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From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. Russians go to the polls today in the first presidential election since their country invaded Ukraine two years ago. The war was expected to carry a steep cost for Vladimir Putin. But as my colleague, Valerie Hopkins explains, the opposite has happened. Today, Valerie travels around Russia to understand how Putin has done it and how long that can last. It's Friday, March 15th. Valarie, the presidential elections in Russia are starting today, and it's the first one since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine two years ago. Back then, there was this idea that the war could potentially become ruinous for Vladimir Putin, both politically and economically. Here we are with Putin running for re-election two years later. We come to you as our on-the-ground Russia expert to talk about where we are in the arc of President Putin's power.

Well, Sabrina, these elections are set to run Friday to Sunday. 29 regions are voting online, and some of them have already started. It's a big event for Putin, but you and I both know very well that elections aren't necessarily the best measure of the people's choice in Russia. Putin is running, once again, without any real, genuine competition. Some of my friends in Moscow actually just refer to it as the voting. The voting. Because it's not really an election.

People are going to vote, but it's not truly a choice.

Exactly. So Putin is expected to just glide to another six-year term, his fifth, and that puts him on a path to becoming the longest-serving leader in Russia since the Russian Revolution, more than 100 years ago. Incredible. What's so remarkable is that this isn't just a story about an autocrat extending his reign. This is a leader with pretty sky high polling numbers right now and seemingly broad support.

Tell me about that. What is that support?

I mean, Sabrina, you and I both know that opinion polls are to be taken with a grain of salt in Russia, especially in a time when repression has become very intense and is only getting stronger by the month. But polls conducted by independent posters like the Lavata Center, which use focus groups and really big sample sizes, show that Putin's approval rating is at 86%, the highest in nearly a decade.

Eighty-six %?

Yeah. Even the more general question, is Russia going in the right direction? That answer has really shocked me. It's 75%. Right now, it's the highest it's ever been since a pollster started asking the question in 1996.

That is incredible. I mean, the highest number since the beginning of polling, basically.

Yes. For me, that's really so incongruous because Remember, you and I were on the ground in Ukraine when the war started and Russia began being deluged with Western sanctions. One company after another announced they were pulling out. Then slowly, it became clear that this war was going to last much longer and be far more deadly than anyone originally expected, I think, including Mr. Putin himself. It seemed like Russia's future was a massive question mark. Looking at the polls now, it's remarkable to see that Putin has managed to get past all of that. I really wanted to get out into the country and talk to some of the people behind these numbers to understand what it is that has kept their support for Vladimir Putin so high and how he's been able to defy the expectations that so many people had at the beginning of this war.

Where did you start?

A few months ago, I decided to go to the ninth largest city in Russia, Samar, Samara. It's a city on the Volga River. I was interested in Samara because it's a pretty big industrial city. I really wanted to see how ordinary people living there were feeling about the war and were experiencing all these changes to Russia's economic life. I mean, again, this was one of the big questions hanging over the war. Would it crater the Russian economy? It occurred to me that a really good place to get a feel for that is at the Mall. I went to one downtown with a couple of my colleagues, and I was really interested to go and see what ordinary life is like for people who are doing some shopping or catching a film.

Valerie, you are a Russian mall expert, also a Russia expert, but our Russian Mall expert. Continue. What did you see in this one?

This mall was really interesting. I saw a lot of activity. One thing I have to say I appreciate is that there's a group of young teenage boys who are playing with large size chess pieces, very Russian. There's no empty storefronts. They've all been replaced by new brands from different countries in the world, some of them Russian, some of them from the Middle East, the Gulf, et cetera. Let me tell you, Sabrina, that's really different from what I saw in malls, even in central Moscow, at the end of 2022. Many Many Russian, especially young, hip, urban Russians, were devastated by the departures of Zara, H&M, McDonald's, Coca-Cola.

And these were departures of Western companies because of the sanctions.

Absolutely. And you would go to malls and it would just feel like a dead zone. Stores shuttered dark hallways. You could see what was no longer available to you as a Russian consumer. And now all that has changed. But I don't know. There's also a lot of news stories like B-Free and G-J. I don't know what that is. But that's a Russian brand, right? Of course, Zara and H&M have been replaced by stores that we in the States have never heard of, but you could still get a lot of the same goods. It seemed like your average mall, teenagers walking around, drinking soda. But One of the big questions I get from friends back home is, did you try the fake Coca-Cola, Dobre Cola, the new brand that has essentially taken over all of Coca-Cola's business inside of Russia. I've just bought a Dobrykola.

For the uninitiated Dobrykola means? Goodkola.

Coolkola. I mean, yeah, I've seen various translations It's good cola, cool cola. Let's see if there's any difference whatsoever.

I don't think so. What does good cola taste like?

Pretty much like the real thing. Maybe like a normal knockoff Coke. Do you think there's any difference? A little bit. Really? I don't know if Coca-Cola took their secret sauce when they left or not. But I don't mean to paint a picture of a mall full of only knockoffs. I think, frankly, I was astonished by the amount of Western goods still available. There were still Chanel, all of the luxury cosmetics and perfume are widely available in Russia.

So really what you're seeing is a mall that has actually returned to some semblance of economic normal.

Yeah. In the past two years, Russia has been able to really successfully reorient its economy. Consumers clearly still have the money to buy expensive Western products, so they're often paying a huge premium, importing them from China, from Kazakhstan, from Georgia, Armenia, and the neighboring countries through middlemen. Oh, let's talk to the Apple people. They're selling all the Apple products. Let's find out, how do they get them? Are they more expensive?. This became really clear to me once I set foot into a shop selling Apple products.

Tell me about that shop.

It looked like an ordinary Apple store. They had all the MacBooks and MacBook pros and accessories, iPhones. In fact, when I first went in just to inquire about the price, the salesman that I talked to was really proud to say that it wasn't that much more expensive than the West and that actually they had gotten the latest iPhone model in stock three days only after it debued in America.

Interesting. What did the guy say?

. He shrugged his shoulders about the economy, about the sanctions. He said, We have no problems getting any of this stuff in. People are still able to buy it. He told me that he actually felt very confident that Russia would be able to survive and maybe even thrive economically.. He compared Russia to Iran, which has been under sanctions for decades. Not that it's the most economically successful country in the world. His point was that other countries have figured out how to survive economic sanctions. Russia is as well positioned as anyone to do that. I mean, he mentioned how resource-rich Russia is. It's one of the world's biggest oil producers, and that has already helped it to generate money to keep the economy afloat..

This is one of the keys to Putin's success, right? Keep the people happy with iPhones. Have the stuff still come in. Make sure that they're not cut off from the world in terms of the stuff that they want.

Exactly. Standing in this fake Apple store in the Samara Mall, the war felt really distant to this guy. He's injured, so he couldn't be mobilized, although he does feel bad for some of his friends who are fighting. But he said the war is not really this immediate presence in his life and that his life really hasn't changed at all. When I thought about it more, it wasn't all that surprising to me. I mean, here we were in a relatively big city, and I knew that Russia had been drafting far more soldiers from rural areas around the country than they are from cities. I started to think I to go further afield to the more rural communities that are actually bearing the brunt of this war. My team and I hopped in a car and we drove for hours along a pothol road all the way to a little village called Oatmeal.

We'll be right back. So, Valerie, tell me about the town of Oatmeal. Is it actually called Oatmeal?

Well, yes. I mean, in Russian, it's, it was a collective farm back in the days of the Soviet Union. In some of the open fields, you can just see the remains of collapsed infrastructure. But the village of Ovsyanka itself provides almost no jobs. Mostly people are working in subsistence agriculture or hunting scrap metal, doing odd jobs here and there. I mean, the place is really impoverished. Every year, it seems like there's another suicide, which in a really small place takes its toll. It feels like a place with a lot of despair.

Really a classic post-Soviet economically depressed landscape, a place that had been this large functioning farm, this collective farm, with the whole village employed in working it. After the Soviet collapse, that just died.

Right. I mean, this is a place that really hasn't seen any of the fruits of Putin's economic success story. These small depressed villages are the places that have sent a lot of people to this war. I arrived in Oatmeal and went straight to the house of the Kadera family who had lost their son in the war. I was really interested in how the family would make sense of their loss and of the war, and what they thought of Russia in that moment, and what they thought of Putin who launched this war. As we arrived, the family were waiting for his body to be brought by the local military officials. As we sat cross-legged on the floor of their main room, as mourners trickled in and out to pay their respects, they told me about him. His name was Garipul S. Kaderow. He was an ethnic Kazak, like most of his relatives. But to his friends and family, he was known by his Russian nickname, Vita. He was a soft-spoken farmer. Shortly after Vladimir Putin announced a general mobilization, officials from the military commissariat came to his house and told him he was going with them.

His family said that though he didn't expect to be drafted, as soon as he was called up, he said it was duty. He went that very day to start his military training. But after just a few months into his tour of duty, he was killed in a part of Ukraine that had been a meat grinder for Russian soldiers. Shortly after we arrived, a military convoy came carrying his body. His mother sobbed most of the day, and one of his sisters was whaling so much that she needed to take sedatives. And just witnessing the pain, it was immense. And then the whole village assembled for a formal ceremony for him with military honors. The head of the district government even came to speak.

He gave a patriotic speech about him dying for the sake of freedom.

He said it is precisely thanks to guys like him that there are peaceful skies over our country. And by participating in the Special Military Operation, which is what Russia calls the war, they are protecting our freedom, our lives, and the health of our children..

What did the family make of all of this?

Well, despite the fact that they had lost their son, their brother, in the war, despite the poverty and pain of this small village community, we You hear them embracing certain elements of Putin's messaging around the war. Many relatives repeated a lot of the shorthand that Putin has been using from the beginning. Saying that this was for the good of the motherland, and that this has long been Russian territory, that most of Ukraine has always historically been a part of Russia, that Ukrainians and Russians are actually one ethnic group.. One thing that really stuck out to me the most was the fervent belief that this is a war against the West. There was a strong conviction that the West had turned Ukraine against Russia, and this was not a war of choice for Putin.. I don't think this was purely that they were taking Putin's propaganda wholesale. But you could see a need to make sense of their loss and to understand the tragedy that befell their family. But there another element in this, too, which is something the family didn't really speak about. That's the fact that men who often are not able to really provide very much for their families while they're alive know that if they do die, their family can get somewhere up to $60, $70, $80, $1 in compensation payments after their death.

Wow. So extremely extremely meaningful for a family like Vita's.

Absolutely. This is a place where, presumably, people are living on maybe the equivalent of a hundred, a couple of hundred dollars a month. So these salaries are an incredible boon. In fact, Putin, in his most recent State of Union speech last month, actually talked about wanting to elevate the role of soldiers and veterans in society and give them more leadership and more opportunities. This is widely perceived as an attempt by Putin to reengineer a new middle class comprised of people involved in the war effort.

Wow, God. I mean, it's It's very dark, but it's also quite cunning of Putin, that there is an economic element to this war for the people who are dying, and that is something that can blunt any potential political opposition to it. The people doing the dying are not going to be the people asking the questions, in part because this money is coming in, and he knows that.

Yes. Sabrina, I've spoken to other family members who have lost their sons and husbands in this war, and they all say that no amount of money can bring back their son. But it does have an effect of making these families far less vocal and far less prone to uniting in some a protest movement that could challenge Putin. But, Sabrina, with all that being said, the longer I spent time in the Kadyrav house, the more I realized that there were so many layers to this family's grief, and that there were people present at the funeral who really aren't on the same page about this war.

Tell me about those people.

I had this really surreal reporting experience. After this military honors ceremony, the Krimsine He's in military-issued casket was actually brought into the house where, according to local custom, Vita was to spend one final night at home before being buried in a nearby cemetery. As members of his family, gathered around his coffin, they got into a debate, actually, about why he died. Wow. They're gathered around his casket. Nobody knows what was inside. The members of the family knew that the body had actually been decomposing for some time in the trench before the Russians were able to get it out. Many people were heartbroken that they couldn't wash the body, they couldn't see the body. I think If that drove one of the family members, especially, to start speaking out against the war.

.

He called the war in Ukraine. Nonsense. Then he said, What? Defending the motherland? From who? He said that he thought the people who believed that this war was necessary had been in some a stupor. He was one of the few people in the family who was willing to say, Actually, we attacked Ukraine, not the other way around.

Amazing.

There were other people around who chimed in. One family member compared it to Putin's annexation of Crimea, saying, What do we even need that for? In other It's like Russia is already such a vast and huge country. I mean, the biggest one territorially in the world. Why do we need new territories? And this idea of a greater unified Russia encompassing Ukrainian land wasn't really landing for him. I mean, these are very brave questions, right?

Saying this also to you sitting there, an American reporter, this is the thing Putin has really been focused on, that people not say things like this, right? And yet there they were saying these things against the war.

There's no doubt this is a really dangerous thing to say to a journalist at a time when the Russian government is really policing all dissenting voices on this war. The extent of oppression in Russia now is so strong that even whispering about them can get you in huge trouble, can land you in jail, can land you with a fine. With my colleague, Anton Trinowski, and other members of our bureau, we've been reporting on the way that people have been fined for antiwar scribbles on a bathroom wall or a simple request to a DJ to play a song by a Ukrainian musician. Not to mention people who take the risk of standing in the street with an antiwar slogan.

Right. Boosting the economy and paying off soldiers is one thing, but repression is really the foundation of what Putin has been up to here.

Absolutely. I mean, that's what holds this whole system together. There are a lot of people in Russia who share anti-war views and who are fed up with more than two decades of Putin in power, but they have very little recourse to do anything to change the situation at this point. We've been reminded of that in the past few weeks in the aftermath of the death of Alexei Navalny, the biggest and most important opposition politician and dissident in post-Soviet Russia. His supporters have shown up to memorials, to his funeral. But everywhere you turn, you're reminded of the repression that still keeps all of them in check. I went to some of the memorials and watched as riot police stood on checking people's IDs and encouraging people not to linger. While I was there, I talked to a 17-year-old student who said he had been too scared to put down flowers because of possible consequences. He's right to worry. I mean, hundreds of people have been arrested across Russia for the simple act of laying down flowers or publicly Mr. Navalny. Wow. So even in this moment where the opposition may have been galvanized to some degree in the lead up to election day, we're still reminded of the hold that Putin has on Russia.

Valarie, to answer the question you started with, how has Putin managed to keep such a tight grip on things? Repression is still central to how he's doing that. But he's also worked extremely hard to keep people happy in malls with their iPhones, keeping the economy going, and also paying out those bonuses to soldiers' families in these very poor areas. At this moment, heading into his re-election, that's all basically working.

That's true, Sabrina. But these are a lot of plates he's spinning, trying to keep the economy afloat while paying huge salaries to military military personnel and revamping the entire military industry. The Kremlin has dipped into reserves to make these financial payments. The economy has changed so much, and no one knows how it will be affected in the long run. The oil price could change. On top of that, the kernel of descent remains despite this inertia of repression.

Interesting. He's, of course, very much in control, but it's tenuous, I mean, for it to work, Putin really needs to keep his eyes on all of these areas at once.

Absolutely, Sabrina. I mean, it's a precarious balance. Traveling across this vast country, I've seen the tremendous power and reach of Putin. Even if these elections are not legitimate, he's still on the cusp of becoming one of the longest serving leaders in Russia's history, and that is a testament to his tremendous staying power. But you also do see the cracks and the tension here. And so the question is whether these cracks begin to widen or whether Putin will prevail as as he has, over yet another tumultuous period in Russia's history.

Valerie, thank you.

Thank you, Sabrina.

Alexey Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalny, has called on Russians who oppose Putin to show up at the polls at noon on Sunday as a sign of collective protest. Earlier this week, Navalny's top aid, Leonid Volkow, who was helping lead that call to action, was beaten and sprayed with tear gas near his home in Vilnius, Lithuania. Just hours before the attack, Volkow given an interview in which he expressed concern for the safety of Navalny's supporters, saying, The key risk is that we will all be killed. We'll be right back. Here's what else you should know today. A jury in Michigan found James Crumbly guilty of involuntary manslaughter, holding him partially responsible for failing to prevent his son from carrying out the state's deadliest school shooting in 2021. Crumbly's wife was convicted of similar charges in a separate trial last month. The couple's parenting skills had come under intense scrutiny, as had their son's access to a handgun that his father had bought. Now, two separate juries have taken the unusual step of holding parents criminally responsible for their child's crimes. And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a speech on the Senate floor, calling him a major obstacle to peace in the Middle East and calling for new leadership in Israel.

As a lifelong supporter of Israel.

It has become clear to me the Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after October seventh.

Schumer's speech was the sharpest critique yet from a senior American elected official. He was effectively urging Israelis to replace Netanyahu, who is under indictment in Israel for bribery and fraud.

I believe in his heart, he has his highest priority is the security of Israel.

However, I also believe Prime Minister Netanyahu has lost his way. Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the United States, said that he believed that Netanyahu had chosen himself and his ambition as a politician over his country. Schumer also said that Netanyahu had allowed too many civilian deaths in Gaza, which he argued had reduced support for Israel around the world. Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipco, Mary Wilson, and Shannon Lynn, with help from Summer Tamad. It was edited by Brenda Clinkenberg and Michael Benoît. Fact-checked by Susan Lee and Milana Mazaeva. Contains original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano, and translations by Milana Mazaeva. It was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansberg of WNDYRLE. That's it for The Daily. I'm Serena Tavernisi.. See you on Monday.