this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
115 points (97.5% liked)
Europe
8324 readers
1 users here now
News/Interesting Stories/Beautiful Pictures from Europe ๐ช๐บ
(Current banner: Thunder mountain, Germany, ๐ฉ๐ช ) Feel free to post submissions for banner pictures
Rules
(This list is obviously incomplete, but it will get expanded when necessary)
- Be nice to each other (e.g. No direct insults against each other);
- No racism, antisemitism, dehumanisation of minorities or glorification of National Socialism allowed;
- No posts linking to mis-information funded by foreign states or billionaires.
Also check out !yurop@lemm.ee
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Belarus just had a popular position candidate for presidential elections. When the results were shown it ended up in huge protests in the country, which very well might have removed Lukashenka from power. The reason they did not was Putin sending his troops to crush it.
If you have something similar in Russia today, you have the army fighting in Ukraine, the economy is in a dumpster fire, Ukraine and the West are going to help the protestors and there is nobody to march in and crush the protests. In addition to that the number of different armed groups in Russia has increased a lot and chances are some are unhappy with Putin. Wagner marched on Moscow after all.
So best choice is to not have an election at all. However that chance is gone now. Calling it off would make Putin look like he knows he would loose. So he has to fake it and the best way to do it is to have no actual competitor, who could win besides him.