For the Kremlin, high voter turnout of over 70%, the absence of any opposition figures on the ballot and over 87% of the population voting for Putin will solidify his role as one of Russia’s greatest leaders in the past millennium, equal to the two tsars he admires most—Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, both of whom expanded the Russian empire’s borders. The 2024 election is more of an acclamation than a contest for power. As he enters his twenty-fifth year in office and if he remains in the Kremlin until this term expires in 2030, Putin will have been in power longer than Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

Shortly after the polling closed on March 17, it was announced that Putin had won 87% of the vote. The other three Kremlin-approved candidates who were on the ballot received between 3% and 4% of the vote. Of course, there is no independent way to verify the official figures. The one independent election monitoring organization, Golos, which operated until a few years ago, was declared a “foreign agent” and its leader is in detention So the world may never know what the true figures are. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, noting that the election “occurred in an environment of intense repression of independent voices and the imprisonment, death, or exile of virtually all genuine political opposition,” described the vote as “undemocratic.”

Putin was so confident after the election results were announced that, for the first time, he mentioned the name of Alexey Navalny, the key opposition leader who had been poisoned, jailed in a remote brutal Arctic labor camp and died a month before the vote. Putin’s message: People die in prison in other countries, including the United States.

The Kremlin was concerned about turnout and produced campaign advertisements touting how much life had improved under Putin and warning the Russian population about what might happen if they failed to vote—economic hardship and more threats from the West. Government offices and many enterprises told their employees that if they did not vote for Putin they would lose their jobs. Voters in Russian-occupied Ukraine were also pressured into voting, although some refused to.

Nevertheless, critics of Putin and Russia’s war against Ukraine protested in some locations, setting fires in polling stations, pouring green ink into ballot boxes and declaring at the polling stations that they would not vote for Putin. Many were detained. Navalny’s organization and other opposition groups launched a “noon against Putin” campaign, calling on their supporters to appear at polling stations at noon on March 17 to demonstrate their opposition. Thousands turned out all over Russia, and many more thousands lined up at Russian embassies abroad to vote for other candidates—including Navalny, whose name they wrote in. In Moscow, Boris Nadezhdin, an anti-war figure who had collected more than the requisite number of signatures required to be on the ballot but was not allowed to register, led a group of Moscow students in voting against Putin and the war. The line outside the Russian Embassy in Berlin—a city that is home to a large group of Russian exiles—took six hours to clear and included Navalny’s widow Julia Navalnaya and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oil tycoon, jailed by Putin for a decade, who is now a leading opposition figure. Given how dangerous it is to express opposition inside Russia to the war or to Putin, the message is that there are still Russians who are not afraid to express their views. Civil society continues to exist, despite the repression.

What’s Next for Russia?

Now that Putin has won a fifth term, what will he do in the next six years? The message to the Russian people is that there is no alternative to Putin. The election has solidified Putin’s role as a wartime leader and the main focus of his next term will be winning the war in Ukraine.

There are rumors of a possible government reshuffle. Putin has never hinted at a potential successor, and he can remain in office until 2036 since he changed the constitution in 2020. So, he is unlikely to groom someone to succeed him. His prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin, a technocrat, has presided over an economy that has withstood Western sanctions and had a growth rate higher than that of most European countries last year, largely because the Russian economy is on a wartime footing. Nevertheless, Mishustin is not associated with the war in Ukraine and Putin may appoint a more hawkish leader of the government. There may be other personnel changes too.

The Kremlin has already outlawed all opposition groups and closed down critical media. Putin may introduce even more repressive laws now that he has been re-anointed. The government has already banned Facebook and X and continues to try to create a “sovereign internet,” as China has. The message to opposition figures after Navalny died was “we can get you anywhere.” There are several leading Russian opposition figures serving long jail sentences and their fate remains uncertain, as does that of jailed U.S. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan.

As Russia’s war with Ukraine continues, with very high casualty rates, more troops in the field are needed. Will there be another general mobilization? The last time Putin tried to mobilize, hundreds of thousands of Russia men fled the country. The Kremlin may not want to repeat that situation and may focus instead on recruiting contract soldiers with high salaries.

What Are the Implications for Russia’s Foreign Policy?

Putin has made it abundantly clear that Russia must succeed in its “special military operation” in Ukraine. This means “denazification” (i.e., regime change) and Ukraine accepting the loss of the four territories Russia has claimed to annex, none of which it fully controls. Putin has said Russia is ready for negotiations—but only if Ukraine agrees to surrender. He is awaiting the results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election and hoping that the next U.S president will end U.S. assistance to Ukraine. He is also watching Europe argue about how much and what kind of military assistance to provide Ukraine and is waiting for the transatlantic consensus for supporting Ukraine to crumble. Russia will probably ramp up its military action in Ukraine, continuing its relentless assault on cities and civilian populations, as well as on Ukrainian infrastructure. It may well launch a new offensive in the spring, hoping that the Ukrainian people will tire of this brutal war and demand that their leaders negotiate to end the bloodshed.

Relations with the West are unlikely to improve. Putin believes that Russia is in an existential conflict with NATO and has hinted that the war could extend to other countries. Moldova would be the next country to watch, because of its vulnerability. The occupants of Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova whose inhabitants are Russian or pro-Russian, recently asked Russia to provide them with “assistance,” raising concerns that Moldova might be next on Putin’s list of countries to invade. It is unclear, however, whether Russia would have the resources to launch another military operation while it is fighting in Ukraine.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s relations with China and countries of the so-called Global South—including the expanded BRICS—have improved. Indeed, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his “warm” congratulations to Putin on his re-election. China has supported Russia since the war began and, whatever its leader Xi Jinping might think about Russia’s conduct of the war, he does not want his fellow authoritarian leader to lose the war. The two leaders together are promoting a “post-West” order with a diminished role for Western democracies, even though they might not agree on what that order would look like. The nightmare for Beijing would be for Putin to be replaced by a leader who decided to reevaluate Russia’s ties with the West—and even with China. Russia-China relations will continue to strengthen during Putin’s fifth term, despite the asymmetries in the relationship.

Much of the so-called Global South has refused to condemn or sanction Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. These countries view the war as a European conflict that should not involve them, and many view Russia as a leader in the anti-imperialist movement. Russia is poised to become more active in Africa and the Middle East. The Israel-Hamas war has strengthened Russia’s position in much of the so-called Global South because Moscow supports Hamas and the Palestinians and has distanced itself from Israel, with which Putin had developed closer ties in the past two decades.

So, Putin’s fifth term will see increased domestic repression, continued aggression in Ukraine, continued close ties with China and Russia consolidating its position in much of the non-Western world.

Angela Stent is a senior advisor to the Center for Russia and Europe at USIP and the author of Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest.