Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, waved off the criticism. “We don’t agree with the USA’ evaluation of the election,” Peskov mentioned. “De facto the USA is concerned within the conflict in Ukraine and is de facto at conflict with us. This isn’t an opinion value listening to and never an opinion that will likely be of significance to us.”
On Monday, Russia’s Central Electoral Fee predictably claimed a landslide victory for Putin. With one hundred pc of votes counted, the fee mentioned Putin had gained 87.28 p.c — his highest tally in any of his earlier 4 elections. In his final marketing campaign in 2018, the authorities mentioned he obtained 77.5 p.c.
Putin, who took energy upon Boris Yeltsin’s resignation on Dec. 31, 1999, has defied time period limits since 2008 when, after serving the utmost two full phrases, he swapped jobs with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. 4 years later, they swapped once more. In 2020, Putin engineered constitutional amendments permitting him to rule till 2036.
The election fee additionally reported “report turnout” — with 87.1 million Russians, totaling 77.44 p.c of voters — heading to the polls. Beforehand, the best turnout in a Russian presidential election was recorded in 1991, after the autumn of the Soviet Union, when Yeltsin was elected with 74.66 p.c of voters taking part.
This yr’s vote, amid Russia’s persevering with conflict in opposition to Ukraine, passed off one month after the sudden dying of Alexei Navalny, Putin’s most formidable political rival, in an Arctic jail colony. In areas of Ukraine occupied by Russia, electoral groups accompanied by troopers pressured residents to forged ballots at gunpoint.
The electoral fee claimed that in occupied areas of Ukraine’s Kherson and Zaporizhzhia areas, Putin gained 88.12 p.c and 92.95 p.c of votes respectively. Russia controls solely elements of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — two of 4 Ukrainian areas it claims illegally to have annexed — and lots of residents are displaced.
In Russia, voting passed off from Friday by Sunday, a three-day window that critics mentioned offered ample alternative for fraud and manipulation. In lots of areas, voters had been inspired to make use of an opaque on-line voting system with no mechanism to guarantee accuracy or safeguard in opposition to dishonest.
By midafternoon Sunday, Russian electoral watchdog Golos had mapped greater than 1,400 reviews of potential electoral violations, together with cases of vote stuffing.
In remarks after midnight following the discharge of preliminary outcomes late Sunday, Putin claimed broad public help and made clear that he would proceed the conflict in Ukraine.
However the three-day vote was marked by indicators of public fury, with a number of Russian residents setting fireplace to voting urns and polling stations and throwing liquid dye on ballots. On Sunday, hundreds of individuals in Russia and overseas participated within the midday protest.
