Putin wins Russian presidential election with 88%: first official results

The election comes just over two years after Putin sparked Europe’s deadliest conflict.

Moscow:

Russian President Vladimir Putin won Russia’s post-Soviet election in a record landslide on Sunday, cementing his grip on power despite thousands of opponents turning out at noon. Protests were held at polling stations, and the United States said the vote was neither free nor fair.

For Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who first came to power in 1999, the result was intended to emphasize to the West that its leaders will have to face an emboldened Russia, both in war and in peace. .

Preliminary results mean Putin, 71, will easily secure a new six-year term, which would make him surpass Joseph Stalin as Russia’s longest-serving leader in more than 200 years.

Putin won 87.8% of the vote, the highest share in Russia’s post-Soviet history, according to exit polls from pollster Fondation Opinion (FOM). The Russian Center for Public Opinion Research (VCIOM) gave Putin an approval rating of 87%. The first official results suggest the polls are accurate.

“Given Mr. Putin’s jailing of political opponents and preventing others from running against him, it is clear that this election was neither free nor fair,” a White House National Security Council spokesman said.

The election comes just over two years after Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine that sparked the worst European conflict since World War II. 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 breach Russia’s borders with proxy forces – a move Putin said would be punished.

Although Putin’s re-election is in doubt given his control over Russia and the absence of any real challengers, the former KGB spy hopes to show he has overwhelming support from Russians. Election officials said national turnout was 74.22% as polls closed at 1800 GMT, exceeding the 2018 level of 67.5%.

Supporters of Alexei Navalny, Putin’s most prominent rival, who died in an Arctic prison last month, have called on Russians to take part in “Noon Against Putin” protests to express their disapproval of the dictator they describe as corrupt dissent from their leaders.

There are no independent statistics on how many of Russia’s 114 million voters took part in the opposition demonstrations, which were held under 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 lining up.

Some said they were protesting, although there were few visible 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 to cheers and chants of “Yuliya, Yulia.”

Exiled Navalny supporters have posted videos on YouTube of protests in Russia and abroad.

“People discover they are not alone”

“We showed 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. “Our victory lies in , we the people have conquered fear, we have 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. US President Joe Biden called him a “crazy SOB” last month. The International Criminal Court in The Hague has accused him of war crimes for abducting Ukrainian children, which the Kremlin denies.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that Putin wanted to rule forever. “This imitation of an election has no legitimacy and cannot be. This man should face trial in The Hague. That’s what we have to ensure.”

Putin described the war as part of a centuries-old struggle with a declining and decadent West, which he said had humiliated Russia by encroaching on Moscow’s sphere of influence after the Cold War.

“Putin’s task now is to indelibly imprint his worldview into the minds of the Russian political establishment” to ensure there is a A like-minded successor. project.

“For a U.S. administration hoping that 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 wider 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, whose Republicans in Congress 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 was waging a hybrid war against Russia and that Western intelligence services and Ukraine were trying to disrupt the election.

There are also votes in Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014, and four other Ukrainian regions partially controlled by Russia and claimed since 2022. Kyiv considers the elections held in the occupied territories illegal and invalid.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)