanks to margins of less than a per cent in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. During a recent appearance on “Meet the Press,” Podesta avoided the question of whether he thought the election had been “free and fair,” saying only that it had been “distorted by the Russian intervention.” But was that distortion in fact decisive? To isolate the WikiLeaks e-mails to explain Clinton’s narrow loss is to elevate their importance above a host of other factors, including the Clinton campaign’s weaknesses, Trump’s genuine appeal as a candidate, as well as the diminishing power of political parties and the national press that covers them. (Not to mention the last-minute, whiplash letters from James Comey, the director of the F.B.I.)

Russia: How Russia Wins an Election | Politico

Did Russia just put its man in the White House? Americans are furiously debating the question as intelligence reports leak, Donald Trump tweets his doubts and Congress vows to investigate. As analysts who have spent years studying Russia’s influence campaigns, we’re confident the spooks have it mostly right: The Kremlin ran a sophisticated, multilayered operation that aimed to sow chaos in the U.S. political system, if not to elect Trump outright. But you don’t need a security clearance or a background in spycraft to come to that conclusion. All you need to do is open your eyes. So how did Putin do it? It wasn’t by hacking election machines or manipulating the results, as some have suggested. That would be too crude. The Kremlin’s canny operatives didn’t change votes; they won them, influencing voters to choose Russia’s preferred outcome by pushing stolen information at just the right time—through slanted, or outright false stories on social media.

Russia: Russian Officials Were in Contact With Trump Allies, Diplomat Says | The New York Times

The Russian government maintained contacts with members of Donald J. Trump’s “immediate entourage” during the American presidential campaign, one of Russia’s top diplomats said Thursday. “There were contacts,” Sergei A. Ryabkov, the deputy foreign minister, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. “We continue to do this and have been doing this work during the election campaign,” he said. Mr. Ryabkov said officials in the Russian Foreign Ministry were familiar with many of the people he described as Mr. Trump’s entourage. “I cannot say that all, but a number of them maintained contacts with Russian representatives,” Mr. Ryabkov said. Later, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said Mr. Ryabkov had been referring to American politicians and supporters of Mr. Trump, not members of his campaign staff. The contacts were carried out through the Russian ambassador in Washington, who reached out to the senators and other political allies to get a better sense of Mr. Trump’s positions on various issues involving Russia.

Russia: U.S. officials warn of Russian mischief in election and beyond | The Washington Post

U.S. intelligence agencies do not see Russia as capable of using cyberespionage to alter the outcome of Tuesday’s presidential election, but they have warned that Moscow may continue meddling after the voting has ended to sow doubts about the legitimacy of the result, U.S. officials said. The assessment reflects widespread concern among U.S. spy agencies that a months-long campaign by Russia to rattle the mechanisms of American democracy will probably continue after polls close on one of the most polarizing races in recent history, extending and amplifying the political turbulence. U.S. security officials have not ruled out Russian-sponsored disruption on Election Day. In recent weeks, officials at the Department of Homeland Security have collected evidence of apparent Russian “scanning” of state-run databases and computer voting systems. “Whether they were really trying hard to get in, it’s not clear,” a U.S. official said.

Russia: Microsoft says Russian hackers blamed for attack on US Democrats exploited Windows bug | The Telegraph

Microsoft has blamed a hacking group previously linked to the Russian government and US political hacks for recent cyber attacks that exploited a newly discovered Windows security flaw. The software maker said there had been a small number of attacks using “spear phishing” emails from a hacking group known as Strontium, which is more widely known as “Fancy Bear,”. Microsoft did not identify any victims. Microsoft’s disclosure of the new attacks and the link to Russia came after Washington accused Moscow of launching an unprecedented hacking campaign aimed at disrupting and discrediting the upcoming US election. The US government last month formally blamed the Russian government for the election-season hacks of Democratic Party emails and their subsequent disclosure via WikiLeaks and other entities. Russia has denied those accusations. The group was also said to be responsible for hacking the records of athletes including Laura Trott and Nicola Adams.

Russia: Why Russia wants the U.S. to believe the election is being hacked | PBS

Another day, another hacking. At least, that’s what it seemed at first. In August, two election databases in Arizona and Illinois were hacked. Arizona responded by shutting down voter registration for nearly a week, and in Illinois, the breach resulted in the compromise of more than 200,000 voter records. Hackers breaching databases has become so commonplace that the loss of personal information barely raises an eyebrow for most Americans. This hack, like so many others, received little attention at first. … To understand Russia’s recent attacks on American democracy, one simply needs to look back to the country’s Cold War tactics. Outpaced by American military spending and military innovation—and challenged by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—the Soviet Union sought an alternative approach to counter the U.S. Rather than match America on the battlefield, the U.S.S.R. sought to erode the U.S. from the inside out—using the “force of politics” rather than the “politics of force” to break democracy, fracturing the unity of the American populace and degrading trust in U.S. institutions. In a program known as “Active Measures,” the Soviet Union would deploy agents and provocateurs to spread propaganda amongst American dissident groups and communist causes throughout the Western world.

Russia: State Department accuses Russia of ‘PR stunt’ in election-monitoring flap | Politico

The State Department on Thursday accused Moscow of a “PR stunt” after reports emerged that the U.S. had rejected Russia’s request to send delegates to “monitor” November’s polls — the latest twist in a bizarre election season sullied by accusations of Russian meddling. Kremlin-backed news outlets such as RT, sometimes citing other media, reported Thursday that representatives of Russia’s Central Elections Commission had talked to the State Department about sending a delegation to watch the U.S. polls on Nov. 8. Although allowing in foreign observers to watch Americans vote is nothing new, “U.S. officials categorically rejected even the possibility of such a mission” by Russia, RT reported. The U.S. is “suffering from some sort of persecutory delusion,” a Russian lawmaker was quoted as saying. “They imagine that Russians want to distort their elections and somehow intend to do it while acting as observers.”

Russia: How Russia Wants to Undermine the U.S. Election | TIME

The leaders of the U.S. government, including the President and his top national-security advisers, face an unprecedented dilemma. Since the spring, U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have seen mounting evidence of an active Russian influence operation targeting the 2016 presidential election. It is very unlikely the Russians could sway the actual vote count, because our election infrastructure is decentralized and voting machines are not accessible from the Internet. But they can sow disruption and instability up to, and on, Election Day, more than a dozen senior U.S. officials tell TIME, undermining faith in the result and in democracy itself. The question, debated at multiple meetings at the White House, is how aggressively to respond to the Russian operation. Publicly naming and shaming the Russians and describing what the intelligence community knows about their activities would help Americans understand and respond prudently to any disruptions that might take place between now and the close of the polls. Senior Justice Department officials have argued in favor of calling out the Russians, and that position has been echoed forcefully outside of government by lawmakers and former top national-security officials from both political parties.

Russia: Journalist arrested for ‘illegal’ voting after exposing fraud in Duma elections | The Independent

An award-winning journalist who exposed voting fraud during Russia’s parliamentary elections has himself been arrested for alleged fraud. Denis Korotkov, a correspondent for the independent news website Fontanka, was scheduled to appear in court in St Petersburg on Wednesday on charges of “illegally obtaining a ballot”. But campaigners say Mr Korotkov was working undercover to expose vote rigging in the Duma elections, which have provoked international concern, and is now being harassed for his work. Mr Korotkov documented how he posed as a voter on 18 September and was given a sticker by polling station officials, who then arranged for him to be transported around St Petersburg with others to cast multiple ballots for specified candidates.

Russia: Phantom voters, smuggled ballots hint at foul play in Russian vote | Reuters

Voters across Russia handed a sweeping victory to President Vladimir Putin’s allies in a parliamentary election on Sunday. But in two regions Reuters reporters saw inflated turnout figures, ballot-stuffing and people voting more than once at three polling stations. In the Bashkortostan region’s capital Ufa, in the foothills of the Urals, Reuters reporters counted 799 voters casting ballots at polling station number 284. When officials tallied the vote later in the day, they said the turnout was 1,689. At polling station 591 in the Mordovia regional capital of Saransk, about 650 km south-east of Moscow, reporters counted 1,172 voters but officials recorded a turnout of 1,756. A Reuters reporter obtained a temporary registration to vote at that station, and cast a ballot for a party other than the pro-Putin United Russia. During the count, officials recorded that not a single vote had been cast for that party.

Russia: Putin Puts An End To Electoral Politics In Russia | Forbes

The Sunday September 18 election for the Russian parliament has given Vladimir Putin another pro-Putin parliament (Duma) to routinely rubber-stamp his most ludicrous and repressive legislation. His United Russia party gained a majority (54 percent according to preliminary results). No opposition party crossed the five percent hurdle; instead, the reliable Communist (13 percent), Liberal Democrat (13 percent), and Just Russia Parties (6 percent) will join United Russia in the new Duma. Only sixteen candidates from the so-called small parties gained seats in regional parliaments. In a word: The Duma election was a total wipeout of legislative opposition in Putin’s Russia. This is no big deal in itself because the legislative branch has little power, but the election signaled the end of hope for change through elections in Russia. Palace coups or the streets are the only remaining options of the Russian people.

Russia: 12 Million Extra Votes in Russia for Putin’s Party | The Atlantic

When liberal-rights activist Ella Pamfilova was named the head of Russia’s election commission in March, she promised to clean house and oversee transparent, democratic elections. “We will change a lot, and radically, in the way the Central Election Commission operates. A lot and radically—this is something I can promise you,” she said at the time. However, a statistical analysis of the official preliminary results of the country’s September 18 State Duma elections points to a familiar story: massive fraud in favor of the ruling United Russia party comparable to what independent analysts found in 2007 and 2011. “The results of the current Duma elections were falsified on the same level as the Duma and presidential elections of 2011, 2008, and 2007, the most falsified elections in post-Soviet history, as far as we can tell,” physicist and data analyst Sergei Shpilkin said to The Atlantic. “By my estimate, the scope of the falsification in favor of United Russia in these elections amounted to approximately 12 million votes.” According to the CEC’s preliminary results, official turnout for the election was 48 percent, and United Russia polled 54.2 percent of the party-list vote—about 28,272,000 votes. That total gave United Russia 140 of the 225 party-list seats available in the Duma. In addition, United Russia candidates won 203 of the 225 contests in single-mandate districts, giving the party an expected total of 343 deputies in the 450-seat house.

Russia: Monitors Report 3,600 Violations at Parliamentary Elections | Newsweek

Russia’s parliamentary election was marred by over 3,600 violations the country’s top independent monitor Golos reported after a decisive win for the government. Ruling party United Russia won a record number of seats, in an expected victory by unexpected margins. Its new electoral chief hailed the vote as the cleanest in Russia’s history and, despite monitors noting violations were fewer than in previous occasions, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) stressed the vote was still hampered by challenges to “fundamental freedoms and political rights” and “numerous procedural irregularities” during counting. Golos head Grigory Melkonyants told news site Rus2Web that the group had “spotted the full spectrum of violations” on polling day. Golos reported several incidents involving suspected mass transportation of voters to constituencies in coaches and announced that the group had received reports of “ballot stuffing” from 16 regions of Russia.

Russia: Irregularities reported at Russia’s ballot boxes as voting begins | Financial Times

Russian election monitors reported a series of irregularities as voting began in the country’s parliamentary elections on Sunday. Those complaints will test the government’s pledge to block the kind of electoral fraud that triggered street protests five years ago against president Vladimir Putin. Non-governmental election monitoring movement Golos said it had received 164 reports by phone and 335 reports via an online platform of rule violations or suspicious incidents. The largest number of complaints came from Moscow, followed by the Stavropol region in southern Russia and Altai region in southern Siberia. In Barnaul, capital of the Altai region, civil rights and opposition activists observed people being instructed to vote using ballots of pensioners who were not going to turn up — an alleged example of so-called cruisers or carousel voting. “They have little stickers on their passports,” said Alexander Lebedev, a municipal deputy of the A Just Russia party who posted videos of what he said were the preparations for illegal voting on Twitter.

Russia: Putin-backed party sweeps to victory amid allegations of election fraud | The Independent

The ruling United Russia party, which is backed by Vladimir Putin, is on track to win 343 of 450 seats in Russia’s lower house of parliament. With 90 per cent of the vote counted, the pro-Kremlin party had 54% of the vote for the 225 seats chosen nationwide by party list, the Central Elections Commission said. The three parties who were the next most popular – the Communist Party, The Liberal Democrats and the Just Russia Party – all support Mr Putin. However, there have been multiple reports of voting fraud and videos have surfaced of apparent ballot stuffing. One video shows an official appearing to take a pile of ballots and shoving them into the voting box while another person seems to stand guard.

Russia: Election remains far from truly free | Financial Times

Five years have passed since the street protests that erupted following what were widely perceived as rigged parliamentary elections in Russia. But recent events have already made clear that anyone hoping that the next election to the Duma, Russia’s lower house, on Sunday will be significantly freer and more open is set for disappointment. Just two weeks before the ballot, Russian authorities blacklisted the Levada Centre, the country’s last independent pollster, as a “foreign agent”, leaving it barely able to function. This was ostensibly for receiving foreign funding. More likely it was because Levada’s polls showed falling support for the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. Memories of the 2011 demonstrations are still fresh in President Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin. So Moscow has taken steps to make this poll appear a little more transparent and competitive. It is reverting to a mixed system for the first time since 2003. Half the seats will come from party lists, half from single-member districts, to restore local representation.

Russia: The most boring election of 2016? Russians disagree as Duma vote nears | The Guardian

It has been described as the most boring election of 2016, a parliamentary race set for Sunday that is largely devoid of drama and unlikely to change Vladimir Putin’s Russia very much. But among the country’s citizens faith in the democratic process has never been stronger. A report published in January by the Moscow-based Levada Centre has found that 62% of Russians believe the country is truly democratic, compared with just 36% five years ago. Putin’s personal approval rating has risen to 82%, underlining just how much the Kremlin has cemented its power since 2011, when the previous parliamentary elections degenerated into the biggest protests since the fall of the Soviet Union.