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Putin Claims Victory in Russian Election

Posted on: Monday, 15 March 2004, 06:00 CST

MOSCOW - Brushing off U.S. criticism of a one-sided election campaign, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed victory early Monday after voters handed him an expected landslide win for a second four-year term.

Putin captured 71.2 percent of Sunday's vote to win a second, four-year term, Central Election Commission chief Alexander Veshnyakov said early Monday. His closest challenger was Communist candidate Nikolai Kharitonov with 13.7 percent of the vote. Four other candidates shared the remaining votes.

"I think I have worked hard all those years, and I worked honestly. People must have felt it," Putin, wearing a black sweater under a black blazer, told reporters at his Red Square election headquarters. "I promise you, that for the next four years, I will work in the same mode."

Opposition observers and human rights groups alleged violations during the voting, including pre-marked ballots and pressure on students and soldiers.

"The authorities are resorting to pressuring the electorate and abusing their powers to manipulate the vote," nationalist candidate Sergei Glazyev told The Associated Press at an election monitoring center jointly run with Kharitonov and liberal candidate Irina Khakamada.

Election officials said 64 percent of the 109 million registered voters cast ballots, surpassing the 50 percent required for the election to be valid.

Despite minimal voter traffic at polling places in the capital of breakaway Chechnya and its second-largest city, Gudermes, election officials claimed turnout in the wartorn region reached nearly 90 percent of the more than 596,000 registered voters there. Officials said close to 93 percent voted for Putin, who rose to prominence by launching the latest Chechen war as prime minister in 1999.

In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States "was concerned about a level of authoritarianism creeping back in the society."

"We don't hesitate to point out to President Putin that he should use the popularity that he has to broaden the political dialogue and not use his popularity to throttle political dialogue and openness in the society," Powell told ABC TV.

That set off an angry rebuke from the Cabinet chief of staff and a calmer retort from Putin, who said the 2000 Florida election fiasco in the United States showed the weaknesses of the world's oldest democracy.

Some "see the splinter in another's eye and ignore the log in his own," Putin said. Russia will consider the criticism and "if we think there is something to think about, will draw the corresponding conclusions," he said.

Putin spent part of election day working out with the Russian national boxing team - sparring barehanded and showing off the clean-living image that has made him popular with Russians tired of the erratic Boris Yeltsin, who was plagued by health troubles and reported alcohol abuse.

Yeltsin elevated Putin, a former KGB agent who later headed one of its successor agencies, to take over as acting president after his surprise resignation on the eve of the millennium. In the March 2000 election, Putin won 53 percent of the vote, and Communist Gennady Zyuganov gave him a respectable challenge with nearly 30 percent.

Since then, Putin has consolidated his grip on the Kremlin and sought to reduce the influence of Yeltsin holdovers - a mission he completed this month by appointing a new Cabinet filled with loyalists and potential fall guys for painful economic reforms.

"We will modernize the country, act resolutely, but explain our every step so that people understand what's done and why," Putin said Monday. "The art of politics is finding the middle line between what is necessary and what is possible."

December parliamentary elections handed Putin a legislature filled with loyalists from a party whose only real platform was their support of him - with a majority strong enough to change the constitution and allow Putin to seek a third term. Putin has said he doesn't support such a move, and declined Monday to speculate on a successor.

In his four years in office, Russia's economy has expanded largely due to its wealth of natural resources and high oil prices. Still, about one-fifth of the country's 144 million people live below the poverty line, and the gap between the rich and poor remains wide - stoking much popular bitterness.

The election campaign was virtually nonexistent, with Putin relying mainly on sycophantic coverage from state-run TV - the only medium that reaches across the world's largest country. In pre-election monitoring, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had criticized Russian media coverage as giving far more time to Putin than any of his five challengers.

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