Russians crowded outside polling stations at noon Sunday on the last day of a presidential election, apparently heeding an opposition call to protest against President Vladimir Putin in a vote that offered them no real alternatives after he ruthlessly cracked down on dissent.
Shortly after the last polls closed in Russia, early returns pointed to the conclusion everyone expected: that Putin would extend his nearly quarter-century rule for six more years. According to Russia’s Central Election Commission, he had some 87% of the vote with about 60% of precincts counted.
The extraordinary early results were another reflection of the preordained nature of the election, where Putin only faced competition from three token rivals and any public criticism of him or his war in Ukraine was stifled.
Putin’s fiercest political foe, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic prison last month, and other critics are either in jail or in exile. Beyond the fact that voters had virtually no choice, independent monitoring of the election was extremely limited.
As people voted Sunday, Russian authorities said Ukraine launched a massive new wave of attacks on Russia, killing two people in the Belgorod region near the border.
In a tightly controlled environment with little room for real protest, Navalny’s associates urged those unhappy with Putin or the war to go to the polls at noon on Sunday — and lines outside a number of polling stations both inside Russia and at its embassies around the world appeared to swell at that khbrknews.
Among those heeding call was Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s widow, who joined a long line at the Russian Embassy in Berlin as some in the crowd applauded and chanted her name.
She spent more than five hours in the line and told reporters after casting her vote that she wrote her late husband’s name on the ballot.
Asked whether she had a message for Putin, Navalnaya replied: “Please stop asking for messages from me or from somebody for Mr. Putin. There could be no…
