For Putin, elections remain critically important even though their results are pre-ordained because they serve as a means of “testing the waters” as to what the elites and the population are prepared to put up with, according to Vsevolod Chernozub.  

The Russian commentator who now lives in Lithuania argues that election campaigns act “as the ultimate political tool, as a way to gauge their standing, approval rating and distance from the public as well as to assess external influences” on political processes (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2026/06/30/iznos-elektorata).

These “external influences” are not radicals now in emigration, Chernozub continues. Rather “the KPRF in recent years has become a factor of external........

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