Even though Russia’s elections have been little more than window dressing to maintain a veneer of legitimacy in the Putin era, Russia’s 2024 presidential election could be a critical inflection point in Russia’s history under the backdrop of President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. While it may be counterintuitive to describe Russia’s elections as providing a meaningful choice in a Western, liberal-democratic sense, Russian elections still do hold importance for a regime which places a premium on coating itself in a veneer of democracy.

At its core, Russia’s political system is still at one of its most vulnerable points during the pageantry of democracy it puts on at constitutionally mandated intervals. Even amidst a major war and the creeping atomization of Russian political culture by the Kremlin, Russia’s 2022 regional elections saw some churn and local activism, indicating that there is still an uncontrollable quality to some elements of Russian electoral politics on a regional and elite level, at least in regional or local contests. Differing assessments on the imminence of Russian and Ukrainian battlefield offensives open a variety of scenarios Russia’s war in Ukraine could develop into. These scenarios, in turn, carry with them sharply divergent implications for Russia’s domestic political climate, including at the very top of the Russian power vertical.

While Putin’s Kremlin is likely secure from systemic turmoil or popular backlash for now, the war in Ukraine is a marathon effort for Moscow and a test of the unity of its political elite. President Putin’s September decision to perform a “partial mobilization” appears to have alleviated manpower issues that helped enable Ukrainian breakthroughs near Kharkiv in September and forced a withdrawal from the city of Kherson and its environs in November. As a result, the war is likely to continue for some time into the future—thereby lengthening the gauntlet the Kremlin must pass through.

Depending on how the invasion is faring in the lead up to Russia’s scheduled March 2024 election, the choreographed affair could go several ways. If the battlefield situation is roughly comparable to its current state—with Russia occupying a non-negligible share of territory it seized after February 24, but still far short of its initial goals of toppling the Ukrainian government in Kyiv—the election will be a chance for the Kremlin to whip together a redoubled elite and public consensus of support for, or at least acquiescence to, the so-called “special military operation.”

If Russia suffers significant, irreversible setbacks that see it pushed back to the territories it occupied in February 2022 (or before 2014), the Kremlin camarilla around President Putin will be faced with a sharp choice over how to proceed. If Russia were to be decisively defeated on the battlefield, up to or including the loss of Crimea or Donetsk and Luhansk, the intra-elite jostling that surrounded early-war setbacks could make a sharp, visible return. Such fighting would make the 2024 election/coronation a difficult maneuver to pull off, one that could be unfeasible depending on the scale of elite infighting.

If the ruling clique, in the face of blowback from outsider elements of the Russian elite (along the lines of the sharp criticism levied on the invasion’s military leadership in the aftermath of the Kharkiv rout), chooses to rally around Putin, the temptation to postpone the election to a more advantageous moment could be hard to resist. The Kremlin reportedly considered a measure to postpone Russia’s 2022 regional elections when it started to become clear that Russia’s intended quick toppling of the Ukrainian state was not materializing. This debate could be further complicated by regional players and Russian federal subjects attempting to renegotiate their relationships with the political center, a process which has already been playing as the status quo relationship has come under some pressure, despite remaining mostly intact for now.

While not as likely at this stage, a scenario where Russia achieves either a surprise upset breakthrough against Ukrainian forces or somehow reverses its battlefield fortunes would shape how the election is crafted in yet another way. If Russia were improbably gain such clear upper hand over Ukraine, the 2024 election would be a chance for the Kremlin to triumphantly rally the disparate elite factions and apathetic Russian people around the flag to forge a new popular consensus in the same vein as the consensus that was assembled after the seizure of Crimea in 2014.

Regional elections in September this year could offer some indication of what March 2024’s choreographed contest might look like. However, the main factor to watch for remains the status of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and whether its failures are no longer possible to ignore.

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