Unsaid was the fact that the Russian election was anything but fair. The most popular opposition leader challenging Putin, Alexei Navalny, had been barred from the ballot. Another opponent, Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin, had been relentlessly attacked by the state media, which Putin and his cronies controlled, and finished a distant second with 12 percent of the vote. It was, as the BBC dubbed it, the election Putin “could not lose.” Back in Washington, Trump monitored the election results and swelled with pride for Putin. He was impressed by the size of his victory.
