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

As Russians prepare to give the president another six-year term this week, an ex-rival has gone from protest candidate to grotesque war hawk

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.