The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Polls show Putin scores 88% of votes in election
Russian President Vladimir Putin is poised to extend his near quarter of a century of rule for six more years as early returns announced after polls closed on yesterday evening in Russia showed he had nearly 88% of the vote with 24% of the precincts counted, according to Russia’s Central Election Commission.
The election took place after a relentless crackdown on dissent – and amid attacks within Russia by Ukrainian missiles and drones, which have killed several people.
Polling happened in a tightly controlled environment where Mr Putin faced competition from only three token rivals and any public criticism of him or his war in Ukraine is stifled.
Mr Putin’s fiercest political foe, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic prison last month, and other critics are either in jail or in exile. Beyond the fact that voters have virtually no choice, independent monitoring of the election was extremely limited.
Mr Navalny’s associates had urged those unhappy with Mr Putin or the war to protest by coming to the polls at noon yesterday – and lines outside a number of polling stations both inside Russia and at its embassies around the world appeared to swell at that time.
Among those heeding the call was Yulia Navalnaya, Mr Navalny’s widow, who joined a long line at the Russian Embassy in Berlin as some in the crowd applauded and chanted her name.
She spent more than five hours in the line and told reporters after casting her vote that she wrote her late husband’s name on the ballot.
Asked whether she had a message for Putin, Ms Navalnaya replied: “Please stop asking for messages from me or from somebody for Mr Putin. There could be no negotiations and nothing with Mr Putin, because he’s a killer, he’s a gangster.”
The OVD-Info group that monitors political arrests said 80 people were arrested in 20 cities across Russia yesterday. Independent monitoring of the election was extremely limited, with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) not invited to observe the three-day vote.
UK Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron tweeted: “The polls have closed in Russia, following the illegal holding of elections on Ukrainian territory, a lack of choice for voters and no independent OSCE monitoring.
“This is not what free and fair elections look like.”
Ukraine had launched a new massive wave of drone attacks as Russians cast ballots on the final day of the presidential vote.
The Russian Defence Ministry reported downing 35 Ukrainian drones overnight, including four in the Moscow region.
Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said a fifth drone, close to the capital’s Domodedovo airport, was later downed yesterday morning.
According to the ministry, another two drones were shot over the Kaluga region just south of the Russian capital and the Yaroslavl region north-east of Moscow.
The attacks in Yaroslavl, which is about 500 miles from the Ukrainian border, were some of the farthest launched by Ukraine so far.
More Ukrainian drones were downed over the Belgorod, Kursk and Rostov regions that border Ukraine and the southern Krasnodar region, the ministry added.
Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said the Ukrainian shelling killed a 16-year-old girl yesterday morning and injured her father, while a second assault later in the day killed another man and injured 11 others.
A drone fell on a refinery in the Krasnodar region, sparking a blaze that was extinguished a few hours later.
Elsewhere, a drone strike at a military installation in Moldova’s breakaway republic of Transnistria yesterday destroyed a helicopter and ignited a fire, officials said. The area’s pro-Russian authorities blamed the strike on Ukraine.
On Saturday, two people were killed and three others were injured in the Ukrainian shelling of the Russian border city of Belgorod which has faced regular attacks.