Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin appears poised to win more than 50 percent of the vote in this weekend’s presidential election and thus avoid a run-off. Polling suggests that Putin will be the choice of about 60 percent of voters. This is well below the 71 percent he won in 2004 and the 70 percent his hand-picked successor, Dimitry Medvedev, garnered in 2008. Nonetheless, should Putin perform as polls suggest, it will mark a strong showing by a politician who seemed in trouble just a few months ago.
Putin’s responses to the disturbances of last December seem to have defused the threat to his political dominance, at least in the short-run. The disturbances, prompted by accusations of fraud in parliamentary elections, rapidly took an anti-Putin turn. The protests, centered in Moscow and St. Petersburg, appeared to represent a threat to Putin’s 12-year rule as president and prime minister. But Putin’s promises of greater openness — though scorned as disingenuous by his critics — seem to have bought him some breathing space. His approval ratings have risen steadily since mid-December.
Perhaps even more importantly, there is, as yet, no obvious alternative to Putin, who has steered an autocratic course since assuming power in 2000. His chief competitors in the election include a communist, an ultra-nationalist and the billionaire owner of the New Jersey Nets.
What are the U.S. stakes in the election? Putin’s Moscow has been a very unreliable supporter of Washington’s international initiatives. Russia, for instance, has undercut U.S. efforts to increase pressure on the Assad regime in Syria. It continues to oppose NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. And, all other things being equal, the United States would clearly like to see Russia move into a more fully democratic direction.
Nonetheless, U.S.-Russia relations are much improved since they reached a low point in the aftermath of the Russo-Georgian War of 2008. In 2010, Russia and the United States concluded the so-called “New START” treaty, curtailing the two countries’ nuclear arsenals. Moreover, it is unclear that any successor to Putin would be more cooperative. Russian nationalism, like its American counterpart, runs deep. And Moscow is unlikely to defer routinely to Washington no matter who rules in the Kremlin.
Joe Barnes is the Bonner Means Baker Fellow at the Baker Institute. Since coming to Rice University in 1995, he has written extensively on international economics, with a focus on the geopolitics of energy. From 1979 to 1993, he was a career diplomat with the U.S. State Department, serving in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.