Russian President Vladimir Putin won a record landslide election on Sunday, Russian officials said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin won a record landslide election on March 17, according to early results, as Western officials have criticized the elections as being unfair and illegitimate.
It means that Mr. Putin, 71, will easily secure a new six-year term that will enable him to become one of Russia’s longest-serving leaders. He won 87.8 percent of the vote, according to an exit poll by the Public Opinion Foundation and state-run media.
His opponent from the Communist Party, Nikolay Kharitonov, received about 4.7 percent of the vote, New People Party candidate Vladislav Davankov got 3.6 percent, and Liberal Democrats candidate Leonid Slutsky got 2.5 percent of the vote, state media reported.
Mr. Putin has not commented on the results, but a former political foe, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, wrote on social media that Mr. Putin scored a “brilliant victory in the election of the President of the Russian Federation.”
US and NATO Criticism
The election comes a little more than two years after Russia launched an invasion against Ukraine, called a “special military operation” by the Kremlin.
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 that Mr. Putin said would not be left unpunished.
Supporters of Putin’s most prominent opponent, Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison last month, had called on Russians to come out at a “Noon against Putin” protest to show their dissent against the leader. There was no 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.
The Biden administration has long been critical of Mr. Putin’s presidency. On March 17, a spokesperson again said the Russian election was unfair after it was predicted that Mr. Putin would win.
“The elections are obviously not free nor fair,” a White House National Security Council spokesperson told news outlets on March 17, adding that political opponents have been imprisoned while others were prevented from running.
