What Putin’s continued rule in Russia means for Ukraine and the world

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• Geoff Bennett:

  We begin tonight with two major stories, one related to the 2024 presidential election, the other focused on an election held just this past weekend in Russia.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Today, in Moscow, President Vladimir Putin declared his intention to advance deeper into Ukraine and issued new threats against the West, one day after he secured his fifth term in office.

  It was an election with no suspense, the outcome of which was preordained.

  Here now is Nick Schifrin.

• Nick Schifrin:

  In Moscow tonight, a celebration and coronation. Tens of thousands in Red Square mark the 10th anniversary of Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and the man who many call the czar.

  Last night, Vladimir Putin declared victory with supporters, some who weren't alive when he was appointed president in 1999. He will soon surpass Joseph Stalin to become the longest running Russian leader since Catherine the Great.

• Vladimir Putin, Russian President (through interpreter):

  People came to create the conditions for internal political consolidation to move forward for development and the strengthening of their fatherland, Russia.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Putin's nearly 88 percent of the vote and record 77 percent turnout made this a Potemkin plebiscite, especially since at least one city offered voters a chance to win expensive Western electronics and another offered motorcycles and even apartments.

  And Putin has launched the harshest crackdown on dissent since the Soviet Union. Putin critics say the country has moved from authoritarian to a dictatorship. But some Russian voters, especially those old enough to remember the chaos of the 1990s, say Putin symbolizes a successful effort to make Russia great again.

  Irina Ivshina, Resident of Vladivostok, Russia (through translator): I am interested in what is being done now. And I would like it to be continued and even improved, because the younger generation must live in peace and harmony.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Putin's critics call that propaganda and voted with gasoline and a match, including one woman who lit her own ballot after writing: "Bring my husband back." Those who believe the ballot was already spoiled an entire box.

  And others wrote in one name, Navalny. Alexei Navalny, the country's leading opposition figure before he died in mysterious circumstances in prison, had called for Russians to protest by all voting at the same time. And they showed up for Noon Against Putin, as seen on this video posted by Navalny's team, strength through numbers.

  That included expats in Berlin, where Navalny's widow, Yulia, who'd echoed her husband's protest call, waited for six hours to vote. For Putin, Navalny had been he who must not be named until today, when he said he was willing to include Navalny in a prisoner swap.

• Vladimir Putin (through interpreter):

  On one condition only, I said, so he doesn't come back. But things happen. There's nothing you can do about it.

• Alexandra Prokopenko, Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center:

  Even before the elections, we knew that the numbers, that there should be more than 80 percent people who vote for him.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Alexandra Prokopenko is with the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and was the adviser to the Central Bank's deputy governor before leaving to protest the Ukraine war.

  She says Russia's economy is unhealthy, but has avoided failure despite Western sanctions, thanks to Chinese and Indian willingness to buy Russian oil and massive military spending.

• Alexandra Prokopenko:

  Next 12, 18 months are decisive for Ukraine from the pure military standpoint. In terms of this time frame, Putin has enough money to finance the war, to continue and maintain lavish payments on population on — during this timeline, and probably to keep inflation moderate.

• Nick Schifrin:

  But there is nothing moderate about Putin, who gets another turn to continue the policies that define his Russia, a nation at war with freedom and its citizens.

  Joining me now is Fiona Hill. She was the senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council staff during the Trump administration. She's now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of "Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin."

  And Evgenia Kara-Murza is advocacy director at the Free Russia Foundation, which seeks to promote a free, democratic and peaceful Russia. Her husband, Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, is a political prisoner in Russia.

  Thanks very much to both of you. Welcome back to the "NewsHour."

  Evgenia Kara-Murza, let me start with you.

  What's your assessment of how the election went, as well as the calls for protest, the Noon Against Putin that we saw people in some parts of Russia, but also across the world?

• Evgenia Kara-Murza, Advocacy Director, Free Russia Foundation:

  Well, first of all, thank you for the invitation.

  And as to the election, so-called election, I don't think that this process that took part in Russia over three days can be called an election, because it has nothing to do with a democratic protest that is called election in any normal democratic country.

  This was Vladimir Putin reappointing himself yet again for the fifth time, as the president of the Russian Federation, in violation of many international laws, and having completely destroyed the Russian Constitution through the so-called referendum in 2020, which basically made him into its czar forever.

  So, this process, I don't believe that it can be considered and accepted as a legitimate process by the international community. And I definitely call on the international community to call Vladimir Putin for who he is. He is a dictator and a usurper, and a criminal, actually, wanted by the ICC, definitely not a legitimate leader of the Russian Federation.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Fiona Hill, was this a reappointment? And is Putin a dictator?

• Fiona Hill, Former National Security Council Official:

  Well, it's definitely a re-anointment, because it's not just being a dictator, but, as Evgenia has said, he's almost a self-styled czar at this point.

  And, in fact, these are the people that he associates himself with in Russian history. In terms of his legacy now, we're all talking about how he will be — been in office longer than Catherine the Great, certainly any of the other previous czars. And if he, in fact, extends his term again beyond this current six-year, after 2030, after 2036, he will have been in power longer than Stalin.

  So I think that those legacies, even those terms, tell you enough.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Evgenia Kara-Murza, what's the point then? Why go through this stage-managed process? What is the Kremlin benefit?

• Evgenia Kara-Murza:

  Well, to create this image of universal support of the Russian population of Vladimir Putin and his policies, both domestic policies and the aggression against Ukraine, because a lot — this regime depends a lot on this image, on this very warped image of reality.

  And this is why the call for the Noon Against Putin, because this was the only way the Russian population was able to show how many Russians were actually opposing these policies, because there are no free and fair elections. We understand that, whatever we put on those ballots will be counted differently.

  And, of course, there was no surprise in Vladimir Putin's winning, maybe in a little bit in the fact that he gave himself over 87 percent of the vote, which is — I mean, he could be slightly more modest. But, no, he had to go that high. And these results were called unprecedented and record by the Russian authorities.

  So the only way for Russians to actually show what they think of it was to come at the same time, at noon, to polling stations and see how many of us there are actually in reality.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Fiona Hill, was Noon Against Putin successful?

• Fiona Hill:

  Look, I think it was symbolically very important.

  We will have to see how we judge success over time. But the very fact that there was signaling that people were dissatisfied, in the only way that they could, given the repressive constraints on them, is very important, because there were certainly hundreds of thousands of people.

  We saw hundreds of thousands of people turning out for Alexei Navalny's funeral, and not just on the day of the funeral, but on the days afterwards.

• Nick Schifrin:

  And doing so despite knowing full well they could be arrested.

• Fiona Hill:

  Exactly right, knowing they could be arrested.

  And, also, people that turned out, in fact, to sign the forms for the possibility of an alternative candidate, Boris Nadezhdin, to also run against Putin, who, ultimately, of course, was disqualified.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Was not allowed, right.

• Fiona Hill:

  But all of this is very important, because the people who have the courage to do these small acts of defiance are also standing in for, let's just say, all of the other people behind them who just don't have either the wherewithal or are too frightened in fact to show their dissatisfaction.

  So I think we can say from this that it isn't a monolith that Putin is presiding over. And it's 87 percent of what?

• Nick Schifrin:

  Hmm.

  Let's turn to the future. Does Putin use 87 percent, does Putin use another election to rule differently, either domestically or internationally?

  Fiona, I want to start with you.

• Fiona Hill:

  Well, it's certainly going to give him confidence. And I think we're going to see him use that externally as well. It's the second-year anniversary, or just there afterwards, of the full-on invasion of Ukraine.

  And Ukraine itself was also supposed to have an election coming up. So I would just predict right now that Putin will use the very fact that he's been re-anointed as the czar from here to eternity, at least his eternity perhaps, to make the case that other elections are not being done in the same way, that there's a lack of legitimacy in Ukraine.

• Nick Schifrin:

  But he's long since questioned other elections. He's long since questioned whether there can be any democratic process anywhere.

  Does he use this election differently specifically, perhaps in Ukraine, or with Joe Biden as president or with the U.S. elections?

• Fiona Hill:

  Yes, specifically to make the point that we all have to deal with him, and that we should be considering him and his position and the importance of Russia as an actor when we think about our own policies. So he's definitely going to use this for all he can.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Evgenia Kara-Murza, what do you think is the state of Russia's opposition today and how Putin will or will not treat it differently moving forward?

• Evgenia Kara-Murza:

  Well, the reason there is so — such harsh repression in the country, the reason there are these mass arrests, detentions, and et cetera, the reason we have hundreds and hundreds of political prisoners and hundreds of thousands of Russians and — being forced out of the country is because this is the alternative.

• Fiona Hill:

  Right.

• Evgenia Kara-Murza:

  This is the alternative, and Vladimir Putin is doing everything to completely annihilate this alternative, so that the world is left to deal with him alone.

  And this is why I believe it would be so important right now for the international community to do everything to show support and solidarity with those Russians who represent a vision for a different Russia, for Russia, democratic Russia, a normal country, a European country that understands and respects the freedoms and rights of its own citizens and lives in peace with its neighbors.

  I just understand that, for as long as Vladimir Putin remains in the Kremlin, there will be warmongering and there will be repression. And those two things in Russia have always been interconnected. Internal repression always leads to external aggression. And this will go on and on for as long as this regime is allowed to survive.

• Nick Schifrin:

  But, Fiona Hill, is Putin isolated internationally? It seems like he has tactical help, certainly on the battlefield from places like North Korea and Iran. He's getting oil purchases from Iran. And there is a strategic top cover, if you will, from Beijing.

  How isolated is he or not, and where does he go from here?

• Fiona Hill:

  Well, that is an issue for us to contend with.

  And I think it's actually a difficult one. We have to be honest about it. And it's something that we have to keep working on as well. And I think part of the problem that we always face, again, is questions about our own electoral system, which we're right in the middle of right now, also showing insufficient, I would say, dedication and resilience when it comes to dealing with foreign policy.

  And the key for thinking about the answer to this question is how we basically conduct ourselves at this particular point. Now, by we, I mean the United States.

• Nick Schifrin:

  So, you think the best thing that the U.S. could do is actually strengthen itself? You think that's…

  (Crosstalk)

• Fiona Hill:

  That's right, and also strengthen its relationship with its allies and partners.

  And that's not just with European countries. It's also with countries like Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand. There are a whole host of countries, including countries like India, that have somewhat ambiguous relationships with Russia, that we need to keep reaching out to and trying to kind of push back against the threat that Vladimir Putin poses, not just to — domestically in Russia or to Ukraine, but to the larger world system that many other countries have benefited from.

  So that's the challenge for us. And Putin's thrown that challenge down. I don't think we should give up hope, because I do think that that signaling from inside of Russia that Evgenia has talked about shows that it isn't a monolith inside of Russia and there are vulnerabilities. And, actually, he is quite isolated domestically, right?

  I don't think he even knows himself quite how much support he has. But people around him will know how many ballots they stuffed. They will know how many people they bussed out or forced to vote. And, eventually, if he shows any kind of weakness internally, there might be another reaction.

  We have already seen that with Prigozhin and that episode several months ago. And we have seen it with the outpouring of emotion and support for Alexei Navalny.

• Nick Schifrin:

  And, Evgenia Kara-Murza, your husband, of course, has long been fighting for some of the changes that Fiona is talking about. He's in prison. How's he doing?

• Evgenia Kara-Murza:

  He's doing as well as he can.

  He's — he still sounds — well, sounds. I haven't talked to him since last summer. But, in his letters, he is optimistic, and he sends us words of support. But that's what Russian political prisoners do, amazingly. They are the ones mistreated. They are the ones denied medical care. They are the ones in solitary confinement.

  And they say about Russia — about the hope for a different Russia, and about that hope living on even after the murder of Alexei Navalny. They say that Vladimir was able to address us during a recent court hearing. And it happened right after Alexei's murder. And he said that, of course, he was absolutely devastated by what had happened, and this was not the first political assassination in Russia's history.

  But he also said that we cannot give in to despair, because this is exactly what they want us to do. And we need to fight even more. And this is what we owe to our fallen comrades, to continue the fight to make sure that Russia does become what they fought for and died for, a normal, European, free, democratic country.

  So, Vladimir sitting in this solitary punishment cell in Western Siberia sends us words of support and encouragement.

• Nick Schifrin:

  Evgenia Kara-Murza, Fiona Hill, thank you very much to you both.

• Fiona Hill:

  Thank you.

• Evgenia Kara-Murza:

  Thank you.