Referendum extends Putin’s potential rule until 2036

Despite this, many anti-Putin protesters, who are mostly situated in the cultural hubs of the country St Petersburg and Moscow, have claimed that election was rampant with fraud. Officials, of course, have denied these reports.

A family that had never voted before turned up at their local polling station for the Putin 2036 referendum, only to find that officials had already marked them down as having cast their ballots. "Accept our apologies." "No, i won't accept your apologies." https://t.co/RmKC7pASrZ

— Marc Bennetts (@marcbennetts1) June 29, 2020

The public face of the ad-hoc referendum (that didn’t actually fulfil the constitutional requirements to be labelled a referendum) was a package of amendments that included pension and minimum wage boosts, a modest reorganisation of government, a constitutional mention of ‘faith in God’, and a more stringent ban on gay marriage. The stipulation about Putin’s term limits was slipped in under the fine print.

There was a palpable restlessness during the campaign among younger Russians for whom Putin has been the only ruler they’ve known. Yury Dud, 33, whose YouTube interviews of celebrities have a mass following, described the vote as ‘an embarrassment’ via Instagram in a comment that garnered over 1m likes.

But the torrent of brazen democratic abuses that pour out of the Putin regime is unlikely to stop anytime soon. The main stalwart of defence against the perennial ‘wild-card’ that is Russia, NATO, has stood relatively impotent whilst Putin has committed a range of power-hungry atrocities over the past decade. Putin’s government has annexed Crimea, inflamed civil wars in neighbouring Ukraine as well as in Syria, Libya, and Yemen to increase Russian influence, poked the bear in the Middle-Eastern stand-off between Iran and Afghanistan, and, most recently, organised hits on American soldiers operating in Afghani territory alongside the Taliban.

Of course, the official statement from the Kremlin, and, worryingly, from the White House on this remains: ‘no collusion.’

An effective abolition of term limits means that the last vestiges of democracy have faded from Russia. With the potential to rule in perpetuity, Putin joins Kim Jong Un and Al-Assad on the list of rulers who cannot be toppled by their internal constitutions. As if it were ever in doubt, Russia is now officially a dictatorship.