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President Vladimir V. Putin on Sunday prolonged his rule over Russia till 2030, utilizing a closely stage-managed presidential election with no actual competitors to painting overwhelming public assist for his home dominance and his invasion of Ukraine.
Some Russians tried to show the undemocratic vote right into a protest, forming lengthy traces at polling stations at a predetermined time — midday — to register their discontent. On the identical time, Ukraine sought to forged its personal vote of types by firing a volley of exploding drones at Moscow and different targets.
However the Kremlin brushed these challenges apart and launched outcomes after the polls closed claiming that Mr. Putin had gained 87 p.c of the vote — a good increased quantity than within the 4 earlier elections he participated in.
Afterward, Mr. Putin took a prolonged, televised victory lap, together with a swaggering, after-midnight information convention at which he commented on the loss of life of the imprisoned opposition chief Aleksei A. Navalny for the primary time, referring to it as an “unlucky incident.”
Mr. Putin is now set to make use of his new six-year time period to additional cement his management of Russian politics and to press on with the struggle in Ukraine. If he sees the time period via to its finish, he’ll change into the longest-serving Russian chief since Catherine the Nice within the 1700s.
Western governments have been fast to sentence the election as undemocratic. Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for President Biden’s Nationwide Safety Council, mentioned “the elections have been clearly not free nor honest.”
However as Mr. Putin prepares to imagine a fifth time period as president, he seems as emboldened as ever, deepening his confrontation with the West and exhibiting a willingness to maintain escalating tensions. Requested on the information convention whether or not he believed {that a} full-scale battle between Russia and NATO was attainable, Mr. Putin responded: “I feel that something is feasible in at present’s world.”
Regardless of the condemnation from the West, the Kremlin views these elections as a ritual essential to Mr. Putin’s portrayal of himself as a genuinely fashionable chief. Analysts now count on him to raise hard-line supporters of the struggle inside the Russian authorities, betting that Western assist for Ukraine will ultimately crumble and Ukraine’s authorities compelled to barter a peace deal on Russia’s phrases.
Requested about his priorities for his subsequent time period, Mr. Putin started by referring to his invasion of Ukraine. “We have to perform the duties within the context of the particular army operation,” he mentioned. The outcomes, he mentioned, have helped “consolidate society” round his management, a chorus additionally repeated on state tv.
The extent of the Russian public’s true assist for Mr. Putin within the election was onerous to evaluate, provided that opposition candidates have been barred from working and that ballot-stuffing and different instances of fraud have been widespread occurrences in previous Russian elections. This was additionally the least clear election in current Russian historical past, with the work of unbiased ballot observers decreased to ranges not seen for the reason that collapse of the Soviet Union.
Greater than 5 million votes have been reported to have come from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, the place individuals have been at instances directed to forged their votes below the watch of armed Russian troopers; in Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk area, Mr. Putin was reported to have acquired 95 p.c of the vote.
Within the final presidential election, in 2018, Mr. Putin’s official outcome was 78 p.c of the vote — some 10 factors decrease than this weekend.
Grigorii Golosov, a political scientist in St. Petersburg, mentioned in a telephone interview that he was shocked by the excessive share of the vote the Kremlin claimed, describing it as “attribute of extraordinarily closed autocracies.”
“They will declare any outcomes they need, provided that the method isn’t clear,” Mr. Golosov mentioned. “All that these outcomes communicate to is the diploma of management over the electoral system, the election course of, that the Russian authorities have attained.”
For the primary time in a Russian presidential election, the vote lasted for 3 days, from Friday to Sunday — an prolonged interval that made it simpler for the Kremlin to drive up turnout, and more durable for anybody to identify fraud.
Ever since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian authorities have mounted a marketing campaign of repression unseen since Soviet instances, successfully criminalizing any type of antiwar speech.
And a few voters interviewed in Moscow mentioned they have been proud to have voted for Mr. Putin, repeating a story that could be a staple of Russian state tv. The president, they mentioned, had turned Russia right into a affluent, revered world energy that has been compelled into army battle with a Western-armed Ukraine.
“I’m happy with my nation and my president,” Irina, 59, mentioned close to a polling station on central Moscow’s Kutuzovsky Avenue, declining to provide her final identify when talking to a Western reporter. “He elevated us globally to the extent that he gained’t let anybody offend us.”
Ukraine repeatedly tried to undermine Mr. Putin’s picture as a pacesetter defending Russia by launching assaults all through the voting interval.
On Sunday, Russian officers mentioned that Ukraine had focused seven areas of the nation with exploding drones, and the Russian army mentioned it had shot down 35 of them. An oil refinery was set on fireplace within the Krasnodar area of southern Russia and air protection forces shot down two drones flying towards Moscow, Russian officers mentioned.
However there was little proof that the assaults — which have been largely ignored by state media — had succeeded in puncturing Mr. Putin’s aura amongst his supporters.
Pyotr, 41, a advertising specialist in Moscow, expressed delight that Mr. Putin might outwit and outlast Western adversaries. “Towards the background of those under-presidents, the Macrons and so forth,” he mentioned, referring to President Emmanuel Macron of France, Mr. Putin “seems like such a celestial being.”
The opposite three candidates on the presidential poll have been all members of the State Duma, Russia’s rubber-stamp Parliament, and had voted for the struggle in Ukraine, for elevated censorship and for legal guidelines curbing homosexual rights.
With Mr. Putin’s best-known critics in jail or in exile, one little-known opponent of the struggle, Boris B. Nadezhdin, did handle to gather tens of hundreds of signatures in an try to get on the poll. However the authorities invalidated sufficient of the signatures final month to bar him, citing what it referred to as “irregularities.”
Nonetheless, Russia’s embattled and largely exiled opposition managed to make use of the elections to mount an uncommon protest: Putin opponents have been inspired to line up at their polling station at midday native time on Sunday. Whereas it was onerous to evaluate what number of voters selected that point to specific their discontent, one polling station close to Moscow’s famed Tretyakov Gallery was comparatively quiet earlier than a protracted line shaped immediately at midday.
“That is our protest — we don’t have some other choices,” mentioned Lena, 61, who got here to a polling station in central Moscow earlier than midday intending, she mentioned, to spoil her poll. “All of us respectable individuals are hostages right here.”
Like different voters interviewed, she declined to offer her final identify, for worry of reprisal.
The noontime traces have been even longer in cities with massive Russian diasporas — like Belgrade, Serbia, and Yerevan, Armenia — the place the Russian Embassy served as a polling station. By 1 p.m. in Berlin, the road to vote snaked for roughly a mile via the town streets, ending simply previous the spot the place an indication marked the situation of Hitler’s World Struggle II bunker.
Yulia Navalnaya, Mr. Navalny’s widow, waited within the line for roughly six hours, making one among her first public appearances since declaring that she would stick with it her husband’s political work after he died final month. She mentioned after leaving the Russian Embassy that she had written “Navalny” on her poll.
Ms. Navalnaya hugged and took pictures with supporters who approached her, a few of them in tears.
Yulia Lozovskaya, 29, who moved to Germany from St. Petersburg after Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, mentioned she had sought out Ms. Navalnaya after studying from social media that she was standing someplace within the line.
“You are feeling you’re not alone,” Ms. Lozovskaya mentioned, referring to the dimensions of the gang. “And that provides huge power.”
Reporting was contributed by Alina Lobzina, Valerie Hopkins, Anatoly Kurmanaev and Milana Mazaeva.
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