Caravanserai
Elections

Kremlin coercion in Central Asia to continue following Putin election charade

Caravanserai and AFP

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to a crowd in Moscow Sunday (March 18) following his victory in a highly criticised election. International leaders, election monitors and Russian opposition parties cited numerous cases of ballot stuffing, repeat voting and voter intimidation. [Kremlin]

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to a crowd in Moscow Sunday (March 18) following his victory in a highly criticised election. International leaders, election monitors and Russian opposition parties cited numerous cases of ballot stuffing, repeat voting and voter intimidation. [Kremlin]

ALMATY -- Central Asians should expect little change in the Kremlin's coercive policies toward the region after Russian President Vladimir Putin won his fourth 6-year term following an election widely criticised as both unfair and fraudulent.

Kremlin statistics say Putin won more than 75% of the vote, but international leaders, election monitors and citizens inside Russia dismissed the results.

"Restrictions on the fundamental freedoms of assembly, association and expression... have limited the space for political engagement and resulted in a lack of genuine competition" in the Russian election, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe said in a report Monday (March 19).

Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner and Putin's most vocal critic, was barred from running because of trumped up charges from the Kremlin.

A still from footage from a Moscow polling station on March 18th shows two female campaign workers stuffing the ballot box with what is to be assumed fake votes.

A still from footage from a Moscow polling station on March 18th shows two female campaign workers stuffing the ballot box with what is to be assumed fake votes.

Members of a local election commission count votes during Russia's presidential election in Simferopol, Crimea, March 18. [STR/AFP]

Members of a local election commission count votes during Russia's presidential election in Simferopol, Crimea, March 18. [STR/AFP]

Navalny said his team planned to stage protests over "unprecedented violations" during the March 18 vote and reported ballot stuffing, repeat voting and Putin supporters being bussed into polling stations en masse.

The elections were "dishonest", said runner-up Pavel Grudinin.

It is "unacceptable" that voting also also took place in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine four years ago in breach of international law, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Monday.

"The result of the election in Russia did not surprise us any more than the circumstances of this election," Maas told reporters in Brussels before talks with his European Union counterparts.

Putin's own actions underscored the fraudulent nature of the election.

He led a lacklustre campaign, refusing to debate his opponents on TV and shooting no new material for his own advertisements.

The seven other candidates who vied for the presidency -- who were there only to give the election a veneer of plausibility -- were either Putin's cronies or allowed to run to fragment the opposition vote.

What Putin's victory means for Central Asia

For Central Asia, Putin's election victory will mean much of the Kremlin's policy toward the region will stay the same -- focused on undermining the sovereignty of Central Asian states.

Putin will continue to pursue expanding Russia's sphere of influence, leading the Kremlin to coerce Central Asian states into serving as military client states, say observers.

Russia is trying to come across as a guarantor of stability and protection against outside threats, particularly terrorism, said Sultanbek Sultangaliyev, an Uralsk-based Kazakhstani political scientist and director of Rezonans.kz, an analytical website.

However, the Kremlin's aggression in the region has damaged its image as a protector, he said.

In addition, the escalation of social problems and of corruption in Russia, along with foreign policy setbacks like military casualties in Syria and the "overhanging" conflict in eastern Ukraine, has eroded Putin's popularity, Sultangaliyev said.

A continuing 'imperial' position

Overall, no abrupt changes to the Kremlin's policy toward Central Asian countries will occur, said Kairat Osmonaliyev, a Bishkek-based lawyer and member of the Kyrgyz Central Election Commission who served as an election observer in the March 18 Russian election.

The Kremlin will likely continue to attempt to strengthen the integration processes within the Russian-dominated Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) economic bloc, he told Caravanserai, referring to efforts to keep those countries economically dependent on Russia.

Dossym Satpayev, director of the Kazakhstani think tank Risk Assessment Group and a political scientist from Almaty, also doubts the election results will affect Russia's policy in the post-Soviet space.

"The aggression-based policy started by the current president will remain," Satpayev told the Kazakh-language version of Qamshy.kz. "Russia will attempt to regain its former influence in the [Commonwealth of Independent States]."

"Russia's position will remain imperial, holding onto tactics of interference in other states' affairs," Almaty-based political scientist Rasul Zhumaly told the same news site.

However the Kremlin will run into resistance in this regard. Central Asian leaders recently met for the first time without Russia, demonstrating that the region is unified, independent and working together, economists and political analysts say.

Russia to use migration as coercion tool

Meanwhile, Russia will continue to view Central Asian migrants with suspicion, mainly as a source of terrorism, observers say.

In recent years, Russian security agencies have accused Central Asian migrants of being recruited by the "Islamic State" (IS) terrorist group and convicted some of plotting terrorism in Russia.

Some destructive forces in Russia are manipulating cases of involvement of Central Asian nationals in terrorist acts committed in Russia, Osmonaliyev said.

Those forces are igniting inter-faith and inter-ethnic enmity and creating tension and conflict in society, he told Caravanserai.

"Certain politicians frequently use these techniques," he said. "In Russia, the issue of restricting immigration by Central Asians frequently comes up on central TV channels ... on the [pretext] of protecting Russians."

The Kremlin might use Central Asian labour migration to pressure regional countries that still have not joined the EEU, namely Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, he added. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are EEU members.

Citizens of EEU member states who come to Russia for work receive significantly more privileges and guarantees than do citizens of non-member Central Asian states, Osmonaliyev said.

"After the elections, Russia's migration policy will only get tougher in the interests of national security and also because of the need to reduce [Russia's] own unemployment," Sultangaliyev said.

Second-class people

Ordinary Central Asians also do not expect Russia to become more welcoming after the election.

"It's unlikely that our migrants will experience any improvement in their situation [under Putin]," Mirzokhid Khamdamov, a 39-year-old teacher from Tashkent, told Caravanserai.

"They have already worked in Russia for many years and have been treated like second-class people the entire time," he said. "But they are forced to put up with it to feed their families."

"The life of migrants should change," said Dilbar Alimova, a Khujand-based employee of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Sughd Province, Tajikistan.

"After all, with their labour they earn money and fill up the [Russian] treasury with work permit payments," she told Caravanserai.

[Arman Kaliyev contributed to this report.]

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17 Comment(s)

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Very few facts. The analysis is very shallow. One-sided thoughts. Do you think there are other factors in the development of Central Asia?

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Imperialist named Putin announced himself a TSAR. By following Russian traditional policy he started to widen its frontier at the expense of neighboring countries. First it was Ukraine, then Belarus. It is the change of geopolitical outlook and it means new episode of Big game of dividing policy have started. At this moment we need to carefully consider who are we.

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Russian sausage is more valuable for Russophiles than lives of 5.6 million muslims that were taken by Russians in years of 1859-1898 and 1918-1938.

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Utin, Putin, Rasputin, Liliputin... [a wordplay with "uti-puti" (Russian for "touchy-feely") and "liliput" (midget)]. This is not about Putin, this is about the Throne that exists on the planet. In Moscow. The only one... Think about it...

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I live in Central Asia, Putin is the best president, don't make any predictions, thank God your life is not that bad.

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Let a migrant who thinks he is considered second-class in Russia work in a first-class job back in his home country.

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This is unwarranted malevolence...

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If there's anything aggressive and full of propaganda here, it is this very article. By the way, Crimea is RUSSIAN territory.

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You lackeys use a rope to hang yourselves [because] you are so envious of Putin

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...and rightly so, comrade!

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It's really not worth reading these wild guesses

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Arman, stop inciting [hatred]; Putin doesn't need war, he is sitting on [a lot of] resources - but those who shelled out some cash to you do need it :)

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I suggest that in the summer or autumn of 2018 we hold a referendum on whether Kazakhstan should join NATO

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Foot-licker journalist, foot-licker website! Yuk!!!

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Don't pee your pants, everything will be okey-dokey.

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This poor video had people slobbering all over themselves, despite the absolute uncertainty as to when the elections were, where they were, and what they were for. Oh, if Navalny had only said something, then there would be no questions asked!

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"He gave up his hut for a gun and a pack, so the Throne in Syria could get the land back." [The author paraphrases the poem "Granada" by Mikhail Svetlov]. Who's going to build a mansion that the Kremlin would endow him with (or the land in Donbass)? "It's easier to break something than to make something..."

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