{"id":3620,"date":"2012-03-04T14:21:33","date_gmt":"2012-03-04T19:21:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/W3\/?p=3620"},"modified":"2012-03-04T14:21:33","modified_gmt":"2012-03-04T19:21:33","slug":"putin-elected-russian-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/putin-elected-russian-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin ‘elected Russian president’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Vladimir Putin has declared victory in Russia’s presidential elections, returning for a third term after spending the last four years as the country’s PM.<\/p>\n

Exit polls and preliminary results gave him about 60% of the vote.<\/p>\n

Mr Putin told supporters at a rally in central Moscow they had won in an open and honest battle.<\/p>\n

But opposition groups have reported widespread fraud, with many people said to have voted more than once.<\/p>\n

They have called for mass protests in central Moscow on Monday.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile tens of thousands of supporters of Mr Putin gathered with Russian flags and banners outside the Kremlin for a concert to celebrate his victory.<\/p>\n

Making a brief appearance with current President Dmitry Medvedev, Mr Putin thanked his supporters from “every corner” of the country.<\/p>\n

“I promised you we would win, and we won,” he said. “Glory to Russia!”<\/p>\n

“We have won in an open and honest battle.<\/p>\n

“We proved that no-one can force anything on us.”<\/p>\n

Slogans on the banner included “Putin – our president” and “We believe in Putin”, but there were indications that some participants had been ordered to attend.<\/p>\n

There is tight security in the city, with 6,000 extra police brought in from outside.<\/p>\n

High turnout<\/p>\n

\nThere’s tight security in the centre of Moscow tonight. I’m standing near Red Square and there’s a line of about 50 trucks guarding the Kremlin with police and interior ministry troops.<\/p>\n

Throughout the day election monitors reported widespread vote-rigging in support of Mr Putin including so-called carousel voting where people are bussed from one polling station to another to cast multiple ballots.<\/p>\n

“The cheating has been on a vast scale,” opposition activist Alexei Navalny told me. “Vladimir Putin hasn’t won this election. He’s appointed himself president.”<\/p>\n

But Mr Putin has his supporters and they were out celebrating even before the polls closed. He’s expected to address supporters later tonight near the Kremlin but tomorrow anti-government protesters will gather in the city centre to denounce this election as neither free nor fair.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The electoral commission showed preliminary results, with more than 20% of districts counted, showing Mr Putin gaining over 62%, enough to give him a first-round victory over nearest rival Gennady Zyuganov.<\/p>\n

The other three candidates were in single digits.<\/p>\n

In a news conference after the polls closed, Mr Zyuganov described the elections as “unfair and unworthy”.<\/p>\n

But he said that with increasing public anger, Mr Putin “would not be able to rule like he used to”.<\/p>\n

“These elections cannot be considered legitimate in any way,” said Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the leaders of the street protest movement, which was not represented in the election.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile Mr Putin’s campaign chief Stanislav Govorukhin described the poll as “the cleanest in Russian history”.<\/p>\n

The turnout was 58.3% by 18:00 Moscow time (14:00 GMT), considerably higher than in 2008 elections. Electoral officials forecast a final turnout of 62.3%.<\/p>\n

The election was held against a backdrop of popular discontent, sparked by allegations of widespread fraud during December’s parliamentary elections in favour of Mr Putin’s United Russia party.<\/p>\n

Observer organisations said there had been thousands of violations including so-called carousel voting, with busloads of voters being driven around to different polling stations.<\/p>\n

The alleged fraud came despite the presence of thousands of independent observers and web cameras at polling stations.<\/p>\n

Opposition blogger and anti-corruption campaigner Alexey Navalny told the BBC: “Grandiose scale of falsifications, especially in Moscow… mass use of carousel voting.”<\/p>\n

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Vladimir Putin has declared victory in Russia’s presidential elections, returning for a third term after spending the last four years as the country’s PM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[1668],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3620"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1001harf.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}