President Vladimir Putin was congratulated by his friends in Russia for winning the election over the weekend, while Western officials criticized the “illegal” poll.
With 87.8 percent of the vote, Putin won Russia’s presidential election in a record-breaking post-Soviet landslide, according to the results released on Sunday.
As a result of the decision, 71-year-old Putin will begin his fifth term as president, interspersed with a term as prime minister. He will surpass Joseph Stalin to become Russia’s longest-serving leader for more than 200 years if he serves out his remaining six-year term.
Long before the results were expected, Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of the Security Council and a stand-in president from 2008 to 2012, posted on Telegram, congratulating Vladimir Putin on his overwhelming win. This highlights the highly expected win of Putin.
Why Putin is frantic to win a significant election?
A lot of people already knew how the upcoming March 15–17 Russian presidential election would turn out.
With the electoral commission excluding any contender who would have attracted any popular support from running, President Vladimir Putin has very little opposition from the other contenders.
The Kremlin did not like the amount of attention and interest that former TV journalist Yekaterina Duntsova’s candidacy had drawn, so soon after she filed her application, she was declared the winner. Notwithstanding his ability to draw the anti-Putin vote, liberal politician Boris Nadezhdin was likewise barred from running. Nadezhdin had advocated for the cessation of the violence in Ukraine.
Putin is seeking a landslide victory in the Russian presidential election to continue his policies, including the special military operation in Ukraine. A landslide victory would allow Putin to take unpopular measures, such as announcing a second wave of mobilization. Putin plans to amass enough troops to launch a new major offensive, break through Ukrainian defenses, and take Kharkiv, Odesa, and Kyiv. The Kremlin is desperate for a big win in the presidential election because the majority of the Russian population is not enthusiastic about the war.
Friends praise Putin for his “illegal” election win, Western leaders oppose
Even though the results of the 2024 presidential election were always certain, a large number of Russians made an effort to resist the inevitable by responding to a call to protest Putin’s war in Ukraine and domestic persecution by turning out to vote at noon on the final day of a three-day election.
However, from the first results, it was certain that Putin would seek a fifth term to continue his almost 25-year domination. Putin received 87.28 percent of the votes, according to the final figures that were made public on Monday and excluded votes cast from overseas. With 4.31, 3.85, and 3.20 percent of the vote, the three other contenders entered the race but refrained from overtly opposing Putin.
But Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, who celebrated Putin’s decisive victory moments before polls opened, was the only one who could defeat him. “I would like to express my congratulations to Vladimir Putin for his overwhelming win in today’s elections,” he said on X. “No resistance. No liberty. Not a choice.
If we combine his tenure as prime minister from 2008 to 2012 with his six-year term until 2030, he would be the longest-reigning Russian leader since Joseph Stalin.
He faced up against three other candidates for president, at least in theory: Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party, Vladislav Davankov of the center-right New People, and Leonid Slutsky of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR).
