Vladimir Putin 'wins Russian election with up to 76% of votes', say exit polls - making him the longest-serving leader since Stalin
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Loading... - Eugenie Jolie
- 19 Mar 2021
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Vladimir Putin has won the Russian Presidential election by a landslide, according to exit polls.
RIA puts his victory at 76.3% of the vote, VTsIOM has his success at 73.9% and TASS reported a figure of 71.9%.
Putin was vying for a new six-year term to make him the longest-serving Kremlin leader since feared Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
He has been either President or Prime Minister since 1999 and the term, which under Russia's constitution would have to be his last, is set to run until 2024.
Opinion polls had given Putin 70% support - nearly 10 times that of his nearest challenger.
But vocal critic Alexei Navalny was barred from the race due to a corruption conviction he says was fabricated by the Kremlin.
Mr Navalny called for a boycott as an aide branded it a "shuttle bus election" amid claims voters were offered cheap goods, bussed in, forced to vote and told to report back to bosses.
Claims of "ballot-box stuffing" by critics also emerged when videos on social media appeared to show people casting ballot paper after ballot paper.
Critics said that with Putin's victory looking inevitable, pushing up turnout was a way to tighten his grip on power.
It comes after Britain's diplomatic relations with Moscow plummeted to their lowest since the Cold War over the nerve agent attack on ex-spy Sergei Skripal two weeks ago.
The UK triggered a diplomatic stand-off this week by booting 23 Russian diplomats out of London and severing high-level ties.
Moscow hit back yesterday by expelling 23 Brits, blocking the UK from opening a consulate in St Petersburg and terminating British Council activities in Russia.
Prime Minister Theresa May will consider Britain's "next steps" at a National Security Council meeting on Tuesday.
Those reportedly include emergency laws to make it easier to seize money laundered through Britain by Russian residents; a stronger visa regime to stop Vladimir Putin 's cronies travelling to London; and forcing Russian oligarchs in the UK to account for "unexplained" wealth.
Vladimir Chizhov, Russia's ambassador to the EU, today suggested British chemical weapons lab Porton Down could have been the source of the Novichok agent - because it is only eight miles from where the attack happened.
Mr Chizhov claimed Russia has never produced Novichok, saying it had “no stockpiles whatsoever” of any nerve agent and "Russia has stopped production of any chemical agents back in 1992".
But British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said that was a "direct lie", and accused Putin's Russia of secretly making and stockpiling the deadly nerve agent within the last decade.
Experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) will arrive in Britain tomorrow to test the poison used on Skripal.
Ex-KGB spy Putin, 65, was one of eight candidates in today's election but opinion polls put his nearest rival Pavel Grudinin, of the Communist Party, on just 7%.
A day of voting across the vast nation's 11 time zones began at 8pm UK time on Saturday and ended at 6pm UK time on Sunday.
Reuters spoke to people who said they had been forced to vote, or took pictures of themselves voting as proof to their bosses.
An 18-year-old student who voted at polling station number 217 in Ust-Djeguta said: "To be honest, we were forced to."
When asked who forced them, the student said: "The teacher."
A 25-year-old man at polling station number 02-13 in Gryazi, south of Moscow, added: "At work we were forced to come and vote, with photos and all the rest of it."
Elsewhere voters were reportedly offered cut-price goods next to polling stations in what critics branded a bid to inflate turnout.
Irina Kornienko, 68, running a clothes stall in Kemerovo, Siberia, told Reuters she was given special incentives by the local government to set up her stall.
She said: "The administration told me I could sell my stuff at a lower price if I came here today. These prices aren't usually allowed.
"It's the same for the people selling food, the prices are much lower. But that's good for people here, life is hard."
Yevgeny Roizman, a Kremlin opponent who is mayor of the industrial city of Yekaterinburg, complained "they're herding the whole country to the polling stations," adding: "We're not sheep."
Ella Pamfilova, head of the commission organising the vote nationwide, said any fraud would be stamped out.
She said those alleging the election was rigged were biased and peddling "Russophobia" - echoing a line used by the Kremlin.
Other voters were openly supportive of Putin, who supporters see as a strong leader who stands up to Western opposition to Russia.
Alexander Kiryukhin, a 79-year-old in the city of Simferopol, Crimea, said: "I voted for our liberator, Putin."
Russia's annexation of the region from Ukraine in 2014 earned Putin condemnation from Western governments but admiration from many Russians.
Kiryukhin declared: "He sorted our lives out, he's irreplaceable for the state."
Lyubov Kachan, a teacher in the settlement of Ust-Djeguta, in southern Russia, said: "I voted for Putin.
"If anything is not going our way right now, that's thanks to the world which treats us so negatively.
"He is trying to stand up to that."
