Russians vote on new Putin term as tensions flare with West

A woman holds a flag that reads “I love Kamchatka, we are the first!” as she prepares to cast her ballots at a polling station

Russians headed to the polls in presidential elections expected to hand Vladimir Putin an easy victory, keeping him in power until 2024.

Putin, 65, already Russia’s longest-serving leader since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin after more than 18 years at the helm, is seeking a fourth term amid an escalating stand-off with the West and economic malaise.

“I am confident that the program I am offering for the country is right,” Putin told reporters yesterday after voting at a polling station at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

With little opposition tolerated and widespread apathy about the outcome amid stagnating living standards, the Kremlin’s main task is to ensure turnout is enough to give Putin’s new term a stamp of legitimacy. Officials mounted a major drive ahead of the vote to get citizens to show up at polling places, offering inducements ranging from free food to prize contests.

Struggling with a cold for much of the campaign, Putin attended few election events and, as in previous contests, dodged televised debates with his opponents. State broadcasters lavished coverage on presidential visits to Russia’s regions, giving scant attention to his rivals. The debates often dissolved into shouting and pushing among the other candidates.

His rivals include Communist Pavel Grudinin, a farm boss who’s defended Stalin’s bloody purges, ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who’s been trounced in past contests, and Boris Titov, who attracted ridicule for running against Putin while serving as the Kremlin’s business ombudsman.

There’s also former reality-TV star Ksenia Sobchak, who’s run a campaign critical of Putin while laboring under accusations from opposition leader Alexey Navalny that the Kremlin encouraged her candidacy to add sparkle to the lackluster contest. Navalny was barred from running.

Turnout was 34.2 percent as of noon in Moscow, according to the Central Election Commission’s website.

With little doubt about the outcome, the Kremlin Friday announced that Putin had already ordered his staff to draft policy decrees covering the next term.

Voting started in Russia’s far east at 8 a.m. local time (2000 GMT Saturday), according to reports on official news agencies. Almost 111 million Russians are eligible to vote at more than 97,000 polling stations nationwide. Polls will close in the westernmost region of Kaliningrad at 8 p.m. local time (1800 GMT), with exit poll results expected immediately. Official results will be largely complete by today.

Putin will face a host of challenges in his new six-year term, as a spiraling dispute with the U.K. over the suspected poisoning of a double agent and his daughter with a chemical weapon adds to tensions with the U.S. and Europe over conflicts in Ukraine and Syria.

Russia is struggling to recover after the longest recession in two decades. The economy was hit by plunging oil prices and Western sanctions over its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

It’s sliding down the world ranking and is forecast to fall to 17th from 11th among the largest economies within 15 years as it’s overtaken by South Korea, Spain and Turkey among others, according to the London-based Centre for Economics & Business Research.

In what’s likely his last term as he’s obliged constitutionally to step down as president in 2024, Putin must also groom a trustworthy successor.

While it’s not clear if any of the U.K.’s allies will also target Russia, the nerve-agent poisoning on March 4 in the English town of Salisbury has stoked security concerns. Britain has expelled 23 Russian diplomats and Moscow on Saturday ordered an equal number of British envoys to leave Russia.

Russia also stands accused of intervening in President Donald Trump’s favor in the 2016 U.S. elections as well as vote meddling in several European countries.

“I came here to vote for stability,” said Larisa Kuznetsova, a 62-year-old pensioner, outside a polling station in central Moscow. “That’s what we count on from our president in such a frightening world.” Henry Meyer, Stepan Kravchenko, Bloomberg