As of: March 19, 2024, 7:57 a.m
By: Lisa Mahnke
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Press
Split
Vladimir Putin wins the Russian election, but he stumbles in one city.
And the allegations of manipulation are increasing.
Barnaul – As expected, Vladimir Putin will be President of Russia for another six years.
The announced result of more than 87 percent of the votes with 74 percent of voter turnout breaks two records.
However, figures from the city of Barnaul in southern Western Siberia could be a thorn in Putin's side - because the long-term Russian president initially lost heavily in a polling station there.
According to a Telegram message from the channel “Elections, TSYK to everyone!”, a full 84 percent of the electorate at polling station 95 in Barnaul voted for the communist Nikolai Kharitonov.
Nationally, the candidate only received 4.7 percent of the vote.
All other candidates, including Putin, only achieved a total of 10 percent in Barnaul.
With 73 votes, the President of Russia received just under a tenth of Kharitonov's votes.
This received 763 votes.
Barnaul was also an outlier in the 2021 State Duma election, with the “Communist Party of the Russian Federation” receiving 1.3 times as many votes as Putin’s “United Russia” party.
Putin doesn't get a majority at the polling station - allegations of manipulation in Moscow
“Kharitonov’s victory at a polling station in Barnaul was stolen,” said a Telegram message from
SOTA
, an independent Russian news agency.
Meanwhile, the electoral commission stated that it had mixed up the lines in the election protocol and that a new count was underway.
According to SOTA,
other candidates also won in some other polling stations, for example in the 1953 polling station in Novosibirsk,
but not as clearly as in Barnaul.
In Novosibirsk, the comparatively
critical Vladislav Davankov achieved
42 percent and Putin 40 percent.
Otherwise, the election results for Putin were significantly worse, especially at foreign polling stations.
However, according to SOTA
in Moscow , election expert Dmitry Nesterov found
suspected fraud: neighboring polling stations recorded a difference of around 40 percentage points - depending on whether they were observed or not.
There are also increasing reports of procedural violations during the counting on the “Elections, TSYK to everyone!” channel.
Putin's spokesman's election predictions are almost coming true
“Our presidential elections are not a real democracy, but a costly bureaucracy,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the
New York Times
.
Already in August he announced Putin's re-election with 90 percent approval, the 87 percent in the Russia election is not far off.
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Putin is now President of Russia until at least 2030.
© NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA / POOL / AFP
Despite isolated election losses, it remains clear: Putin will remain president of Russia for another six years.
Through constitutional reforms shortly before the Ukraine war, Putin could even run again and remain in office until 2036.
Even the individual election wins of the opposing candidates do not have much weight in the current situation with Ukraine: the only three opposing candidates (Davankov, Kharitonov and Leonid Slutski) are all classified as Kremlin supporters.
None of the candidates openly opposed the war in Ukraine.
(lismah)