Vladimir Putin largely re-elected for a fifth term

An unsurprising ballot outcome. Vladimir Putin won with 87% of the votes, Sunday March 17, a presidential election which had been calibrated to guarantee his triumph, in the absence of a real opposition decimated by repression. This score provided following a survey by the official Vtsiom institute was announced on state television. According to the Russian electoral commission, he received 87.97% of the votes after the counting of votes in 24% of polling stations.

The regional results are also trickling in on the website of the Russian public agency Tass, which reports a solid 89% of the votes in the city of Moscow. According to a Russian television channel, the distribution of votes nationally is as follows: 87.85%, 3.86%, 3.76% and 2.97%. The authorities had, in any case, left no room for opponents of power: the three adversaries of Vladimir Putin were all in line with the Kremlin.

The reactions of the opposition were not long in coming. The team of Alexeï Navalny, who died in prison, denounced this score as having “no connection with reality”. “The percentages invented for Putin obviously have no connection with reality. It’s not worth talking about it”, reacted on Twitter Leonid Volkov, former right-hand man in exile of Alexeï Navalny. Internationally, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky considered that Vladimir Putin was a man “drunk with power” wants “reign forever”. Poland, for its part, judged that the presidential election was not “not legal, free and fair”.