Putin achieves a landslide victory in his re-election to extend his 25-year rule in a vote that demonstrators criticized as a sham.

world News

by Ronnie Reyes

Opinion polls showed that Russian President Vladimir Putin won by a record 88% in Sunday's presidential elections, as citizens opposed to his strong rule threw Molotov cocktails and firecrackers at polling stations and poured ink into ballot boxes to protest the vote.

Putin, who took power in 1999, received a new six-year term as president, overtaking Joseph Stalin as Russia's longest-serving leader in more than 200 years.

But the Russian president was not without his critics, as his opponents were filmed destroying and vandalizing ballot boxes in opposition to a victory that many saw as certain from the start.

A compilation video of the first days of voting, uploaded by Russian-language outlet Medusa, shows several incidents in which protesters set fire to ballot boxes and polling sites across the country.

A 21-year-old woman threw a Molotov cocktail onto the balcony of a polling station in St. Petersburg. According to Medusa.

Deputy Chairman of the Russian Central Election Commission Nikolai Pulayev confirmed incidents in the Rostov and Karachay-Cherkessia regions where protesters also poured ink into ballot boxes.

Officials in Moscow and Voronezh said protesters also doused ballot boxes with ink.

The Kremlin claimed that the stunts were led by Ukraine, which Russia invaded two years ago and is still trying to occupy.

“It is clear that they were promised money and rewards,” Pulev said of the protesters in a statement during an election commission meeting on Friday, the first of three days of voting.

The woman who threw the Molotov cocktail in St Petersburg allegedly told police that a “Ukrainian Telegram channel” promised to pay her money for setting the fire. According to what was reported by the Russian newspaper Fontanka.

She and some other protesters were detained.

Despite the protests, Putin won 87.8% of the vote, the highest ever result in Russia's post-Soviet history, according to the FOM exit poll.

The Russian Public Opinion Research Center gave Putin a rating of 87%.

The landslide victory demonstrates the overwhelming support for the former KGB spy.

The Russian President's victory came despite calls from supporters of his most prominent rival, the late Alexei Navalny, who urged their citizens to go out in a “noon protest against Putin” to express their opposition to his government.

There were no independent official statistics on how many of Russia's 114 million voters took part in the protests, which attracted tens of thousands of police and security officials in response.