For the next three days, Russians are heading to the polls supposedly to choose the country’s next president. Except we already know, as do most Russians, who the winner will be. It is a foregone conclusion that after this weekend Vladimir Putin will win another six years in power.

But just because the Russian elections are a sham doesn’t mean they are insignificant. In fact, quite the opposite. This weekend marks a threshold in Putin’s grip on Russia: regardless of the margins by which he will claim to have won another presidential term, he will no longer legitimately hold power.

Putin’s fifth term will shortly see him overtake Stalin as the second longest ruler in Russia’s history

Putin’s current term as president is due to expire on 7 May. That Putin is even on the ballot this time around is thanks to an amendment to the constitution he illegally rammed through with the support of the Duma in 2020. That amendment gave him a personal exemption from the law stating that no Russian president is allowed to serve more than two consecutive terms in office. It was brought in at the last minute without parliamentary scrutiny and lumped together with 205 other proposed changes to the constitution, including changes to the minimum wage and pensions. These were then put to the Russian public in a ‘plebiscite’ designed to give the change legitimacy. Russians only had the choice of voting for the package as a whole with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Putin’s expected ‘victory’ after this weekend will mean he is set for a third, illegally engineered consecutive term in power – his fifth in total. On that basis, it’s time for the West, and Ukraine’s allies in particular, to call out Putin’s presidency for what it will be: illegitimate.

If anyone on the fence needed further convincing, you only need to look as far as the nadir to which Putin has dragged Russia since his decision to invade Ukraine two years ago. There is no longer an independent media or judiciary in the country and the parliament, as the 2020 amendments show, exists only to serve Putin’s interests. This election isn’t just taking place within Russia’s borders. The vote is also being held in the occupied territories of Ukraine that Russia has so far claimed in the war – a clear violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty.

The three candidates that made it onto the ballot against Putin were all picked and vetted by the Kremlin. Putin has taken every opportunity to crush meaningful opposition to his rule: the death of Alexei Navalny in an Arctic penal colony last month served as a painful reminder of this fact. There are still several hundred political prisoners who remain incarcerated in Russia, including well-known figures such as Vladimir Kara-Murza, but also countless people whose names have not made it into the western press.

The environment in which this vote is going ahead demonstrates Russia’s slide into dictatorship quite clearly. Declaring Putin an illegitimate leader on the world stage wouldn’t, of course, topple his regime overnight. But it would have tangible political and diplomatic consequences.

It has been no secret that the Russian sanctions brought in by the West since 2022 have been riddled with loopholes. Just this week, a Sky News investigation revealed that exports of British luxury cars worth hundreds of millions of pounds are still being sold to Russia via neighbouring countries such as Azerbaijan. Declaring Putin an illegitimate leader would provide added incentives for countries to close those loopholes: after all, it’s much more embarrassing to have ineffective sanctions against a country with an illegal leadership regime.

Putin’s popularity in Russia should not be overestimated, as the thousands of locals who lined up to pay their respects at Navalny’s grave after his funeral showed. Similarly, support for the war in Ukraine is far lower than it seems at first glance. Research suggests that just 17 per cent of Russians genuinely support it. Would Russian soldiers be just as willing to go to the Front and risk their lives for the war of a leader considered illegitimate on the world stage?

Declaring Putin illegitimate would send a clear signal to the Russian population, and notably the elite who have enriched themselves at home and abroad under his rule, that the blame for the war and Russia’s present isolation rests solely at his feet. The only way back to normal life for them is to get rid of him. Such a declaration by the West would also have potential ramifications for the transition to democracy for Russia: whoever Putin eventually nominates as his successor would also, by extension, be considered illegitimate.

As a report by the Henry Jackson Society on the topic points out, the debate over whether to declare Putin illegitimate after this election is not a new one. In November 2021, a proposal was brought before Congress in the US to do just this. Last October, the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe declared that Putin’s rule has ‘turned the Russian Federation into a de facto dictatorship’ and called for its member states to ‘cease all contact with him, except for humanitarian contact and in the pursuit of peace’. The move is also supported by opposition figures such as Navalny’s widow Yulia, Kara-Murza and Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

It may well be that, gradually, over the next few months, several Western states do come out to declare Putin ‘illegitimate’. The UK has the opportunity to lead from the front and be one of the first. This would add pressure on other, more hesitant Western allies to decisively take a stand, including countries like Germany who have been dragging their heels on every decision since the war in Ukraine began.

Putin’s fifth term will shortly see him overtake Stalin as the second longest ruler in Russia’s history. Only Peter the Great controlled the country for longer. It’s in the West’s interest to help the country free itself from the grip of yet another autocrat. Declaring Putin an illegitimate president would be a step towards achieving this.