Exit polls suggested Sunday that Vladimir Putin has won another six-year term as Russian president, clearing the path for the tough former spy to become the longest-serving Russian leader in more than 200 years.
The 71-year-old’s victory was never in doubt, with all of his major opponents killed, imprisoned, or exiled, and authorities cracking down on those who publicly criticize the Kremlin or its military incursion in Ukraine.
After voting closed in Russia’s westernmost territory of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, the government-run VTsIOM pollster predicted Putin would easily win with 87 percent of the vote.
The three-day election was highlighted by an increase in lethal Ukrainian bombardments, pro-Kyiv sabotage organizations infiltrating Russian territory, and damage at polling places.
The Kremlin had framed the poll as an opportunity for Russians to lend their weight behind a full-scale military action in Ukraine, where voting is also taking place in Russian-controlled territory.
Kyiv and its allies denounced the vote as a fraud, and President Volodymyr Zelensky referred to Putin as a “dictator” who was “drunk from power”.
“There is no evil he will not commit to prolong his personal power,” Zelensky said in a message on social media.
Opposition dismisses vote
Poland, a Ukrainian ally, claimed the poll was not “legal, free, and fair,” according to a foreign ministry statement.
EU chief Charles Michel congratulated Putin sarcastically on his “landslide victory” on the first day of voting on Friday.
Allies of the late Alexei Navalny, Putin’s most prominent rival who died in an Arctic prison last month, had urged voters to storm voting booths at noon and destroy their ballots as part of a “Noon Against Putin” protest.
His wife, Yulia Navalnaya, was greeted by supporters in Berlin with flowers and cheers. She stated that she had written her late husband’s name on her ballot after voting at the Russian consulate.
Some voters in Moscow appeared to heed Navalny’s appeal, telling AFP that they had come to commemorate his legacy and express their opposition in the only legal way imaginable.
“I came to show that there are many of us, that we exist, that we are not some insignificant minority,” said Artem Minasyan, a 19-year-old student at a polling site in central Moscow.
Leonid Volkov, a top aide to the late opposition leader who was recently attacked in Lithuania after fleeing political persecution in Russia, disputed Moscow’s announced results.
“The percentages drawn for Putin have, of course, not the slightest relation to reality,” Volkov, Navalny’s former chief of staff, remarked on Twitter.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, meanwhile, hailed Putin on his “splendid victory” well before the official results were published.
State-run television also commended Russians for their “colossal support for the president” and the “unbelievable consolidation” of the country behind its leader.
Tributes to Navalny
At Navalny’s tomb in a Moscow cemetery, AFP reporters discovered ruined voting papers with his name written across them on a pile of flowers.
Navalny had sparked enormous protests and attempted to run against Putin in the 2018 election, touring Russia to rally support, but his candidacy was denied.
“We live in a country where expressing our opinions might land us in jail. So when I come to events like this and see so many people, I realize that we are not alone,” Regina, 33, explained.
In the early days of polling, there were numerous acts of protest, including the arrest of Russians accused of pouring dye into vote boxes or committing arson assaults.
Any public criticism in Russia has been heavily punished since the beginning of Moscow’s operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and the authorities have repeatedly warned against electoral protests.
The OVD-Info police monitoring group announced that at least 80 people had been jailed in nearly 20 Russian cities for election-related protests.
The spike in Ukrainian strikes against Russia has continued unabated, with the Russian defense ministry reporting at least eight regions struck overnight and Sunday morning.
Fatal border attacks
Following the barrage, three airports serving the city temporarily ceased operations, while a drone attack in the south caused a fire at an oil refinery.
Multiple rounds of shelling killed two people in Russia’s border district of Belgorod, including a male and a 16-year-old girl, and injured 12 others, the territory’s governor said Sunday.
Eight additional people were injured in subsequent bombardments as polls closed, he said.
The governor had already ordered the closure of retail malls and schools in Belgorod and the surrounding area for two days due to the strikes.
According to Moscow-installed officials, “kamikaze drones” set fire to a polling center in the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia area of Ukraine, where voting is also taking place.
‘Difficult period’
Putin, a former KGB operative, has been in power since December 31, 1999, and is expected to maintain control of the country until at least 2030.
If he completes another Kremlin term, he will be the longest-serving Russian leader since Catherine the Great in the 18th century.
In a pre-election speech, Putin said Russia was going through a “difficult period” and urged the country to remain “united and self-confident.”
On Monday, a concert will be held on Red Square to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Russia’s takeover of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, with the event also serving as a victory party for Putin.