The Russians cast their final ballots in favor of prolonging Putin’s rule

Vladimir Putin and the Defense Ministry in a Close, Confined Environment after a Decay of the Navalny Strikes Back

Russian President Vladimir Putin is poised to extend nearly a quarter century of rule for six more years on Sunday after wrapping up an election that gave voters no real alternatives to an autocrat who has ruthlessly cracked down on dissent.

The three-day election that began Friday has taken place in a tightly controlled environment where no public criticism of Putin or his war in Ukraine is allowed. Dissenters are either in jail or in exile after the death of Navalny last month.

The 71-year-old Russian leader faces three token rivals from Kremlin-friendly parties who have refrained from any criticism of his 24-year rule or his full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago. In the run-up to the voting, Putin boasted that Russian successes had been achieved, but early Sunday a massive Ukrainian drones attack reminded him of challenges faced by Moscow.

The Russian Defense Ministry reported downing 35 Ukrainian drones overnight, including four near the Russian capital. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said there were no casualties or damage.

Russia’s economy has survived despite Western sanctions. The Russian defense industry has served as a key growth engine, working around the clock to churn out missiles, tanks and ammunition.

Russians cast final ballots in election preordained to extend Vladimir Putin’s rule – a source of frustration with the Kremlin

The opposition has urged Russians who are unhappy with Putin to come to the polls at noon on Sunday. The strategy was endorsed by Navalny not long before his death.

Voting is taking place at polling stations across the vast country’s 11 time zones, in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine, and online. At least a half-dozen cases of vandals were reported Friday and Saturday at polling stations.

A 50-year-old university professor was imprisoned Saturday for 15 days after she tried to throw green liquid into a ballot box in the Urals city of Ekaterinburg, local news site Ura.ru reported. In Podolsk, a town close to Moscow, a woman was fined 30,000 rubles ($342) and charged with “discrediting the Russian army” after spoiling her ballot with an unspecified message, according to OVD-Info, a police monitoring group.

Putin has boasted about recent gains in Ukraine, where Russian troops have made slow advances relying on their edge in firepower. It has been fought back with cross-border shelling and raids, as well as launching drones inside Russia.

Belgorod was the scene of shelling that killed two people, and there were air raid sirens that went off multiple times. Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had thwarted attempts to enter the country by “Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups,” following claims by Ukraine-based Russian opponents of the Kremlin last week that they had made an armed incursion into the Belgorod and Kursk regions.

Source: Russians cast final ballots in election preordained to extend Vladimir Putin’s rule

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s First Reionization Reaction During the Three Day Voting Reheating in Moscow, As Derided by State and the West

Independent monitoring is very limited because there aren’t many options for voters. There were no international observers present. Only election candidates approved by the Kremlin can assign observers to polling stations.

“The stars magically aligned for me to show up here at noon,” said Alexei, a university student who — like others at the event — declined to provide his last name out of fear of reprisals from the state.

In Moscow, an NPR reporter witnessed some two hundred people gather at a voting precinct shortly after noon – despite the presence of police and what appeared to be plain clothed government agents filming with cameras.

The widow of the late Navalny encouraged supporters to honor the symbolic protest he had planned on the last day of the election, in order to show how much the opposition disliked Putin.

According to a human rights monitoring group, at least 89 Russians were detained for a series of election-related protests — some of them quickly went viral online.

There were fears of vote rigging and the fact that Russia’s military had been charged with securing the vote in occupied territories of Ukraine, among other things.

Abbas Gallaymov, a former Kremlin speech writer and government critic in exile, says the Kremlin couldn’t afford to have these candidates in the race.

The will of thousands of Russians who backed their candidacies with cumbersome signature gathering campaigns was undone by the banning of antiwar candidates over registration errors.

Putin’s opponents in the race — all members of Russia’s rubber-stamp parliament — barely ran campaigns or held any rallies at all. None received more than 5% of the vote.

We have a lot of work to do. But when we are consolidated — no matter who wants to intimidate or suppress us — nobody has ever succeeded. Not in history, not now, nor will they ever succeed in the future,” said Putin.

At the press conference, Putin ridiculed claims that the vote was undemocratic, and claimed that Russians had just supported him when faced with threats.

Putin thanked everyone at the campaign headquarters in Moscow early Monday for their support.

After a three-day election derided by government critics and the West as neither free nor fair, Russian President Putin won a resounding reelection with 87% of the vote.

Going into the vote, the Kremlin was believed to seek not merely victory but a historic turnout: one that showed the country more united than ever behind their leader, more than two years into the full scale invasion of Ukraine.

The Central Elections Commission showed that 81 percent of eligible voters had cast their ballots, which was a new post-Soviet record.

The hundreds of thousands of Russians who left their country because of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine were a reminder of the larger crowds formed outside Russian embassies around the globe.

That was much to the delight of Kristina and her husband Sergei — Putin supporters who declined to give their last names to an American journalist due to their work in the government security services.

“Russia should have a czar. Sergei believes that Russia has to have a leader who can manage the country, even though he agrees that there is a need for a monarch.