‘I considered him a decent person’: how Putin’s puppets help to dupe Russia’s voters

Vladimir Putin’s image is flown on a flag outside the Kremlin in Moscow before this week’s presidential election. Photograph: Gripas Yuri/Abaca/PA Images

Two election cycles ago, in 2012, Sergei Mironov was loudly playing the role of opposition to Russia’s ruling party, wearing the white ribbon of the protest movement in the State Duma and claiming his run against Vladimir Putin was “serious”.

If made president, he said, he would even appoint the now deceased opposition leader Alexei Navalny as the head of Russia’s accounts chamber as an anti-corruption measure.