Results of the Russian presidential “elections”: Putin breaks records
18 March 2024 12:16
After counting 99.75% of the ballots in the presidential “election,” the Russian Central Election Commission said that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is leading with 87.29% of the vote, Komersant ukrainskyi reports 
Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is in second place with 4.30% of the vote. Vyacheslav Davankov of the New People party received 3.84%, and Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky 3.21%.
The turnout was 77.44%.
The Russian Central Election Commission will officially sum up the results of the presidential election on 21 March.
According to Russian propagandists, Putin allegedly gained up to 95% of the vote in the occupied territories of Ukraine: 95.23% in the occupied part of Donetsk region, 94.12% in Luhansk region, 92.95% in Zaporizhzhia region, and 88.12% in Kherson region.
It is worth noting that the previous record for the number of votes for Putin was recorded in 2018 – 76.69%.
In Chechnya, 99.28% of voters allegedly voted for Putin.
The turnout in the Russian presidential election abroad by 08:30 Moscow time was 372,000 people, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, adding that this was not the final figure.
According to Stanislav Andreychuk, co-chairman of the Russian movement Golos (recognised as a foreign agent in Russia), the analysis of the turnout for the presidential election “points to fraud”.
In total, Golos received 1,648 reports of violations on its election map.
“In some regions of the Russian Federation, the turnout is completely unnatural, it is drawn there in some territorial election commissions: all neighbouring precinct election commissions show approximately the same percentage of turnout up to a tenth. This does not happen in real life. This is a sign of outright fraud,”
– Andriychuk explained.
The world’s reaction to the Russian presidential election
North Korean President Kim Jong-un, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro congratulated Putin on his election victory.
Independent observers and experts describe the elections as unfree and non-competitive. Putin, who has ruled Russia since 2000, was running for a fifth term. All candidates from non-parliamentary parties and self-nominated candidates who collected signatures were denied registration by the Central Election Commission.
The Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already commented on the results, stating that they were not conducted in a transparent and democratic manner. In particular, the diplomatic agency pointed out that Russia had organised the elections in the occupied territories of Ukraine.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said that the presidential election in Russia was not free and fair. According to him, “the illegal holding of elections on the territory of Ukraine, the lack of choice for voters and independent monitoring by the OSCE” is “not what free and fair elections look like”.
The United States also refused to consider the Russian elections free and fair.
TheGerman Foreign Ministry called the vote a “pseudo-election, the result of which is not surprising to anyone”. The Polish Foreign Ministry also stated that the elections in Russia cannot be considered free and fair.
Putin’s fifth term
In the summer of 2020, Russia adopted constitutional amendments that allowed Putin to run for the presidency twice again and remain in power until 2036.
Putin has been in power since 2000. He was elected president twice in the 2000s: in 2000 and 2004. Back then, the presidential term was four years. In 2008, Putin and the then-prime minister made a switch: Dmitry Medvedev became president and Putin became prime minister. In 2012, Putin was elected for a third term, and in the same year, the presidential term was extended from four to six years. In 2018, he became president for the fourth time.
