In one of the most predictable events this year, Vladimir Putin has once again been elected as the president of Russia, according to exit polls.
Putin, 71, is leading in a presidential election where opposition was effectively banned with 87.68% of votes so far, according to election officials who have counted 30.08% of ballots.
This almost secures Putin’s control over Russia for another six years and makes him the longest-serving leader since Joseph Stalin.
After the death of his strongest critic in an Artic prison, Aleksei Navalny, none of his other competitors posed much of a threat.
Nikolai Kharitonov, of the Communist Party who was heavily defeated by Putin in 2004, gained 4.6% of the votes, according to exit poll data from the Russian Public Opinion Research Center published Sunday evening. according Protesters demonstrated outside the Russian embassy in London this afternoon (Picture: Reuters)
while consistently agreeing more or less with the Kremlin leader, secured 4.2% of the votes. Ukraine Fourth was Leonid Slutsky, a Putin supporter of the Liberal Democratic Party, who urged his followers to vote for Putin anyway.
None were even that different from Putin. Every other major name on the ballot is a member of the Duma who also voted for the Russia-Ukraine war, even more censorship and to tear up human rights laws.
The Kremlin had also banned all criticism of Putin or his war. As much as this would have made campaigning a bit difficult for opposition candidates, the Kremlin blocked them from running anyway.
conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation similarly showed Putin leading with 87.8%. While nearly nine in 10 voters in Moscow chose Putin in the voting booths, the Moscow City Election Commission said.
A second exit poll By this evening
turnout was more than 70% , according to the Central Election Commission, though this excludes the 4.3 million who voted online.At the encouragement of Yulia Navalnaya, Alexei Navalny’s widow, many Russians have spoiled their ballot papers for the current election
But opposition leaders definitely did their best. The ‘Noon Against Putin’ saw Navalny allies urge Russians to swarm polling places in a symbolic protest.
Long lines quickly formed outside polling stations, including Moscow and St Petersburg.
Expats in England also joined in. Thousands gathered outside the Russian embassy in London to vote today, with
Metro.co.uk seeing examples of spoiled ballots that include, among other things, doodles of phalluses. If the final vote share is indeed in the high 80s, this is higher than the 77% that saw Putin cruise back into power in 2018.
Putin, who was first chosen as successor to President Boris Yeltsin in 2000, has long said he’ll remain in power for as long as Russia’s constitution allows.
'This is not good and it is harmful for the country and I don't want it either,' he said in 2014 when
asked if he wanted to be president forever. 'We will see what the situation will be like, but in any case the duration of my work is limited by the Constitution.'
Putin will govern until at least 2030.
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