Russia celebrates this Friday the first day of the eighth presidential elections in its history in which the current head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, seeks re-election for a fifth six-year term.
Polling stations opened last night in the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Chukotka Autonomous District, the easternmost regions of Russia, for presidential elections in which more than 112 million Russians are called to vote over the next three days.
The polls opened at 08:00 local time (20:00 GMT) in the Russian Far East and will close at 20:00 local time (18:00 GMT) in the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad in a country with eleven time zones.
Russians will be able to exercise their right to vote for 36 hours, something that more than two million voters have already done in advance.
Putin “competes” against three other candidates
According to official polls, Putin, who is competing against three other candidates, has a voting intention of more than 80%, so he could achieve his largest electoral victory since he came to power in 2000.
The representative of the New People party, Vladislav Davankovand the communist Nikolai Kharitonov They have 6% support among those surveyed. Meanwhile, the ultranationalist Leonid Slutski support is around 5%.
They also vote in the occupied areas of Ukraine
According to the Central Election Commission (CEC), the elections will take place in all 89 regions of the country, including the four Ukrainian territories annexed in September 2022 (Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia), and the also annexed Crimean peninsula.
Some 4.5 million voters will be able to vote in the areas occupied by the Russian army in these four regions, partially controlled by Moscow.
In total, the commission enabled 93,644 polling stations, to which another 295 must be added in the 144 countries where Russian citizens live.
More than a third of voters will be able to exercise their right to vote electronically, clearly fraudulent methodaccording to the opposition in exile.
Following the death in prison of the Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, His co-religionists – who hold Putin directly responsible – called on the West not to recognize the electoral results.
Ukraine, which considers the Russian elections on its territory illegal, has launched several massive drone attacks against Russia in recent days, in addition to border incursions in the Belgorod and Kursk regions.
The first direct elections in Russian history took place on June 12, 1991, when the Soviet Union still existed, and were won by Boris Yeltsin, who would be re-elected in 1996 and hand over power to Putin before the March elections. 2000.
