Putin dismisses protesters, Russia’s critics following challenge-free election

President Vladimir Putin won a record post-Soviet landslide in Russia’s election on Sunday, cementing his already tight grip on power in a victory he said showed Moscow had been right to stand up to the West and send its troops into Ukraine.

Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who first rose to power in 1999, made it clear that the result should send a message to the West that its leaders will have to reckon with an emboldened Russia, whether in war or in peace, for many more years to come.

The outcome means Putin, 71, is set to embark on a new six-year term that, if he completes it, will see him overtake Josef Stalin and become Russia’s longest-serving leader for more than 200 years.

Putin won 87.8 per cent of the vote, the highest ever result in Russia’s post-Soviet history, an exit poll by pollster FOM showed. The Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) put Putin at 87 per cent. First official results indicated the polls were accurate.

The United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and other nations have said the vote was neither free nor fair due to the imprisonment of political opponents and censorship.

Communist candidate Nikolai Kharitonov finished second with just under four per cent, newcomer Vladislav Davankov third, and ultra-nationalist Leonid Slutsky fourth, partial results suggested.

Putin told supporters in a victory speech in Moscow that he would prioritize resolving tasks associated with what he called Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine and would strengthen the Russian military.

“We have many tasks ahead. But when we are consolidated — no matter who wants to intimidate us, suppress us — nobody has ever succeeded in history, they have not succeeded now, and they will not succeed ever in the future,” said Putin.

Supporters chanted “Putin, Putin, Putin” when he appeared on stage and “Russia, Russia, Russia” after he had delivered his acceptance speech.

Putin dismisses critics

Inspired by opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison last month, thousands of opponents protested at noon against Putin at polling stations inside Russia and abroad.

Putin told reporters he regarded Russia’s election as democratic and said the Navalny-inspired protest against him had had no effect on the election’s outcome.

In his first comments on his death, he also said that Navalny’s passing had been a “sad event” and confirmed that he had been ready to do a prisoner swap involving the opposition politician.

What Navalny’s death means for opposition to Putin

Exiled Belarusian leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was with Alexei Navalny’s wife when she heard the first reports of his death. Tsikhanouskaya spoke to The National’s Ian Hanomansing about the impact of Navalny’s death for the family and the opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

When asked by a NBC, a U.S. TV network, whether his re-election was democratic, Putin criticized the U.S. political and judicial systems.

“The whole world is laughing at what is happening [in the United States],” he said. “This is just a disaster, not a democracy.

“Is it democratic to use administrative resources to attack one of the candidates for the presidency of the United States, using the judiciary among other things?” he asked, making an apparent reference to four criminal cases against Republican candidate Donald Trump.

The Russian election comes just over two years since Putin triggered the deadliest European conflict since the Second World War by ordering the invasion of Ukraine.

The war has hung over the three-day election: Ukraine has repeatedly attacked oil refineries in Russia, shelled Russian regions and sought to pierce Russian borders with proxy forces — a move Putin said would not be left unpunished.

Putin said Russia might need to create a buffer zone inside Ukraine to prevent such attacks in future.

While Putin’s re-election is not in doubt given his control over Russia and the absence of any real challengers, the former KGB spy wanted to show that he has the overwhelming support of Russians.

Nationwide turnout was 74.22 per cent at 9 p.m. Moscow time when polls closed, election officials said, surpassing 2018 levels of 67.5 per cent.

There was no independent tally of how many of Russia’s 114 million voters took part in the opposition demonstrations, amid extremely tight security involving tens of thousands of police and security officials.

Reuters journalists saw an increase in the flow of voters, especially younger people, at noon at polling stations in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, with lineups of several hundred people and even thousands.

Some said they were protesting, though there were few outward signs to distinguish them from ordinary voters.

At least 74 people were arrested on Sunday across Russia, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors crackdowns on dissent.

‘Czar forever’

Over the previous two days, there were scattered incidents of protest as some Russians set fire to voting booths or poured green dye into ballot boxes. Russian officials called them scumbags and traitors. Opponents posted some pictures of ballots spoiled with slogans insulting Putin.

But Navalny’s death has left the opposition deprived of its most formidable leader, and other major opposition figures are abroad, in jail or dead.

Like Navalny, Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza survived two suspicious poisonings and blamed the Kremlin for making him seriously ill, in 2015 and again in 2017. He was arrested in April 2022, and then last April was sentenced to 25 years in prison for treason after speaking out against Russia’s war in Ukraine.

West must call out Putin as ‘usurper and dictator,’ critic says

Evgenia Kara-Murza is working ‘to be the voice for those whom the regime is trying to silence back home’ as Russian President Vladimir Putin nears an expected re-election amid criticism and protest. Her husband, Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, is currently imprisoned and survived two poisonings he blames on the Kremlin.

While Kara-Murza remains in a Siberian penal colony, his wife, Evgenia, has taken on his fight for a democratic Russia and to press other countries to call out Putin’s next term as illegitimate. The election follows constitutional amendments pushed through four years ago to abolish presidential term limits, following a nationwide vote.

“I completely agree with my husband and I completely support him in this call, and in fact, Vladimir has been advocating for this since 2020, when in Russia there was held the so-called referendum that’s completely destroyed the Russian constitution and basically made Vladimir Putin into czar forever,” she told CBC’s David Common on Sunday.

Evgenia Kara-Murza said Putin should be called “what he is in reality, a usurper and dictator.”

The West casts Putin as an autocrat and a killer. U.S. President Joe Biden last month dubbed him a “crazy SOB.” The International Criminal Court in The Hague has indicted him for the alleged war crime of abducting Ukrainian children, which the Kremlin denies.

Putin casts the war as part of a centuries-old battle with a declining and decadent West that he says humiliated Russia after the Cold War by encroaching on Moscow’s sphere of influence.