Russian President Vladimir Putin won reelection Sunday with more than 70% of the vote.
Putin’s victory will extend his total time in office to nearly a quarter of a century, until 2024, by which time he will be 71. Only Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ruled for longer. Putin has promised to use his new term to beef up Russia’s defences against the west and to raise living standards.
In a widely-expected result, an exit poll by pollster VTsIOM showed Putin, who has dominated the political landscape for the past 18 years, had won 73.9% of the vote. Backed by state TV and the ruling party, and credited with an approval rating around 80%, his victory was never in doubt.
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None of the seven candidates who ran against Putin posed a threat, and opposition leader Alexei Navalny was barred from running.
AP:
Social networks buzzed all day Sunday with videos, photos and firsthand accounts of voting violations in Russia’s presidential election.
Election authorities said they will investigate all irregularities and annul results where needed. But the breadth of the reports was striking, and they may cast a shadow on the victory by incumbent Vladimir Putin.
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CCTV footage of a voting station in the Moscow suburb of Lyubertsy shows a woman taking a ballot from a table, looking around to see if anyone is watching, then putting it in the box. She repeats the action, again and again. Another woman, apparently a colleague at the station, joins her.
A video from Ilskhan-Yurt in Chechnya shows a man in a white cap repeatedly putting ballots in the same box.
In the Primorsky region of the Far East, a woman pulls papers from her jacket and stuffs them in the box.
Dozens of other examples of apparent ballot box stuffing were posted online.
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Video from a polling station in Makhachkala in the Caucasus Mountains republic of Dagestan showed local official Magomet Rasulov appearing to punch observer Malik Butaev before being led out by police.
Aida Mirmaksumova, who is collecting violations in Makhachkala, said burly men dressed in black dragged an observer for Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin on the ground as he shouted, “Help!” Others yelled: “Get out of here!” Amid the melee, people were seen stuffing what appeared to be ballots into a ballot box.
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Residents in Perm, Yekaterinburg and Moscow showed the AP messages from employers pressuring workers to vote and requiring them to report on when and where they cast ballots. One worker said he feared he wouldn’t get his monthly bonus if he didn’t.
Video recordings from polling stations showed irregularities in a number of towns and cities across Russia. Several showed election officials stuffing boxes with ballot papers.
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During polling day, independent election monitoring group Golos reported hundreds of irregularities, including:
- Voting papers found in some ballot boxes before polls opened
- Observers were barred from entering some polling stations
- Some people were bussed in amid suspicion of forced voting
- Webcams at polling stations were obstructed by balloons and other obstacles
In Dagestan, one election official said he was prevented from doing his job by a crowd of men who blocked the ballot box.
AP:
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.
Vladimir Putin wins Russian election with more than 70% of vote – exit poll (The Guardian)
Putin easily wins fourth term as Russia's president, early results show (AP)
Russia election: Vladimir Putin wins by big margin (BBC News)
Russian vote problems: Ballot stuffing, coercion, gimmicks (AP)