Vladimir Putin was always going to claim his fifth term as president with a landslide, faced with three other candidates all rubber-stamped by the Kremlin.
But when election officials said results gave him more than 87% of the vote, he said Russia’s democracy was more transparent than many in the West.
In truth, no credible opposition candidate was allowed to stand. Supporters of dead Putin critic Alexei Navalny did stage symbolic protests.
Their “Noon against Putin” initiative meant that long queues of voters formed at midday in Russian cities including Moscow and St Petersburg and in even greater numbers outside many embassies abroad, but it was never going to have any impact on the result.
Monitoring group OVD-Info said at least 80 Russians were arrested. There was no repeat of the sporadic attacks on some polling stations that happened on Friday.
Western countries lined up to condemn the vote as neither free nor fair.
Germany called it a “pseudo-election” under an authoritarian ruler reliant on censorship, repression and violence.
UK Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron condemned “the illegal holding of elections on Ukrainian territory”.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said, “The Russian dictator is simulating another election”.
In the words of Navalny ally Leonid Volkov, savagely beaten with a meat hammer in exile in Lithuania last week: “The percentages drawn for Putin have, of course, not the slightest relation to reality.”
Russians had three days to vote and people in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine had even longer, in an attempt to persuade residents to take part.
One election commission official was reported killed in the occupied town of Berdyansk on Sunday and residents spoke of pro-Russian collaborators going from home to home with ballot boxes accompanied by armed soldiers.
Anadolu/Getty ImagesOfficials said turnout was greater than 74% in the election
But on Russia’s carefully controlled state TV channels, the result was hailed as a triumph.
“This is an incredible level of support and unity around the figure of Vladimir Putin,” said one correspondent excitedly, “and a signal to Western countries”.
President Putin was more subdued as he took questions from reporters, but he did hail Russia’s presidential campaign as far more advanced than the US, citing Russia’s use of online voting, which officials said brought in eight million voters.
Mr Putin had earlier been filmed performing a single keystroke to exercise his democratic right.
“It’s transparent and absolutely objective,” he suggested, “not like in the US with mail-in voting… you can buy a vote for $10
He is now set to stay in power until at least 2030, and has ruled Russia since 2000 – the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
Independent watchdog Golos was barred from observing the vote but reports of irregularities have emerged, as well as pressure on public sector employees to vote either in polling stations or online.
President Putin praised opposition campaigners for encouraging voters to turn out in greater numbers, although he condemned those who spoilt their ballots and said action would be taken against them.
For the first time, he referred to Alexei Navalny by name, a month after his most vocal critic died in a penal colony inside the Arctic Circle.
In a remark possibly aimed at rebutting widespread allegations that he had Navalny killed, Mr Putin confirmed reports that he had explored exchanging him for prisoners held in the West, but on the condition that his rival never returned.
“I said I’m for it but, unfortunately, what happened happened. What can you do? That’s life.”
Yulia Navalnaya described queuing for six hours outside the Russian embassy in Berlin as part of the protest vote campaign. She said she had written her late husband’s name on her ballot paper, and praised everyone who turned up, for giving her “hope that everything is not in vain”.
By BBC
