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Moscow: Russians voted for a new president yesterday in an election likely to hand victory to President Vladimir Putin's chosen successor but criticised by the opposition for a lack of real competition.
The Kremlin's candidate and the almost certain victor, 42-year-old First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, cast his ballot in Moscow with his wife Svetlana, telling reporters: "I feel good. Spring has come."
Exit polls and first official results were due after polls close in Russia's 11th and final time zone, the European enclave of Kaliningrad near Poland at 8pm (10pm UAE time) yesterday.
Polls suggest most voters want to reward Putin for eight years of rapid growth and rising wages by backing his chosen successor. Record prices for Russia's main exports of oil, gas and metals have fuelled the biggest boom in a generation, though not everyone has benefited.
Surveys predict that Medvedev, who trained as a lawyer and first worked with Putin in St Petersburg 18 years ago before following him to the Kremlin, will win about 70 per cent.
Opposition politicians denounced the election as a farce, saying biased media coverage and strong support by Putin, a former KGB spy, for Medvedev had made the contest one-sided. "This is a secret service KGB operation to transfer power from one person to another," opposition leader and former premier Mikhail Kasyanov said. "It has nothing to do with elections."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed criticism, saying a forecast high turnout "speaks to the active political participation of the people of Russia and many of them are choosing to vote for a continuation of the changes".
Some voters complained at what they said was a phoney contest, in which Medvedev barely appeared on the campaign trail, avoided giving interviews and shunned debates.
"These elections are false, because everything has already been decided," Islam Mogushkov, 35, a former policeman in the city of Nazran in Russia's Muslim south, told Reuters.
"We all know who the next president of Russia will be. If it's not Medvedev, you can cut my head off."
Vladimir Churov, head of the Central Election Commission, said on state television turnout "in almost all parts of Russia" was three to five points higher than in parliamentary elections last December, when 63.78 per cent voted.
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