Vladimir Putin, 71, has been elected once again as the President of Russia. He becomes the longest-serving Russian leader since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in more than 200 years with the victory.
Putin, who has been in office since 2000 had no major opponent, with most of them in exile or prison while some were dead. Also, his administration is waging an unrelenting crackdown on those who publicly oppose the Kremlin or its military offensive on Ukraine.
The country’s VTsIOM pollster projected that Putin had sailed to an easy victory with 87 percent of the vote after polls closed in Russia’s western-most region of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea.
The poll was described as neither free nor fair by those observing it from afar.
Speaking, Putin thanked citizens for turning out to vote, saying that his win would “allow the country to prosper by becoming stronger and more effective.”
“No matter how hard they tried to scare us, suppress our will, our conscience, no-one has ever succeeded in history. They failed now, and they will fail in the future,” he said.
The victory also gave Putin the chance to talk about Alexei Navalny. He revealed that he had been in support of a swap deal involving the opposition leader days before the jailed critic died in an Arctic prison last month.
The poll was characterized by protests across polling stations. At least 80 protesters were detained for acts vandalism.
However, various world leaders have spoken about the polls which have remained largely unrecognized by Western Governments.
“The percentages drawn for Putin have, of course, not the slightest relation to reality,” Volkov, Navalny’s former chief of staff wrote on social media.
UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron on his own part accused Russia of “not being interested in finding a path to peace.”
“There is no evil he will not commit to prolong his personal power,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke via social media while labeling Putin a “dictator” who was “drunk from power”.