Quote Originally Posted by goji View Post
I see Russia has some local elections now. I wonder if that's why Putin is so keen to make it look like Russia is leading the way with vaccine licensing ? When in reality he's just made it available before the phase 3 trial.
No. For sure no. Here elections are going every year at the second Sunday of September. All: local (municipal), town/city (mayors and councils) , regional (oblast') and republican parliaments and governors (86 in total).

Putin himself does not support any of them (at least not does it openly). He is caring only about his approving rate, which is historically low, but still is above 50% (after Crimea it was >80%). He lost a lot because of unpopular pension reforms., but his rating is still above 50% because of peoples income: at time of Putin (at past 20 years) average personal income here grew over 4 time. Here is popular proverb, direct translation from Russian: "Refrigerators are still voting for Putin" (means full stocked with food refrigerators at homes, they were empty just 20 years ago, and people still remember it).