Russian election: Sham election hands Putin six more years

Russia’s Central Election Commission said Putin won over 87 per cent of the vote on a record turnout of 74 per cent in a presidential election held over three days and eleven time zones, handing him six more years in power. Anti-Kremlin resistance units seized ammunition stockpiles in the extreme west of the country, but didn’t threaten his authority.

There were no genuine opposition candidates. Nor was there ever any doubt about the result. Russian propagandists claimed that Putin won up to 95 per cent of the vote in the occupied territories of Ukraine, where people were forced to vote under pressure from the Russian army in the absence of independent observers.

Observers who did attempt to monitor polling stations remotely reported multiple voting process violations, including ballot-stuffing, public officials being forced to vote and election commission members inspecting ballots after they were filled out. Police detained people at voting stations across the country for burning ballots or writing protest inscriptions on them – offences that could lead to five-year jail terms.

Thousands of protesters heeded Alexei Navalny’s call from beyond the grave to register their dissent by voting at noon yesterday. Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, and the former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky voted in Berlin. In a brief victory speech, Putin mentioned Navalny by name for the first time in years, claiming to have been in favour of a prisoner exchange on condition that he not return to Russia.