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Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared his goal to move deeper into Ukraine and has voiced new threats against the West a day after securing his fifth term. It is a no-holds-barred election and the final results are predetermined. Nick Schifrin discussed what the continuation of Putin’s rule, Ukraine, the United States and the world with Fiona Hill and Evgenia Kara-Murza means for Russia.
Note: Transcripts are both machine-generated and human-generated and edited for accuracy. They would possibly involve mistakes.
Geoff Bennett:
We start tonight with two main articles, one similar to the 2024 presidential election and the other focused on the elections held last weekend in Russia.
Amna Nawaz:
Today in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin declared his goal to move deeper into Ukraine and launched new threats against the West, a day after securing his fifth term.
It is an election without suspense and with a predetermined result.
Now let’s meet Nick Schifrin.
Nick Schifrin:
This afternoon in Moscow, birthday party and coronation. Tens of thousands of people in Red Square are celebrating the 10th anniversary of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and the guy they call tsar.
Last night, Vladimir Putin declared victory with his supporters, some of whom were not alive when he was appointed president in 1999. He would soon surpass Joseph Stalin as the longest-serving Russian leader since Catherine the Great.
Vladimir Putin, President of Russia (through an interpreter):
The others came to create the conditions for internal political consolidation to advance towards the progress and strengthening of their homeland, Russia.
Nick Schifrin:
With about 88% of Putin’s vote and a record turnout of 77%, this is a Potemkin plebiscite, not least because at least one city presented voters with the chance to win expensive Western electronics and other motorcycles and even apartments.
And Putin has introduced the harshest crackdown on dissent since the Soviet Union. Putin’s critics say the country has gone from an authoritarian regime to a dictatorship. But some Russian voters, especially those old enough not to forget the chaos of the 1990s, that Putin symbolizes a successful effort to make Russia wonderful again.
Irina Ivshina, resident of Vladivostok, Russia (through a translator): I’m interested in what’s being done now. And I would like it to continue and even improve, because the younger generation will have to live in peace and harmony.
Nick Schifrin:
Putin’s critics call it propaganda and voted with gas and a match, adding a woman who ignited her own poll after writing: “Bring my husband. “
Alexei Navalny, the country’s leading opposition figure before he died in mysterious criminal circumstances, had called on Russians to protest by voting all at once. And they showed up at noon opposed to Putin, as shown in this video. published through Navalny’s team, strength through numbers.
This is because of expats in Berlin, where Navalny’s widow, Yulia, who had echoed her husband’s call to protest, waited six hours to cast her vote. For Putin, Navalny is the one who has not been identified until today, when he said he was in a position to come with Navalny in a prisoner exchange.
Vladimir Putin (through an interpreter):
On one condition, I say, that he doesn’t come back. But things happen. There’s nothing you can do about it.
Alexandra Prokopenko, Carnegie Center for Russia and Eurasia:
Even before the election, we knew the numbers would have to be over 80 to vote for him.
Nick Schifrin:
Alexandra Prokopenko works at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and is an adviser to the deputy governor of the Central Bank before leaving to protest the war in Ukraine.
He claims that the Russian economy is not healthy, but that it has avoided failure despite Western sanctions, thanks to China and India’s willingness to buy Russian oil and large military spending.
Alexandra Prokopenko:
The next 12 to 18 months will be decisive for Ukraine from a purely military point of view. During this period, Putin has enough cash to finance the war, to continue and maintain generous bills to the population during this period, and likely to maintain moderate inflation. .
Nick Schifrin:
But there is nothing moderate about Putin, who has the new task of implementing the policies that shape his Russia, a country at war with freedom and its citizens.
She was senior director for European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council during the Trump administration. She is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of “Mr. Putin: An Operative in the Kremlin. “”.
And Evgenia Kara-Murza is advocacy director of the Free Russia Foundation, which seeks to promote a free, democratic and nonviolent Russia. Her husband, Russian opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza, is a political prisoner in Russia.
Thanks a lot. Welcome back to NewsHour.
Evgenia Kara-Murza, let me start with you.
How do you assess the development of the elections, as well as the calls for anti-Putin protests from the South that we have observed in some regions of Russia, but also around the world?
Evgenia Kara-Murza, director of advocacy at the Free Russia Foundation:
Well, first of all thank you for the invitation.
And as for the elections, the so-called elections, I don’t think that this procedure that took place in Russia for 3 days can be called an election, because it has nothing to do with a democratic protest that is called an election in any general democratic country.
It is about Vladimir Putin being re-elected for the fifth time as President of the Russian Federation, in violation of many foreign legislations and after absolutely destroying the Russian Constitution through the so-called referendum of 2020, which necessarily made him President of the Russian Federation. Tsar forever.
So I don’t think this procedure can be accepted as a valid procedure through the foreign network. And I resolutely call on the foreign network to call Vladimir Putin as he is. He is a dictator, a usurper, and a criminal hunted through the foreign network. ICC and, in fact, is not a valid leader of the Russian Federation.
Nick Schifrin:
Fiona Hill, is it a renewal? And is Putin a dictator?
Fiona Hill, former head of the National Security Council:
Well, it’s definitely a new appointment, because it’s not just about being a dictator, but, as Evgenia said, he’s almost a self-proclaimed tsar at this point.
And, in fact, those are the other people he associates with in Russian history. When it comes to her legacy, we all talk about what it will be: she will be in force longer than Catherine the Great and, indeed, every single one of the other tsars before her. And if he does extend his term beyond the current six years, after 2030, after 2036, he will have been in power longer than Stalin.
So those legacies, even those terms, tell you enough.
Nick Schifrin:
Evgenia Kara-Murza, what’s the point then? Why follow this step-by-step process?What is the Kremlin’s advantage?
Evgenia Kara-Murza:
Well, to create this universal symbol of the Russian population for Vladimir Putin and his policies, whether it’s at the local level or on the aggression against Ukraine, because this regime relies very much on this symbol, this very distorted symbol of reality.
And that’s why at noon we called to oppose Putin, because it was the only way for the Russian population to show how many Russians were opposed to this policy, because there are no free and fair elections. We perceive that anything we put on those ballots will be counted differently.
And of course, there were no surprises in Vladimir Putin’s victory, perhaps a little bit in the fact that he gave himself more than 87% of the vote, which is. . . I mean, it could be more modest. But no, it had been. To go so high. And those consequences have been described by Russian authorities as unprecedented and unprecedented.
The only way the Russians could show what they thought about it was to go to the polling stations at the same time, at noon, and see how many of us there are.
Nick Schifrin:
Fiona Hill, Was Noon Against Putin a Hit?
Fiona Hill:
Look, I think symbolically it’s very important.
We’ll have to see how we judge good luck over time. But the very fact that there were signs of dissatisfaction, in the only way they could, given the repressive constraints between them, is very important, because there were indeed many thousands of people.
We saw thousands of people attend Alexei Navalny’s funeral, and not only on the day of the funeral, but also in the days that followed.
Nick Schifrin:
And this, even though they knew full well that they could be arrested.
Fiona Hill:
Exactly true, knowing that they can be arrested.
And also other people who signed the bureaucracy that allowed an elected candidate, Boris Nadezhdin, to also run against Putin, who was eventually disqualified.
Nick Schifrin:
It is not allowed.
Fiona Hill:
But all of this is very important, because those who have the courage to dedicate those little acts of defiance are also, let’s just say, replacing all the other people behind them who just can’t or aren’t able to do it. In fact, they are too scared to show their discontent.
So I think we can deduce that Putin is not a monolith. And that’s 87% of what?
Nick Schifrin:
Mmm.
Is Putin some other choice to govern differently, either locally or internationally?
Fiona, I need to start with you.
Fiona Hill:
Well, it’s going to give you confidence. And I think we’ll also see how it’s used outdoors. It’s the second anniversary, or just after, the all-out invasion of Ukraine.
And Ukraine itself had intended to hold elections soon. So I hope that Putin will use the very fact that he has been re-elected tsar for eternity, at least perhaps for his eternity, to argue that other elections are not going the same way. it is a lack of legitimacy in Ukraine.
Nick Schifrin:
But he has long questioned other elections. He has known for a long time whether there can be a democratic procedure anywhere.
Are you employing this particular election, maybe in Ukraine, or with Joe Biden as president or with the U. S. election?
Fiona Hill:
Yes, especially to emphasize that we all have to deal with him and that we take him into account, his position and the importance of Russia as an actor when we think about our own policies. So he will definitely use it as much as possible.
Nick Schifrin:
Evgenia Kara-Murza, what do you think is the current state of the Russian opposition and how will Putin deal with it in the future?
Evgenia Kara-Murza:
Well, the explanation of why there is so much repression in the country, the explanation of why these mass arrests and detentions, et cetera, the explanation of why we have lots and lots of political prisoners and lots of thousands of Russians and. . . that they are being deported out of the country. country is because that is the alternative.
Fiona Hill:
Okay.
Evgenia Kara-Murza:
This is the alternative, and Vladimir Putin is doing everything he can to annihilate it completely, so that the world will have to deal with it.
And that is why I think it would be so vital at this time for the foreign network to do everything possible to show its solidarity with those Russians who constitute a vision of another Russia, of a Russia, of a democratic Russia, of a country in general, of a European Russia. A country that understands and respects the freedoms and rights of its own citizens and lives in peace with its neighbours.
I simply sense that as long as Vladimir Putin remains in the Kremlin, there will be warmongering and repression. And those two things in Russia have been linked. Internal repression leads to external aggression. And this will continue as long as this regime can survive.
Nick Schifrin:
But, Fiona Hill, is Putin internationally isolated? It appears to be receiving tactical assistance, especially on the battlefield, from countries such as North Korea and Iran. And there’s a strategic hedge, so to speak, of Beijing.
To what extent is it isolated or not? Is it doing it now?
Fiona Hill:
Well, that’s a challenge we have to face.
And I think that’s a tough question. We have to be fair about that. And that’s something we also want to keep working on. And I think part of the challenge that we’re still facing, again, is the challenges around our own electoral system, which we’re right in the middle of right now, which is also showing, I would say, insufficient determination and resilience when it comes to addressing foreign policy.
And the key to thinking about the answer to this is how we fundamentally behave at this specific point. Now, by us, I mean the United States.
Nick Schifrin:
So do you think the most productive thing America can do is itself?You think it’s. . .
(crosstalk)
Fiona Hill:
That is true, and so are its relationships with its allies and partners.
And it’s not just European countries. The same is true for countries such as Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. There is a total diversity of countries, including countries like India, that have an ambiguous relationship with Russia, with which we will have to continue to try to deal with the risk posed by Vladimir Putin, not only domestically. Russia or Ukraine, but the broader global formula that many other countries have benefited from.
So that’s the challenge for us. And Putin rejected that challenge. I don’t think we will lose hope, because I think that the signal coming from the internal Russia that Evgenia spoke of shows that it is not a monolithic internal Russia and that there are vulnerabilities. And in fact, it’s quite isolated nationally, rarely is it very much like that?
I don’t think he realizes what he’s getting. But the other people around you will know how many ballots they filled out. They’ll know how many other people they’ve bused or forced to vote. And, eventually, if it shows any internal weakness, there could be some other reaction.
We have already noticed this with Prigozhin and this episode several months ago. And we saw it with great emotion and for Alexei Navalny.
Nick Schifrin:
And Evgenia Kara-Murza, her husband, of course, has long struggled for some of the adjustments Fiona talks about. He’s in prison. What is he like?
Evgenia Kara-Murza:
He’s doing what he can.
He is – he looks – well, he looks. I haven’t spoken to him since last summer. But in his letters, he is positive and sends us words of support. But that, curiously, is what Russian political prisoners are doing. They are the ones who are being abused. They are the ones who are denied medical care. They are the ones who are in solitary confinement.
And they talk about Russia, about the hope for another Russia, and about that hope that endures even after the assassination of Alexei Navalny. It is said that Vladimir was able to stand up to us at a recent court hearing. And this happened right after Alexei’s murder. homicide. And he said that, of course, he surely devastated him with what happened, and that this is not the first political assassination in the history of Russia.
But he also said that we can’t give in to despair, because that’s precisely what they need us to do. And we have to fight even harder. And this is what we owe our fallen comrades: to continue the fight to make sure that Russia becomes what they fought and died for: a normal, European, relaxed and democratic country.
So Vladimir, sitting in this solitary confinement mobile in western Siberia, sends us words of encouragement.
Nick Schifrin:
Evgenia Kara-Murza, Fiona Hill, thank you very much.
Fiona Hill:
Thank you.
Evgenia Kara-Murza:
Thank you.
As Deputy Senior Producer of Foreign Affairs and Defense at PBS NewsHour, Dan plays a key role in helping to oversee and produce the show’s foreign affairs and advocacy stories. His articles broke new ground on a variety of military topics, revealing debates that were brewing in the open air. the public eye.
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