PUTIN EYES FOURTH TERM AS RUSSIANS GO TO POLLS
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Photo credit (AFP ) -Casting his ballot in Moscow, Putin said he would be pleased with "any" result that gave him the right to continue serving as president |
Russians voted Sunday in an
election set to hand President Vladimir Putin a fourth Kremlin term, as the
country is embroiled in a crisis with Britain and its allies over a spy
poisoning.
With the vast
country stretching across 11 time zones, polls opened in the Russian far east at
2000 GMT on Saturday and will close in Kaliningrad, the country's exclave on
the EU border, at 1800 GMT on Sunday.
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Ksenia Sobchak |
With Putin's main
challenger Alexei Navalny barred from taking part in the poll for legal
reasons, the result of the election is hugely predictable, with overall turnout
remaining the only likely element of surprise.
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Ana Gamzatova is the one of the challengers of Putin |
Many analysts say
that after 18 years of leadership -- both as president and prime minister --
Putin fatigue may be spreading across the country, and a lot of Russians are
expected to skip the polls.
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Photo credit (AFP ) - Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been barred from running, is urging voters to boycott the election which he has denounced as a sham |
The Kremlin needs a
high turnout to add greater legitimacy for a new mandate for Putin, who is
already Russia's longest-serving leader since Joseph Stalin.
'A STAGED PROCEDURE'
Casting his ballot
in Moscow, Putin said he would be pleased with "any" result that gave
him the right to continue serving as president.
"I am sure the
programme I am offering is the right one," Putin was quoted as saying by
Russian news agencies.
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Photo credit (AFP ) - Putin is running against a motley crew of seven challengers, none of whom are polling more than eight percent |
Navalny has
denounced the election as a sham and urged Russians to boycott the vote.
He has deployed more
than 30,000 observers to monitor the polls and on Sunday, his team began
publishing a rolling list of violations from polling stations around the
country.
Rather than call it
a vote, Navalny's team is referring to Sunday's election as "a staged
procedure to re-appoint Putin".
"Those who said
that 'there would be fewer falsifications during these elections because Putin
has already won over everyone' have made a mistake," he said.
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Photo credit (AFP ) - The Kremlin needs a high turnout to add greater legitimacy to a new term for Putin, who is already Russia's longest serving leader since Stalin |
In the run-up to the
poll, a new crisis broke out with the West after Britain implicated Putin in
the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal with a Soviet-designed
nerve agent.
And Washington
slapped sanctions on Moscow over alleged election meddling.
TOTAL CONTROL
Since first being
elected president in 2000, Putin has stamped his total authority on Russia
muzzling opposition and reasserting Moscow's posture abroad.
He has sought to use
the campaign to emphasise Russia's role as a major world power, boasting of its
"invincible" new nuclear weapons in a major pre-election speech.
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Vladimir Putin's grip on power |
His previous Kremlin
term has been marked by a severe crackdown on the opposition, the annexation of
Crimea, support for an insurgency in eastern Ukraine, an ongoing military
intervention in Syria and the introduction of European and US sanctions -- all
to the backdrop of a huge deterioration in ties with the West.
But the 65-year-old
former KGB officer is certain to extend his term to 2024 despite a litany of
domestic problems like widespread poverty and poor healthcare following a
lacklustre campaign.
'ECONOMY IS TERRIBLE'
Valentina Popova, a
77-year-old retiree, said she supported Putin's foreign policies and would vote
for him.
"There's no
alternative to him," she told AFP at a polling station in the south of
Moscow. "I respect him for the foreign policy, otherwise Russia would
perish."
In Saint Petersburg,
the former imperial capital, Antonina Kurchatova also said she voted for Putin but
was just hoping things in Russia would not get worse.
"I very much
like his foreign policy. He's doing everything right. But as far as the economy
is concerned, everything is terrible," the 40-year-old told .
State-run pollsters
predict Putin will take just under 70 percent of the vote, with the independent
Levada Centre -- branded a "foreign agent" -- barred from releasing
any research related to the election.
Sunday marks exactly
four years since Putin signed a treaty declaring Crimea to be a part of Russia
after its annexation from Ukraine in a move that triggered the outbreak of a
pro-Kremlin insurgency in the east of the ex-Soviet country.
That conflict has
since claimed more than 10,000 lives.
Kiev has said
Russians living in Ukraine would not be able to vote in Sunday's election as
access to Moscow's diplomatic missions would be blocked.
PUSH TO BOOST TURNOUT
Putin is standing
against a motley crew of seven challengers, including millionaire communist
Pavel Grudinin and former reality TV host Ksenia Sobchak, but none are polling
more than eight percent.
Overall turnout is
expected to be between 63 and 67 percent, according to official pollsters.
Stepan Goncharov of
the independent Levada Centre told the pollster expected turnout to be
between 57 and 68 percent.
Authorities have
pulled out all the stops to ensure a huge turnout, offering food discount
vouchers and prizes for the best selfies taken at polling stations after
running a sexually-charged online campaign.
Students have been
warned they may face problems or even expulsion if they do not turn out to
vote, and heads of state enterprises have put pressure on their employees to go
to polls.
Putin first became
president after Boris Yeltsin sensationally resigned on New Year's Eve 1999. At
the end of his second term in 2008 he handed power to his protege Dmitry
Medvedev.
Putin then served a
term as prime minister -- although few doubted who was really in charge -- and
returned as president in 2012.
The run-up to
Russia's last presidential election in 2012 was marked by huge protests across
the country against Putin's return as head of state.
But those
demonstrations were quashed, and once he was back in the Kremlin a crackdown
ensued, with activists arrested, the Pussy Riot rock band jailed and draconian
new laws passed which criminalised popular protest.
SOURCE: AFP
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