CNN
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President Vladimir Putin is set to tighten his grip on the country he has ruled since the turn of the century, with partial results from Russia’s stage-managed election indicating a predictably large victory for the Kremlin leader in a result that was a foregone conclusion.
With half of the ballots counted, Putin was in the lead with 87.3% of the vote, according to preliminary results reported Sunday by Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC).
The result means Putin will rule until at least 2030, when he will be 77. Russia’s longest-serving leader since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, he will secure a third full decade of rule.
With most opposition candidates either dead, jailed, exiled or barred from running – and with dissent effectively outlawed in Russia since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – Putin faced no credible challenge to his rule.
The result was inevitable – Putin’s spokesman said last year that the vote was “not really democracy” but “costly bureaucracy” – but the ritual of elections is nonetheless crucially important to the Kremlin as a means of confirming Putin’s authority. The ritual used to be held every four years, before the law was changed in 2008 to extend presidential terms to six years. Later constitutional changes removed presidential term limits, potentially allowing Putin to stay in power until 2036.
In a victory lap at his election headquarters late Sunday, Putin said the election had “consolidated” national unity and that there were “many tasks ahead” for Russia as it continues its course of confrontation with the West.
“No matter how hard anyone tries to frighten us, whoever tries to suppress us, our will, our consciousness, no one has ever managed to have done such a thing in history, and it won’t happen now and it won’t happen in the future. Never,” he said.
Putin’s fiercest opponents have died in recent months. After leading a failed uprising in June, Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed two months later after his plane crashed while traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The Kremlin denied any involvement in Prigozhin’s death.
The elections were held a month after the death of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s most formidable opponent. Navalny, who was barred from running for election in 2018, was poisoned by the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok in 2020; a CNN-Bellingcat investigation identified the Russian Security Service (FSB) team specializing in toxins and nerve agents that tailed him. Following his treatment in Germany, Navalny returned to Russia in 2021 and would eventually be sentenced to a total of more than 30 years in prison during various trials.
Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony on February 16. Russia’s prison service said he “felt unwell after a walk” and lost consciousness, later attributing his death to natural causes. The Kremlin denied any involvement in his poisoning or death.
In his Sunday evening address, Putin also made an unprecedented break with his tradition of not uttering Navalny’s name, discussing his death and confirming discussions over a potential prisoner swap involving the opposition figure. Navalny’s allies had previously claimed he was “days away” from being exchanged before his death.
“As for Mr. Navalny – yes, he passed away. It is always a sad…
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