No minor party strife for Putin

Hold the presses: Vladimir Putin has won Russia’s election in a landslide. His victory does not make his odious and malevolent regime appear any more acceptable as the world faces another six years with him in the Kremlin. He ruthlessly emasculated his opposition and saw to it that his most credible opponent, Alexei Navalny, was jailed and barred from the ballot. There was never any doubt Mr Putin would get the result he wanted. There was a 60 per cent turnout and he won 76 per cent of the vote. Voting slips were found in some ballot boxes before the polls opened, some observers were barred, webcams were obscured at polling places and the 100 per cent vote for Mr Putin in some areas might have made Saddam Hussein blush.

The extent of his victory provides a taste of what lies ahead, with an emboldened Mr Putin deliberately and provocatively choosing the fourth anniversary of Russia’s illegal seizure of Crimea for polling day, then celebrating at a concert marking the invasion.

The centrality of Crimea to his campaign and victory has to be seen in the context of the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine and the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 as well as the storm over the use of a deadly nerve agent in the attempted killing of Russian turncoat Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Britain. That was, portentously, the first time a chemical weapon has been deployed in Europe since World War II. Mr Putin will use his victory to justify more aggression, so the West must redouble its vigilance. Perceptively, chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov has warned that “every free world leader who congratulates Putin on his ‘election’ is complicit in his war on democracy”.