Putin eyes fourth term but voter turnout could be low

RUSSIANS voted in an election set to hand President Vladimir Putin a fourth Kremlin term, as the country is embroiled in a crisis with Britain and its allies over a spy poisoning.

Polls opened in the Russian far east at 8pm on Saturday and was expected to close in Kaliningrad, the country’s enclave on the EU border, at 6pm yesterday. With Putin’s main challenger, Alexei Navalny, barred from taking part in the poll for legal reasons, the result of the election is hugely predictable, with overall turnout remaining the only likely element of surprise.

Many analysts say that after 18 years of leadership – both as president and prime minister – Putin fatigue may be spreading across the country, and a lot of Russians are expected to skip the polls.

The Kremlin needs a high turnout to add greater legitimacy for a new mandate for Putin, who is already Russia’s longest-serving leader since Joseph Stalin.

Casting his ballot in Moscow, Putin said he would be pleased with any result that gave him the right to continue serving as president.

“I am sure the programme I am offering is the right one,” Putin was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

Navalny denounced the election as a sham and urged Russians to boycott the vote. He deployed more than 30 000 observers to monitor the polls and yesterday, his team began publishing a rolling list of violations from polling stations around the country. Rather than call it a vote, Navalny’s team referred to the election as a staged procedure to reappoint Putin.

“Those who said that ‘there would be fewer falsifications during these elections because Putin has already won over everyone’ have made a mistake,” he said.

In the run-up to the poll, a new crisis broke out with the West after Britain implicated Putin in the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal with a Soviet-designed nerve agent.

And Washington slapped sanctions on Moscow over alleged election meddling.

Since first being elected president in 2000, Putin has stamped his total authority on Russia muzzling opposition and reasserting Moscow’s posture abroad. He has sought to use the campaign to emphasise Russia’s role as a major world power, boasting of its invincible new nuclear weapons in a major pre-election speech.

State-run pollsters predict Putin will take just under 70% of the vote, with the independent Levada Centre barred from releasing any research related to the election. —