Vladimir Putin claimed a landslide victory and a fifth term in Russia’s presidential election, with the Kremlin’s electoral machine boosting his share of the vote and turnout to near farcical levels. After counting 75% of ballots, Russia’s electoral commission claimed Putin was leading with 87.14% of the vote and that turnout was the highest in history at 74% of the electorate.
The war in Ukraine was front and centre in his victory speech, as Putin claimed he was securing the border from recent raids by pro-Ukrainian military units and said that his main tasks as president would be the war in Ukraine, “strengthening defence capacity and the military”. Asked about the potential for a direct conflict with Nato, he said: “I think that everything is possible in the modern world … everyone understands that this would be one step from a full-scale third world war. I don’t think that anyone is interested in that.”
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said Putin was “imitating” yet another election, adding that the Russian leader was “addicted to power” and that there was “no evil he will not commit to prolong his personal power”. “There is no legitimacy in this imitation of elections and there cannot be. This person should be on trial in The Hague. That’s what we have to ensure,” Zelenskiy said.
Ukraine launched 35 drones at targets across Russia including in the capital region, sparking a fire at an oil refinery and disrupting electricity supplies in several border areas but causing no direct casualties, the defence ministry in Moscow has said. The ministry accused Kyiv of seeking to sabotage the presidential election after one of the biggest air operations on Russian territory since the invasion two years ago.
Russian authorities also said shelling of the Belgorod region on Sunday morning killed a 16-year-old girl and injured her father, while an attack later in the day killed one man and injured 11. Russian forces shot down 12 rockets launched from Ukraine towards the region, the defence ministry said, as well as a Ukrainian Mi-8 military helicopter that was heading towards Belgorod and was reportedly downed in Ukraine’s Sumy region.
Ukraine meanwhile reported dozens of attacks by Russia near their shared border on Sunday, with more than 60 shelling incidents in the district of Sumy in which one person was killed. Earlier on Sunday one man was killed and at least eight people were wounded in a Russian missile attack on the Black Sea port city of Mykolaiv, Ukrainian officials said.
A drone strike at a military installation in Moldova’s breakaway republic of Transnistria on Sunday destroyed a helicopter and ignited a fire, authorities in the pro-Russia region said, blaming the strike on Ukraine. However, Moldova’s Bureau for Reintegration Policies said in a statement that after examining video footage, they “do not confirm any attack” on Transnistria and called it “an attempt to cause fear and panic in the region.” It added that the military equipment destroyed in the footage, which appeared across social media, “has not worked for several years”.
Russia has sought to suppress the Ukrainian identity of Crimea since annexing the Black Sea peninsula a decade ago, Amnesty International said in a report, adding that the same rulebook was being used with other annexed territories in Ukraine.
