Putins Kremlin gremlins are setting up a poll-temkin village across Russia in this weeks elections

In keeping with Russia’s imperial history, President Vladimir Putin will spend the next week erecting a countrywide Potemkin Village.On Sept.18-20, the man wanted by The Hague for war crimes will put on a sly smirk and attempt to fool the world with the country’s “elections.” All 450 seats of the Duma — Russia’s legislative body — will ostensibly be up for grabs, but the outcome is preordained.

It will be a grotesque, choiceless farce.The Kremlin will manufacture the numbers; in all likelihood, it already has.Russians will show up at the polling stations and turn in their ballots, but will be choosing nothing other than humiliation and indignity of living in a participatory autocracy.

The majority of seats will go to United Russia, Putin’s war-loving party.Even the mildest dissent proved too much: Yabloko, Russia’s only registered anti-war party, was barred from running.The English language lacks a word for the obscenity about to unfold.

So let’s coin one: call it a poll-temkin.All facade, no substance.To vote is a revered right and duty of citizens worthy of self-rule.

This is one place where Ukraine and Russia have long differed.In December 1991, as Soviet occupation of Ukraine drew to an end, over half a million people, or two-thirds of eligible Crimeans, turned out for the referendum to restore Ukraine’s independence.

More than 54% said yes.Russified by Moscow after the mass deportation of its native Kirimli population, Crimea chose a free Ukraine when its political will actually mattered.Two decades later, Russia came knocking again.

Or, rather, kicked down the door.In 2014, troops in unmarked uniforms seized Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula, and Moscow hurriedly staged its own new “referendum” at the barrel of a gun.

The invaders did not even offer Crimeans the option of remaining part of Ukraine.The result? An astonishing 97% supposedly “voted” for Russian reunification, on a turnout of 83%.Regrettably, these numbers surviv...