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.
The first presidential election since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began not without incident.
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%.
Russia’s best-known opposition politician, Alexei Navalny, died suddenly in an Arctic penal colony last month and other prominent Kremlin critics are exiled or in jail.
Navalny’s widow, Yulia, who has blamed Putin for her husband’s death, urged her supporters to protest against Putin, 71, by voting en masse at noon local time on Sunday, forming large crowds and overwhelming polling stations. The polling protest has been labelled “Noon Against Putin” and the plan was endorsed by Navalny before he died.
From patriotic films to youth festivals: the £1bn push to get vote out for Putin
Navalny’s team suggested spoiling the ballot paper, writing “Alexei Navalny” across the voting slip, or voting for one of the three candidates standing against Putin.
Russian prosecutors on Thursday threatened any voters who take part in the Noon Against Putin action with five years in prison, though it remains unclear how authorities plan to crack down on the protest given that they would have no legal grounds to disperse participants.
Russian woman detained after pouring dye into ballot box – video
A number of Russians took more direct action to undermine the vote. In several incidents caught on video on Friday, Russians walked up to urns carrying ballots and poured in a green antiseptic dye before being detained by police.
In Kogalym, western Siberia, a woman set a small fire inside a polling station. Video showed the fire creeping toward a ballot box before a poll worker leapt over the fire to intervene. Another video showed a voting booth in flames at a polling station in Moscow.
