President Vladimir V. Putin on Sunday extended his rule over Russia until 2030, using a heavily stage-managed presidential election with no real competition to portray overwhelming public support for his domestic dominance and his invasion of Ukraine.
Some Russians tried to turn the undemocratic vote into a protest, forming long lines at polling stations at a predetermined time to register their discontent.
But the Kremlin brushed those challenges aside and released results after the polls closed claiming that Mr. Putin had won 87 percent of the vote an even higher number than in the four previous elections he participated in.
Putin took a lengthy, televised victory lap, including a swaggering, after-midnight news conference at which he commented on the death of the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei Navalny as an “unfortunate incident”
Mr. Putin is now set to use his new six-year term to further cement his control of Russian politics and to press on with the war in Ukraine. If he sees the term through to its end, he will become the longest-serving Russian leader since Catherine the Great in the 1700s.
However Western governments have condemned the election as undemocratic.
Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for President Biden’s National Security Council, said “the elections were obviously not free and fair.
Grigorii Golosov, a political scientist in St. Petersburg, described Putin win as extremely closed autocracies.
“They can declare any results they want, given that the process is not transparent,” Mr. Golosov said. “All that these results speak to is the degree of control over the electoral system, the election process, that the Russian authorities have attained.”
But despite these views Putin prepares to assume a fifth term as president, he appears as emboldened as ever, deepening his confrontation with the West and showing a willingness to keep escalating tensions.
Ever since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian authorities have mounted a campaign of repression unseen since Soviet times, effectively criminalizing any form of antiwar speech.
And some voters interviewed in Moscow said they were proud to have voted for Mr. Putin, repeating a narrative that is a staple of Russian state television. The president, they said, had turned Russia into a prosperous, respected world power that has been forced into military conflict with a Western-armed Ukraine.
As we wait Putin to assume office what lies ahead of his fuve years term. Shall we see war no more?
