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Monday, March 19, 2018, 18:15
Putin overwhelmingly wins another 6 years as Russian leader
By Associated Press/Xinhua
Monday, March 19, 2018, 18:15 By Associated Press/Xinhua

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaking to supporters during a rally near the Kremlin in Moscow, on March 18, 2018. Vladimir Putin headed to an overwhelming win in Russia's presidential election on Sunday, adding six years in the Kremlin. (ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO / AP)

MOSCOW/BEIJING — Final Russian election results show Vladimir Putin overwhelmingly won a fourth presidential term with 76.67 percent of the vote, his highest score ever.

There had been no doubt that Putin would win in his fourth electoral contest; he faced seven minor candidates and his most prominent foe was blocked from the ballot.

His only real challenge was to run up the tally so high that he could claim an indisputable mandate.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday sent a congratulatory message to Putin on his re-election. 

Xi expressed the belief that Russia will definitely be able to keep creating new glories in national development. 

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Monday as he arrived at a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels that "Russia will remain a difficult partner but will also be needed for solutions to the big international conflicts."

He added that "we want to remain in dialogue but we expect constructive contributions from Russia."

ALSO READ: Putin on track for commanding win as Russians head to polls

More than 30,000 crowded into Manezh Square adjacent to the Kremlin in temperatures of minus-10 degrees for a victory concert and to await Putin's words

The Central Election Commission said on Monday that communist Pavel Grudinin came in a distant second with 11.78 percent. Third was ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky with 5.66 percent. The only candidate to openly criticize Putin in the campaign, TV star Ksenia Sobchak, won just 1.68 percent.

The electoral commission said official turnout was 67 percent, but the figure was thrown into question by images circulating online of ballot stuffing and nationwide accounts of workers being coerced to vote. But the claims are unlikely to dilute the power of Russia's longest-serving leader since Josef Stalin.

As the embodiment of Russia's resurgent power on the world stage, Putin commands immense loyalty among Russians. More than 30,000 crowded into Manezh Square adjacent to the Kremlin in temperatures of minus-10 degrees (15-degrees F) for a victory concert and to await his words.

Putin extolled them for their support — "I am a member of your team" — and he promised them that "we are bound for success."

Then he left the stage after speaking for less than two minutes, a seemingly perfunctory appearance that encapsulated the election's predictability.

Since he took the helm in Russia on New Year's Eve 1999 after Boris Yeltsin's surprise resignation, Putin's electoral power has centered on stability, a quality cherished by Russians after the chaotic breakup of the Soviet Union and the "wild capitalism" of the Yeltsin years.

But that stability has been bolstered by a suppression of dissent, the withering of independent media and the top-down control of politics called "managed democracy."

Women examine a poster of candidates inside a polling station during presidential elections in St.Petersburg, Russia, on March 18, 2018. (DMITRI LOVETSKY / AP)

Authorities struggled against voter apathy, putting many of Russia's nearly 111 million voters under intense pressure to cast ballots.

I am a member of your team, Russia is bound for success

Vladimir Putin, President re-elect, Russia

Voters appeared to be turning in out in larger numbers on Sunday than in the last presidential election in 2012, when Putin faced a serious opposition movement and there were instances of multiple voting, ballot stuffing and coercion. He polled 63.6 percent of the vote in the 2012 election.

Putin's most vehement foe, anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, was barred from running on Sunday because he was convicted of fraud in a case widely regarded as politically motivated. Navalny and his supporters had called for an election boycott but the extent of its success could not immediately be gauged.

There were widespread reports of forced voting on Sunday, efforts to make Russia appear to be a robust democracy.

Among them were two election observers in Gorny Shchit, a rural district of Yekaterinburg, who told The Associated Press they saw an unusually high influx of people going to the polls between noon and 2 pm. A doctor at a hospital in the Ural mountains city told the AP that 2 pm was the deadline for health officials to report to their superiors that they had voted.

Other examples from observers and social media included ballot boxes being stuffed with extra ballots in multiple regions; an election official assaulting an observer; CCTV cameras obscured by flags or nets from watching ballot boxes; discrepancies in ballot numbers; last-minute voter registration changes likely designed to boost turnout; and a huge pro-Putin sign in one polling station.

Election officials moved quickly to respond to some of the violations. They suspended the chief of a polling station near Moscow where a ballot-stuffing incident was reported and sealed the ballot box. A man accused of tossing multiple ballots into a box in the far eastern town of Artyom was arrested.

People cast their ballots at a polling station in Yelizovo, about 30 kilometers ( 19 miles) northeast from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, capital of Kamchatka Peninsula region, Russian Far East, Russia, on March. 18, 2018. (ALEXANDER PETPOV / AP)

The election came amid escalating tensions with the West, with reports that Moscow was behind the nerve-agent poisoning this month of a former Russian double agent in Britain and that its internet trolls had waged an extensive campaign to undermine the 2016 US presidential election. Britain and Russia last week announced expulsions of diplomats over the spy case and the US issued new sanctions.

In his first public comments on the poisoning, Putin on Sunday referred to the allegations against Russia as "nonsense."

Moscow has denounced both cases as efforts to interfere in the Russian election. But the disputes likely worked in Putin's favor, reinforcing the official stance that the West is infected with "Russophobia" and determined to undermine both Putin and traditional Russian values.

READ MORE: Russia expels 23 UK diplomats in spy spat

The election took place on the fourth anniversary of the 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, one of the most dramatic manifestations of Putin's drive to reassert Russia's power.

Ukraine, insulted by the decision to hold the election on the anniversary of Crimea's annexation, refused to let ordinary Russians vote. Ukraine security forces blocked the Russian Embassy in Kiev and consulates elsewhere as the government protested the voting in Crimea, whose annexation is still not internationally recognized.

In his next six years, Putin is likely to assert Russia's power abroad even more strongly. Just weeks ago, he announced that Russia has developed advanced nuclear weapons capable of evading missile defenses. The Russian military campaign that bolsters the Syrian government is clearly aimed at strengthening Moscow's foothold in the Middle East, and Russia eagerly eyes any reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula as an economic opportunity.

At home, Putin must face how to groom a successor or devise a strategy to circumvent term limits, how to diversify an economy still dependent on oil and gas, and how to improve medical care and social services in regions far removed from the cosmopolitan glitter of Moscow.




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