Putin hails electoral victory that was preordained, after harshly suppressing opposition voices. Even with little margin for protest, Russians crowded outside polling stations at noon on Sunday.
Putin hailed the overwhelming early results as an indication of "trust" and "hope" in him. His fiercest political foe, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic prison last month, and other critics are either in jail or in exile.. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter: "This is not what free and fair elections look like"