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Comment by smsm42 | Hacker News Reader

They are not "cartoonishly" evil. They are really evil. The elections were stolen, and everybody - including in Russia - knows it. Some think it's OK because "Putin is stability" but nobody thinks there is anything like free elections or democracy there. Nobody knows how many popular votes Putin got - exactly because he did not allow to count the votes fairly.

But it's not only stealing elections. It's also completely destroying judicial system - again, nobody believes there's such thing as independent judiciary anymore in Russia, it is jailing political opponents, it is stealing millions of dollars from the budget... Yes, things "aren't rosy". But I'd seriously suggest you to wake up and smell the roses, because the real evil is already there. And if history teaches us anything, it'll get much worse before it gets better. Russia has a history of leaders who imprisoned their political opponents. Nothing good came out of it, not once.

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  Nobody knows how many popular votes Putin got - exactly because 
  he did not allow to count the votes fairly.

Not many dispute Putin's personal election results, even the opposition. The parlamentary elections before that -- is another matter, they were substantially rigged in favour of the pro-government party.

And let me correct you -- 63% of the Russian voters who have voted for Putin believe that they live under democracy, and are very happy that their votes count and their candidate has won.

What are you talking about - of course many dispute it! There were mass protests about the election results, and multiple proven cases of fraud - which, of course, were never prosecuted due to absence of independent judiciary.

Again, quoting official results in obviously and proven rigged elections as evidence of "voters who have voted for Putin" is just disingenuous - do you really believe anybody would be swayed by the argument "Putin won elections because Putin says so"?

Also, the democracy is not only when majority wins. It is also when the rights of everybody are respected. Even if Putin had won the majority vote - which we do not know since there was no free and fair election - it would not absolve him from responsibility to preserve the rights of every citizen - including those who oppose him. That is clearly not happening.

There were no mass protests after Putin election results. You can check for yourself http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011%E2%80%932012_Russian_prote...

There were 25 thousand people protesting in Moscow Pushking square immediately after his re-election on March 5, 2012. No major regional protests reported. Moscow has 11 million inhabitants, so 0.02% of them were protesting. I would not call them 'mass protests'.

In contrast, the protests about cases of fraud during Parliament elections rally on Bolotnaya square in December 2011 brought 60 thousand protesters in one day, and many more rallies have been reported throughout Russia.

On tens of March (I quote) "Another 'For Fair Elections' protest was staged on the Novy Arbat street in Moscow. A permit was issued for 50,000,... but just 25,000 thousand came according to the organisers and 10,000 according to the police. The mood was downbeat after Putin won an absolute majority everywhere but Moscow where he garnered 46.95% of the vote. Sergei Udaltsov of Left Front, called for a massive demonstration 1 May, but no further protests are scheduled".

The problem is: the other 40% were screwed again -- the same 40% were screwed on every russian presidential elections ever. There were no elections with "unorthodox" result -- there is no choice. The lack of choice and circulation hurts the credibility of the regime.

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