Supporters applaud Putin as he thanks Russians for putting their trust in him
Published March 17, 2024
Vladimir Putin was always going to claim his fifth term as president with a landslide, faced with three other candidates all rubber-stamped by the Kremlin.
But when election officials said results gave him more than 87% of the vote, he said Russia’s democracy was more transparent than many in the West.
In truth no credible opposition candidate was allowed to stand.
Supporters of dead Putin critic Alexei Navalny did stage symbolic protests.
Their “Noon against Putin” initiative meant that long queues of voters turned out in Russian cities including Moscow and St Petersburg and outside many embassies abroad, but it was never going to have any impact on the result.
Monitoring group OVD-Info said at least 80 Russians were arrested. There was no repeat of the sporadic attacks on some polling stations that happened on Friday.
Western countries lined up to condemn the vote as neither free nor fair.
Germany called it a “pseudo-election” under an authoritarian ruler reliant on censorship, repression and violence.
UK Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron condemned “the illegal holding of elections on Ukrainian territory”.
READ FULL ARTICLE
SOURCE: www.bbc.com
RELATED: Putin scores a resounding win, but what’s next for Russia?
Published March 17, 2024
CNN — The polls are now closed across Russia, but the outcome was never in doubt: Russian President Vladimir Putin has secured a fifth term in office through a dubious national plebiscite.
But Russia’s three-day presidential vote was never about democratic procedure. For the Kremlin, a resounding first-round win will give the incumbent a fresh stamp of legitimacy and sends a clear message: Putin’s war on Ukraine has the full backing of his people.
In an address to the Russian people on the eve of the election, Putin urged voters to cast ballots as a show of national unity.
READ FULL ARTICLE
SOURCE: www.amp.cnn.com
RELATED: Russia’s Putin hails victory in election criticised as illegitimate
Early results show Putin winning some 87 percent of the vote, the highest-ever result in Russia’s post-Soviet history.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has hailed his election victory as a vindication of his decision to invade Ukraine [File: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP]
Published March 17, 2024
Russian President Vladimir Putin has cemented his grip on power in a landslide election victory that has been widely criticised as lacking democratic legitimacy.
In a post-election news conference, Putin cast the outcome as a vindication of his decision to defy the West and invade Ukraine.
“No matter who or how much they want to intimidate us, no matter who or how much they want to suppress us, our will, our consciousness – no one has ever succeeded in anything like this in history,” Putin said in an address from his campaign headquarters early on Monday morning.
“It has not worked now and will not work in the future. Never.”
Shortly after the last polls closed on Sunday, early returns pointed to the conclusion everyone expected: that Putin would extend his nearly quarter-century rule for six more years.
According to Russia’s Central Election Commission, he had some 87 percent of the vote with about 60 percent of precincts counted. The result means Putin, 71, will overtake Joseph Stalin and become Russia’s longest-serving leader in more than 200 years.
