Welcome to this week’s Great Game, where we’ll cover the Russian election as well as the ongoing turmoil in Nigeria.

Putin in total control

Vladimir Putin won a “landslide” win over the weekend with almost 90% of the votes. That was completely as expected and really no news there. Rather, I’m watching the protests or lack there of in Russia as a gauge of how many and where dissidents to the Putin regime exists.

The supporters of the deceased opposition leader Alexey Navalny urged people to show up at their voting stations at noon Sunday. A very subtle way of protesting that’s very hard to suppress for the authorities. After all – people were going to vote and perhaps even voted for Putin, so how could the police strike down on that?