Russians are voting in an election that holds little suspense after Putin crushed dissent

At least half a dozen cases of vandalism at polling stations were reported, including a firebombing and several people pouring dyed liquid into ballot boxes.

A Russian missile strike on the port city of Odesa killed at least 14 people on Friday, local officials said. Voters are casting their ballots Friday through Sunday at polling stations across the vast country's 11 time zones, in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine and online. The election holds little suspense since Putin, 71, is running for his fifth term virtually unchallenged.

"Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today. No opposition. No freedom. No choice," he wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter. "The elections in Russia as a whole are a sham. The Kremlin controls who's on the ballot. The Kremlin controls how they can campaign. To say nothing of being able to control every aspect of the voting and the vote-counting process," said Sam Greene, director for Democratic Resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington.

The Kremlin banned two politicians from the ballot who sought to run on an anti-war agenda and attracted genuine — albeit not overwhelming — support, thus depriving the voters of any choice on the "main issue of Russia's political agenda," said political analyst Abbas Gallyamov, who used to work as Putin's speechwriter.

The watchdog described the campaign ahead of the vote as "practically unnoticeable" and "the most vapid" since 2000, when Golos was founded and started monitoring elections in Russia.

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