To a large extent, the concept of an "election" as a driver of people's wills is a Western construct. In China, for example, people's wills are directly expressed my complaining to the government. For example, we saw that the government tore down it's COVID-19 restrictions following mass protests and that they shut down the tutoring economy following a huge number of complaints. Meanwhile, the US is notorious for claiming things during elections and turning around to deliver nothing with no system of recourse for voters.

This isn't to say that China has a free and liberal democracy, but it is to say that a free election does not make a free democracy and that the ability to impact government policy does not require elections to be free.

Of course, none of this is relevant because Russia's government doesn't listen to their citizens lol.