17 March 2024

Vladimir Putin has won the Russian election with 87.8 per cent of the vote, exit polls show. 

Vladimir Putin has won the Russian election with 87.8 per cent of the vote, exit polls show

The despot is heading for a landslid victory in the presidential election to secure another six year term, the poll by the Russian Public Opinion Research Centre showed this evening. 

The vote, which holds little suspense, is taking place against the backdrop of the harshest crackdown on political opposition and freedom of speech in Russia since Soviet times. 

Only three token candidates – and no one who opposes his war in Ukraine – were allowed to run against him as he sought a fifth term. 

Poland has already declared the election as ‘not legal’ following the publication of the poll.

‘Russia’s presidential election is not legal, free and fair,’ said a foreign ministry statement, adding that voting had taken place ‘amid harsh repressions’ 

People attend a rally in Berlin, near the Russian embassy where voters lined up to cast their ballots in the Russia’s presidential election

Russians form huge queues outside London embassy polling station

Earlier, votes from Russian citizens living in other countries were being cast across the world.

In the UK, scores of people queued up outside the Russian Embassy in London to vote in the election. The line was at least half a mile long when MailOnline visited. 

Thousands across the nation who oppose the veteran Kremlin leader had gone to their local polling station at midday to either spoil their ballot paper in protest or to vote for one of the three candidates standing against Putin. 

Others had vowed to scrawl the name of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died last month in an Arctic prison, on their ballot paper.

Navalny’s allies broadcast videos on YouTube of lines of people queuing up at different polling stations across Russia at midday who they said were there to peacefully protest.

Navalny had endorsed the ‘Noon against Putin’ plan in a message on social media facilitated by his lawyers before he died. The independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper called the planned action ‘Navalny’s political testament’.

-agency