(CNN) — President Vladimir Putin is set to tighten his grip on the country he has ruled since the turn of the century, with early results from Russia’s stage-managed election indicating a predictably large victory for the Kremlin leader in a result that was a foregone conclusion.
President Vladimir Putin is set to tighten his grip on the country he has ruled since the turn of the century, with early results from Russia’s stage-managed election indicating a predictably large victory for the Kremlin leader in a result that was a foregone conclusion.
Minutes after polls closed on Sunday, the head of the Russian Central Election Commission (CEC) said Putin was in the lead with 87.9% of the vote, with 24.4% of the count in.
The result means Putin will rule until at least 2030, when he will be 77. Russia’s longest-serving leader since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, he will secure a third full decade of rule.
With most opposition candidates either dead, jailed, exiled or barred from running – and with dissent effectively outlawed in Russia since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – Putin faced no credible challenge to his rule.
The result was inevitable, but the ritual of elections is nonetheless crucially important to the Kremlin as a means of confirming Putin’s authority. The ritual used to be held every four years, before the law was changed in 2008 to extend presidential terms to six years. More constitutional changes in 2020 removed presidential term limits, potentially allowing Putin to stay in power until 2036.
Russia also held the presidential election in four Ukrainian regions it annexed during its full-scaled invasion. Ukraine said the elections violated international law and would be designated “null and void.”
Putin’s fiercest opponents have died in recent months. After leading a failed uprising in June, Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed two months later after his plane crashed while traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The Kremlin denied any involvement in Prigozhin’s death.
The elections were held a month after the death of Alexey Navalny, Putin’s most formidable opponent. Navalny, who was barred from running for election in 2018, was poisoned by the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok in 2020; a CNN-Bellingcat investigation identified the Russian Security Service (FSB) team specializing in toxins and nerve agents that tailed him. Following his treatment in Germany, Navalny returned to Russia in 2021 and would eventually be sentenced to a total of more than 30 years in prison during various trials.
