- By RFE/RL
Putin: No Plans To Change Constitution For Now, Suggests Will Not Run In 2030
President Vladimir Putin has said that he has no plans to change the country's constitution for the time being, and suggested he would not seek the presidency again in 2030.
Putin spoke to reporters late on March 18, as election results indicated that he easily won a new six-year term as president.
An existing limit of two straight presidential terms means that Putin would not be eligible to run again in 2024 without changing the constitution, but could do so in 2030.
The restrictions have sparked speculation that Putin, 65, could push through a change in the constitution in order to stay in the presidency after 2024 or alter the structure of Russia's government in order to retain power in a different position.
Putin's 2024 Problem: Election Win Raises Curtain On Clouded Future
When a friend told Ilya Barabanov that he would vote for the very first time on March 18 -- and vote to keep President Vladimir Putin in office until 2024 -- the journalist had to ask why.
"At least it's some sort of guarantee that he'll be gone in six years," came the reply.
Don't count on it.
Now that Putin has coasted to victory, the clock starts ticking on what could be his final stint as president, because the Russian Constitution imposes a limit of two consecutive terms.
But few believe that will stop the man who has been president or prime minister since August 1999 from looking for ways to continue to call the shots after 2024.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky is not happy.
The the nationalist firebrand who is sometimes called the Kremlin's court jester came in a distant third place in the March 18 vote, with just 6.3 percent of the vote, according to preliminary results from the Central Election Commission.
Asked if he was satisfied with the results, Zhirinovsky, who is the longtime leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, replied: "No. I'm not satisfied."
He then went on to add some choice, unvarnished commentary about the state of Russian elections more broadly:
"The condition were absolutely unfair. There were no debates. The scandals were artificial, provoked only to attract attention. There is no democracy. There is no competition. There is one Kremlin candidate, and all the rest are just 'faces,'" he was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying.
"In reality there should be a lower percentage for Putin. I think a real European percent is no more than 40," he said.
Five Of The Most In-Your-Face Shenanigans Of Russia’s Presidential Election
Here are some of the more flagrant instances of election violations and notable shenanigans recorded around Russia.
1. Mob Attacks Monitors
At polling station number 1,126 in Makhachkala, the capital of Daghestan, observers and journalists flagged several election violations, including repeated ballot-stuffing and a physical attack on election monitors.
The first violation was caught by a security camera shortly after the polling station opened, when a woman who appears to be a station official is seen sneaking out of the room before returning with a handful of ballots which she stuffs into a ballot box. The stack is so thick it gets caught for a moment in the box’s slot.
Not long after, the same security camera shows what was described by witnesses as a mob of young men entering the polling station before violently dragging monitors out of sight of the ballot box. Then, with the monitors and voters distracted, two men go to work stuffing ballots into the abandoned ballot boxes. Video of the incident had been viewed tens of thousands of times by the time of this story’s publication.
Max Seddon, a journalist with the Financial Times who was at the polling station when the attack occurred, later posted a photograph of a monitor who he reported had been injured by the mob.
Golos, the respected independent election monitor, reported that as of late afternoon, Moscow time, it had received at 2,263 reports of alleged violations.
- By RFE/RL
RFE/RL correspondent Christopher Miller took the pulse of some voters in Moscow as the country cast ballots to elect the president.
As Putin Cruises, Navalny And Sobchak Spar In Election-Day Standoff
Kremlin critics say the Russian election was a show, with President Vladimir Putin's victory the dully predictable final act. On election day, Aleksei Navalny and Ksenia Sobchak provided a far livelier sideshow -- but it may have done little to help the opposition's cause.
Shortly before polls closed in Moscow on March 18, Sobchak showed up at Navalny's headquarters and -- in an exchange broadcast live on the opposition leader's YouTube channel -- proposed that they join forces.
The result was not too pretty. Navalny rejected Sobchak's offer, using stark language to reiterate his accusation that she only helped the Kremlin slap a veneer of democracy on an election he has dismissed for months as "the reappointment of Vladimir Putin."
Navalny, who was barred from the ballot due to a financial-crimes conviction he contends was fabricated by the Kremlin, accused Sobchak of "endlessly lying" and said that everything she does is "repulsive."
More video of the Putin victory rally held in Moscow's Manezh Square.
- By Current Time
Current Time, the Russian-language TV channel run by RFE/RL in collaboration with VOA, is running a special election-day live broadcast, covering all the events surrounding the vote, including video from the Moscow rally celebrating Vladimir Putin's re-election.
If you're a Russian speaker, check it out.
Russians In Ukraine Blocked From Voting In Presidential Election
KYIV -- Russian voters in Ukraine were blocked from casting their ballots in Russia's presidential election on March 18, as Ukrainian authorities stepped up security outside diplomatic facilitates and nationalists staged anti-Moscow protests.
Two days prior to the election, in which President Vladimir Putin was heading for a landslide win, Ukrainian authorities announced that only Russian diplomats in Ukraine would be allowed to cast ballots at Russian diplomatic missions.
The move came in retaliation for Russia's annexation of Crimea, which on March 18 voted in a presidential election for the first time since it was taken over in 2014.
Ukrainian police on March 18 guarded the Russian Embassy in Kyiv and consular offices in Odesa, Lviv, and Kharkiv, while nationalist groups protested the election at Russian diplomatic compounds.
At one voting place in Kyiv, nationalists surrounded a woman seeking to cast her ballots, mocking her and throwing snow at her.