[richrichie]

No it was a genuine question. Did his party win any seats at any election at all?

Call me old school, i am a bit skeptical of single perspective foreign country coverage after the Iraq war lies and NYT’s fawning coverage of Stalin’s Russia.

[tokai]

Russia is not a democracy. I doesn't matter if he won any elections.

[richrichie]

Why do you say so? They seem to have regular elections and voter turnout seems decent (per wikipedia).

[ErneX]

Elections where candidates are murdered or barred from participating? Those aren’t elections.

[richrichie]

I was not aware of these. Were they barred through court process (like we are trying to bar Trump through judicial process) or was it extra-judicial, arbitrary? Don’t they have the equivalent of the election commission.

[omgtehlion]

Yep. They have election commission, appointed by 1/3 putin, 1/3 by duma (with putin's party dominating it), 1/3 by "soviet of federation" which is comprised of governor representativs of governors appointed by putin (in Russia you can not vote for your governor). So, completely independent institutuion, I suppose...

[ErneX]

What good are elections if you jail or straight up murder the dissents/opposition? It’s a complete joke. Navalny was also poisoned in 2020 he almost died on a commercial flight that had to be diverted.

Look up also the amount of journalists murdered there, that isn’t a democracy.