Putin’s presidential election rivals aren’t even pretending to put up a fight

“I don’t dream of beating Putin. What’s the point?" Leonid Slutsky, the leader of Russia’s Liberal-Democratic Party, or LDPR, said after registering his candidacy in December. Andrei Bogdanov from the Russian Party of Freedom and Justice was more blunt when asked if he can win: “Of course not. Do I look like an idiot?"

Nearly two years into the invasion of Ukraine, polls show Putin is assured of victory in a vote that will give him six more years at Russia’s helm and could make him Moscow’s longest-running leader since Stalin.

Billboards promoting his campaign have gone up across Russia and in occupied parts of Ukraine including Mariupol, the city Russian forces pulverized before they seized it in 2022.

Putin’s biggest potential challengers have either fled or are locked up in prison. Criticism of his war in Ukraine is rarely heard. Indeed, his bet that Russia can outlast the West’s support for Ukraine appears to be paying off as political leaders in Europe and the U.S. bicker over aid to Kyiv, while Russia’s economy steps up production of the arms and ammunition needed to sustain the war.

So why do Putin’s opponents bother to run, and why does he hold the election at all?

“It’s a question of principle," says Tatyana Stanovaya, a Russian political analyst in Paris who maintains contacts with people close to the Kremlin. “He wants to reassure himself that people support him and he needs it to show the world that he still benefits from huge social support."

Not that the Russian leader opens up the field to just anyone.

Over the years, Putin has assembled a political system that squeezes out rivals seen as posing a threat but permits—and at times encourages—a handful of contenders who uphold a facade of fair elections while ultimately backing his line on the issues that the Kremlin cares about most.

It took shape after Putin first came to power in 2000, when he set about creating what political-science majors call a power vertical, where different levels of the political hierarchy answer ultimately to him. Key to this was something the Kremlin spin-doctors dubbed “managed democracy," a form of governance that maintains elections while doing everything to determine their outcome.

For it to work, Putin requires a coterie of Kremlin-approved parties that participate in Russian elections to uphold a veneer of democracy. Some have greater scope to push their own policy ideas, so long as they don’t threaten Putin’s hold on power. Others are entirely subordinate to the state.

“From Putin’s point of view this is a healthy, responsible and constructive opposition that understands the rules," said Stanovaya. “But they are part of the vertical, and they are not really independent."

For years, those groups existed alongside what Russian political analysts call the “non-systemic opposition," including the anti-Putin movement spearheaded by Alexei Navalny. When he made a failed bid for the presidency in 2018, Navalny oversaw a Russia-wide network of political offices that organized street protests and nurtured local politicians who sometimes won unlikely victories.

By late 2021, months before Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, this actual opposition had been decimated, with its members fleeing a sweeping political crackdown.

Navalny, Putin’s main political rival and critic, was convicted on what he says were trumped up charges and is now serving a 19-year sentence in an Arctic prison colony. His aides and acolytes are living in exile as they seek in vain to influence events inside Russia from abroad, squabbling with other opposition factions and unable to unite as a single political force.

“These are not elections," Leonid Volkov, a top aide to Navalny now based in Europe, said about the coming vote. “They’re Putin’s public relations show." He described the candidates allowed to run against Putin as “sparring partners tasked with getting the smallest percentage of votes."

Even the authorized opposition appears to be confused about what it is supposed to be doing.

Candidates fielded by the main Kremlin-approved parties have publicly stated they won’t criticize Putin. One says there is no point registering candidates to oppose him. Another issued a statement in Putin’s support and backed out of the race.

After an independent candidate, former journalist Yekaterina Duntsova, was in late December banned from running in the elections because of what the electoral commission said were procedural flaws, she appealed to one of the permitted parties, Yabloko, to run as its candidate. Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky rebuffed her, saying in a radio interview that there was no point.

Yavlinsky is a veteran politician who helped oversee Russia’s transition to a market economy in the 1990s and contested the presidential election on three occasions. In the 2018 vote, he was skeptical of his chances but said he ran to show people that real political competition is possible.

“Yes, politics was on the decline, it was subdued. But there was an opportunity to say important things," he said in a phone interview. “That option is now gone, and it won’t come back."

Despite their tightly managed nature, analysts say elections are important to Putin as a way to legitimize his continued rule. He can use the result he garners as evidence that he retains popular backing in Russia, wielding it against potential rivals and citing it at international summits.

And for many of the Potemkin candidates, taking part is a way to make a name for themselves.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a firebrand nationalist who in 1992 founded the right-wing LDPR and led it until his death in April 2022, contested six presidential elections and earned himself a reputation as a foil for Putin.

Socialite and TV presenter Ksenia Sobchak ran against Putin in the 2018 vote while defending his reputation and calling on Russians not to “demonize" him. On the campaign trail she described the election as “fake" and came in fourth amid widespread accusations that she was a Kremlin plant.

But some approved candidates have given Putin a run for their money. In 2018, farming tycoon Pavel Grudinin amassed so much grassroots support after his nomination by the Communist Party that the authorities moved to rein him in with a propaganda campaign on state TV and online aimed at discrediting him. His ratings plummeted. Putin won with 77.5% of the vote. Grudinin came in second with 11.9%, and Sobchak got less than 2%.

In an echo of Grudinin’s campaign, Russians have in recent days lined up in the cold to leave signatures for antiwar candidate Boris Nadezhdin, whose surname roughly translates to “Man of Hope." Analysts say that at a time when criticizing the military or speaking out against the invasion of Ukraine can easily lead to jail time, an endorsement of Nadezhdin is the closest thing to protesting the war.

But Stanovaya says that wartime conditions and Putin’s secure hold on power have diminished the Kremlin’s appetite for risk. Few expect Nadezhdin, who has long been in the state’s good graces with appearances on television talk-shows where he plays the token liberal, to be allowed onto the ballot.

Election officials have questioned the legitimacy of his support, and after he submitted his signatures on Thursday, state TV aired multiple reports sowing doubts about their validity

Even before she was barred from contesting the vote in December, Duntsova carefully hedged her words. She now says protests are pointless, won’t comment on Navalny, and says she doesn’t see herself as part of the opposition. She says those approved to run against Putin are well aware that they are pawns in a game.

“They used to at least say they want to win, now they don’t even talk about it," she said. “They understand they’re part of the system."

Slutsky, the current LDPR leader, is at least attempting to campaign. Last week, he launched a fleet of LDPR-branded buses to fan out across the country and answered voters’ questions about his platform.

Slutsky is probably on safe ground, though.

Calling for a swift victory in Ukraine, he may even be more supportive of the war than Putin’s United Russia party. After his nomination in December, he tied himself in knots explaining his candidacy.

“I don’t call on people to vote against Putin," he told reporters that month. “The president will win by the largest ever margin."

Write to Matthew Luxmoore at matthew.luxmoore@wsj.com