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Putin wins Russia election in landslide with no serious competition
President Vladimir Putin won a record post-Soviet landslide in Russia’s election on Sunday, cementing his already tight grip on power in a victory he said showed Moscow had been right to stand up to the West and send its troops into Ukraine, Reuters reported.
Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel who first rose to power in 1999, made it clear that the result should send a message to the West that its leaders will have to reckon with an emboldened Russia, whether in war or in peace, for many more years to come.
The outcome means Putin, 71, is set to embark on a new six-year term that will see him overtake Josef Stalin and become Russia’s longest-serving leader for more than 200 years if he completes it.
Putin won 87.8% of the vote, the highest ever result in Russia’s post-Soviet history, according to an exit poll by pollster the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM). The Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VCIOM) put Putin on 87%. First official results indicated the polls were accurate. The United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and other nations have said the vote was neither free nor fair due to the imprisonment of political opponents and censorship.
Communist candidate Nikolai Kharitonov finished second with just under 4%, newcomer Vladislav Davankov third, and ultra-nationalist Leonid Slutsky fourth, partial results suggested.
Putin told supporters in a victory speech in Moscow that he would prioritise resolving tasks associated with what he called Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine and would strengthen the Russian military, read the report.
“We have many tasks ahead. But when we are consolidated – no matter who wants to intimidate us, suppress us – nobody has ever succeeded in history, they have not succeeded now, and they will not succeed ever in the future,” said Putin.
Supporters chanted “Putin, Putin, Putin” when he appeared on stage and “Russia, Russia, Russia” after he had delivered his acceptance speech.
Inspired by opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison last month, thousands of opponents protested at noon against Putin at polling stations inside Russia and abroad.
Putin told reporters he regarded Russia’s election as democratic and said the Navalny-inspired protest against him had had no effect on the election’s outcome.
In his first comments on his death, he also said that Navalny’s passing had been a “sad event” and confirmed that he had been ready to do a prisoner swap involving the opposition politician.
When asked by a NBC, a U.S. TV network, whether his re-election was democratic, Putin criticised the U.S. political and judicial systems.
“The whole world is laughing at what is happening (in the United States),” he said. “This is just a disaster, not a democracy.”
“…Is it democratic to use administrative resources to attack one of the candidates for the presidency of the United States, using the judiciary among other things?” he asked, making an apparent reference to four criminal cases against Republican candidate Donald Trump.
The Russian election comes just over two years since Putin triggered the deadliest European conflict since World War Two by ordering the invasion of Ukraine.
War has hung over the three-day election: Ukraine has repeatedly attacked oil refineries in Russia, shelled Russian regions and sought to pierce Russian borders with proxy forces – a move Putin said would not be left unpunished.
Putin said Russia might need to create a buffer zone inside Ukraine to prevent such attacks in future, read the report.
While Putin’s re-election was not in doubt given his control over Russia and the absence of any real challengers, the former KGB spy had wanted to show he had the overwhelming support of Russians.
Nationwide turnout was 74.22% at 1800 GMT when polls closed, election officials said, surpassing 2018 levels of 67.5%.
There was no independent tally of how many of Russia’s 114 million voters took part in the opposition demonstrations, amid tight security involving tens of thousands of police and security officials.
Reuters journalists saw an increase in the flow of voters, especially younger people, at noon at polling stations in Moscow, St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, with queues of several hundred people and even thousands.
Some said they were protesting, though there were few outward signs to distinguish them from ordinary voters.
At least 74 people were arrested on Sunday across Russia, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors crackdowns on dissent.
Over the previous two days, there were scattered incidents of protest as some Russians set fire to voting booths or poured green dye into ballot boxes. Opponents posted some pictures of ballots spoiled with slogans insulting Putin.
But Navalny’s death has left the opposition deprived of its most formidable leader, and other major opposition figures are abroad, in jail or dead.
The West casts Putin as an autocrat and a killer. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that Putin wanted to rule forever and that the vote had been illegitimate.
Putin portrays the war as part of a centuries-old battle with a declining West that he says humiliated Russia after the Cold War by encroaching on Moscow’s sphere of influence.
Russia’s election comes at what Western spy chiefs say is a crossroads for the Ukraine war and the wider West.
Support for Ukraine is tangled in U.S. domestic politics ahead of the November presidential election.
Though Kyiv recaptured territory after the invasion in 2022, Russian forces have made gains after a failed Ukrainian counter-offensive last year.
Regional
Iran, US continue escalating attacks, recriminations over peace deal
US Central Command said earlier that its forces had carried out fresh strikes after a Panama-flagged tanker was attacked by an Iranian drone on Saturday.
Iran and the US continued their attacks in the Gulf as each accused the other of violating an increasingly precarious interim deal signed less than two weeks ago to end their four-month-old war, Reuters reported.
Shortly after President Donald Trump warned the US might “militarily complete the job”, Iran early on Sunday launched missiles and drones on US military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain, continuing a series of escalating attacks.
Beyond the Gulf, Israel said it had struck Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon as fighting continued in an area Tehran says is key to its peace deal with Washington.
The U.S. military said earlier it had struck Iran again, hours after a tanker was hit in the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important energy shipping route, which Iran had largely cut off for most of the conflict.
The 14-point U.S.-Iran interim agreement was meant to halt the fighting, which the US and Israel started on February 28, and reopen the strait to shipping while talks proceeded on more deep-seated issues, such as Iran’s nuclear programme.
One round of mediated talks, led by Vice President JD Vance and Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, was held in Switzerland a week ago and Washington then waived sanctions on Tehran, but the fighting and recriminations have since resumed and intensified.
“There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started,” Trump posted on social media. “If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”
About an hour after Trump’s post, the Kuwaiti army said its air defences were responding to “hostile” missile and drone attacks, while sirens sounded in Bahrain, according to that country’s interior ministry.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said its navy and air forces had launched missile and drone operations targeting US military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain in response to recent US strikes against Iran, read the report.
The Guards said in a statement the US strikes had violated the ceasefire and “will result in the complete halt of all diplomatic processes”, according to state-run Press TV. The IRGC navy command said American bases in the region “will experience hell in the coming days”.
A US official, confirming the attacks on US facilities, told Reuters there were no reported US casualties or major damage to US sites in the Middle East but that the situation was still unfolding.
Hours later, alarms sounded for a second time in Bahrain, and the foreign ministry there condemned the attacks as a deliberate and repeated violation of the kingdom’s sovereignty and security. It urged the U.N. Security Council to hold an urgent session to hold Iran accountable.
US Central Command said earlier that its forces had carried out fresh strikes after a Panama-flagged tanker was attacked by an Iranian drone on Saturday.
“Iran was given a chance to honor the ceasefire agreement but elected not to,” Central Command said in a statement, adding that its strikes were “in direct response to continued Iranian aggression against commercial shipping” and targeted Iranian military surveillance, communications, air defence, drone storage and mine-laying facilities.
Iranian state broadcaster IRIB said explosions were heard in Sirik in southern Iran, without providing details. The Guards said “America’s blind shots at Sirik will not resolve our dominance over the Strait of Hormuz. But our shots at violators will remind the rest of the vessels of the clear passage route.”
Saturday’s tanker attack in the strait followed one on a cargo ship on Thursday that triggered the latest escalation. Iran is seeking to assert control over the strait, which carried one-fifth of global oil and LNG supplies before the war and which had just begun to reopen after months of disruption, Reuters reported.
Hundreds of ships, including tankers laden with oil, have been blockaded inside the Gulf since war broke out. As they began leaving through the strait over the past two weeks, oil prices have tumbled close to pre-war levels on the surge in supply.
Washington has been promoting a southern lane along the coast of Oman, while Tehran, which ultimately aims to charge fees for use of the strait, wants ships to use a northern route through its waters and under its control.
In Lebanon, Israel said on Sunday it had killed Hezbollah militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and struck a rocket launcher in the Nabatieh area.
Iran accuses the US of violating its commitment under the peace deal to sustaining a ceasefire in Lebanon, which US ally Israel invaded in March in pursuit of Hezbollah.
Israel, which is not a party to the US-Iran deal, and Lebanon have repeatedly agreed to US-brokered ceasefires, the latest on Friday. But these have had only limited effect, with Israel insisting it will not withdraw from Lebanese territory it has seized and Hezbollah repeatedly rejecting calls to give up its arms as long as Israeli troops remain in place.
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US strikes Iran in response to attack on cargo ship in Strait of Hormuz
The U.S. did not immediately respond to Iran’s report of striking American targets, a tactic that has sought to undermine U.S. allies in the region during the conflict.
The U.S. military attacked Iran on Friday in response to an Iranian drone strike on a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz, with each country accusing the other of violating terms of a ceasefire agreed on last week, Reuters reported.
U.S. Central Command said aircraft struck missile and drone storage locations and coastal radar sites, later publishing a grainy black-and-white video of an explosion labeled “unclassified.” A U.S. official reported the operation had concluded.
Iran said a projectile struck the area around a pier in Sirik in southern Iran, and that Iranian naval forces responded by striking U.S. military targets in the region. Tehran did not provide details about what may have been hit.
Elsewhere, however, there were signs of progress in ending the four-month-old conflict, as Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement to end the fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah. Both sides framed the deal as an initial step that calls for Hezbollah to disarm and Israel to withdraw troops from Lebanon, but it was not clear how it would be enforced. Hezbollah said it would not cooperate.
Tehran has said it would control the Strait of Hormuz and warned Gulf states not to side with Washington after Thursday’s attack on a cargo ship traveling near Oman’s coast. President Donald Trump blamed the attack on Iran and said it violated last week’s interim agreement.
“The unwarranted aggression against commercial shipping by Iranian forces clearly violated the ceasefire,” U.S. Central Command said in its statement announcing strikes, which it called “a powerful response to yesterday’s attack on a commercial ship that was transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”
The U.S. military said it would continue to provide “safe passage coordination and support” to commercial vessels transiting the strait.
Vice President JD Vance, once seen as a skeptic on U.S. intervention in Iran but now a Trump administration point person on the conflict, said the Americans have honored the ceasefire deal, also known as a memorandum of understanding.
“Iran signed a ceasefire agreement. We have honored it. If they have disagreements about how the MOU is being applied, they can pick up the phone. But violence will be met with violence,” Vance said on X.
Iranian state media, citing an unnamed military source, reported the strike at the port of Sirik after an explosion was heard there. The source said several warning shots had been fired from Sirik toward vessels that violated Strait of Hormuz regulations about five hours earlier, adding two warning missiles had also been launched from the nearby Karpan area toward the strategic waterway, read the report.
On Saturday, Iran’s Mehr news agency cited the head of ports at eastern Hormozgan as saying that there was no damage to the port of Sirik after the attack by the U.S. The official said the port was operating normally with no damage reported to facilities and equipment.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said that in response its navy “struck the locations where the terrorist U.S. military is stationed in the region” and warned that any further U.S. attacks would be met with a broader response, according to the statement carried on state media.
The ceasefire agreement gives Iran control over ship traffic in the strait, the Guards said.
“However, the United States, by provoking various fronts, sought to violate this commitment, and the necessary response was given and will continue to be given. If the aggression is repeated, our response will be broader than this,” the Revolutionary Guards said.
The U.S. did not immediately respond to Iran’s report of striking American targets, a tactic that has sought to undermine U.S. allies in the region during the conflict.
Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, said in response to the latest strikes that Trump has failed to show a commitment to the principles of negotiation or ceasefire.
“This reckless violation of the ceasefire will, as always, lead to retreat and regret on their part,” Azizi posted on X.
Before the renewed outbreak of violence, oil prices fell about 3% on Friday, on course for steep weekly losses, in response to oil tankers exiting the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for one-fifth of global oil and LNG supplies before the U.S. and Israel launched the war on February 28, Reuters reported.
Saudi Aramco resumed crude loadings at its Ras Tanura terminal in the Gulf, the world’s biggest oil port, after a nearly four-month halt, shipping data showed.
Fertilizer shipments through the strait have also picked up, helping to assuage concerns about a spike in global food prices.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio — wrapping up a tour of the Gulf to reassure regional allies about the interim pact — issued a joint statement with the Gulf Cooperation Council calling for “free, unconditional, and unrestricted navigation” in the strait without tolls or “attempts to assert control.”
Iran’s foreign ministry said the strait should be governed by Iran and Oman, while Ali Akbar Velayati, top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, warned Washington’s Gulf allies their survival depended on Tehran’s tolerance.
Regional
Iran’s Pezeshkian says without missiles his country would be ‘just like Gaza’
The Iranian president stressed that Tehran’s defensive capabilities are not open to negotiation.
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