With ‘don’t mention the war!’ the order of the day, it felt as if Vladimir Putin’s message to his people this year was haunted by the ghost of Basil Fawlty.

The New Year’s message is a Soviet and then Russian tradition dating back to the 1970s. It is watched widely across the country, sometimes with reverence, often with irony, but nonetheless something of a ritual observed almost regardless of class, location or political orientation.

Aired just before midnight in each of the country’s 11 time zones, before the chimes of the Kremlin belltower and the national anthem, in the past it was an opportunity for Putin to try and present himself as the caring father of the household. It usually included a summary of the previous year’s successes – and occasionally, where absolutely necessary, a mention of tragedies – followed by an optimistic look forward and some unconvincing injunction for everyone to cherish and care for each other.

Last year’s message though was very different. The first since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it was recorded not from the traditional vantage of a balcony in front of Red Square but from the headquarters of the Southern Military District in Rostov-on-Don, where the war is being managed, before serried ranks of servicemen and women in camouflage. Putin spoke for longer than usual, more angrily than usual, eschewing the usual topics for attempts to justify the ‘difficult but necessary decisions’ behind the invasion. As a result, there was considerable speculation this year as to whether he would revert to tradition or continue in this new, martial vein.

This time, although he was back to his usual perch and didn’t even mention the war explicitly, it nonetheless loomed over everything Putin said.

There was no summary of the past year – how could there be, with war, sanctions and all they entail? Instead, along with assertions about the unity of the ‘multinational people of Russia… one country, one big family’ able to deal with the ‘most complex problems’ of the moment, there were only painfully vague allusions to the war, with Russians having ‘repeatedly proved that we can solve the most difficult tasks and will never back down because there is no force that can separate us.’ Even though security concerns mean Moscow has again cancelled the traditional fireworks and concert on Red Square, the current crisis became simply ‘the historical stage through which Russia is passing,’ while the soldiers shivering in their muddy trenches received bland thanks for ‘all those who are on duty, on the front line of the fight for truth and justice. You are our heroes. Our hearts are with you.’ One passing reference to finding common cause ‘in work and in battle,’ was presumably intended to be taken metaphorically, not literally.

This was a jarring change of tone even just from his recent performance less than three weeks ago, when he used his marathon press conference and town hall explicitly to reiterate his most hawkish takes on the war. So what changed?

The answer is that the campaign for the March presidential elections has started in earnest. There is no doubt, of course, that Putin will win by a landslide: careful selection of the field to ensure no meaningful or charismatic opponents, the state’s stranglehold on the media, and extensive vote-rigging will ensure that. The presidential administration’s political technologists currently seem to be planning for Putin to win around 80 per cent of the vote on a 70-plus per cent turnout.

With such elections, the real question is just how much effort the state will have to put into muzzling or demoralising any opposition while revving up its support base to try and keep the gap between results and reality as narrow as possible. Too obviously crooked an outcome will not only defeat the purpose of this ritual piece of political theatre, but potentially trigger protests, as happened in 2011-12.

Beyond handouts to the usual constituencies – Putin’s announcement that 2024 would be the ‘year of the family’ was as good as a promise of new benefits – the strategy seems to be to make this the ‘there is no alternative’ election. In other words, a dull one, more like a Soviet-style civic event than a real contest. The two most likely disruptors, the liberal Ekaterina Duntsova and the ‘turbo-patriot’ Igor Girkin, have both been kept off the ballot by procedural shenanigans and the remaining candidates are clearly not intending to put up any kind of a fight. The Communists’ Nikolai Kharitonov has already declared he will not criticise Putin.

War? Nothing to be done about that. Economic hardship? Better days are just around the corner. International isolation? We don’t need the West. Above all, Putin’s campaign team want a low-key campaign, in which the war will feature as little as possible. Putin’s New Year message was a harbinger of the blandness to come.