Putin Heading For Landslide Reelection Amid Reports Of Violations, Pressure To Vote
By RFE/RL
MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to be heading for a landslide victory in the March 18 presidential election amid reports of hundreds of violations at polling stations across the country.
The Central Election Commission said after the polling stations closed that with 21.3 percent of ballots counted, Putin has 71.97 percent of the vote in an election that is set to hand him a fourth term in office.
Exit polls from two main pollsters -- including state-owned VTsIOM -- showed Putin winning with more than 73 percent of the vote.
According to the election committee, Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin was second with 15.7 percent of the vote, followed by flamboyant ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky with 6.9 percent and journalist and TV personality Ksenia Sobchak with 1.3 percent. The four other candidates had less than 1 percent.
The 65-year-old incumbent is riding a wave of government-stoked popularity on the fourth anniversary of Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region and in the wake of a military intervention in Syria that has been played up on state-controlled television as a patriotic success.
Amid government efforts to get out the vote and reports of voter fraud, much attention was focused on whether Russians would turn out in big enough numbers to hand Putin a convincing mandate.
- By RFE/RL
Putin Election Spokesman: Britain Is To Thank For High Turnout In Russian Election
Relations between London and Moscow have been thrown into turmoil following the poisoning of a retired Russian military intelligence officer earlier this month. British officials say Russia is to blame for using a military-grade nerve agent against Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
While Britain is outraged, Moscow has denied the charge and complained that Russia is being unfairly accused.
Now the press secretary for Vladimir Putin's election campaign has this assertion to offer about the fallout from the poisoning:
"Right now, the turnout figures seem higher than we expected by about 8-10 percent. For this, we should say thank you to Britain, because they didn't take into account the Russian mentality," Andrei Kondrashov was quoted by Interfax as saying.
"At the moment when they started to pressure us, it was the exact moment when we needed to mobilize [voters]. Because any time that Russia is indiscriminately, and without evidence, accused of anything, what the Russian people do is unite around the center of power. The center of power is today, without question, Putin. So thanks to Britain for having done this turnout for the elections, which they themselves hadn't dreamed of," Kondrashov said.
This photo is the facade of the Great Patriotic War museum in Moscow's Poklonnaya Gora park dedicated to the Soviet victory in World War II, apparently taken this evening.
"VICTORY. CRIMEA. PUTIN"
- By RFE/RL
Russians celebrating Vladimir Putin's election to another 6-year term as president gathered in Moscow's Manezh Square, just off of Red Square.
It's unclear, from this photo taken by the independent TV station Dozhd, exactly how many people had gathered.
- By Mike Eckel
There's at least one place in Russia where Vladimir Putin appears to have lost decisively.
That would be the Lenin Sovkhoz, the Moscow region collective farm whose longtime boss, Pavel Grudinin, was the Communist Party's candidate for the presidency.
Grudinin made his successful management of the farm-- known for strawberries, among other things-- part of his campaign platform.
In the end, he came in second to Putin, with preliminary figures showing him netting around 15.7 percent of the vote nationally.
At the Lenin farm, however, Grudinin netted 55 percent of the vote, trailed by Putin's 38.5 percent and 1.5 percent for longtime firebrand nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
- By RFE/RL
As media in Russia's big cities trained their lenses on voters and ballot boxes, photographer Dmitry Markov took a stroll through the sunshine in the small town of Pskov in the country's west to see what else was going on.
Electing Not To Care: What Russians Were Doing When They Weren't Voting
- By RFE/RL
Vladimir Putin, speaking not long after polls showed him winning a resounding re-election victory, thanked voters for their support and lead a chant of "Russia! Russia!" in appearance outside the Kremlin.
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.
- 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.
More video of the Putin victory rally held in Moscow's Manezh Square.