- By RFE/RL
Putin Election Spokesman: Britain Is To Thank For High Turnout In Russian Election
Relations between London and Moscow have been thrown into turmoil following the poisoning of a retired Russian military intelligence officer earlier this month. British officials say Russia is to blame for using a military-grade nerve agent against Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
While Britain is outraged, Moscow has denied the charge and complained that Russia is being unfairly accused.
Now the press secretary for Vladimir Putin's election campaign has this assertion to offer about the fallout from the poisoning:
"Right now, the turnout figures seem higher than we expected by about 8-10 percent. For this, we should say thank you to Britain, because they didn't take into account the Russian mentality," Andrei Kondrashov was quoted by Interfax as saying.
"At the moment when they started to pressure us, it was the exact moment when we needed to mobilize [voters]. Because any time that Russia is indiscriminately, and without evidence, accused of anything, what the Russian people do is unite around the center of power. The center of power is today, without question, Putin. So thanks to Britain for having done this turnout for the elections, which they themselves hadn't dreamed of," Kondrashov said.
Putin Heading For Landslide Reelection Amid Reports Of Violations, Pressure To Vote
By RFE/RL
MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to be heading for a landslide victory in the March 18 presidential election amid reports of hundreds of violations at polling stations across the country.
The Central Election Commission said after the polling stations closed that with 21.3 percent of ballots counted, Putin has 71.97 percent of the vote in an election that is set to hand him a fourth term in office.
Exit polls from two main pollsters -- including state-owned VTsIOM -- showed Putin winning with more than 73 percent of the vote.
According to the election committee, Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin was second with 15.7 percent of the vote, followed by flamboyant ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky with 6.9 percent and journalist and TV personality Ksenia Sobchak with 1.3 percent. The four other candidates had less than 1 percent.
The 65-year-old incumbent is riding a wave of government-stoked popularity on the fourth anniversary of Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region and in the wake of a military intervention in Syria that has been played up on state-controlled television as a patriotic success.
Amid government efforts to get out the vote and reports of voter fraud, much attention was focused on whether Russians would turn out in big enough numbers to hand Putin a convincing mandate.
- By RFE/RL
Russian Central Election Commission says that with 21.3 percent of ballots counted, President Vladimir Putin has 71.97 percent of the vote.
If you read Russian, you can follow the vote tally as the election commission posts it to their web page here.
- By RFE/RL
Polls have closed in Moscow and the first exit polls are out. State-run pollster VTsIOM says incumbent Vladimir Putin received 73.9 percent of the vote, as shown by this graphic shown on state television.
- By RFE/RL
Golos, the respected independent election monitor, reported that as of late afternoon, Moscow time, it had received at 2,263 reports of alleged violations, including ballot boxes placed out of sight of observation cameras and observers being blocked from carrying out their job.
At this voting precinct in Makhachkala, Daghestan, an observer caught on video an unidentified man trying to stuff a pile of paper ballots into the ballot box.
- By Mike Eckel
In normal times, a tweet from the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., about voter turnout for expatriate Russians might not merit much attention.
But these aren’t normal times we’re living through.
Here, the Russian Embassy says that as of 12 p.m. Eastern Time, 524 Russian citizens had cast ballots. That included Ambassador Anton Antonov, who was one of the first to vote.
And for some lucky Russian expatriates, who cast ballots in New York City, they came away with their very own coffee cups, emblazoned with the logo of the Russian election. (If you read Russian, you'll be able to pick up exactly how the author of this post feels about the entire process...)
Vladimir Kara-Murza, a leading Russian opposition figure, engaged in his own bit of ballot-defacing protest, by writing the name of his late friend and colleague, Boris Nemtsov, on his ballot.
Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, was gunned down on a bridge near the Kremlin in February 2015, a killing that shocked Russia’s opposition.
Kara-Murza writes in his tweet: “my candidate isn’t here; they killed him.”
- By Glenn Kates
Ksenia Sobchak, the socialite and TV personality whose father was President Vladimir Putin's mentor years ago, showed up at the studio where Aleksei Navalny was doing his live election-day broadcast, and demanded to go on the air.
Sobchak is the only woman running in the race. For many critics, her presence has been derided as Kremlin-organized window dressing aimed at making the election more credible.
Navalny agreed and let Sobchak on the air... and then proceeded to rip into her.
A bit of dark Russian election humor, directed at Americans, it would seem:
A poster circulating on social media that reads: "We Chose The U.S. President; And Now We're Choosing The Russian President!"