Exit polls on Sunday indicated that Vladimir Putin was on track to secure another six-year term as Russian president, potentially making him the longest-serving Russian leader in over two centuries.

Vladimir Putin was headed for another six-year term as Russian president Sunday, exit polls showed, paving the way for the hardline former spy to become the longest-serving Russian leader in more than 200 years.

Victory for the 71-year-old in the three-day vote 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 Putin had won the election with 87% of the vote after polls closed in Russia’s western-most region of Kaliningrad at 1700 GMT.

The highly touted 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 cast the election as an opportunity 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 slammed the vote as a sham, and President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced Putin as a “dictator” who is “drunk on 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

Allies of the late Alexei Navalny—Putin’s most prominent rival, who died in an Arctic prison last month—has urged voters to flood polling stations at noon and spoil their ballots for a “Midday 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 honor his memory and show their opposition in the only legal way possible.

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.

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, who galvanized mass protests, tried to run against Putin in the 2018 presidential election and toured Russia to drum up support, but his candidacy was rejected.

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.

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.

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

 

With AFP