A woman takes a photo in front of a screen showing the first results of the Russian presidential election in Moscow, Mar. 17, 2024. (Credit: AFP)
According to initial figures on Sunday, Vladimir Putin won the presidential election with 87 percent of the vote, a result that was calibrated to guarantee his triumph in the absence of an opposition, decimated by repression and unable to field a candidate.
This score, provided by a poll conducted by the official VCIOM institute, was announced on state television. According to the Russian electoral commission, Putin won 87.97 percent of the vote after 24 percent of polling stations were counted. This was a record for the man who had always won between 64 and 68 percent of the vote in previous elections.
Beforehand, the authorities had insisted that the Russian people should be "united" behind their leader, presenting the Ukraine war as a Western plot to destroy Russia. The assault on Ukraine, launched by Putin in February 2022 with no end in sight despite tens of thousands of deaths, was the backdrop to the vote, especially as attacks on Russian territory have multiplied this week.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described Putin as a man "drunk with power" who wants to "rule forever."
Poland deemed the presidential election "not legal, free or fair." In Russia, the authorities left no room for opponents of the government. The three other candidates selected were all in line with the Kremlin, whether in terms of Ukraine or the repression that culminated in the death of Alexei Navalny in an Arctic prison in February.
Against this backdrop, the wife of Vladimir Putin's late No. 1 detractor, Yulia Navalnaya, called on her supporters to show their support by voting against the Russian president at midday on Sunday.
'I wrote Navalny'
She voted after waiting several hours in a huge crowd at the Russian embassy in Berlin. "I wrote [on the ballot paper] the name 'Navalny' because it's not possible ... that a month before the elections, Putin's main opponent, already imprisoned, should be killed," she told the press after casting her vote.
As she left the embassy, her supporters chanted "Yulia, Yulia, we're with you!" AFP reported. She also called Putin a "killer" and a "gangster."
In front of many other Russian embassies, large crowds turned out to vote at midday around the world, tens of thousands of Russians having gone into exile since the start of the assault on Ukraine because of repression and fear of being drafted into the army.
Alexei Navalny's team declared that Putin's score in the Russian presidential election had "no connection with reality." In some places in Moscow, as in St Petersburg, long queues formed at the appointed time. At other polling stations, however, the crowds did not seem particularly large.
In the Moscow district of Marino — in front of the office where Navalny used to vote — a few dozen people answered the call. "I was able to meet a few people, talk to them, and I felt that they were thinking the same thing as I was. I'm not alone," explained 52-year-old Olga, before setting off with her son to visit the grave of the opposition leader buried in the neighborhood.
Dozens of people marched through the cemetery, placing fresh flowers on the grave and ballot papers with Navalny's name added. The opposition mobilization passed off peacefully, but the NGO OVD-Info, which specializes in monitoring repression, reported at least 77 arrests in Russia for various forms of electoral protest.
Strikes and incursions
The Russian diplomatic spokeswoman stated that the voters who flocked to the embassies, as in Paris, London and Berlin, were not opposition supporters. "They came to vote, seizing the opportunity that their country Russia offered them despite all the threats from the West," Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram. Hostilities in Ukraine also played a role in the vote.
The election week was marked by deadly air strikes and attempted ground incursions from Ukraine into Russian territory, a retaliation for Russia's daily bombardments and assaults against its neighbor for more than two years.
On Sunday morning, a 16-year-old girl was killed in an air strike on the city of Belgorod, close to the border and frequently targeted. In the afternoon, another person died and 19 were wounded in the same region. A military unit operating from Ukraine, the Siberian Battalion, claimed on Sunday morning to have entered the Russian hamlet of Gorkovski.