19 March 2018 10:21 am
DPA, 18th MARCH, 2018-Russians were heading to the polls on Sunday to cast their votes in a presidential election in which the incumbent, Vladimir Putin, was all but certain to win a fourth term.
Putin, who has been in power as president or prime minister for nearly two decades, cast his vote at a polling location in Moscow.
“I’m sure that the programme which I suggest for the country is right,” Putin was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
The election is taking place against the backdrop of a growing row with Britain and its allies over the use of a Russian-developed nerve agent to poison a former double agent and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury. Russia has denied any involvement.
Polling is also happening on the fourth anniversary of the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula, a move by Russia that served as a further boost at the time to Putin’s already-strong popularity ratings.
He has maintained approval ratings of around 70 per cent in recent years, according to nationwide surveys by the country’s two largest pollsters, one state-run and the other independent.
The length of Putin’s rule, however, has prompted speculation that many potential voters might abstain in an election whose result appeared largely predictable.
Under the constitution as it currently stands, a fourth term would be his last.