Rabat - Vladimir Putin won Sunday’s presidential election, receiving 73.9 percent of the vote, according to the state-run exit poll.
Rabat – Vladimir Putin won Sunday’s presidential election, receiving 73.9 percent of the vote, according to the state-run exit poll.
Putin’s win was largely expected after one of his major opponents, Alexei Navalny, was barred from running in the election due to a fraud conviction.
Putin was followed by Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin with 15.6 percent of the vote. Vladimir Zhirinovsky was third with 6.9 percent.
Born in 1952, the Russian leader is the country’s longest-serving president since Joseph Stalin, who governed the Soviet Union for 30 years (1922-1952) as general secretary of the Communist Party. Putin also served as the Prime Minister of Russia from 2008 to 2012.
Critics opposing Putin’s election claimed that “officials had compelled people to come to the polls to ensure that voter boredom at the one-sided contest did not lead to a low turnout,” according to News.com.
The 2018 presidential election featured Putin seeking a fourth term in the Kremlin. More than 100 million citizens were registered to vote.
