WITH three months left until parliamentary elections, United Russia, Russia’s ruling party, has come up with a new slogan: Vazhno Vybrat’ Pravil’no. The message (“It is vital to choose correctly”) is an ominous reminder to voters that some choices may be “wrong”, and its acronym—VVP—hints at the correct one: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. The party is not using his image in its campaign, for fear of dragging down his popularity.

In the last parliamentary elections in 2011, when a majority voted against United Russia, the Kremlin tampered with the results. This sparked mass protests in large cities. More than 100,000 people took to the streets of central Moscow clamouring for “Russia without Putin”. Alexei Navalny, a popular blogger, was transformed into a viable opposition leader. Mr Putin’s hold on power never looked shakier.

Since then, the Kremlin has been doing everything in its power to prevent a repeat. Anyone with an independent position has been “sent a signal that it will end badly”, says Maria Lipman, editor of Counterpoint, a journal. Opposition leaders have been systematically trashed by the state media. Russian nationalist movements that once opposed the government have been co-opted or crushed. NGOs, including election-monitoring groups, have been declared “foreign agents” and forced to close. The remains of the independent media have come under attack. Many of the activists of the protests in 2011 and 2012 have been pushed out of the country. Some will watch the vote from prison. Boris Nemtsov, the most respected and recognised Russian liberal, has been murdered.

The screws are being tightened everywhere. The Duma passed a law last year allowing the police to open fire on crowds. Pro-government vigilantes have stepped up attacks on opposition leaders. (Mr Navalny was recently beaten up by thugs dressed as Cossacks.)

Ideologically, Mr Putin’s expansionist nationalism, expressed in the annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine, has trumped the demands for modernisation voiced by the protesters five years ago. Many of those who once cheered for reform have embraced the new imperialism. “There is no doubt that our support base has been reduced,” says Mr Navalny.

Pick a candidate, any candidate

The Kremlin has also learned the risks of blatant rigging. To give these elections a veneer of respectability, Mr Putin replaced Vladimir Churov, the too-obviously-loyal head of the election commission (nicknamed “the magician”, for his ability to make troublesome results disappear) with Ella Pamfilova, a more respected human-rights ombudsman. Ballot-stuffing will be unnecessary: the only serious opposition, Mr Navalny’s Progress Party, has been barred from registering.

Big protests are unlikely. Polls show Russians are unhappy with the faltering economy but are less willing to wave placards than they were five years ago, when growth was solid. “Dissatisfaction is breeding apathy,” says Lev Gudkov, head of the Levada Centre, an independent pollster.

But although elections have been rendered meaningless, a real fight for Russia’s future is unfolding in the corridors of the Kremlin. Technocrats are trying to win Mr Putin over by persuading him that their economic reforms will help him hold on to power. Mikhail Dmitriev, a former deputy economics minister, notes a strong demand within the Kremlin for deregulation and reduction of bureaucracy.

The technocratic camp took heart when Mr Putin appointed Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister, to head the Centre for Strategic Research, a think-tank charged with devising reforms. Mr Kudrin’s influence, says Mr Dmitriev, is greater than any minister’s. The technocrats also include German Gref, a former minister who now heads Sberbank, Russia’s largest state-owned bank.