MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin was re-elected in a landslide victory Sunday, extending his 18-year rule by another six years.
There had been no doubt that Putin would win in his fourth electoral contest. Instead, his goal was to produce such a strong turnout and run up the tally so high that he could claim an indisputable mandate.
After casting his ballot early Sunday in central Moscow, Putin was asked what turnout he sought. "Any that gives me the right to perform the duty of president," he said. "I am sure I am offering the right program to the country."
Late in the day, more than 30,000 people crowded into Manezh Square, near Moscow's Red Square, in temperatures of minus-15 degrees Fahrenheit for a victory concert. Putin extolled them for their support.
"I am a member of your team," he said.
"Together, we'll take on a great task in the name of Russia," Putin said. "Success awaits us."
Then he left the stage after speaking for less than two minutes.
More than 110 million people were eligible to vote, from the distant Kamchatka Peninsula in the Far East to the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad. With ballots from 80 percent of Russia's precincts counted by early this morning, Putin had amassed 76 percent of the vote.
Voters at Polling Station No. 148, in a red-brick school building in central Moscow, appeared supportive of Putin.
"He is a strong politician, a strong president, who led Russia to rebirth," said Vitaly Tretyakov, dean of the faculty of television journalism at Lomonosov Moscow State University.
The years under President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s were a disaster, Tretyakov added, echoing a common theme. Whether the current electoral system is good or bad is a different matter, he said.
Putin took the helm in Russia on New Year's Eve 1999 after Yeltsin's surprise resignation. Putin served two four-year terms as Russia's president but was constitutionally limited from running for a third consecutive term. However, he was appointed prime minister in 2008 in what was widely seen as a way to hold on to power. During his four-year term as prime minister, the terms for Russia's president were lengthened from four to six years, and he was elected president in 2012.
Constitutional limits still ban Putin from seeking a third consecutive term in 2024, though he could serve a six-year term as prime minister, then seek the presidency again in 2030. Asked Sunday whether he might consider running in 2030 -- when he would be 77 -- Putin dismissed the question as "funny," saying, "Am I going to stay around until I'm 100? No."
Putin, a former Soviet intelligence officer, is already Russia's longest-serving leader since Josef Stalin.
His electoral power has centered on stability, a quality cherished by Russians after the chaotic breakup of the Soviet Union and the "wild capitalism" of the Yeltsin years.
"I came here to vote for stability," said Larisa Kuznetsova, a 62-year-old pensioner, outside a polling station in central Moscow. "That's what we count on from our president in such a frightening world."
FORCED TO VOTE
In Russia, there were widespread reports of forced voting, which observers said were efforts to make Russia appear to be a robust democracy.
"It is not a democracy, but they have to go through the motions," said Konstantin von Eggert, a Russian television talk show host and veteran political analyst.
Two election observers in Gorny Shchit, a rural district of Yekaterinburg, said they saw an unusually large influx of people going to the polls between noon and 2 p.m. A doctor at a hospital in the Ural mountains city said that 2 p.m. was the deadline for health officials to report to their superiors that they had voted.
Footage of a voting station in the Moscow suburb of Lyubertsy shows a woman taking a ballot from a table, looking around to see whether anyone is watching, then putting it in the box. She repeats the action, again and again. The regional election commission said the results from the Lyubertsy station would be invalidated.
Dozens of other examples of apparent ballot-box stuffing were posted online.
Aida Mirmaksumova, who was watching the city of Makhachkala, said men dressed in black dragged an observer for Pavel Grudinin, the Communist Party candidate, on the ground as he shouted, "Help!" Amid the melee, people were seen stuffing what appeared to be ballots into a ballot box.
Other examples of tampering cited by observers and on social media included ballot boxes obscured from surveillance cameras by flags or nets; discrepancies in ballot numbers; last-minute voter registration changes; and a pro-Putin sign in one polling station.
Election officials moved quickly to respond to some of the violations.
Residents in Perm, Yekaterinburg and Moscow showed to The Associated Press messages from employers pressuring workers to vote and requiring them to report on when and where they cast ballots.
Yevgeny, a 43-year-old mechanic voting in central Moscow, spoke on condition that his last name not be used out of fear his employer would find out. He said he briefly wondered whether it was worth voting at all.
"But the answer was easy ... if I want to keep working, I vote," he said.
PUTIN'S CHALLENGERS
Putin faced seven challengers Sunday. They didn't include his most prominent foe, Alexei Navalny, who was blocked from the ballot because he was convicted of fraud in a case widely regarded as politically motivated.
Navalny, who has criticized fraud and corruption in the Russian government, dismissed Putin's challengers on Sunday's ballot as "puppets," and he vowed to continue defying the Kremlin with street protests.
There was only one woman among the eight candidates -- Ksenia Sobchak, 36, a reality TV star turned political journalist and the daughter of Putin's political mentor.
Grudinin's supporters were scattered among the voters. Grudinin, 57, the millionaire director of a farming enterprise, the Lenin State Farm, vowed to restructure the economy and nationalize key industries controlled by oligarchs.
The emergence of a possible protest vote for Grudinin prompted the Kremlin to campaign against him, even though he remained distant in the government-run polls.
Nikolai Volkov, a 26-year-old business manager, said he had voted for Grudinin because he thought his transformation of the Lenin State Farm, which had its roots as a Soviet collective, into a successful agricultural and real estate business could be a model for all of Russia.
But the attitude of many voters was that none of the opposition candidates had the ability to lead.
"Who am I voting for? Who else?" said Putin supporter Andrei Borisov, 70, a retired engineer in Moscow. "The others, it's a circus."
"It is not easy to rule Russia," added Christina Amelina, 50, an artist. "It is too big a country."
Election day was moved to March 18, the fourth anniversary of Russia's annexation of the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine, to emphasize Putin's theme that he kept Russia safe by projecting its power.
Ukraine, insulted by the decision to hold the election on the anniversary, refused to let ordinary Russians vote. Ukraine security forces blocked the Russian Embassy in Kiev and consulates elsewhere as the government protested the voting in Crimea, whose annexation is still not internationally recognized.
Information for this article was contributed by Neil MacFarquhar of The New York Times; by Jim Heintz, Vladimir Isachenkov, Francesca Ebel, Angela Charlton, Nataliya Vasilyeva, Kate de Pury and Yuras Karmanau of The Associated Press; and by Henry Meyer, Ilya Arkhipov, Stepan Kravchenko and Irina Reznik of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 03/19/2018