Putin for life? Election win weds his fate to victory in Ukraine at all costs

For a few weeks in 2022, Vladimir Putin's world was unravelling fast. Russian troops had failed to take Kyiv and the west was coalescing around Volodymyr Zelenskiy, freezing Russian assets abroad and passing unprecedented sanctions.

- Andrew Roth

Putin appeared unhinged, railing against Lenin or appealing to Ukrainians to overthrow their "gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis".

As Russians go to the polls today in an election with only one possible result, the Kremlin will claim a mandate for that war, enshrining Putin's bloodiest gamble as the country's finest moment.

The Russian leader has often succeeded by presenting his opponents with only bad and worse options; these elections are no different. Now convinced that he can outlast the west, Putin is seeking to wed Russia's future, including an elite and society that appear resigned to his lifelong rule, to the fate of his long war in Ukraine.

A former senior Russian official said: "You are dealing with the person who started this war; he's already made a mistake of such a scale that he can't ever admit it to himself. And he can't lose that war either. For him that would be the end of the world.

"We all - thanks to Putin - have been led into such a shitshow that there is no good outcome. The only options go from very bad to catastrophic," he added. And if Putin begins to lose, then "we may all see the stars in the sky" suggesting a potential nuclear war.

Putin's re-election campaign, which has included a more than £1bn propaganda push, according to leaked documents obtained by the Estonian outlet Delfi and reviewed by the Guardian, has put the war front and centre, as he envisages a militarised society stripped of its liberal trimmings.