Ukraine

Even though the Russians know that the elections are rigged, they desperately want to keep up the appearance that their country is the best and most democratic, and not at all an evil empire ruled by a crazy dictator. That is why they care so much about keeping up the election show.

Also, the dominant mafia group that runs Russia uses elections to prove to other competing mafia groups that they are still the strongest, able to manipulate millions of people without any protest.

They're picking between pretense of legitimacy and no pretense of legitimacy, and they can afford it. It also delivers just the right amount of soul-crushing with virtually no risk of protest.

I spoke to some Russians I got to know about this actually (they moved west quite a while before the invasion, met them through work).

They said one of the things that shocked them both when they moved to Western Europe was that people actually cared about elections. The thing is: Everyone knows that Russian elections are rigged, while the government pretends they're not. The Russian people see this and assume that everywhere else is the same. These Russians I met were young, intelligent people, but they had gone their whole life believing that everyone did elections the same way as them. When they heard of elections in other countries, they thought people were just as apathetic as them, because of course they're rigged, it's the most natural thing in the world. Thus: their legitimate shock when seeing people actually care about elections, and vote because they know/believe it matters.

This opened my eyes to an important reason the Russian government keeps up the "facade": It's essentially a brain washing/gaslighting tactic to make it seem like everyone else holding elections is also rigging it.

Oh, and, more specifically, right after the elections they'll 146% stop pretending, so people are also looking towards a major life quality drop on all fronts. =)