The Russian president, Vladimir Putin will remain in the Kremlin until 2030 after achieving 87.5% of the votes According to the scrutiny of 32% of the votes, the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) reported at the end of the three days of voting. Putin, 71, achieved his biggest electoral victory since he came to power in 2000, despite the war in Ukraine and Western economic sanctions.

He will remain president of this country for another six years, after which he will be able to run for reelection again, since in 2020 he reformed the clauses of the Constitution that prevented him from continuing in the Kremlin. The second most voted candidate was the communist Nikolai Kharitonov with 4% of the votes.followed by the representative of the New People party, Vladislav Davankov, with 3.86%.

The last candidate is the ultranationalist Leonid Slutski, who accounts for 3% of the ballots. The opposition to the Kremlin could not attend the elections, since the CEC did not register its candidates for various technical reasons or formal defects, for supporting peace in Ukraine. The CEC, which did not invite Western observers, today denied that serious irregularities occurred, although independent experts and the press in exile denounced several cases of electoral manipulation.

Participation with three hours left before the schools closed exceeded 74%, meaning expected to mark a record high since Russia’s first direct presidential election in 1991. The opposition expressed its suspicions about the massive use of administrative resources after more than half of the census, estimated at 112 million people, voted in the first two days.

Thousands of Russian critics of the Kremlin came out at 12 noon on Sunday to vote en masse in Russia and abroad in a show of rejection coordinated by the opposition against Putin’s policies and the war in Ukraine. The elections have been marked by drone attacks and Ukrainian border incursions, which caused several deaths and led Putin to accuse Kyiv of trying to torpedo his re-election.