An expected triumph.
After three days of voting, initial estimates confirm the re-election of President Vladimir Putin as head of the country, against the backdrop of repression, the death of opponent Alexeï Navalny and the assault on Ukraine.
Critics of the Russian president, who has been in charge of the country for 24 years, wanted to show themselves by going to vote at the same time, at noon on Sunday.
In places, crowds were visible, elsewhere the influx was more modest, AFP journalists noted.
Overall, this mobilization took place peacefully, but the NGO OVD-Info reported at least 80 arrests for various forms of electoral protests.
These protests did not affect the very predictable outcome of the vote.
At 7 p.m. (Paris time), the first estimates from an exit poll confirmed Vladimir Putin's victory with 87% of the vote.
An election without real opposition
The president, aged 71, faced three hand-picked and insignificant candidates.
The opposition has been decimated by years of repression which has further accelerated with the conflict in Ukraine.
The entire week was also marked by deadly strikes and attempted armed incursions from Ukraine into Russian territory, responses to the daily bombings and assaults by Kremlin forces in its neighbor for more than two years.
On Sunday, a sixteen-year-old girl was killed in an air attack on the town of Belgorod, close to the border and very often targeted.
A drone strike blamed on Ukraine also caused a refinery fire in southern Russia, with regional authorities reporting one death after a heart attack.
“We must confirm our unity”
Despite these attacks, a prolonged deadly conflict and increasingly restricted freedoms, the master of the Kremlin can count on very real popularity and sees the election as a demonstration of unity of the Russians behind him.
“We must confirm our unity,” he insisted on Thursday, the country being, in his mind, the target of a war hatched by the West.
Read alsoRussian presidential election: from his puppet on TV to the death of Navalny, how Putin extinguished the opposition
A vision shared by many of his compatriots.
“The actions that the West inflicts on us only further unite the Russian people,” swears to AFP Lyubov Piankova, a 70-year-old retiree from Saint Petersburg, the head of state's hometown.
In order to display a united front, it was also important for the Kremlin to ensure a high participation rate.
In the evening, participation at the national level stood at 73.33%, a record according to official figures.
Vladimir Putin's main critics have died, in prison or in exile, a repression that culminated with the mysterious death of Alexei Navalny in an Arctic prison.
Navalny's memory
In front of several Russian embassies around the world, huge queues formed at the appointed time.
The crowds were there particularly in Berlin, London and Paris while tens of thousands of Russians have gone into exile due to repression and military mobilization since the start of the Russian assault against Ukraine in 2022.
Yulia Navalnaïa, the wife of the deceased who had launched the call to vote at midday, waited in line all afternoon in the German capital.
Around her, some brandished signs: “No Putin, No War”, “Russia without Putin” or even “Putin is a killer”.
At the end of the day, she was cheered by her supporters as she entered the Russian embassy to vote, according to an AFP journalist on site.
She claims to have written the name of her late husband, Alexeï Navalny, on her report card.
Read alsoOpposition in Russia: these women who challenge Putin
At the appointed time, some polling stations saw a large influx, in others it was much more limited.
“It’s the last form of protest where you can express yourself freely,” said Alexandre, 29.
“If I hadn’t done that, I would have felt like a coward.”
Leonid Volkov, a former close collaborator of Navalny, thanked these crowds: “The world has seen you.
Russia is not Putin, Russia is you,” he greeted on X.
The spokesperson for Russian diplomacy, Maria Zakharova, affirmed that the voters who came en masse to the embassies were not supporters of the opposition but Russians who came to vote “despite all the threats from the West”.
Ukraine in the background
With regard to Ukraine, while the conflict has probably cost the lives of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers, the Kremlin strives to triumphantly present recent conquests of limited scale.
Also read: War in Ukraine: why kyiv is increasing its strikes and incursions into Russian territory
All week, the Russian army also had to repel attempted armed incursions from Ukraine, assaults claimed by anti-Putin units claiming to be composed of Russians.
A group, the “Siberian Battalion” claimed on Sunday morning to have entered a Russian hamlet, Gorkovsky.
Several people have died in these regions in recent days in addition to drone, rocket and artillery attacks, even if Russian anti-aircraft defense seems able to shoot down most of the projectiles.
The Russian army said on Sunday that it had destroyed 35 Ukrainian drones flying over several regions, including Moscow, overnight.
Moscow, for its part, continues its bombing of Ukraine.
A strike killed 21 people in Odessa on Friday.