Putin, a former KGB officer who has held power for a quarter-century, maintained his control over Russia for six more years Monday with a highly orchestrated landslide election. That election followed what critics say is the harshest crackdown on political opposition and free speech since Soviet times.
Putin won re-election with 87% of the vote after three days of voting. He supposedly faced three token opponents on the ballot who supported his policies and received single-digit support.
Putin’s re-election came just one month after the death of Alexei Navalny, Putin’s most well-known opposition leader, who died Feb. 16 in a prison.
The list of dead Putin critics is a long one, from courageous journalists to corrupt businessmen, who have been found shot dead in an apartment or found on the pavement after being thrown out a window from a high-rise building.
Last summer, Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a mysterious plane crash over Russia after leading a brief uprising against Russia’s corrupt and incompetent generals in mid-June.
Bob Maginnis, a senior fellow for national security at the Family Research Council, says Putin has no domestic enemies to challenge him in all of Russia.
“He's going to become more aggressive,” Maginnis predicts. “A couple years ago, we couldn't say this, but the fears of the Baltic nations – Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, as well as Poland – are threatened by a rising Moscow."
Maginnis says he is especially concerned about tensions in Europe, in particular between Russia and NATO over the Russia-Ukraine war. That two-year war, which has cost tens of thousands of casualties on both sides, seems to be winding down with a Russian victory looking more likely.
Russia’s leaders are famously paranoid about NATO and its intentions, a fear that dates back to the Cold War.
Maginnis says it doesn’t ease Russia's fears after French president Emanuel Macron recently urged NATO allies to consider putting ground troops on Ukraine soil.
That could drag the U.S. into yet another war in Europe.
A year ago, in March, U.S. Army leaders announced the U.S. had "upgraded" the army's presence in Poland and formed the first U.S. Army garrison
“And so I see that this is all very, very problematic,” Maginnis warns, “that Joe Biden's failed foreign policy has drawn us into a very serious situation with Russia, just as the problems in Eastern Asia with China are on the rise.”
