Russian President Vladimir Putin won a record 88% of Russia’s presidential elections on Sunday, exit polls and preliminary results showed, cementing his grip on power. Yet thousands of opponents put on a symbolic show. Protest at noon At the polls.
Early results mean PutinPutin, who came to power in 1999, looked set to easily win a new six-year term, surpassing Joseph Stalin as Russia’s longest-serving leader in more than 200 years.
Exit polls by the polling agency FOM showed that Putin won 87.8% of the vote, the highest vote share in Russia’s post-Soviet history. The Russian Center for Public Opinion Research (VCIOM) puts Putin’s support rate at 87%. The first official results show the polls are accurate.
The election comes just over two years after Putin ordered the worst European conflict since World War II. Invasion of Ukraine. He called it a “special military operation.”
The three-day election is looming over the shadow of war: Ukraine has repeatedly attacked Russian oil refineries, shelled Russian regions and tried to use proxy forces to breach Russia’s borders – moves that Putin said would be punished.
While Putin’s re-election is not in doubt, the former KGB spy hopes to show he has the overwhelming support of Russians, given his hold on Russia and the absence of any real challengers. National turnout exceeded 2018’s level of 67.5% just hours before polls closed at 1800 GMT.
Supporter of Putin’s most famous rival Alexei NavalnyDied in an arctic prison last month is called Russians took part in the “Noon Against Putin” protests to express their dissent against a leader they see as a corrupt dictator.
There are no independent statistics on how many of Russia’s 114 million voters took part in the opposition demonstrations, which were held amid extremely tight security involving tens of thousands of police and security officials.
Reuters reporters saw an increase in the flow of voters, especially young people, at polling stations in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg at noon, with hundreds or even thousands of people queuing.
Some said they were protesting, although there were no obvious signs to distinguish them from ordinary voters.
When midday arrived in Asia and Europe, hundreds of people gathered at polling stations at Russian diplomatic missions. Navalny’s widow Yulia appeared at the Russian Embassy in Berlin, and people cheered and shouted “Yuliya, Yulia”.
Exiled Navalny supporters have posted videos on YouTube of protests in Russia and abroad.
“People discover they are not alone”
“We show ourselves, the whole of Russia and the world that Putin is not Russia, but that Putin has seized power in Russia,” said Ruslan Shavidinov of the Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation. “Ours The victory is that we, the people, have conquered fear, conquered loneliness – and many have discovered that they are not alone.”
Leonid Volkov, an exiled Navalny aide who was attacked with a hammer in Vilnius last week, estimated that hundreds of thousands of people came to the polls in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and other cities to cast their votes.
At least 74 people were arrested across Russia on Sunday, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors a crackdown on dissent.
In recent days, sporadic protests have occurred in Russia, with some people setting fire to polling stations or pouring green dye into ballot boxes. Russian officials called them scumbags and traitors. Opponents posted photos of ballots marred by slogans insulting Putin.
But Navalny’s death leaves the opposition without its most powerful leader, with other major opposition figures abroad, in jail or dead.
The West views Putin as a dictator and a killer.U.S. President Joe Biden last month called him “Crazy whimpering.” The International Criminal Court in The Hague has accused him of war crimes related to kidnapping Ukrainian children, which the Kremlin denies.
Putin sees the war as part of a centuries-old struggle with a declining and decadent West, which he says has humiliated Russia by encroaching on Moscow’s sphere of influence after the Cold War.
“Putin’s task is now to imprint his worldview indelibly into the minds of the Russian political establishment” to ensure a like-minded successor, Nikolas Gvosdev, director of the National Security Program at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, told the Russia Matters project.
“For the U.S. administration, which hopes Putin’s Ukraine odyssey will end with a decisive setback for Moscow’s interests, this election is a reminder that Putin expects many more rounds to come in the geopolitical boxing ring.”
Russia’s election comes at a crossroads between what Western spy chiefs say is the war in Ukraine and the broader West, which Biden sees as a 21st-century struggle between democracies and authoritarian states.
Support for Ukraine has become entangled with domestic U.S. politics ahead of the November presidential election, which pits Biden against his predecessor, Donald Trump. Trump’s congressional Republicans have blocked military aid to Kyiv.
While Kiev has regained territory following the 2022 invasion, Russian forces have made gains recently after a failed counteroffensive in Ukraine last year.
The Biden administration is concerned that Putin could seize a larger share of Ukraine unless Kiev gains more support soon. CIA Director William Burns said this could embolden China.
Putin said the West is waging a hybrid war against Russia and that Western intelligence services and Ukraine are trying to disrupt the election.
There are also votes in Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014, and four other Ukrainian regions that Moscow has partially controlled and claimed since 2022. Kyiv considers the elections in the occupied territories illegal and invalid.
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