Kremlin: Russia’s democracy is ‘the best’ in the world

Vladimir Putin’s press secretary on Wednesday asserted that Russia’s democracy surpasses all others.

“We will no longer tolerate criticism of our democracy. Our democracy is the best,” Dmitry Peskov declared at a youth forum in Sochi on the Black Sea coast.

He made the brazen claim 19 days after the death in prison of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny; one week prior to a presidential election Putin is certain to win; and on the same day that Roman Ivanov, an independent journalist, was sentenced to seven years in prison for disseminating “false information” about the Russian military.

Ivanov faced charges for reporting on the Bucha massacre and other alleged war crimes by the Russian military during its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Just last summer, however, Peskov was more equivocal about the state of Russian democracy.

“Our presidential election is not really a democracy, it is a costly bureaucracy,” he remarked during an interview; he also predicted that Putin would receive 90 percent support in the election. He later claimed his words were misconstrued.

But Peskov’s blunt forecast now appears to be prescient, especially after the disqualification of the only two significant anti-war opposition candidates, Ekaterina Duntsova and Boris Nadezhdin, from the race.

Putin is now expected to face off against three candidates who have voluntarily abstained from criticizing him.