The Peanut Gallery: Siberian Election Results Accidentally Reveal Putin's Real Support Among Russians
March 18, 2024
Welcome to the Peanut Gallery! Today we’re fulfilling a request from the audience.
Special thanks to u/benes238 for the translation of the Refinery Bingo card. I went ahead and took what they wrote and modified the card, then started looking into the struck refineries. Ones with red ‘X’s are—as far as I can tell—out of action. Blue circles are ‘hits’ which caused either minor or negligible damage.
Please treat all information on the Refinery Bingo card as suspect, and please remember that I know nothing.
Russian polling district in southern Siberia has scrambled to recount votes after presidential candidate Nikolai Kharitonov received more votes than Vladimir Putin in the March 15 to 17 election, according to local media reports.
Voting results were recounted at a polling station in the city of Barnaul in the Altai Republic after the Russian electoral commission found a "technical error." It resulted in veteran candidate Kharitonov of the Communist Party receiving 763 votes—10 times more than the number of votes for Putin, independent Russian publication Meduza reported. The new results are still unknown. Newsweek has contacted Russia's Foreign Ministry via email for comment.
Boys and girls, I hesitate to belabor the point, but with Putin polling at 10%...well let’s just say that’s a terrible sign for the Kremlin. Assuming, of course, the ‘mistaken’ results are indicative of the nationwide average. And I don’t see any reason they shouldn’t be—at least in regards to the rural vote. I suspect the only reason we heard about the actual results is because the voting district was too small to justify the FSB’s personal attention.
You know what? Let’s workshop it. Let’s follow this idea to its natural conclusion: if Putin only has 10% support nationwide, then the Freedom of Russia Legion (LSR) raids into Belgorod Oblast represent an existential threat to the regime.
The issue is propaganda. See, the Russian partisans are running off Middle East insurgency rules, where each grandiose act of defiance functions as a recruitment beacon, a bonfire in the night. All it takes is one--one big spark to set Russia alight...and I can’t think of any more ready timber than a 10% approval rating.
Let’s do a brief check-in with the partisans. How’s that whole ‘Russo-Ukraine War’ thing coming along, ISW?
Putin admitted that the all-Russian pro-Ukrainian volunteer forces are comprised of Russian citizens amid the continuation of cross-border raids into Belgorod Oblast on March 18. Putin stated on March 18 that “four groups of traitors” (likely referring to the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), Freedom of Russia Legion (LSR), Siberian Battalion, and Ichkerian volunteers) are conducting cross-border raids into Russia and insinuated that Russia will execute the traitors.
Putin seems mad. Super mad. Mad enough to fuck up and admit he’s facing an actual insurrection, thereby lending the LSR legitimacy as an alternative government. They’re no longer ‘Ukrainian’ or ‘Western’. The Russian Volunteers are, in fact, Russian.
Putin be slipping. More and more each day. I had my suspicions this was the case following the Carlson interview, but that boy’s done nothing to dissuade my assessment ever since. Vladamir Putin is not living in our reality. He exists in a fantasy world, one where he is the avatar of Russian glory. In his mind Putin is Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, and Stalin all rolled into one, and so he rules like a megalomaniac, brazenly declaring rebel groups ‘traitors’ like some power mad king. It’s sloppy.
The issue is that now he can’t hold these freedom fighters back with conscripts, not that this was an option in either case. The revolutionaries are ‘Russian’ and therefore may convince a group of terrified teenagers forced to serve Moscow against their will to go ahead and point their rifles at the folks holding their chain.
Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia needs to form a veteran-led Russian “Administrative Corps” as part of the “Time of Heroes” initiative, which will incorporate Russian veterans into the Russian workforce.
That hard up for people, eh? Or just trying to put ‘em to use?
“Lose a leg? You’re still worth something to the State! Grab a wrench and join the assembly-line—hop to it!”
Putin reemphasized the idea of a “sanitary zone” in Ukraine in a manner congruent with Russian Security Council Deputy Chair Dmitry Medvedev’s recent call for the total elimination of Ukrainian statehood and absorption into the Russian Federation.
See? Utterly delusional.
Medvedev’s demands extended well beyond the borders of Ukraine, reaching deep into Moldova, Poland, and Nordic states. It’s overtly expansionistic. I’ve been studiously ignoring the spewing foreskin because everything he says is absurd; it’s a nasty habit, I’m aware, because Medvedev is technically the spokesperson for the Russian Federation. He’s supposed to be Antony Blinken’s counterpart.
With Putin picking up the extremist language, however, implies that it’s the direct intent of state. With this election Putin is ripping off the mask: he is Tzar, Emperor of all Russia. All are subject to His imperial will. Just nobody look too hard lest they notice how little he’s wearing.
Russian authorities continue to militarize children in occupied Ukraine as part of efforts to Russify Ukrainian children and create a resource for Russia’s future force generation needs. (..) Russian authorities have approved the creation of the Luhansk Cadet Corps under the Russian Investigative Committee (Russia’s rough equivalent to the American Federal Bureau of Investigation), possibly before 2025.[61] Lysohor stated that Luhansk Cadet Corps will teach Ukrainian children about pro-Russian concepts including their “debt” to the Russian “Motherland.”
Please give Ukraine what they need to bring this war to an end.
‘Q’ for the Community: /r/TheNuttySpectacle!
How much significance do you believe we should place in the Siberian Results?
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