Moscow’s incumbent Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has been re-elected to office after Sunday’s vote, Russia Today reports.

According to official data released on Monday morning, with about 99 percent of ballots counted, Sobyanin garnered just over 70 percent of the vote, meaning he has secured his new five-year term after the first round.

He is followed by Vadim Kumin from the Communist Party with 11.44% votes. Ilya Sviridov (A Just Russia) won 7.06% of votes, Mikhail Degtyaryov (LDPR) and Mikhail Balakin (The Citizens’ Union) won 6.76% and 1.87% respectively. </s> MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th September, 2018) Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated incumbent Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who is currently leading in the mayoral election with 70.02 percent of the votes after 99 percent of ballots have been counted, on his re-election as the head of the Russian capital, the presidential office said on Monday.

"In a phone conversation Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Sergei Sobyanin on his victory in the Moscow mayoral election," the Russian presidential office told journalists.

Sobyanin, who has already declared his victory in the mayoral vote, said that for him, this election was different from the previous vote, stressing that this time, he ran for his last term as Moscow's mayor.

Under the Russian law, one person cannot be re-elected for the mayor's position more than twice.

"We have planned to do so many things, we have taken so many obligations that during these coming years we will have to work harder than during the past years. We will have to do far more than we have done during the past five years. This means that tomorrow the whole team will roll up their sleeves and work," Sobyanin said in a speech at his election headquarters.

He also expressed gratitude to Moscow residents for their support.

Sobyanin came to power in 2010 after the previous long-time mayor Yuri Luzhkov was dismissed. In 2013, Sobyanin was elected at the mayoral vote with 51.4 percent of the vote. </s> Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has been re-elected to office after Sunday’s vote, securing the backing of Muscovites for a major program of city renovation. It was, however, more difficult in the Moscow Region for the incumbent governor.

According to official data released on Monday morning, with about 99 percent of ballots counted, Sobyanin garnered just over 70 percent of the vote, meaning he has secured his new five-year term after the first round.

Communist candidate Vadim Kunin was second in the race but his support was much more modest, winning less than 12 percent of votes. A representative of another leftist party – Ilya Sviridov from the Fair Russia – was third with just over 7 percent and Mikhail Degtyaryov of the populist-nationalist opposition party LDPR came in fourth with under 7 percent, still more than twice what he got in his previous mayoral bid in 2013. Professional developer Mikhail Balakin, backed by the minor party Union of City Dwellers came in last in the race with under 2 percent.

The man who polled strongly in the 2013 election – anti-corruption blogger-turned-opposition activist Aleksey Navalny – could not participate in this year's elections because of an unserved conviction for corruption. Still, Navalny and his allies attempted to affect the situation in the city by launching protests on election day – despite the fact that such action is forbidden by Russian law.

According to the opposition and Moscow police, the number of participants in Sunday’s unsanctioned protests numbered about 2,000. Several senior activists were briefly detained over calls for illegal action and now face civil lawsuits, with court hearings scheduled on Monday. At least two protesters were detained for attacking police and now face criminal charges and punishments of up to five years behind bars.

The turnout at the Moscow mayoral polls was about 30 percent, one of the lowest in modern Russian history. However, election officials and political analysts noted that the low turnout was typical for countries where people are relatively content with the status quo and also for major cities in general. The head of Sobyanin's elections HQ, Konstantin Remchukov, noted that the 2013 mayoral elections had a similar turnout of about 32 percent and large US cities had recently demonstrated similar stats – 28 percent in the recent mayoral elections in New York City and 27 percent in Houston.

Sunday also saw the gubernatorial election in the Moscow Region – the large territory surrounding the Russian capital and the second-most populated area of the Russian Federation with about 7.5 million residents. Here, the incumbent Governor Andrey Vorobyov also won the race but with a more modest 62.5 percent of the vote amid a turnout of just under 38 percent. Communist candidate Konstantin Cheremisov was second with just under 13 percent and representative of the Alliance of the Greens, Liliya Belova, was third with about 7.5 percent. LDPR candidate Kirill Zhigarev claimed about 5.8 percent of the vote and candidates from the Fair Russia party and the pro-business Party of Growth got under 5 percent each.

The difference can be explained, at least in part, by the fact that over the past six months the Moscow Region saw numerous, intense protests over the construction of landfills and many participants of these events blamed the dire situation in certain districts directly on Governor Vorobyov. The tensions reached their climax in March when Vorobyov attempted to personally intervene and calm the situation. Yet things only got worse when the official was mocked by a 10-year old girl, whose ‘slit-throat’ gesture at Vorobyov was caught on camera and went viral.

In post-election interviews the freshly re-elected Moscow Region governor acknowledged the problems and agreed that his victory was, to a large extent, due to the efforts of his team of political consultants and activists.

Like this story? Share it with a friend! </s> Ahead of Sunday’s elections, the multifunctional Sobyanin brand was promoted like the latest washing machine.

Sunday’s mayoral elections in Moscow marked a turning point. Until this weekend, the capital had a democratically elected mayor: Sergei Sobyanin was the victor of an unexpectedly fierce electoral battle back in September 2013, and he has presided over the capital since. Although Sobyanin was again chosen to be the capital mayor, his victory this time around was not the result of an election in the true sense of the word. Rather, it was the product of a marketing campaign.

The multifunctional Sobyanin brand was promoted like the latest washing machine, or in this case, the latest, most cutting-edge construction company. After all, the almost continuous repaving of Moscow’s streets is the signature policy of the man in charge of the Russian capital. This year, the Kremlin decided they weren’t going to allow candidates from the liberal opposition (such as former Duma deputy Dmitry Gudkov) to take part in the vote. These contenders failed to collect the required number of signatures from local lawmakers to be able to run. The authorities likely took this decision to avoid repeating the mistakes of their 2013 campaign, when opposition leader Alexei Navalny took 27.24 percent of the vote, almost forcing Sobyanin, who won with 51.37 percent, into a runoff. Sobyanin’s haul on Sunday was not too far off Vladimir Putin’s share of the vote in presidential elections earlier this year in March — 70 percent compared with Putin’s 71 percent. But despite an unprecedented campaign to boost turnout, the overall figure of 30 percent will have been disappointing for the authorities. In 2013, the margin was slightly higher at 32 percent. One reason that so few Muscovites went to the polls was likely because there was a complete lack of intrigue around the vote and no real competition from opposition candidates. The Kremlin was confident that if they allowed anti-corruption crusader Navalny to run, he would not be able to secure more than a small percentage of the vote. But ultimately, the mayor’s office wasn’t even prepared to simulate electoral competition and risk disturbing the city’s political hibernation by allowing Navalny to run. In the end, it decided to only promote the Sobyanin brand. City Hall’s marketing goals included transforming polling stations into mobile playgrounds (making them more attractive to families with children); handing out free concert tickets to voters; and opening a concert venue in the popular new Zaryadye park near the Kremlin, attended by Sobyanin and President Vladimir Putin.

All told, the day was characterized by a mixture of sophisticated marketing techniques, the suppression of the opposition and banning of any anti-government demonstrations.

 The problem with this approach is that it affects voter turnout. As the municipal elections of September 2017 demonstrated, the fewer people at polling stations, the more votes for the ruling authorities, and vice versa. On Sunday, Sobyanin’s team was striving to achieve a decent turnout. But given the electorate’s loyalty to ritual ballots and giving the Kremlin the outcome it wants, this goal seemed attainable. The dearth of real alternatives is the most obvious explanation for Sobyanin’s artificial popularity. Yet many representatives of the capital’s creative class do support him. Sobyanin’s team has created the image of a forward-looking mayor, open to urban modernization. Digitalization, gentrification, reconstruction, regeneration: all these buzzwords sound seductive to Moscow’s progressive and young population. For them, open urban spaces are sometimes more important than an open society. Sobyanin mercilessly suppresses any signs of opposition activity. He is prepared to use any tools at his disposal to realize his personal vision of Moscow. He is ready to enter into conflict with local communities that defend parks and courtyards from sometimes barbaric reconstruction work. But in the eyes of the new urban conformists, the mayor is implementing an authoritarian modernization utopia in Moscow. And if he were to become prime minister or president, these dreamers reason, Sobyanin could realize this utopia on a nationwide scale. Admittedly it would be in a technocratic way, but Moscow’s experience has demonstrated that the city can manage quite well without democracy. These loyal Sobyanin supporters people don’t take into account that as Moscow mayor, Sobyanin has a vast fortune at his disposal: about 20 percent of all the country’s regional revenues. That is to say: We know who Mr. Sobyanin is with money, but we don’t know who he would be without money, as prime minister, for example. A promotion like this is conceivable: he has demonstrated to Putin his efficiency in quelling social upset on more than one occasion, such as over plans to demolish many Khrushchev-era, five-story apartment buildings in the city. Not to mention that Sobyanin is the only pro-Putin politician to have taken on Navalny in an election — and won. Andrei Kolesnikov is a senior associate and the chair of the Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center. The views expressed in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the position of The Moscow Times. </s> Kremlin ally, Sergei Sobyanin has been re-elected as Moscow's mayor, according to results released by Moscow election commission.

Sobyanin, mayor of the Russian capital since 2010, received 70.02 percent of the vote, the city electoral commission reported on Monday.

The candidate thanked voters on social media, "thanks to all who voted for me or other candidates," he wrote.

"Regardless of the difference in views, we all love our city," he added.

In 2013, Sobyanin barely escaped a second-round runoff after a strong challenge from protest leader Alexei Navalny, winning 51.4 percent of the vote, with Putin's top critic unexpectedly picking up over a quarter of the ballots.

In advance of the vote, a Moscow court jailed Navalny for 30 days, just a couple weeks before he planned to stage a rally on election day.

On Tuesday, Russia also warned Google against "meddling" in local elections by hosting Navalny's videos calling for mass protests.

In a nationwide day of polls, members of the ruling United Russia party also won in elections for governors and legislators in other Russian cities.

But elections were overshadowed by dissatisfaction with government plans to raise the pension age by at least five years as the country struggles with a demographic crisis.

Putin, who is 65, has attested that the pension age should be raised to 60 for women and 65 for men because there is an escalating burden on the pension system.

However, life expectancy in Russia remains low, at 66 for men and 77 for women, meaning that 43 percent of Russian men are not expected to reach the age of 65, according to data from the World Bank.

Putin promised in 2005 never to raise the age for Russians to receive a pension, but Russia is facing a crisis, and President Putin seems not to have other alternatives. </s> Russian opposition candidate Russian and activist Ilya Yashin, center, gestures while speaking to a crowd next to a bas-relief of the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, left, during a protest in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, July 14, 2019. Opposition candidates who run for seats in the city legislature in September’s elections have complained that authorities try to bar them from the race by questioning the validity of signatures of city residents they must collect in order to qualify for the race. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian opposition leaders led a rally in Moscow of about 1,000 people Sunday to protest the city election commission’s decision that will keep several opposition candidates off the ballot in a local election.

The unsanctioned rally was billed as a meeting between opposition leaders and voters after the Moscow election commission rejected signatures needed to qualify the candidates for the September city parliament election.

Demonstrators chanted “We are the authority here!” and “Putin is a thief.”

Police made no effort to intervene until later in the evening, after the protest crowd had largely dispersed and opposition leaders called for the remaining participants to stage an overnight sit-in at the election commission.

Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, was not seen at the protest. The demonstration was led, in various stages, by opposition figures Dmitry Gudkov, Ilya Yashin and Lyubov Sobol.

“We were collecting the signatures under rain and in the heat,” Gudkov said. “And you know what (the election commission) told us yesterday? They told us that our signatures are fake. Many of the people who gave me their signatures are here today. Friends, do you agree?”

Yashin, one of the disqualified candidates, called on the crowd to march with him to the mayor’s office to state their election demands. They knocked on the doors of city hall, but no one answered.

“I think this is outrageous,” Sergei Bukharov, a former Moscow parliament press officer told The Associated Press outside city hall. “And what they say at the election commission, how they explain why they don’t admit independent candidates, it’s all lies. Those signatures are real.”

Opposition activist Sobol, who also is fighting to be on the September ballot, urged protesters to continue down the street to the election commission.

“They are stealing our elections. They are stealing our future,” Sobol alleged, going on to accuse Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin of ordering the rejection of the signatures.

The march began fading out after three hours, though a few hundred protesters remained outside the election commission as of 7 p.m. Moscow time (GMT 16:00.)

An election commission spokesman told Yashin that chief Valentin Gorbunov would not meet with the demonstrators Sunday since he was spending the weekend at his cottage outside the city, the Ekho Moskvy radio station reported.

About 30 said they would stage a sit-in overnight in the courtyard of the commission’s offices. Moscow police intervened a little over an hour later, dispersing the holdouts and arresting Yashin, Sobol, and several other opposition candidates.

As of 9 p.m. Moscow time (GMT 18:00), at least 38 protesters had been detained, according to arrest monitoring group OVD-Info.

Yashin tweeted from the back of a police van that the demonstration had been brutally dispersed and that he was currently detained with at least 20 other people. </s> YEKATERINBURG, Russia (AP) - Russian voters are heading to the polls for a presidential election in which Vladimir Putin's victory is assured - the only question being how convincing his mandate will be for his fourth term.

Polls opened at 8 a.m. Sunday in Russia's Far East regions of Chukotka and Kamchatka. Voting will conclude at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT; 2 p.m. EDT) in Kaliningrad, the Baltic exclave that is Russia's westernmost region.

Putin is so certain of winning that authorities are investing instead in massive get-out-the-vote efforts to produce a turnout that would embolden the Russian leader both domestically and internationally.

Yevgeny Roizman, the mayor of Russia's fourth-largest city Yekaterinburg, says local officials and state employees have received orders "from higher up" to make sure the presidential vote turnout is over 60 percent.

A man sets a banner reads "2018 March Election of Russian President" as he prepares a polling station for Sunday's election in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 16, 2018. There are eight candidates in Sunday's Russian presidential election, including President Vladimir Putin. With his approval rating topping 80 percent and rivals trailing far behind, Putin is set to easily win a fourth term. Putin's most vocal critic, the 41-year-old opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was barred from the race due to a criminal conviction that he calls politically motivated. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

FILE - In this file photo taken on Thursday, Feb. 1, 2018, Russian TV host Ksenia Sobchak speaks about her campaign to challenge Vladimir Putin in the March 18 presidential election, during an interview to the Associated Press in Moscow, Russia. There are eight candidates in Sunday's Russian presidential election, including President Vladimir Putin. With his approval rating topping 80 percent and rivals trailing far behind, Putin is set to easily win a fourth term. Putin's most vocal critic, the 41-year-old opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was barred from the race due to a criminal conviction that he calls politically motivated. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

People walk through a street with an election poster that reads: "Choose President - Choose Future!" in Yekaterinburg, Russia, Saturday, March 17, 2018. Just like in any other city or town in Russia, thousands of state employees in Yekaterinburg are under pressure from the management to come out to vote in Sunday's presidential election in line with the Kremlin's efforts to boost the turnout. (AP Photo/Nataliya Vasilyeva)

A woman holds a flag that reads "I love Kamchatka, we are the first!" as she prepares to cast her ballots at a polling station in Yelizovo, about 30 kilometers ( 19 miles) north-east from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, capital of Kamchatka Peninsula region, Russian Far East, Russia, on Sunday, March. 18, 2018. Polls have opened in Russia's Far East regions for the presidential election in which Vladimir Putin is seeking a fourth term in the Kremlin. (AP Photo/Alexander Petpov) </s> Moscow police detained more than 1,000 people including several prominent independent politicians Saturday and blocked the city’s major thoroughfares in an attempt to prevent a protest demanding that opposition candidates be allowed to run in a city council election.

Heavy police presence throughout the city kept what police estimated were at least 3,500 people from participating in the protest. The demonstration was the latest in a series of protests over the last month against the Moscow city government’s rejection of applications from independent candidates to run for the 45-seat Moscow city council on the Sept. 8 ballot.

While the protest, and others elsewhere in Russia, was sparked by a feeling of disenfranchisement in the local government decision-making process, the anger appears to have the Kremlin concerned. Trust in the central government has dropped in recent months, a year after Russian President Vladimir Putin was re elected to a fourth term by a landslide. Much of the hostility is due to Putin’s support for an unpopular pension bill that raises the retirement age by five years. In addition, Russia’s economy is stagnating while real incomes shrink and inflation rises.

Opposition leaders had called for Saturday’s protest to begin in front of Moscow City Hall on the Russian capital city’s Tverskaya Street, a broad avenue lined with Stalin-era buildings that ends at the Red Square and the Kremlin’s red walls.

Police cordoned off the sidewalks near the city hall hours early to prevent people from gathering. Walls of police officers in riot gear locked arms to form columns that pushed demonstrators into side streets, where small skirmishes between protesters and police ensued. Many were beaten with batons before being dragged into police buses and taken to detention centers.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin sent out warnings earlier in the week that Saturday’s protest was unsanctioned and said participants would be prosecuted. In a tweet Saturday morning, Sobyanin said the opposition was planning provocations that could put city the public’s safety as risk.

Sobyanin’s warning showed that the government was clearly shaken by last weekend’s demonstration in a Moscow central square that saw 22,000 protesters calling for free and fair elections. That city government had granted a permit for that protest but were surprised when it grew into one of the largest in Moscow since 2012, when tens of thousands demonstrated against election fraud and government authoritarianism.

This month’s protests started after the Moscow Election Committee declared ineligible several independent candidates’ applications to run for a city council seat in a September election. The council currently is dominated by the Kremlin-favored United Russian party.

In recent days, Alexei Navalny, a leading opposition leader and fierce critic of Putin, was arrested and sentenced to 30 days in jail for organizing an unsanctioned demonstration. Police then searched the homes of and arrested at least four other opposition candidates seeking to get on the ballot and opened an investigation into their participation in a demonstration held outside of the election commission July 14.

The protests come at a time when Russians across the country are voicing their frustrations about a lack of local participation in regional issues. In the last two years, large protests with several thousand people have sprung up in regional capitals and in provincial cities outside of Moscow to demand the closure of garbage dumps. In Ekaterinburg, Russia’s third largest city, thousands protested against the city’s plans to build a large cathedral in one of its last remaining central parks. Authorities then agreed to relocate the cathedral’s construction site.

In Moscow, demonstrators said they were tired of blatant corruption associated with an expensive makeover program that has torn up and replaced sidewalks and streets across the city of nearly 13 million people. As lucrative procurement deals have been approved by City Hall, residents have had little say on the spending, protesters said.

“The government has made a mistake, and it’s showing its weakness,” said Viktor Yelkin, 69, a retired military officer. “The powers don’t want to let the opposition candidates on the ballot because they know that people will vote for them.”

Clashes between police and demonstrators lasted for several hours in downtown Moscow, where at least 638 were detained, according to OVD-Info, an independent monitoring agency. </s> MOSCOW — The Latest on the re-election of Vladimir Putin as Russian president (all times local):

Russian President Vladimir Putin has thanked Russians for re-electing him, promising to foster economic growth and solve social problems.

In a live televised speech Putin, who won nearly 77 in Sunday's vote, said he wanted to express gratitude to the Russians for his strongest ever electoral victory.

He said Friday that the powerful support was particularly important now, when the country faces domestic and external challenges.

Putin said that the country needs to make a "real breakthrough" in many spheres and move to encourage economic growth, raise living standards, modernize health care, revive the infrastructure and solve environmental and other problems. He emphasized that Russia needs to make a "technological leap" to meet those challenges.

Russian electoral officials have officially declared incumbent President Vladimir Putin the winner of last Sunday's election.

The Central Election Commission on Friday issued final results, showing that Putin won nearly 77 of the vote. Communist candidate Pavel Grudinin came second with nearly 12 .

The vote was tainted by widespread reports of ballot-box stuffing and forced voting. Ella Pamfilova, chairwoman of the Election Commission, said at the commission's session on Friday that the vote was free and fair.

Sunday's win will keep Putin in office until 2024.
The Russian presidential office confirms that mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin is reelected for a second and final term.