The March 15-17 presidential election was the most rigged in Russia's modern history, according to evidence published by election experts, observers, and media.
Estimates of vote rigging range from at least 22 million votes to about 31.6 million votes, without taking into account the online voting ...
Another sign of rigging is that 2024 election results peaked at round figures, Shukshin wrote. This distribution of results looks like a saw on graphs, which led to the nickname "Putin's saw."
Probably because he was imprisoned. It's hard to say what his results would have been, but a lot of experts said just by virtue of being the only opponent he could have beat Putin in a fair election.
The sad thing is that of that bullshit 87% figure were still people who voted for him and far more than should have. There are way too many Putin sycophants in Russia. I realize it doesn't help that the media is state-controlled, but it's amazing what he can get away with and still be worshiped by a significant segment of the population.
Lots of Americans seem to think that state media is a bad thing. Lot's of countries get it right. Especially after it's first been implemented.
I'd often rather have a government (obviously not Russia, China, or in my case Canada) over some oligarch controlling it. Murdoch hasn't exactly been doing good things wherever he goes
It looks completely different from my perspective. Vast majority of Putin's supporters are quite passive and want to have tomorrow everything they have today. They do not organize into groups themselves, and they are not invested emotionally.
I'd say that war supporting Z-groups behave much more like Trump supporters. But don't let yourself to be tricked here, they are 2 distinct groups with not complete intersection
I don't doubt the elections were rigged (mostly in making sure anybody else with a fraction of a chance was imprisoned and murdered before the elections), but the Kyiv Independent might not be the least biased source around.