Dubious voting will allow Vladimir Putin to stay in office until he is 83
Early results of a week-long vote on changes to the Russian constitution suggest Vladimir Putin will be able to remain in office for two more terms as president, taking him to 2036.
Polling stations in Russia were kept open for several days from last Thursday to minimise the risk of spreading the coronavirus. They closed on Wednesday night.
Observers said Mr Putin was anxious to push through the constitutional amendments before the economic fallout of the Covid lockdown kicked in.
Voting was marred by frequent reports of violations - in St Petersburg, David Frenkel, a journalist for Media Zona, was assaulted by a police officer on Tuesday after he went to a polling station to check reports of vote-rigging.
He underwent four-hour emergency surgery for a broken arm and was on Wednesday night reported to be in a stable condition, according to Media Zona.
Voting was held under new, lax regulations that allowed ballot officials to skirt a host of electoral rules, leaving plenty of room for vote-rigging, according to election experts.
And Russia's Central Election Commission stunned observers on Wednesday by publishing some of the results while voting was still under way, which would normally have been illegal.
According to the preliminary count of 6 per cent of the ballot papers, nearly 70 per cent of voters backed Mr Putin's amendments.
However, in Moscow, where anti-Putin sentiment was strong, few voters were ready to go on the record to defend the constitutional changes that could allow Mr Putin two further terms in the Kremlin and remain in power until he is 83 years old.
Nikita Potapov, 33, said he did not believe his vote would be counted fairly and he struggled to think of any friend or acquaintance who would support Mr Putin. "Even those who work in law enforcement, they're being forced to vote, and they're voting No," he told The Telegraph.
72-year old Leonid Yakovlevich, who did not give his last name, said that he finds the very idea of letting anyone rule for life “abhorrent.”
“There are some basic things (about the Constitution) that you should not touch,” he said.
Mr Putin was seen casting his ballot without wearing the obligatory face mask, which his spokesman Dmitry Peskov explained by saying the Russian leader had "absolute trust" in coronavirus health and safety measures taken at all polling stations.
The Russian opposition had been split over whether or not to boycott the referendum. An impromptu rally in central Moscow attracted several hundred people on Wednesday night.
A survey taken last month by the Levada Centre, Russia's only independent pollster, showed 44 per cent would back the amendments while 32 per cent would vote against.
Gregory Yudin, a professor at the Moscow school of social and economic sciences, said in a blog post that he expected the results to be rigged to show overwhelming support for Mr Putin's rule for life and to demoralise those who would vote against the amendments.
Along with the clause allowing the sitting president to run for office again, the Kremlin has put 205 other constitutional amendments up to a vote, including vague pledges for protecting Russian children, the memory about Soviet sacrifices during the Second World War and heterosexual marriage.
An impromptu protest rally in central Moscow on Wednesday evening attracted several hundred people amid heavy security presence, and a group of activists went to Red Square earlier that day to lie down on the cobbled pavement to form “2036” with their bodies to protest Mr Putin’s plans.
