Putin declared winner with 87 percent of votes – Russia’s elections at a glance Thousands of people protest against Putin’s election

What does the result look like?

After a presidential election mired in allegations of rigging, Russia’s election commission awarded Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin a record result of about 87 percent of the vote. After almost 50 percent of the votes cast were counted, Putin had a share of 87.34 percent, Russian media from the Central Election Commission reported. This means that the 71-year-old Putin won more than ten percentage points compared to the 2018 elections (76.7 percent). It is considered his best ever result as he begins his fifth term in office.

Voter turnout in the elections was reportedly over 74 percent – ​​also a record. It was the highest number in a Russian presidential election. However, critics pointed out that this could only be achieved through repression, coercion and fraud.

Why is the result considered controversial?

Independent observers pointed to systematic fraud behind this high value for Putin. Since the first day of voting on Friday, a large number of cases have been documented in which employees of state-owned enterprises were pressured to vote and in some cases even had to take photos as proof of their completed voting form.

Critics also complained that the online process in particular was easy to manipulate. Observers also documented the mass putting of pre-filled ballots into ballot boxes.

How turbulent were the elections?

Several incidents occurred during the presidential elections in Russia, which were widely criticized as unfree. According to media reports, a woman set off fireworks at a polling station and seriously injured herself. The 64-year-old from the city of Perm caused the explosion in the building’s toilet and ripped off her own hand, the Telegram channel Baza reported on Sunday evening.

Regional authorities confirmed an emergency at the polling station and said the woman had been taken to hospital. It is not known whether more people were injured.

Absurd images from Russian polling stations are also circulating on social media. A video shows an armed soldier storming into the voting booths to see what is happening there. Another video shows a woman being detained by a police officer for having green paint on her.

The Ovd-Info portal reports on Twitter that dozens of people have been arrested during the protests in Russia. In total, the Ovd-Info organization counted more than seventy arrests across the country at the beginning of Sunday afternoon, including about thirty in the city of Kazan. People in Moscow and St. Petersburg were also affected. Many of them wanted to line up in long lines outside their polling stations at exactly noon local time on Sunday to show their displeasure over Putin’s re-election, which was planned by the power apparatus and denounced as undemocratic by the opposition. .

Opposition politician Boris Nadezhdin, who was excluded from the presidential elections, also took part in the peaceful ‘Lunch against Putin’ protest in the Russian capital. At the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, where there is a polling station, he was greeted with great applause by students, as shown in a video he published on Telegram on Sunday. “I think you still have a chance to vote for me,” he told the crowd. He announced that he would publish his own post-election surveys after the polls closed.

What was going on in Switzerland?

On the last day of the Russian presidential elections, about a thousand Russians protested against the incumbent Vladimir Putin in Bern on Sunday. The call went out to “all those who disagree with Putin’s policies and are against war and injustice.”

There were also protests against Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin in front of the Russian Consulate General in Geneva. The line, which included many young Russians, stretched orderly across the sidewalk, a correspondent from the Keystone-SDA news agency reported. Some carried posters against Putin and the war in Ukraine. Nearly 2,000 Russians from French-speaking Switzerland were expected to vote in Geneva.

Most of the people present around noon followed the call from the widow of the late opposition figure Alexei Navalny to go to the polls at the same time around noon.

What did Navalnaya do?

Speaking of Navalnaya, Navalny’s widow, who lives in Germany, also took part in protests in Berlin. The human rights activist did not abstain from voting, but said she had written her late husband’s name on the ballot paper.

She said this on Sunday in Berlin after participating in the elections for the Russian embassy there. Navalnaya unexpectedly joined the queue outside the embassy and then entered the area in the early evening. Shortly afterwards she left again.

According to police information, about 800 people took part in the demonstration in Berlin. The demonstrators shouted: “Victory for Ukraine! Freedom for Russia!”, “Navalny is a hero of Russia” and “Putin is illegitimate”. Numerous people waved flags in white-blue-white, which, according to the participants, should be the new colors of a free Russia.

What does Zelenskyj say about the result?

People in the occupied parts and the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, also voted in the election, which was criticized as a farce by Putin’s opponents. Ukraine and other countries reject the vote, which was organized in violation of international law, as illegal and pointless. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kiev called on the international community not to recognize the results.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denied Putin ‘any legitimacy’. “This election fraud has and cannot have legitimacy,” Zelensky said in his evening video address in Kiev. “This figure (Putin) must end up in the dock in The Hague – we must ensure that, everyone in the world who values ​​life and decency.” An arrest warrant has been issued by the World Criminal Court in The Hague against Putin over allegations of war crimes in Ukraine.

(dab/cmu/con with material from sda)