Russia: Putin re-elected president in landslide victory

By Elena Teslova

MOSCOW

Russian President Vladimir Putin won a landslide re-election victory in Sunday’s elections, Russia’s Central Election Commission said on Monday.

Putin scored a record 76.67 percent of the vote with 99.75 percent of ballots counted, easily winning a new six-year term.

Putin has ruled Russia as either president or premier since 1999.

Pavel Grudinin of the Communist Party came in second with 11.79 percent of the vote, followed by 5.66 percent for Liberal-Democrat Party head Vladimir Zhirinovsky, 1.67 percent for pro-Western candidate Ksenia Sobchak, and 1.04 percent for pro-Western Grigory Yavlinsky.

Three more candidates got less than 1 percent of the votes.

According to the Central Election Commission, about 108 million Russians went to the polls on March 18, with voter turnout of 67 percent.