MOSCOW: Russia began three days of voting on Friday in a presidential election that is set to extend the rule of Vladimir Putin by six more years.
Two years into the war in Ukraine, Putin dominates Russia’s political landscape and none of the other three candidates on the ballot paper presents any credible challenge.
The Kremlin says Putin, in power as president or prime minister since 1999, will win because he commands support across society for rescuing Russia from post-Soviet chaos and standing up to the West.
Russia’s best known opposition politician, Alexei Navalny, died suddenly in an Arctic penal colony last month and other Kremlin critics are exiled or in jail. The opposition says the vote is a sham.
More than 114 million Russians are eligible to vote, including in what Moscow calls its “new territories” — four regions of Ukraine that its forces only partly control. Putin is running against Communist Nikolai Kharitonov, Liberal Democratic Party’s Leonid Slutsky and New People Party’s Vladislav Davankov. Two anti-war candidates, Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova, were barred from running by the poll commission.