Russian President Vladimir Putin won his fifth presidential election, securing the Russian leader another six years and tightening his grip over the country in an election that offered voters no viable alternatives to his rule.
Russia’s Central Election Commission said Putin obtained nearly 88% of the vote with 24% counted, according to the Associated Press. The election was the first since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, and came just one month after the death of Putin’s largest critic Alexei Navalny.
Navalny‘s supporters showed up at polling stations at noon to protest the Kremlin, a coordinated effort that the Russian dissident leader endorsed before he died. The protest, called “Noon Against Putin,” occurred on the last day of voting in the Russian presidential election.
Only three other candidates were allowed on the ballot — Nikolay Kharitonov of the Communist Party, Vladislav Davankov of the centrist New People Party, and Leonid Slutsky of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia.
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Russian-occupied oblasts in Ukraine also took part in the election.