Russia's voting opens with Putin victory all but certain
His foes are in jail, in exile or are dead
Voters headed to the polls in Russia on Friday for a three-day presidential election that is all but certain to extend President Vladimir Putin's rule by six more years after he stifled dissent.
The election takes place against the backdrop of a ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and prominent rights groups and given Putin full control of the political system.
It also comes as Moscow's war in Ukraine enters its third year. Russia has the advantage on the battlefield, where it is making small, slow gains. Ukraine, meanwhile, has made Moscow look vulnerable behind the front line: Long-range drone attacks have struck deep inside Russia.
Voters will cast their ballots through Sunday at polling stations across the vast country's 11 time zones, as well as in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine.
The election holds little suspense since Putin, 71, is running for his fifth term virtually unchallenged. His political opponents are either in jail or in exile abroad, and the fiercest of them, Alexei Navalny, died in a remote Arctic penal colony recently.
The three other candidates on the ballot are lowprofile politicians from token opposition parties that toe the Kremlin's line.
Observers have little to no expectation that the election will be free and fair.
Only registered candidates or state-backed advisory bodies can assign observers to polling stations, decreasing the likelihood of independent watchdogs.
“The elections in Russia as a whole are a sham. The Kremlin controls who's on the ballot. The Kremlin controls how they can campaign. To say nothing of being able to control every aspect of the voting and the vote-counting process,” said Sam Greene, director for Democratic Resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington.
Ukraine and the West also have condemned Russia for holding the vote in Ukrainian regions that Moscow's forces have seized and occupied.
In many ways, Ukraine is at the heart of this election, political analysts and opposition figures say.
They say Putin wants to use his all-but-assured electoral victory as evidence that the war and his handling of it enjoys widespread support.
The opposition, meanwhile, hopes to use the vote to demonstrate their discontent with both the war and the Kremlin.
The Kremlin banned two politicians from the ballot who sought to run on an antiwar agenda and attracted genuine — albeit not overwhelming — support.