Sitting down to write about the siege on democracy while images of Russians voting appear on screens is poetic justice. We call the cardboard stage sarcastically organized by Vladimir Putin's regime legislative elections. The new tsar has been at the center of Russian power for 27 years thanks to methods learned in the KGB. The systematic elimination of dissent, of civil and political opposition, and of free media, along with a predatory instinct, have turned him into a totalitarian leader who swims in corruption. After internally drowning any symptom of democratic development and wiping out the oligarchs and the opposition, Putin has been waging a war against Ukraine for four years, with Chinese acquiescence, which he is now expanding to the whole of Europe. The advantage of totalitarians is that social control has no costs. Especially for a paranoid and icy mind like that of the Russian president, who is determined to turn into reality the territorial expansion that only connects with a glorious past in his imagination.