Vladimir Putin won a landslide election victory on Sunday — the fourth anniversary of the annexation of Crimea — extending his presidency by another six years as he easily breezed past a field of minor candidates left by the disqualification of his only credible rival. If Putin serves to the end of his new fourth term, which expires in 2024, he would become the longest-serving leader of Russia since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
Backed by state TV and the ruling party, and credited with an approval rating around 80 percent, he faced no credible threat from a field of seven challengers.
His nearest rival, Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin, won 11.8 percent while nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky got 5.6 percent. His most vocal opponent, anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, was barred from running.
Critics alleged that officials had compelled people to come to the polls to ensure that boredom with the one-sided contest did not lead to low participation.
Russia's Election Commission put out a report on Sunday "claiming that their website was hit by a cyberattack overnight and saying the cyberattack originated overseas —in 15 countries overseas. We don't have much more detail than that, and we'll see if the claim goes anywhere."
Putin loyalists said the result was a vindication of his tough stance towards the West.
“I think that in the United States and Britain they’ve understood they cannot influence our elections,” Igor Morozov, a member of the upper house of parliament, said on state television.
Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the upper house, hailed the victory as a moral one over the West.
“Our elections have proved once again … that it’s not possible to manipulate our people,” she said. “People came together.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping was among the first to offer his congratulations to Putin, saying in a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement he believed Russia would “definitely continue to create new glories for national development.”
Opposition leader Navalny is expected to call for anti-Putin protests demanding a re-run of an election he says was neither free nor fair and international observers were due to give their verdict on how clean the election was later on Monday.
The longer-term question is whether Putin will now soften his anti-Western rhetoric.
