Russia goes to polls in election Vladimir Putin certain to win

Voters headed to the polls in Russia on Friday for a three-day presidential election that is all but certain to extend President Vladimir Putin's rule by six more years.

Putin has ruthlessly cracked down on opposition amid his ongoing attack on Ukraine, crippling independent media and tightening his grip on the political system.

Voters are casting their ballots from Friday to Sunday at polling stations across the sprawling country's 11 time zones, as well as in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine.

Russians also can vote online, the first time the option has been used in a presidential contest. More than 200,000 people in Moscow voted online soon after the polls opened, authorities said.

The election holds little suspense since Putin, 71, is running for his fifth term virtually unchallenged.

His main opponent, Alexei Navalny, died in a remote Arctic penal colony last month. The three other candidates on the ballot are low-profile politicians from token opposition parties.

Russia's scattered opposition has urged those unhappy with Putin or the war to show up at the polls at noon on Sunday, the final day of voting, in protest. The strategy was endorsed by Navalny not long before his death.

“We need to use election day to show that we exist and there are many of us, we are actual, living, real people and we are against Putin. ... What to do next is up to you. You can vote for any candidate except Putin. You could ruin your ballot," his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said.

Golos, Russia's independent election observer group, said in a report this week that authorities were "doing everything so that the people don't notice the very fact of the election happening."

Authorities appear to be betting on pressuring voters they can control, such as Russians who work in state-run companies or institutions, to show up at the polls, the group said.

The group’s co-chair, Grigory Melkonyants, is in jail awaiting trial on charges widely seen as an attempt to pressure the group ahead of the election.

The vote comes as Moscow's war in Ukraine enters its third year.

Tens of thousands of soldiers have been killed and many more wounded on both sides, thousands of Ukrainian civilians are dead and Ukraine's economy and infrastructure have suffered damage worth hundreds of billions of dollars.