Western criticism of Russia’s presidential election is false-hearted at best. But coming from the United States with its recent history of election fiascos it is astounding. There are very good reasons why Russians would want Putin, even if they did have a ‘Western’ style electoral rodeo.

Americans are given the illusion of choice with a Pepsi-Cola/Coca-Cola two-party circus where the AIPAC financed politicians (The Grayzone here and Al Jazeera here) agree on everything except who should run the show in America’s imperial interests. What doesn’t change is the 1% in whose interests the 9% of the cream work.

It appears harder for a third-party candidate to get into a US presidential election debate than it does in Russia. Only Ross Perot in 1994 comes to mind. The Oligarchs and their scribes in the two major American parties get to pick and choose who gets into the televised debates.

Authoritarian v. Liberal Democracy : Oligarchs All!

Yes, Russia is an authoritarian ‘democracy’ in that it has elections but lacks many of the free speech laws in the West although EU censorship these past two-and-a-half years calls even that into question. Given that the real opposition in Russia today is the Communist Party, who would the United States like to see run against Putin? The racist and White supremacist Navalny is practically unknown in Russia. Other opposition forces muster at most less than 20% of public opinion.

Let’s say Russia had a western style media and political environment which I contest is wholly democratic. Do they think that a pro-western candidate, ready to sell off Russia’s industry and natural resources to the highest western bidder, and allow for the breakup of the Russian Federation, à la Chechnya, as Clinton almost succeeded in doing with Yeltsin, could beat Vladimir Putin?

It took Putin 20 years to right the wrongs committed by Yeltsin, under Bill Clinton’s dismantling efforts (see below), when so-call pro-democracy ‘NGOs‘ (many such as US Aid and Endowment for Democracy work with and for the government) ran amok. The Clinton administration actually bankrolled Yeltsin’s re-election campaign.

My question is what planet do western pundits live on if they think Russians would elect their man, whoever he may be? Putin has the overwhelming support of the Russian people who rightly feel threatened by an aggressive NATO. Why did up to 500,000 Ukrainians fall (clic here) in a war whose end was a foregone conclusion?

Let the Statistics Talk

Russia may be authoritarian but for Russians, it seems that is all right for the vast majority. They don’t want to be WOKE. They don’t care for gender born male army generals wearing skirts. They have universal health care. Shops are full and housing is affordable. Suicide rates, and death by alcoholism have fallen dramatically under Putin (1).

Child mortality rates are lower in Russia. They have fallen from 19 per thousand children in 2000 to 4.4 in 2020 which is well below the rate in the US which is 5.4, according to UNICEF. Emanuel Todd says that Transparency International’s 2021 corruption index which places Russia at N°136 while the US is placed at N° 27 is an impossibility because “a country which benefits from a child mortality rate inferior to that of the United States cannot be more corrupt than they are.” (2)

“Infant mortality, because it reflects the deep disposition of a society, is without a doubt in and of itself the best indicator of real corruption than the fabricated indicators from who knows what criteria.“

Emmanuel Todd, Anthropologist and Historian

Yes, both countries have Oligarchs yet the GINI index on inequality is better in Russia than in the US: .36 as opposed to .4 (3). This is really a case of the pot calling the kettle black. But again, given these arguments, why would the Russian people not elect Putin if faced with a candidate supported by the West? Who is this candidate western talking-heads go on about?

Russia’s economy is doing better today than before the sanctions over Ukraine.  According to the economist, James K. Galbraith, it is thanks to the sanctions that Russian entrepreneurs and companies were able to develop at such a clip. (4)

The hypocrisy of western pundits on the elections is as gross as it is on Ukraine. Up until October 7, they went on and on about how Russia was “targeting civilians” until the world got to see in Gaza what targeting civilians really means. You don’t hear them making such accusations against Russia anymore.  Actually, what Israel is doing in Gaza today is only a more intense form of what the Israelis have been doing for 75 years (5, 6).

Somebody please tell me when Israel ever recognized Palestine’s “right to exist?”

I don’t live in Russia, and I don’t pretend to be in a position where I can tell them how to run their country. I just think those giving lessons might want to sweep in front of their own door.

NOTES

1. Between 2000 and 2017 death due to alcoholism fell from 37,214 per year to 12,276, suicides from 56,934 to 20,278 (happier people), homicides from 41,090 to 9,048.
2. Emanuel Todd, La Défaite de l’Occident, p. 39, Gallimard, Paris, 2024.
3. https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm
4. James K. Galbraith, The Gift of Sanctions: An Analysis of Assessments of the Russian Economy, 2022-2023, Institute for New Economic Thinking Working Paper, n° 204, 10 April 2023 (cited in Todd).
5. This accusation will get me in trouble, but I am in good company. We are sold the Israeli genocide in Gaza as a “counter attack against Hamas terrorism” and “the right to self defense.” If killing women, children, innocent civilians, non combattants, by their thousands, is a terrorist act, then Israel is a “terrorist state.” If we apply to Israel the same logic imposed on Hamas, then this logic says October 7 was “a counter attack” by Hamas against Israeli terrorism. The same can be said for the tens of thousands of “hostages” imprisoned by Israel these past 75 years, without trial and often for years on end. And what of the illegal blockade of Gaza which has deprived Palestinians of basic necessities since 2007? And what of the illegal occupation of the West Bank and the theft of 80% of Palestinian land?
6. Between the beginning of the illegal Israeli blockade on Gaza in 2007 and October 7, 2023, Israel shot and killed or wounded 155,000 Palestinians, 33,000 of them children, which hardly ever sparked the ire of our western pundits.