PUTIN WINS RUSSIAN PRESIDENTIAL POLL, SECURES ANOTHER SIX-YEAR TERM || PUTIN WINS 88% OF VOTES

Putin Wins Russian Presidential Poll, Secures Another Six-Year Term.
Putin wins 88% of votes in election where opposition was banned, early results show.
Victory for the 71-year-old was never in doubt, with all his major opponents dead, in prison or exiled.
Vladimir Putin has secured another six-year term as Russian president, exit polls showed Sunday, paving the way for the hardline former spy to become the longest-serving Russian leader in more than 200 years.

Summary:
Putin wins 88% of vote - exit poll.
New term gives Putin six more years in power.
War hung over the election.
Ukraine strikes Russia with drones and rockets.
Thousands come out for 'noon against Putin' protest.

Victory for the 71-year-old was never in doubt, with all his major opponents dead, in prison or exiled, and authorities waging an unrelenting crackdown on those who publicly oppose the Kremlin or its military offensive on Ukraine.

The government-run VTsIOM pollster projected that Putin had sailed to an easy victory with 87 percent of the vote after polls closed in Russia’s western-most region of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea.

The three-day election was marked by a surge in deadly Ukrainian bombardments, incursions into Russian territory by pro-Kyiv sabotage groups and vandalism at polling stations.

The Kremlin had cast the election as moment for Russians to throw their weight behind the full-scale military operation in Ukraine, where voting is also being staged in Russian-controlled territories.

Kyiv and its allies slammed the vote as a sham and President Volodymyr Zelensky lashed out at 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.

MOSCOW, March 17, 2024 (FIRST BROADCAST) - President Vladimir Putin won a record post-Soviet landslide in Russia's election on Sunday, cementing his already tight grip on power in a victory he said showed Moscow had been right to stand up to the West and send its troops into Ukraine.
Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who first rose to power in 1999, made it clear that the result should send a message to the West that its leaders will have to reckon with an emboldened Russia, whether in war or in peace, for many more years to come.

Ukrainian ally Poland said the vote was not “legal, free and fair,” in a statement issued by the foreign ministry.

EU chief Charles Michel had sarcastically congratulated Putin on his “landslide victory” on the first day of polls opening 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 flood polling stations at noon and spoil their ballots for a “Noon Against Putin” protest.

His wife, Yulia Navalnaya, was greeted by supporters with flowers and applause in Berlin. She said she had written her late husband’s name on her ballot after voting at the Russian embassy.

Some voters in Moscow appeared to heed Navalny’s call, telling AFP they had come to honour his memory and show their opposition in the only legal way possible.

“I came to show that there are many of us, that we exist, that we are not some insignificant minority,” said 19-year-old student Artem Minasyan at a polling station in central Moscow.

The outcome means Putin, 71, is set to embark on a new six-year term that will see him overtake Josef Stalin and become Russia's longest-serving leader for more than 200 years if he completes it.
Putin won 87.8% of the vote, the highest ever result in Russia's post-Soviet history, according to an exit poll by pollster the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM). The Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VCIOM) put Putin on 87%. First official results indicated the polls were accurate. The United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and other nations have said the vote was neither free nor fair due to the imprisonment of political opponents and censorship.

Leonid Volkov, a senior aide to the late opposition leader who was recently attacked in Lithuania where he fled political persecution in Russia, dismissed the results published by Moscow.

“The percentages drawn for Putin have, of course, not the slightest relation to reality,” Volkov, Navalny’s former chief of staff wrote on social media.

Former Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev meanwhile congratulated Putin on his “splendid victory” long before the final results were due to be announced.

And state-run television praised how Russians and rallied with “colossal support for the president” as well as the “unbelievable consolidation” of the country behind its leader.

Communist candidate Nikolai Kharitonov finished second with just under 4%, newcomer Vladislav Davankov third, and ultra-nationalist Leonid Slutsky fourth, partial results suggested.
Putin told supporters in a victory speech in Moscow that he would prioritise resolving tasks associated with what he called Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine and would strengthen the Russian military.
"We have many tasks ahead. But when we are consolidated - no matter who wants to intimidate us, suppress us - nobody has ever succeeded in history, they have not succeeded now, and they will not succeed ever in the future," said Putin.

Tributes to Navalny:
At Navalny’s grave in a Moscow cemetery, AFP reporters saw spoiled ballot papers with his name scrawled across them on a pile of flowers.

Navalny had galvanised mass protests and tried to run against Putin in the 2018 election — touring Russia to drum up support — but his candidacy was rejected.

“We live in a country where we will go to jail if we speak our mind. So when I come to moments like this and see a lot of people, I realise that we are not alone,” said 33-year-old Regina.

There were repeated acts of protest in the first days of polling, with a spate of arrests of Russians accused of pouring dye into ballot boxes or arson attacks.

Any public dissent in Russia has been harshly punished since the start of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 and there were repeated warnings from the authorities against election protests.

The OVD-Info police monitoring group announced that at least 80 people had been detained across nearly 20 cities in Russia for protest actions linked to the elections.

A surge in Ukrainian strikes on Russia continued unabated with the Russian defence ministry reporting at least eight regions attacked overnight and on Sunday morning.

Supporters chanted "Putin, Putin, Putin" when he appeared on stage and "Russia, Russia, Russia" after he had delivered his acceptance speech.
Inspired by opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison last month, thousands of opponents protested at noon against Putin at polling stations inside Russia and abroad.
Putin told reporters he regarded Russia's election as democratic and said the Navalny-inspired protest against him had had no effect on the election's outcome.
In his first comments on his death, he also said that Navalny's passing had been a "sad event" and confirmed that he had been ready to do a prisoner swap involving the opposition politician.
When asked by a NBC, a U.S. TV network, whether his re-election was democratic, Putin criticised the U.S. political and judicial systems.
"The whole world is laughing at what is happening (in the United States)," he said. "This is just a disaster, not a democracy."
"...Is it democratic to use administrative resources to attack one of the candidates for the presidency of the United States, using the judiciary among other things?" he asked, making an apparent reference to four criminal cases against Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Fatal border attacks:
Three airports serving the capital briefly suspended operations following the barrage, while a drone attack in the south sparked a fire at an oil refinery.

In Russia’s border region of Belgorod, multiple rounds of shelling killed two — a man and a 16-year-old girl — and wounded 12 more, the region’s governor said Sunday.

Eight more were wounded in other bombardments later as polls were closing, he said.

The governor had already ordered the closure of shopping centres and schools in Belgorod and the surrounding area for two days because of the strikes.

In the Russian-controlled territory of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, where voting is also taking place, “kamikaze drones” set a polling station ablaze, according to the Moscow-installed authorities.

'Difficult period’

Putin, a former KGB agent, has been in power since the last day of 1999 and is set to extend his grip over the country until at least 2030.

If he completes another Kremlin term, he will have stayed in power longer than any Russian leader since Catherine the Great in the 18th century.

In a pre-election address Putin said Russia was going through a “difficult period” and called on the country to be “united and self-confident.”

A concert on Red Square is being staged on Monday to mark 10 years since Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula — an event that is also expected to serve as a victory celebration for Putin.

The Russian election comes just over two years since Putin triggered the deadliest European conflict since World War Two by ordering the invasion of Ukraine.

War has hung over the three-day election: Ukraine has repeatedly attacked oil refineries in Russia, shelled Russian regions and sought to pierce Russian borders with proxy forces - a move Putin said would not be left unpunished.
Putin said Russia might need to create a buffer zone inside Ukraine to prevent such attacks in future.
While Putin's re-election was not in doubt given his control over Russia and the absence of any real challengers, the former KGB spy had wanted to show he had the overwhelming support of Russians.
Nationwide turnout was 74.22% at 1800 GMT when polls closed, election officials said, surpassing 2018 levels of 67.5%.
There was no independent tally of how many of Russia's 114 million voters took part in the opposition demonstrations, amid tight security involving tens of thousands of police and security officials.
Reuters journalists saw an increase in the flow of voters, especially younger people, at noon at polling stations in Moscow, St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, with queues of several hundred people and even thousands.
Some said they were protesting, though there were few outward signs to distinguish them from ordinary voters.
At least 74 people were arrested on Sunday across Russia, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors crackdowns on dissent.
Over the previous two days, there were scattered incidents of protest as some Russians set fire to voting booths or poured green dye into ballot boxes. Opponents posted some pictures of ballots spoiled with slogans insulting Putin.
But Navalny's death has left the opposition deprived of its most formidable leader, and other major opposition figures are abroad, in jail or dead.
The West casts Putin as an autocrat and a killer. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that Putin wanted to rule forever and that the vote had been illegitimate.
Putin portrays the war as part of a centuries-old battle with a declining West that he says humiliated Russia after the Cold War by encroaching on Moscow's sphere of influence.
Russia's election comes at what Western spy chiefs say is a crossroads for the Ukraine war and the wider West.
Support for Ukraine is tangled in U.S. domestic politics ahead of the November presidential election.
Though Kyiv recaptured territory after the invasion in 2022, Russian forces have made gains after a failed Ukrainian counter-offensive last year.
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Writing by Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow, Andrew Osborn in London and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne Editing by Frances Kerry, Peter Graff, Ros Russell and Lisa Shumaker.