Vladimir Putin headed to an overwhelming win in Russia’s presidential election Sunday, adding six years in the Kremlin for the man who has led the world’s largest country for all of the 21st century.
The vote was tainted by widespread reports of ballot-box stuffing and forced voting, but the complaints will likely do little to undermine Putin. His popularity remains high despite his suppression of dissent and reproach from the West over Russia’s increasingly aggressive stance in world affairs.
Putin’s main challenge in the election was to obtain a huge margin of victory in order to claim an indisputable mandate. With ballots counted from 60 percent of the vast country’s precincts, Putin won more than 75 percent of the vote, the Central Elections Commission said.
In a short speech to a throng of thousands of supporters near Red Square late Sunday, Putin hailed those who voted for him as a “big national team,” adding that “we are bound for success.”
Russian authorities had sought to ensure a large turnout to bolster the image that Putin’s so-called “managed democracy” is robust and offers Russians true choices. By 7 p.m. Moscow time, authorities said turnout had hit nearly 60 percent.
Putin had faced seven minor candidates on the ballot. His most vehement foe, anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, was barred from running because he was convicted of fraud in a case widely regarded as politically motivated.
The election came amid escalating tensions between Russia and the West, with reports that Moscow was behind the nerve-agent poisoning this month of a former Russian double agent in Britain. The U.K. and Russia last week announced tit-for-tat diplomat expulsions over the spy case. Putin, in his first detailed comments on the poisoning, said in his speech that Russia had been falsely accused but added that Moscow was ready to cooperate in the investigations with London.
The election took place on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, one of the most dramatic manifestations of Putin’s drive to reassert Russia’s power.
Crimea and Russia’s subsequent support of separatists in eastern Ukraine led to an array of U.S. and European sanctions that, along with falling oil prices, damaged the Russian economy and slashed the ruble’s value by half.
But Putin’s popularity remained strong, apparently buttressed by nationalist pride.
“Who am I voting for? Who else?” asked Putin supporter Andrei Borisov, 70, a retired engineer in Moscow. “The others, it’s a circus.”
In his next six years in office, Putin is likely to assert Russia’s power abroad even more strongly.
Just weeks before the election, he announced that Russia has developed advanced nuclear weapons capable of evading missile defenses.
The Russian military campaign that bolsters the Syrian government is clearly aimed at strengthening Russia’s foothold in the Middle East and Russia eagerly eyes possible reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula as a lucrative economic opportunity.
At home, Putin must decide whether to groom a successor or devise a strategy to circumvent term limits, how to drive diversification in an economy that is still highly dependent on oil and gas and how to improve medical care and social services in regions far removed from the cosmopolitan glitter of Moscow.
Given the lack of real competition, authorities struggled against voter apathy, in the process putting many of Russia’s nearly 111 million voters under intense pressure to cast ballots.
Yevgeny, a 43-year-old mechanic voting in central Moscow, said he briefly wondered whether it was worth voting.
“But the answer was easy ... if I want to keep working, I vote,” he said on condition of anonymity.
Yekaterinburg Mayor Yevgeny Roizman said on his video blog that local officials and state employees all received orders “from higher up” to make sure the vote turnout was over 60 percent.
In Moscow, first-time voters were given free tickets for pop concerts and health authorities were offering free cancer screenings at some polling stations.
Some 145,000 observers monitored Sunday’s vote, including 1,500 foreigners, and they and ordinary Russians reported hundreds of problems.
Election officials moved quickly to respond to some of the violations.
AP
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