Putin claims a brand new six-year time period in vote condemned as not free or honest | EUROtoday

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, waved off the criticism. “We do not agree with the United States’ assessment of the election,” Peskov mentioned. “De facto the United States is involved in the war in Ukraine and is de facto at war with us. This is not an opinion worth listening to and not an opinion that will be of importance to us.”

On Monday, Russia’s Central Electoral Commission predictably claimed a landslide victory for Putin. With one hundred pc of votes counted, the fee mentioned Putin had received 87.28 % — his highest tally in any of his earlier 4 elections. In his final marketing campaign in 2018, the authorities mentioned he acquired 77.5 %.

Putin, who took energy upon Boris Yeltsin’s resignation on Dec. 31, 1999, has defied time period limits since 2008 when, after serving the utmost two full phrases, he swapped jobs with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Four years later, they swapped once more. In 2020, Putin engineered constitutional amendments permitting him to rule till 2036.

The election fee additionally reported “record turnout” — with 87.1 million Russians, totaling 77.44 % of voters — heading to the polls. Previously, the best turnout in a Russian presidential election was recorded in 1991, after the autumn of the Soviet Union, when Yeltsin was elected with 74.66 % of voters taking part.

This yr’s vote, amid Russia’s persevering with conflict in opposition to Ukraine, occurred one month after the sudden dying of Alexei Navalny, Putin’s most formidable political rival, in an Arctic jail colony. In areas of Ukraine occupied by Russia, electoral groups accompanied by troopers compelled residents to solid ballots at gunpoint.

The electoral fee claimed that in occupied areas of Ukraine’s Kherson and Zaporizhzhia areas, Putin received 88.12 % and 92.95 % of votes respectively. Russia controls solely components of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — two of 4 Ukrainian areas it claims illegally to have annexed — and plenty of residents are displaced.

In Russia, voting occurred from Friday by means of Sunday, a three-day window that critics mentioned supplied ample alternative for fraud and manipulation. In many areas, voters have been inspired to make use of an opaque on-line voting system with no mechanism to guarantee accuracy or safeguard in opposition to dishonest.

By midafternoon Sunday, Russian electoral watchdog Golos had mapped greater than 1,400 stories of potential electoral violations, together with cases of vote stuffing.

In remarks after midnight following the discharge of preliminary outcomes late Sunday, Putin claimed broad public help and made clear that he would proceed the conflict in Ukraine.

But the three-day vote was marked by indicators of public fury, with a number of Russian residents setting fireplace to voting urns and polling stations and throwing liquid dye on ballots. On Sunday, hundreds of individuals in Russia and overseas participated within the midday protest.