Voting underway in Russia presidential elections

Voters in Russia headed to the polls across the country’s 11 time zones on Friday in a three-day presidential election that is all but certain to extend Vladimir Putin’s 24-year rule until at least 2030.

The longtime Russian leader is facing no meaningful opposition after the Russian authorities barred two candidates who had voiced their opposition to the war in Ukraine from running. Three other politicians running in the election do not directly question Putin’s authority and their participation is meant to add a facade of legitimacy to the race.

The first presidential election since Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine began not without incident. Local authorities in at least five regions, including Russian-annexed Crimea, reported cases involving voters spilling green antiseptic dye into ballot boxes and incidents of arson at polling stations.

Russia’s electoral commission reported that it had faced more than 10,500 cyber-attacks, and a key government website used for online voting was unavailable in some Russian regions for much of the day.

In angry comments on Friday, Putin lashed out at Kyiv for an ongoing raid along the Russian border that he called an attempt to “disrupt the voting process [and] intimidate people in at least those areas which border Ukraine”.

The start of the voting came hours after one of the deadliest Russian strikes yet on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, which killed at least 20 people when two rockets fired from Crimea struck a residential area.

The Kremlin wants to show that it can successfully stage elections despite the war. Putin has won previous elections by a landslide but independent election watchdogs say they were marred by widespread fraud.

Before these elections, the state-backed Vtsiom polling agency predicted Russians would give Putin 82% of the vote, his highest ever return, on a turnout of 71%. By Friday afternoon, Russia’s electoral commission said turnout had already exceed 25%, including more than 2.6m ballots cast online. Putin was among those who voted online on Friday, the Kremlin said.