Thirteen years ago, Vladimir Putin went out to watch a martial arts tournament, and as he congratulated the winner of a heavyweight fight, the unthinkable happened: A large part of the audience began booing and jeering at their shocked leader.
It was the start of a rocky period for the Russian president, as his obviously fraudulent election sparked the country’s biggest protests since the collapse of the Soviet Union. “We are not afraid anymore,” one man told me at a huge demonstration in Moscow.
I heard anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny warn Putin that “if the scoundrels and thieves continue to try to deceive us and lie to us, we will take power ourselves”. I met other key opposition leaders, such as former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov.
Today, Navalny is dead, ‘murdered’ in an Arctic penal colony a month ago, and Nemtsov was gunned down on a Moscow bridge just meters from the Kremlin in 2015.
But Putin, after 24 years in power, will secure a fifth term in office after a rubber-stamp election at the weekend after crushing all dissent in his country.
After 24 years in power, Putin will secure a fifth term in office after a rubber stamp election at the weekend after crushing all dissent in his country
Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died in a prison camp, stands in a queue outside the Russian embassy in Berlin, Germany
The diminutive dictator will argue that the result gives him a popular mandate for his war in Ukraine, a conflict he expected to end in a landslide within just five days but has turned into a fierce battle of attrition against people determined determined to defend their liberties.
Putin looks unassailable after killing, banishing or jailing all rivals – including Vladimir Kara-Murza, the dual Russian-British citizen who was jailed for 25 years for ‘treason’ after speaking out against the war – despite the disastrous start of his attempt at full-scale invasion and the West’s unexpected united response.
He has militarized schools and society at large, put the economy on a war footing, and raised defense spending to the highest level since the Cold War.
After changing the constitution via a sham referendum four years ago, he can remain in power until 2036 – when he will be 83.
Putin is also now backed by three of the world’s most repulsive autocracies – China, Iran and North Korea – an alliance that underlines how the war he launched in Ukraine a decade ago with the invasion of Crimea has become an epochal struggle between democracy and dictatorship.
And yet the West remains astonishingly complacent about the challenge this tyrant poses to our way of life and our democratic values.
It may have finally united in 2022 behind Ukraine’s fight for survival, but many Western leaders were so intimidated by Putin’s saber rattling that, despite their bold rhetoric, they delivered insufficient military support too slowly, an approach that had tragic consequences.
One of the worst offenders in the early days of the war was French President Emmanuel Macron, who tried to win over Putin by arguing that Russia should not be humiliated and limit France – a major military power – to truly pathetic levels of aid to Ukraine in terms for weapons and ammunition.
Vladimir Putin has won the Russian election with 87.8 percent of the vote, exit polls show
The Russian tyrant, 71, has cemented his position at the top of the Kremlin until at least 2030
Members of a local election commission count ballots at a polling station after the final day of Russia’s three-day presidential election in Moscow
Now Macron seems to have woken up. He is increasing defense spending to the highest level in half a century, while doubling the number of reservists, strengthening cyber security and drastically increasing funding for intelligence services.
The French president has even dared to suggest that Western troops could be sent to support Ukraine’s struggle. “If Russia wins this war, Europe’s credibility will be reduced to zero,” he correctly said. “We no longer wanted security in Europe. Who can seriously believe that Putin, who has respected no borders, would stop there?’
Macron’s newfound insistence is echoed by the frontline states that have previously suffered Russian brutality and therefore never had any illusions about the threat from Putin.
‘True solidarity with Ukraine? Fewer words, more ammunition,’ read an online post by Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland, whose nation is rearming at a breathtaking pace to create the strongest land army in Europe.
The French and Polish leaders were in Berlin last week trying to persuade ultra-cautious German leader Olaf Scholz to deploy long-range, low-flying, bunker-busting Taurus missiles to Ukraine.
Germany is Europe’s biggest source of military aid to Ukraine – but Scholz fears that the stealth missiles could be used to attack Moscow, despite Kyiv’s denials, so he shamefully refuses to supply the Ukrainians with this potentially decisive weapon.
Meanwhile, Washington’s support for the country is on hold due to political feuds ahead of elections this year.
Such myopia comes at a time when military officers at the highest levels of the British armed forces are becoming increasingly concerned that Nato could end up at war with Russia within the next few years.
People attend a rally in Berlin, near the Russian embassy, where voters lined up to cast their ballots in the Russian presidential election
This is why top generals are suddenly talking about conscription and warning that preparing for such a conflict must be a ‘whole nation’s obligation’.
In such a context, it is deeply disappointing that our own government is failing to follow more forward-thinking European nations by immediately bolstering Britain’s depleted military capabilities, pouring far more money into defense and fixing our woeful military procurement system.
We should also follow Finland’s lead by teaching children from an early age how to resist the flow of fake news and challenge the conspiracy theories that can be used by dictatorships to divide our countries and weaken our democracies, especially in this threatening age with artificial intelligence.
As Putin said before his first election success 24 years ago, no one should believe in miracles to save their country. The relentless march of his aggression against the West has made this point frighteningly clear.