Few Russians were surprised when United Russia, the political party of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin establishment, secured a landslide victory in last week’s parliamentary elections. United Russia won nearly 50% of the vote, comfortably retaining a two-thirds majority in the State Duma (parliament).
Putin needed his party to retain a supermajority in order to enact amendments to the constitution. Earlier this year, the ex-KGB officer signed a law allowing him to run for two more six-year terms — a move that could keep Putin in power until 2036.
It’s easy to forget that the authors of the 1993 Russian constitution intended to limit the power of the executive to only two four-year terms. It’s a standard that has since been repeatedly rewritten to keep the shirtless horse-riding czar in charge for almost two decades. Although largely symbolic, Russian elections do represent pivotal points in Putin’s campaign for power. In the past, blatant election fraud, including some truly obvious examples of old-school ballot stuffing and voter intimidation, were staple features of the Russian “democratic” process.
In this election, however, the Kremlin added something a little different.
In addition to the tried-and-true methods of state-sanctioned election fraud, opposition parties were hit with a new weapon from Putin’s growing authoritarian arsenal — online vote tampering.
“After polls closed Sunday night after three days of voting, early partial results showed several opposition parties and politicians making strong showings in the capital, with some seemingly in reach of victory with most votes counted,” ABC News reported in its coverage of the Duma election. “But those results were all wiped out when, after many hours, authorities published results from online voting, which handed victories to pro-Kremlin candidates.”
In other words, the Russian government waited to see which pro-Putin candidates were in trouble, before unleashing a flood of so-called online votes that adjusted the result of the election.
I will reluctantly note, in case the FSB domestic security service is reading, that these are alleged instances of election fraud. By design, this sort of vote tampering is much harder to prove — only experienced data scientists who are granted access to Russian voting systems could conclude whether or not the Kremlin fiddled the numbers.
But for those who see through the government propaganda, this election represents a clear transition to a new form of digital repression — one designed to permanently disarm the political opposition.
The Kremlin has gone to great lengths in recent years to tighten its control of the internet and build out a robust cybersurveillance infrastructure. In 2019, the Russian government implemented a “sovereign internet” law that gave the regime an unprecedented level of control over web traffic in the country. Under the statute, internet service providers are required to install deep packet inspection (DPI) equipment designed to filter and block online content. More importantly, the law empowers Moscow to shut off the Russian internet from the rest of the world in case of a loosely defined “emergency.” Whether this shut-off could actually offer defense against foreign cyberattacks is unclear.
Still, in March, the Kremlin floated a proposal that would ask social media and online messaging app users to submit their passport data, home addresses, and other personal information to authorities. A month later, Moscow passed a law requiring all smart devices purchased in Russia to come with pre-installed Russian software — a move intended to encourage the use of apps that are tightly regulated by the Kremlin.
Most egregious of all, Moscow successfully forced Apple and Google to remove the app of opposition leader Alexei Navalny just before the Duma election. The app, which was created to help Russian voters back candidates with the best chance of winning against Putin’s party, was declared illegal by authorities. They threatened to prosecute local Apple and Google employees if the tech giants didn’t comply with the Kremlin’s order.
Internet regulations aside, Russians have also been forced to endure a wide range of other repressive measures designed to suppress political dissent. Major subway stations in some of the country’s biggest cities, for instance, are getting face recognition cameras that can track the movement of opposition protesters. Purchasing something as simple as a cellphone SIM card, meanwhile, requires the buyer to disclose their passport data to authorities.
Putin’s Russia has always been an authoritarian state that punishes vocal critics of the ruling elite. But in recent years, it has drastically revamped and modernized its instruments of oppression.
There is very little optimism for those who are bravely struggling to liberate the Russian people from the claws of Putin’s tyranny.
Nikita Vladimirov (@nikvofficial) is a political strategist and a contributor to the Washington Examiner‘s Beltway Confidential blog.
