Vladimir Putin will continue to lead Russia until 2024 following his landslide win in the Russian election.
Official results have shown Putin to have secured over 75 percent of the votes, extending his Presidency into the fourth term and making him the first Russian ruler to lead for over a decade since Stalin.
“Thank you for your support,” Putin told a rally in Moscow. “Everyone who voted today is part of our big, national team.”
The results of the election were of no surprise. A spokesperson from his election campaign said the results were an “incredible victory”.
“The percentage that we have just seen speaks for itself. It’s a mandate which Putin needs for future decisions, and he has a lot of them to make,” they added.
Speaking about the voting turnout, which was approximately 60 percent, the campaign chairman said: “Right now the turnout numbers are higher than we expected. We need to thank Great Britain for that because once again they did not consider the Russian mentality. Once again we were subject to pressure at just the moment when we needed to mobilise.”
Following Putin, millionaire communist Pavel Grudinin received the next highest number of votes of 12 percent.
Also in the running was Ksenia Sobchak, a former reality TV host, and the veteran nationalist, Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Together, they received about eight percent of the total vote.
When asked by a journalist if he would consider running for yet another term after 2024, Putin said: “What you are saying is a bit funny. Do you think that I will stay here until I’m 100 years old? No!”
When the President was questioned about the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Britain, he told reporters that Russia did not have chemical weapons and it would be “nonsense” to imagine Russia launching an attack in the lead up to the election.