Russian elections: Landslide 'victory' will give president Vladimir Putin carte blanche to pursue aims at home and abroad

Vladimir Putin beat his own expectations to take 88 per cent of the vote

The juxtaposition of two consecutive tweets issued this morning by news agency AFP summed up the global reaction to the results of the Russian election perfectly.

The first, alongside a picture of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, stated: “Chinese president Xi says Putin’s re-election ‘fully reflects’ support of Russian people.” The second, immediately posted underneath: “Putin re-election based on ‘repression and intimidation’: EU foreign policy chief Borrell.”

Josep Borrell was not the only major international figure to condemn the election, which has been dubbed a sham by Western governments.

A vendor stands next to traditional Russian wooden nesting dolls, Matryoshka dolls, depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin (From L) and his predecessor - Dmitry Medvedev, Boris Yeltsin, Mikhail Gorbachev and Leonid Brezhnev at a gift shop in Moscow this week.

"This is not what free and fair elections look like,” added UK foreign minister David Cameron, in an echo of comments made by France, Lithuania and Poland, among others.

President Vladimir Putin will not be bothered by the condemnation of Western allies, especially not when he has received such a public message of support from a friend as powerful as China – as well as India, Iran and North Korea, which also backed the results.

Mr Putin won 87 per cent, or 76 million votes – by far the biggest landslide in post-Soviet Russian history, paving the way for him to become the longest serving Russian leader in 200 years.

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What the election “result” means is that he can now claim he has the Russian people’s support to do whatever it is he plans to do, namely the continuation of the war in Ukraine. It essentially gives him carte blanche to increase aggression abroad and continue his campaign of Soviet era-esque control at home.

Mr Putin is likely to continue to forge stronger economic ties with his allies. Yet a small, but vocal, minority, particularly in Russia’s urban areas has begun to rise up against him, previously led by late opposition politician Alexei Navalny and latterly by his wife Yulia.

However, experts have warned the new economic “elite”, Russia’s soldiers returning from fighting on the front in Ukraine, who are set to rise in status due to veteran’s benefits, could eventually turn on the government.

Mr Putin’s fifth term could see him in power until 2030. The question is whether his dissenters will remain quiet until then.