Do you have first hand information from inside russia?
As far as I know, Putin is absolutely scared of a big scale protest. Which is why he reacted so harsh against the anti war protests so far.
And the russian system is still based on elections(with observers). Where fraud might happen, but if he loses popular support(which he still has), he will eventually loose the elections.
That actually make me chuckle. I do actually have first-hand information from inside Russia.
Election system is completely controlled by the government. Opposition members can't even register as a candidate, they are just rejected. And if that doesn't help, the well oiled machine of election fraud ensures that the 'right' candidate wins.
As for 'big scale protest', Putin has enormous internal army consisting of riot police, RosGuardia, and so-called titushkis, a class of combatants with criminal backgrounds.
And he has tanks, armoured vehicles and firearms, which he wouldn't hesitate to use against protesters. Good luck protesting against all of that.
"the well oiled machine of election fraud ensures that the 'right' candidate wins."
That machine only works with popular support (as it relys on individuals to manipulate counts etc.).
Which Putin has, as many russians are crying for the loss of their empire and would like Putin to restore the former glory. If they realize, that the new glory will be more misery, Putin will be gone. That might happen very fast, if the war goes wrong for him.
Ok smart guy, where was your wisdom the last 10 years while I and my friends were opposing Putin and his election fraud machine?
But seriously, you don't have even a remote idea how this works.
Putin's party popularity is around 25-30% now, but it has the majority of seats in parliament. But at the same time, he controls 100% of seats in the parliament. How? Because every other party permitted to take part in elections is controlled by him too!
The only way you can 'protest' him in elections is by concentrating opposition voters to vote against his main party, but even his main candidate fails, the other one is made from the same kind of shit.
And as for 'independent observers', ... It's hard even to begin describing how such observer can be simply severely beaten by several gopniks at the government's request, or thrown away from the prescint by the police for 'disturbing order' (by yelling trying to stop blatant electon fraud)
I am not debating, that there is election fraud, nor that Putin increasingly takes the role of a untouchable tsar.
"The only way you can 'protest' him in elections is by concentrating opposition voters to vote against his main party"
But I am aware of this tactic and know that in some areas this brought some embarassement for the established candidate and at least made fraud obvious.
And polls are probably hard to do accurate in this climate, but wikipedia cites some other numbers for Putins popularity in general. Allmost never under 50%
I was talking about his party's popularity, which had plummeted to the level that party members obscure their membership in it in their official materials or go as 'independent' candidates.
Putin personally seems to enjoy a slightly higher rating, currenlty at about 50%, but distributed very unevenly. His popularity among educated urban youth is at about 10-20% - and you have to take into account vast 'electoral sultanates' in the form of national republics like Chechnya, Dagestan or Tatarstan who all give him almost 100% of support thanks to tight control over both voting and polling.
Anyway, by all accounts, this war and inevitable harsh sanctions is going to cost him support instead of boosting it.
Yes, but you wish for safety and also recommend downloading some unspecified mesh network software to organize protest. That is extremely dangerous, if you don't know what you are doing. And I know a bit about IT security and I have no idea, what software I can recommend to safely organize a protest in russia.
