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Russian Voters Turn Out for Putin and United Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin waits to cast his vote at a Moscow polling station.
(By Alexei Boitsov -- Bloomberg News)
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The Communists, charging widespread fraud, said they planned to contest the results in court, although the courts have no record of upsetting the Kremlin.
The Liberal Democratic Party, led by ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and Fair Russia, a party whose creation was approved by Putin, came in with about 10 percent and 7 percent of the vote respectively, according to the exit polls and early returns.
Zhirinovsky, although well-known for his bluster, never seriously challenges the Kremlin. The success of his party also means that Andrei Lugovoy, who is accused of using a radioactive substance to kill former domestic intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko in London last year, will become a member of parliament.
Lugovoy, whose extradition is being sought by Britain, was No. 2 on the Liberal Democratic Party's list, guaranteeing him a seat in parliament. Russian lawmakers are immune from prosecution, ruling out even the unlikely scenario of a Russia-based prosecution in the Litvinenko case.
The Fair Russia party, which the Kremlin created as a left-wing but controlled alternative to United Russia, also secured enough votes to win representation in parliament.
Election officials said about 60 percent of Russia's 109 million voters went to the polls, which exceeded the 56 percent turnout in the last parliamentary election four years ago.
Small opposition parties, including the Union of Right Forces and Yabloko, were shut out of parliament for the second consecutive electoral cycle. Both parties complained bitterly that the authorities had disrupted their campaigns by breaking up rallies, seizing election literature and detaining their activists when they attempted to canvass voters.
"I believe they were the most dishonest elections in the last 20 years," said Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and a leader of the Union of Right Forces, speaking to the Russian news agency Interfax.
Other opposition groups, such as the Other Russia coalition headed by former chess champion and fierce Putin critic Garry Kasparov, could not participate in the contest. Under election laws passed by the last parliament, parties were subject to stringent new registration rules that prevented several of them from appearing on the ballot.
"They are not just rigging the vote, they are raping the whole electoral system," said Kasparov, who told reporters that he spoiled his ballot at a Moscow polling station by not voting for anyone. "These elections are a reminder of Soviet elections, when there was no choice."
Putin said he was in a "festive mood" after voting in Moscow with his wife, Lyudmila.
"Thank God, the election campaign has concluded," Putin told reporters. "I am sure that the voters have made their choice, and they should only have voted for the party whose program seems convincing."
