Russian President Vladimir Putin won a record landslide victory in the post-Soviet era in Russian elections on Sunday, strengthening his grip on power. However, thousands of opponents staged a noon protest at polling stations, and the US said the vote was neither free nor fair.
For Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who first rose to power in 1999, the outcome is meant to underscore to the West that its leaders will have to deal with a more emboldened Russia, both in war and peace, for many years to come.
The early result means that Putin, 71, will quickly secure a new six-year term that will enable him to overtake Joseph Stalin and become Russia's longest-serving leader in more than 200 years.
According to a poll conducted by the Foundation for Public Opinion (FOM), Putin won 87.8% of the vote, the highest result in the history of post-Soviet Russia. The Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) put Putin at 87%. The first official results indicate the accuracy of the polls.
“It is clear that the election is neither free nor fair given the way Mr. Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him,” a White House National Security Council spokesman said.
The election comes just over two years since Putin sparked the deadliest European conflict since World War II when he ordered the invasion of Ukraine. He described it as a “special military operation.”
The three-day election has been clouded by war: Ukraine has repeatedly attacked oil refineries in Russia, bombed Russian regions, and sought to penetrate the Russian border with proxy forces — a move that Putin said would not go unpunished.
Although Putin's re-election is not in doubt, given his control of Russia and the absence of any real challengers, the former KGB spy wanted to show that he had overwhelming support from the Russians. Several hours before polls closed at 1800 GMT, voter turnout nationwide exceeded 2018 levels of 67.5%.
Supporters of Putin's most prominent opponent, Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison last month, had called on Russians to go out in a “noon anti-Putin” protest to show their opposition to a leader they describe as a corrupt autocrat.
There was no independent count of the number of 114 million Russian voters who participated in the opposition demonstrations, which took place amid tight security measures in which tens of thousands of police and security officials participated.
Reuters journalists saw an increase in the flow of voters, especially young people, at noon at polling stations in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, with queues numbering several hundred and perhaps thousands.
Some said they were protesting, even though there were not enough outward signs to distinguish them from ordinary voters.
As noon fell across Asia and Europe, hundreds of people gathered at polling stations in Russian diplomatic missions. Navalny's widow, Yulia, appeared at the Russian embassy in Berlin amid chants and chants of “Yulia, Yulia.”
Navalny's exiled supporters broadcast footage on YouTube of protests inside and outside Russia.
“People saw that they were not alone.”
“We have shown ourselves, all of Russia and the whole world that Putin is not Russia, that Putin has seized power in Russia,” said Ruslan Shaveddinov of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. “Our victory is that we, the people, have defeated fear, we have defeated isolation – many people have seen that they are not alone.”
Leonid Volkov, the exiled Navalny aide who was attacked with a hammer last week in Vilnius, estimated that hundreds of thousands of people turned out to polls in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and other cities.
At least 74 people were arrested on Sunday across Russia, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors crackdowns on dissent.
Over the past two days, there have been isolated incidents of protest with some Russians setting fire to voting booths or pouring green dye into ballot boxes. Russian officials described them as scoundrels and traitors. Opponents published some pictures of ballot papers with slogans insulting to Putin.
But Navalny's death has left the opposition without its most powerful leader, and other key opposition figures are abroad, in prison or dead.
The West portrays Putin as a tyrant and a murderer. US President Joe Biden last month described him as a “sob lunatic.” The International Criminal Court in The Hague accused him of committing the alleged war crime of kidnapping Ukrainian children, which the Kremlin denies.
Putin portrays the war as part of a centuries-old battle with a declining and declining West, which he says has humiliated post-Cold War Russia by encroaching on Moscow's sphere of influence.
“Putin’s mission now is to indelibly imprint his worldview on the minds of the Russian political establishment” to ensure a like-minded successor, Nicholas Gvosdev, director of the National Security Program at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, told Russia Matters. project.
“For the US administration, which had hoped that Putin’s Ukraine adventure would now end in a decisive setback for Moscow’s interests, the election serves as a reminder that Putin expects there will be many more rounds in the geopolitical boxing ring.”
The Russian election comes at what Western intelligence chiefs say is a crossroads between the Ukrainian war and the wider West in what Biden has described as a 21st century conflict between democracies and authoritarian regimes.
Support for Ukraine is entangled in US domestic politics ahead of the November presidential election, which pits Biden against his predecessor, Donald Trump. Trump's Republican Party in Congress had blocked military aid to Kiev.
Although Kiev regained control of the territory after the invasion in 2022, Russian forces have recently made gains after a failed Ukrainian counteroffensive last year.
The Biden administration fears that Putin could seize a larger slice of Ukraine unless Kiev gets more support soon. CIA Director William Burns said this could embolden China.
Putin says the West is engaged in a hybrid war against Russia and that Western intelligence and Ukraine are trying to disrupt the elections.
Voting was also held in Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014, and four other Ukrainian regions it partly controls and has claimed since 2022. Kiev considers elections on the occupied territories illegal and invalid.
