Putin is said to have won 87.3 per cent of the presidential vote in the poll — but it was a ludicrous sham.

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The Kremlin despot’s strongest political opponent Alexei Navalny died — or was murdered — in a Siberian prison camp last month.

And Putin then made sure candidate Boris Nadezhdin, who believed he was polling as high as 30 per cent, was refused a place on the ballot paper.

Although he had never personally criticised Putin, Nadezhdin was campaigning against the war in Ukraine.

The Russian electoral system is heavily weighted against free and fair voting, which was enough to see him disqualified from taking part.

So what can Britain and the West expect from another six years — at least — of Putin?

Well, more warmongering and the suppression of his own people.

Putin’s regime is at least as brutal as Stalin’s.

The only difference is that in Stalin’s purges people were just taken out and shot.

In Putin’s purges, opponents are disgraced and sent away, they’re not murdered in quite the numbers as they were under Stalin.

But inside Russia the sense of oppression is as great as it was in Stalin’s days.

Now there is only one direction Putin can go in — he has to keep suppressing the opposition and chasing his opponents both at home and abroad.

Putin will believe his 87.3 per cent in the presidential vote — even if it was won unfairly — will give him fresh legitimacy with his people.

Dictators always do.

So he thinks it gives him licence to double down on and win his war with Ukraine.

His only other option is to exit the conflict on terms very favourable to Russia, which will mean a huge land grab in Ukraine’s east and of its southern coast.

Putin will get another six-year term in 2030 unless he is pushed back and loses in Ukraine.

The Ukrainians can achieve victory if we in the West give them the right weapons and ammunition, it’s as simple as that.

The issue is that we’re either too short-sighted or just plain frightened — in the case of Germany — to do so.

Britain currently spends 2.2 per cent of our GDP on defence, down from almost four per cent at the end of the Cold War in 1991.

Anyone who knows anything about defence will tell you it has to rise to at least three per cent and possibly higher.

The US is by far the biggest military donor to Ukraine, so far around £36billion.

And most of that is spent in the US on armaments, giving a real boost to the arms industry there.

Suppress and chase

If they just keep up that spending rate, Russia can be defeated and it would take them off the front line for a couple of generations.

That would free the Americans to concentrate on China, which is what they say they want to do.

But fresh military aid has been stalled by Congress, and if Donald Trump is elected president in November it may be slashed altogether.

If Trump makes good on suggestions he might pull the US out of Nato, then Europe will have to step up to the plate if it wants to keep Putin at arm’s length.

Britain will have a huge role in Europe’s defence if the US disengages.

Europe should be re-arming and spending more on defence now — but it is not. That seems foolhardy.

Putin is trying to recreate the old Russian Empire, so he would like to seize part of the Baltic States — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — part of Finland, and all of Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia.

Then the shadow of a great Russia looming over the rest of Europe would mean that countries couldn’t make independent decisions without reference to what Moscow thinks.

Brittle rule

Putin wants to dominate the agenda of the rest of Europe by having a great power overshadowing it.

Yet for all the talk of Putin’s strength, his rule may be more brittle than it outwardly seems.

At some point I believe there will likely be a revolt against him, whether it is in this presidential term or after 2030.

The Russian economy is beginning to suffer.

Russians are now paying for this war in a way they weren’t in its first months.

For that reason, I believe Russia’s oligarchs will eventually unite against him.

There is no sign of it yet, but I believe it will come.

What can Britain do to help?

Make sure Russia loses its war in Ukraine.

Then the Russian people can do the rest.

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