Politics

Putin will remain in the Kremlin until 2030 after winning 87.2% of the votes

(Updates percentage of votes and scrutiny)

Moscow, Mar 17 (EFE) – Russian President Vladimir Putin will stay in the Kremlin until 2030 after Sunday’s election victory, his biggest since coming to power, which will allow him to continue the military campaign in Ukraine and his current pulse with the West.

He will remain in power for another six years, after which he can run for re-election, as he reformed the constitution in 2020, changing clauses that prevented him from staying in the Kremlin.

Putin, 71, won 87.2% of the vote with 68% counted, 10 points higher than in 2018 (76.5), during three days of voting in the eighth presidential election in Russia’s history since 1991.

The election results were not affected by the death in prison of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, for which his supporters blame the Kremlin, nor by the Ukrainian border incursions in recent days.

Ukraine and Western countries denounced the absence of opposition candidates and illegal voting in the four Ukrainian regions annexed by the Russian army, while the Russian opposition called on the international community not to recognize the election results.

More than 98 million Russians, out of 112 million who were called to the polls, voted for the re-election for a fifth term of the current president, who came to the Kremlin in 1999 after taking power from Boris Yeltsin.

The second most popular candidate was the Communist Nikolai Kharitonov with 4.17% of the votes, followed by the representative of the New People’s Party, Vladislav Davankov, with 4.07%. In last place is the ultranationalist Leonid Slutsky with 3.15% of the votes.

The CEC did not register candidates who support peace talks in Ukraine, claiming various technical reasons or formal flaws that prevented the opposition from participating.

Western observers were not invited, and the CEC denied on Sunday that there had been any irregularities, although independent experts and the exile press denounced several cases of ballot stuffing.

With three hours to go before polls closed, turnout was more than 74 percent, expected to be the highest since Russia’s first direct presidential election in 1991.

The opposition expressed suspicions about the massive use of administrative resources after more than half of the 112 million registered voters cast their ballots in the first two days.

Thousands of Russians critical of the Kremlin turned out en masse to vote at noon Sunday in Russia and abroad in a coordinated opposition effort against Putin’s policies and the war in Ukraine.

The initiative, called “Noon Against Putin,” encouraged people to go to the polls at noon and simultaneously vote for any candidate other than Putin, and aimed to challenge his claim to power.

The election has been marked by drone attacks and Ukrainian border incursions, which left several dead and led Putin to accuse Kyiv of trying to torpedo his re-election.EFE

mos/mcd

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