Victory for the 71-year-old in the three-day vote was never in doubt, with all his major opponents dead, in prison or exiled, and authorities waging an unrelenting crackdown on those who publicly oppose the Kremlin or its military offensive on Ukraine.

The government-run VTsIOM pollster projected Putin had won the election with 87 percent of the vote after polls closed in Russia’s western-most region of Kaliningrad at 1700 GMT.

The highly-touted election was marked by a surge in deadly Ukrainian bombardments, incursions into Russian territory by pro-Kyiv sabotage groups and vandalism at polling stations.

The Kremlin cast the election as an opportunity for Russians to throw their weight behind the full-scale military operation in Ukraine, where voting is also being staged in Russian-controlled territories.

Kyiv slammed the vote as a sham, and President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced Putin as a “dictator” who was “drunk from power.”.

“There is no evil he will not commit to prolong his personal power,” Zelensky said in a message on social media.

Opposition dismisses vote

Allies of the late Alexei Navalny—Putin’s most prominent rival, who died in an Arctic prison last month — has urged voters to flood polling stations at noon and spoil their ballots for a “Midday Against Putin” protest.

His wife, Yulia Navalnaya, was greeted by supporters with flowers and applause in Berlin. She said she had written her late husband’s name on her ballot after voting at the Russian embassy.

Some voters in Moscow appeared to heed Navalny’s call, telling AFP they had come to honour his memory and show their opposition in the only legal way possible.

“I came to show that there are many of us, that we exist, and that we are not some insignificant minority,” said 19-year-old student Artem Minasyan at a polling station in central Moscow.

Leonid Volkov, a senior aide to the late opposition leader who was recently attacked in Lithuania where he fled political persecution in Russia, dismissed the results published by Moscow.

“The percentages drawn for Putin have, of course, not the slightest relation to reality,” Volkov, Navalny’s former chief of staff, wrote on social media.

Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, argued the long lines outside embassies abroad were evidence of support for the Kremlin.

“If the people queueing abroad to vote in the Russian presidential election had taken part in the ‘noon’ action, they would have all dispersed after noon. But no,” she wrote on social media.

Tributes to Navalny

At Navalny’s grave in a Moscow cemetery, AFP reporters saw spoiled ballot papers with his name scrawled across them on a pile of flowers.

Navalny, who galvanised mass protests, tried to run against Putin in the 2018 presidential election and toured Russia to drum up support, but his candidacy was rejected.

“We live in a country where we will go to jail if we speak our mind. So when I come to moments like this and see a lot of people, I realise that we are not alone,” said 33-year-old Regina.

There were repeated acts of protest in the first days of polling, with a spate of arrests of Russians accused of pouring dye into ballot boxes or arson attacks.

Any public dissent in Russia has been harshly punished since the start of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 and there were repeated warnings from the authorities against election protests.

The OVD-Info police monitoring group announced that at least 80 people had been detained across nearly 20 cities in Russia for protest actions linked to the elections.

The surge in Ukrainian strikes on Russia continued unabated, with the Russian defence ministry reporting that at least eight regions attacked overnight and on Sunday morning.

Fatal border attacks

Three airports serving the capital briefly suspended operations following the barrage, while a drone attack in the south sparked a fire at an oil refinery.

In Russia’s border city of Belgorod, multiple rounds of shelling killed two — a man and a 16-year-old girl—aand wounded 12 more, the region’s governor said Sunday.

The governor has ordered the closure of shopping centres and schools in Belgorod and the surrounding area for two days because of the strikes.

In the Russian-controlled territory of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, where voting is also taking place, “kamikaze drones” set a polling station ablaze, according to the Moscow-installed authorities.

– ‘Difficult period’ –

Putin, a former KGB agent, has been in power since the last day of 1999 and is set to extend his grip over the country until at least 2030.

If he completes another Kremlin term, he will have stayed in power longer than any Russian leader since Catherine the Great in the 18th century.

In a pre-election address Putin said Russia was going through a “difficult period” and called on the country to be “united and self-confident.”

A concert on Red Square is being staged on Monday to mark 10 years since Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula — an event that is also expected to serve as a victory celebration for Putin.

The post Putin wins Russian presidential election with 87.97% of the vote appeared first on New Mail Nigeria.

Volodymyr Zelensky, whose only previous political role was playing the president in a TV show, trounced incumbent Petro Poroshenko by taking 73 percent of the vote, according to exit polls conducted by several think tanks.

It was an extraordinary outcome to a campaign that started as a joke but struck a chord with voters frustrated by poverty, corruption and a five-year war in eastern Ukraine that has claimed some 13,000 lives.

The 41-year-old star of the TV series “Servant of the People” will now take the helm of a country of 45 million people beset by challenges and having run on the vaguest of political platforms.

“I will never let you down,” Zelensky told jubilant supporters at his Kiev campaign headquarters where he was showered with glittering confetti after the exit polls were released.

“While I am not formally president yet, as a citizen of Ukraine I can tell all post-Soviet countries: ‘Look at us! Everything is possible!’.”

Zelensky won in all regions of the country, defeating Poroshenko even in the west where he traditionally enjoyed strong support.

Poroshenko, 53, conceded defeat in a speech at his campaign headquarters and said the results were “clear” and enough reason to “call my opponent and congratulate him. I will leave office but I want to firmly stress — I will not quit politics,” Poroshenko said.

Preliminary results were expected in several hours but the same exit polls were accurate in the first round of the election.

After taking the most votes in last month’s first-round vote, Zelensky had enjoyed a strong lead going into Sunday’s poll.

From Ukrainian-speaking regions in the west of the country to Russian-speaking territories in the war-torn east, many voters said they feared uncertainty but yearned for change.

“We’re tired of all the lies,” said Marta Semenyuk, 26, who cast her ballot for the comedian.

“I think it just cannot get any worse and I hope he’ll live up to his promises,” said Larisa, an 18-year-old student from the government-held eastern port city of Mariupol.

Zelensky’s victory opens a new chapter in the history of a country that has gone through two popular uprisings in the last 20 years and is mired in a conflict with Moscow-backed separatists in the east.

His supporters say only a fresh face can clean up Ukraine’s politics and end the separatist conflict.

But others doubt the showman will be able to take on the country’s influential oligarchs, negotiate with the likes of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and stand up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

“People have gone mad,” Viktoriya Olomutska, a 39-year-old Poroshenko supporter, said in Kiev. “Cinema and reality are two different things.”

Poroshenko had previously mocked his rival’s lack of political experience and argued he was unfit to be a wartime commander-in-chief.

The outgoing leader came to power after a 2014 pro-Western uprising ousted a Kremlin-backed regime, triggering Moscow’s annexation of Crimea.

His supporters credited him with rebuilding the army and securing an Orthodox Church independent of Russia.

But many feel the country’s ruling elite have forgotten the promises of the revolution.

The comic shunned traditional campaign rallies and instead performed comedy gigs and used social media to appeal to voters.

The Ukrainian president has strong powers over defence, security and foreign policy but needs backing from parliament to push through reforms.

Poroshenko’s faction has the most seats in the current legislature and new parliamentary polls are due in October.

The West has closely watched the race amid concern a new government might undo years of economic reforms.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called both Zelensky and Poroshenko on the eve of the run-off vote.

The post Comedian Zelensky wins Ukraine presidency in landslide appeared first on New Mail Nigeria.