Vladimir Putin wins election, according to early results

Vladimir Putin looks set to be Russia’s president for six more years as an exit poll and early returns suggest he has easily won a fourth term.

The vote was tainted by widespread reports of ballot-box stuffing and forced voting, but the complaints are likely to do little to undermine Mr Putin.

The Russian leader’s popularity remains high despite his suppression of dissent and reproach from the West over Russia’s increasingly aggressive stance in world affairs and alleged interference in the 2016 US election.

Russian authorities sought to ensure a large turnout to bolster the image that Mr Putin’s so-called “managed democracy” is robust and offers Russians true choices.

He faced seven minor candidates on the ballot. His most vehement and visible foe, anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, was rejected as a candidate because he was convicted of fraud in a case widely regarded as politically motivated.

The election came amid escalating tensions between Russia and the West, with reports that Moscow was behind the nerve-agent poisoning of a former Russian double agent in Britain and that its internet trolls mounted an extensive campaign to undermine the 2016 US presidential election.

Britain and Russia last week announced diplomat expulsions over the spy case and the United States issued new sanctions.

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

Crimea and Russia’s subsequent support of separatists in eastern Ukraine led to an array of US and European sanctions that, along with falling oil prices, damaged the Russian economy and slashed the ruble’s value by half. But Mr Putin’s popularity remained strong, apparently buttressed by nationalist pride.

In his next six years in office, he is likely to assert Russia’s power abroad even more strongly.

Just weeks before the election, he announced that Russia has developed advanced nuclear weapons capable of evading missile defences.

The military campaign in Syria is clearly aimed at strengthening Russia’s foothold in the Middle East and Russia eagerly eyes possible reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula as a lucrative economic opportunity.

At home, he will be faced with how to groom a successor or devise a strategy to circumvent term limits, how to drive diversification in an economy still highly dependent on oil and gas and how to improve medical care and social services in regions far removed from the modern glitter of Moscow.

Casting his ballot in Moscow, Mr Putin was confident of victory, saying he would consider any percentage of votes a success.

“The programme that I propose for the country is the right one,” he declared.

Given the lack of real competition in the presidential race, authorities struggled against voter apathy, putting many of Russia’s nearly 111 million voters under intense pressure to cast ballots.

Yevgeny, a 43-year-old mechanic voting in central Moscow, said he briefly wondered whether it was worth voting.

“But the answer was easy … if I want to keep working, I vote,” he said.

He spoke on condition that his last name not be used out of concern that his employer — the Moscow city government — would find out.

Across the country in the city of Yekaterinburg, a Russian doctor also said she was being coerced to vote.

She said she had not voted by midday.

“The chief of my unit called me and said I was the only one who hadn’t voted,” said the doctor, Yekaterina, who spoke on condition her last name not be used because she also feared repercussions.

Yevgeny Roizman, the mayor of Yekaterinburg, said local officials and state employees all received orders “from higher up” to make sure the presidential vote turnout was over 60%.

In Moscow, first-time voters were being given free tickets for pop concerts and health authorities were offering free cancer screenings at some polling stations.

Voters appeared to be turning in out in larger numbers than in Russia’s last presidential election in 2012, when Mr Putin faced a serious opposition movement and violations like multiple voting, ballot stuffing and coercion marred the voting.

Some 145,000 observers were monitoring the presidential vote, including 1,500 foreigners, and they and ordinary Russians reported hundreds of problems.

These 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 board inside one polling station.

Russian 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.

Mr Navalny, whose group also monitored the vote, dismissed Mr Putin’s challengers on the ballot as “puppets.” He urged Russian voters to boycott the election and vowed to continue defying the Kremlin with street protests.

The Ukrainian government, insulted by Russia’s holding the election on the anniversary of Crimea’s annexation, refused to let ordinary Russians vote. Ukrainian security forces blocked the Russian Embassy in Kiev and consulates elsewhere as the government protested against the voting in Crimea, whose annexation is still not internationally recognised.

Ukrainian leaders are also angry over Russian support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, where fighting has killed at least 10,000 people since 2014.

Polls show that most Russians view the takeover of the Black Sea peninsula as a major achievement despite subsequent Western sanctions.

“Who am I voting for? Who else?” asked Putin supporter Andrei Borisov, 70, a retired engineer in Moscow. “The others, it’s a circus.”

Early in the voting, the commission claimed it had been the target of a hacking attempt coming from 15 unidentified nations that was deterred by authorities.