Russians voted yesterday in parliamentary elections overshadowed by last Friday's suicide bomb attack on a train close to Chechnya. The results of the poll will determine the country's political future by influencing presidential elections due next year.
Putin puts the blame for Friday's attack firmly on Chechen separatists. United Russia, the party which supports him, may gain from a sympathy vote, even though the atrocity exposes his failure to resolve Russia's security crisis.
The election campaign has been dominated by Mr Putin's promises to put an end to corruption, reinforce law and order and reassert Russian pride and dignity in world affairs. It has been biased in his favour by manipulation of the state-dominated media, widespread reports of electoral fraud and the use of public administrative resources by the United Russia party. As a result, turnout is expected to be relatively low, since many voters are cynical about such abuses and do not believe they can genuinely affect the country's future by going to the polls. The Duma is seen as an ineffective legislature excessively subject to executive power.
Mr Putin scored a populist stroke ahead of the elections by jailing Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the billionaire boss of Yukos, Russia's leading oil firm and several of his associates. This move has been welcomed in opinion polls as fulfilling Mr Putin's undertaking to tackle corruption, which he and his supporters pin on the group of fabulously rich businessmen who grew wealthy during the privatisation of state property in the mid-1990s. So far there is no indication that privatisation will be reversed. Rather the ruling group around Mr Putin fears political competition, since these new business oligarchs have already funded opposition parties and aspire to stand against Mr Putin next year, or more likely in 2008. Unless the constitution is changed Mr Putin cannot stand for a third time then; many Russian commentators believe he craves a two-thirds majority in the new parliament to allow him achieve such a change.
The election has therefore become an occasion to look more closely at Russia's trajectory under Mr Putin's rule. The major motifs are a continuing strong state, a weak and fragile civil society, a dominant leader, an emphasis on order and authority rather than rights, a ruthless war against Chechen separatism, and a desire to re-establish Russia's influence with former Soviet states and assert its role as a global power. Russia's special characteristics are emphasised, and it should not be assumed that Mr Putin aspires to a thoroughgoing westernisation.
Nevertheless the enlarged European Union has much to gain from developing a constructive relationship with Russia. This would help reassure the new EU member-states that the EU's new borders are not politically closed. It would give Mr Putin more incentive to co-operate with the EU on such issues as the Kyoto treaty, and it would provide a continuing focus for political and social reform in Russia.