Western Coverage of Russian Elections Awash in Disinformation

Analyst Mark Sleboda criticized Western reporting on Russia’s presidential election and explained why President Vladimir Putin is so popular in Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will return to the Kremlin this year with a renewed mandate, having won 87% of the vote in an election with over 77% turnout. The outcome suggests strong support for the leader among the Russian public, but Western media has repeatedly attempted to delegitimize the presidential contest with a combination of misleading characterizations, half-truths, and outright lies.

International relations and security analyst Mark Sleboda returned to Sputnik’s Fault Lines program on Monday to break down mainstream media coverage of the election and explain why Putin enjoys such massive support in Russia.

“Putin has won this election by stunning margins,” said host Jamarl Thomas, with early results showing a convincing win for the Russian president immediately after polls closed on Sunday. “On some level people expected Putin to win it, and the question was going to be how much enthusiasm was there going to be in this race? And, apparently, there's been a lot of it.”

What Western media is saying about the Russian presidential election:

📌 The Guardian: Putin winning huge majority in Russian presidential election with only one possible result

📌 Financial Times: Putin wins powers to impose tit-for-tat sanctions on West

📌 New York Times:… pic.twitter.com/Bb6AkKCjYy

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) March 17, 2024

“All of the polls, of course – domestic polls, opposition polls, foreign polls, take your pick – whichever ones you don't want to trust, they all show the same thing for the election,” noted Sleboda.

“Glancing over the absurdity of the Western media, it's quite obvious they are not going to recognize the results of this election at all, which will make even a slim hope of diplomatic settlement of the current conflict in Ukraine essentially impossible going forward because they will not even recognize the results of the Russian election. But this is nothing new,” Sleboda said.

“Take a look at elections in Palestine and Lebanon when the elections didn't go the way the West wanted,” recalled the analyst. “They just didn't recognize the results.”

The United States has a long history of casting doubt on foreign elections that produce results contrary to the country’s foreign policy aims. In the book Manufacturing Consent, authors Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman recall how the US discounted Nicaragua’s 1984 election, which revealed the Sandinista movement enjoyed the support of more than two-thirds of its citizens.

The United States criticized electoral conditions there even while supporting elections in neighboring Central American countries that returned US allies to power in conditions considered far more repressive, according to international observers. The US then backed violent Contra death squads in the country, fueling a bloody civil war until Nicaraguans were compelled to vote for US-backed forces to quell the conflict.

“‘In your country, one of the two major candidates… there's legal battles trying to keep him off of ballots across the country,’” noted Sleboda, referring to Russian presidential spokesperson Maria Zakharova’s response to Western criticism of the country’s election. “Not to mention the Electoral College and all of the corruption with campaign finance… Your criticisms don't mean anything to anyone anymore. You are literally the emperor with no clothes.”

“I think that this vote certainly showed the unity of the Russian people,” Sleboda added, “and the unity, it must be said, of the new regions. The vote in Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporozhye – the turnout was even higher than in the rest of the country, despite some of the people, at least on the front lines, facing going to the polls literally under fire.”

Thomas noted the mendacity of Western coverage on the subject, with CNN and other outlets reporting that people in the Donbass were voting “under gunfire or under gunpoint. But not under gunfire from Ukrainians. But, basically, that they were being pushed to the polling, meaning the impression that is being given in some of the media outlets is the opposite.”

Western outlets also attempted to portray massive turnout in a negative light, with The Wall Street Journal suggesting long lines at voting locations were protesters demonstrating against the presidential elections in Russia.

“It's the opposite of reality,” said Sleboda, criticizing Western media’s dishonest presentation of information. “They [voters in the Donbass] were literally under fire from the country that believes it has the right to rule over them, by the regime in Kiev. So that is a reversal of the portrayal that is in the Western media.”

“All during that time period the [Ukrainian] regime was attacking, they were launching artillery strikes, cluster munitions, trying to hit polling stations, quite obviously to punish the people of the former East Ukraine for choosing wrong and for participating in an actual democratic process which they don't have in their own country,” he added. “Because, one, Zelensky has banned elections for the time being in the country. And two, he already banned all the parties of eastern Ukraine before anyway.”

“Since 2014, since the government was overthrown, there have been over 20 political parties banned in [Ukraine],” Sleboda noted. “All opposition media has been shut down. There's one unified information policy. The largest church in the country is literally undergoing a pogrom, with its leaders being arrested and the leaders of the top three opposition parties in the country… have all been charged with treason against the Zelensky regime. That is what is heralded as freedom and democracy that they're fighting for in the Western media.”

The expert pointed out that Russians’ turnout in this year’s election has surpassed that of even 1991, when Russia held its first elections of the modern era. Russia has been transformed under Putin’s leadership since the 1990s, when Western bombs devastated Moscow’s ally Yugoslavia and the Russian economy stood in tatters. Some even predicted Russia would collapse as the Soviet Union had only a few years before.

Now Russia is the largest economy in Europe, with a restored military and renewed international standing as a major player in the BRICS alliance.

Sleboda said Putin’s strong performance is a ratification of support for the special operation in the Donbass as well as a demonstration of approval of his domestic agenda, which includes support for Russian families, improving standard of living, and developing public infrastructure.

“Everything is as transparent and secure as it can possibly be,” he concluded, noting Russia’s glass ballot boxes and publicly viewable video feeds from each polling location. “But it doesn't make any difference to the West. They're going to not accept the results no matter what because, ultimately, the results aren't what they want. As Victoria Nuland clearly stated just before resigning, it's not the Russia we wanted.”

“Too bad, too bad.”