“Navalny? Unfortunately these things happen” –

Russian President Vladimir Putin will remain in the Kremlin until 2030: comfortably re-elected in a virtually unrivaled vote, he achieved his biggest victory since coming to power, a mandate that will allow him to continue the military campaign in Ukraine, the brutal repression of dissent and the tug of war with the West. Addressing the country at the end of the day, the head of the Kremlin thanked those who voted for him and contributed to creating the conditions for “internal political consolidation” and warned that he will not allow himself to be “intimidated”. Then for the first time he spoke about the death of his main opponent, Alexey Navalny. There are no definitive data yet, but the 71-year-old ‘tsar’ is sailing towards re-election with a record percentage, almost 88% of the votes, ten points more than in 2018 (76.5), and a voter turnout by over 70%. The election results were influenced neither by Navalny’s death in prison, nor by the calls for the ‘midday vote’ (the call to protest launched by the dissident’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya) nor by the incursions on the Ukrainian border in recent days. An obvious result but one that Putin wanted to underline in his victory speech, a speech centered on the war, at his electoral campaign headquarters near the Kremlin.

“Now Russia is stronger,” he said, thanking the soldiers at the front, promising that “all plans will be concretely implemented and objectives achieved, grandiose plans that we will do everything to achieve.” Asked about the possibility of a direct conflict with NATO, he confirmed that “everything is possible in the modern world” but underlined that it would be “a step towards a large-scale third world war”. “And I don’t think,” he added, “that anyone is interested in this.” Then for the first time he spoke about Navalny’s death, calling him by name: he rejected the accusations of having killed him and claimed that a few days before his death, in the remote prison in the Arctic, he had given the ‘green light’ to the exchange of the dissident with some Russian prisoners in the West. “Believe me or not, the man who spoke to me hadn’t finished his sentence and I said, I agree. But unfortunately what happened happened.” Putin explained that someone who does not belong to the presidential administration – in recent days Navalny’s allies had spoken of the oligarch Roman Abramovich – had proposed exchanging the dissident for Russians imprisoned in European countries. «I accepted but on one condition, we exchange him, but that he never comes back. Let it stay there. But this is life.” And then, speaking of “Mr. Navalny”, he described his death in a prison in the Arctic Circle as “a sad event, these things happen”.

From exile or prison, opposition leaders had urged people to go to the polls en masse at midday in memory of Navalny and to vote against Putin. And hundreds of people followed the appeal, in the front row the widow of the dissident who voted in Berlin by writing the name of her husband on her ballot. Today Putin is expected to celebrate his victory, on the tenth anniversary of the annexation of Crimea, with a concert in Moscow’s Red Square.