Vladimir Putin has entered the Grand Kremlin Palace for inauguration into 4th term as Russian president

MOSCOW (AP) — Vladimir Putin has entered the Grand Kremlin Palace for inauguration into 4th term as Russian president. </s> Vladimir Putin has been sworn in for his fourth term as president of Russia at a ceremony in the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow.

Video footage released by Russian television showed Mr Putin's distinctive walk along the Great Kremlin Palace's long corridors, thanking supporters as they applauded him.

Mr Putin has been in power in Russia since 1999, whether as prime minister or president, and is Russia's longest-serving leader since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

After winning a landslide victory in March, Mr Putin, 65, is expected to continue to control Russia until at least 2024, despite protests on Saturday amid a crackdown on encrypted messaging app Telegram.

Supporters see Mr Putin as a father-of-the-nation figure who has restored national pride and expanded Moscow's global power.

He has pledged new economic reforms that would boost living standards across Russia.

The Kremlin has planned a low-key inauguration ceremony that will not include a lavish Kremlin reception in an apparent effort to eschew any bad publicity.

A respectful gun salute was held outside the Kremlin at Mr Putin was sworn in.

The ceremony is being watched across the world as the Russian leader finds himself increasingly at odds with much of the international community.

Russia's annexation of Crimea and Mr Putin's support for Syria's Assad, as well as the use of a chemical weapon it manufactured in an attempted assassination in Salisbury, have resulted in sanctions against the country.

His inauguration follows nationwide rallies and protests which resulted in the arrests of at least 1,200 demonstrators.

Russia's interior ministry said about half of the 1,200 arrests happened in Moscow, but monitoring group OVD-Info put the number at more than 1,600 across 20 cities.

Protest leader Alexei Navalny was arrested in Moscow's Pushkin Square on Saturday, but he later tweeted that he had been released and will face charges of organising an unauthorised meeting and of resisting police.

Mr Putin's inauguration comes ahead of Russia hosting the World Cup 2018 this summer.

In a widely expected win in March, Mr Putin secured more than 76.66% of the vote and a turnout of 67.47%, the Central Election Commission said.

The result came amid allegations of election violations, including ballot-box stuffing and forced voting.

Addressing a crowd near Moscow's Red Square shortly after the count, Mr Putin said his victory was a vote of confidence in his achievements.

"It's very important to maintain this unity," he said.

"We will think about the future of our great Motherland," he said, before leading the crowd in repeated chants of "Russia!"

Asked later if he could seek the presidency again in 2030, Mr Putin replied: "It's ridiculous. Do you think I will sit here until I turn 100?" </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> Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen on a screen at the stand of Russian state oil major Rosneft during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russia May 25, 2018. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Vladimir Putin said on Friday he would respect the Russian constitution which bans anyone from serving two consecutive presidential terms, meaning he will step down from his post in 2024 when his current term expires.

His remarks, made to reporters at an economic forum in St Petersburg and broadcast on state TV, are not a surprise and do not necessarily mean he will relinquish power in six years.

Putin has stepped down as president once before, in 2008, after serving two back-to-back terms only to return in 2012 after doing a stint as prime minister, a maneuver he would be legally entitled to carry out again.

“I have always strictly abided by and abide by the constitution of the Russian Federation,” Putin said, when asked if and when he would be leaving office.

“In the constitution it’s clearly written that nobody can serve more than two terms in a row ... I intend to abide by this rule.”

Putin easily won re-election in March, extending his tenure by six years to 24 - which would make him Moscow’s longest-serving leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. </s> MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 19th June, 2019) US President Donald Trump officially launched his 2020 White House re-election campaign at a rally in Orlando, Florida on Tuesday.

"Tonight I stand before you to officially launch my campaign for a second term as president of the United States," Trump said. </s> Vladimir Putin sailed to electoral victory on Sunday, winning a huge popular mandate for a fourth presidential term at a time of escalating tensions between Russia and the West.

In a widely expected outcome, the Central Election Commission, with just in excess of 70 per cent of the votes counted, announced that Putin had won 75.9 per cent of the vote, a marked increase on the 64 per cent he won at the last election, in 2012.

None of the seven candidates running against the incumbent president posed a serious threat. Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most popular opposition leader, was barred from the ballot. Opposition groups said the election was marred by widespread fraud, but the Russian election commission said irregularities had not significantly altered the result of the vote.

Mr Putin’s victory will extend his time in office until 2024, when he will be 71 and Russia’s longest-serving leader since Joseph Stalin. During the election campaign he pledged to continue to boost Russia’s military might if he won a fourth term, to defend the country against hostile outside forces.

In his annual state-of-the-nation speech early this month he unveiled an array of advanced nuclear weaponry that Kremlin critics say will unleash a new cold-war arms race.

Tensions with the West, already badly strained by the Kremlin’s aggressive policies in Ukraine and alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential election, have reached breaking point this month following the poisoning of a former Russian double agent in the UK.

Russian officials have denied involvement in the attack on Sergei Skripal, in Wiltshire, and cast the UK accusations as a provocation designed to upset the election campaign.

On Sunday, Putin dismissed British accusations of Russia’s involvement in the poisoning as “nonsense”, but added that Moscow is ready to co-operate with London in the investigation.

On Sunday night a jubilant crowd of Putin supporters flocked to a square near the Kremlin to celebrate the election victory. Russians had consolidated around the national leader in response to outside pressure, said Andrei Kondrashov, press secretary for Mr Putin’s election campaign team. “Every time Russia faces indiscriminate and unproven accusations about something or other , it makes the Russian people unite around a central force. Today that central force is definitely Putin.” Additional reporting: PA and Reuters </s> MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that he would not serve more than two presidential terms in a row, as the Russian constitution states.

His current presidential term, his second in succession, ends in 2024. </s> Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, congratulates Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl as he attends the wedding of Kneissl with with Austrian businessman Wolfgang Meilinger in Gamlitz, southern Austria, Saturday, Aug. 18, 2018. (Roland Schlager/pool photo via AP)

BERLIN (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin is flying to Austria to attend the wedding Saturday of the country’s foreign minister, before heading to Berlin for talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Austrian authorities have imposed tight security measures around the site of the ceremony near the southern town of Graz of Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl, who was nominated by the pro-Russia Austrian Freedom Party.

Putin’s meeting with Merkel late Saturday takes place at the German government’s guesthouse in Meseberg, north of Berlin. Topics during the bilateral talks include Ukraine, Syria and the planned Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany that the United States and some European countries object to.

The two leaders planned to make statements before the talks. </s> Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and around 1,600 anti-Kremlin activists were detained by police today during street protests against Vladimir Putin ahead of his inauguration for a fourth term as president.

Mr Navalny had called on Kremlin critics to take to the streets ahead of Mr Putin's inauguration to register their opposition to what Mr Navalny says is Putin's autocratic Tsar-like rule.

Mr Navalny, who was barred from running in the election on what he says was a false pretext, was detained soon after showing up on Moscow's Pushkin Square.

Before his detention, he briefly addressed supporters in central Moscow, leading them in chants of 'Down with the Tsar!".

Mr Putin won a landslide re-election victory in March, extending his grip over the world's largest country for another six years until 2024, making him the longest-lasting leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin who ruled for nearly 30 years.

Navalny, who has been detained and jailed numerous times for organising similar protests, said he was proud to have made it to the rally.

OVD-Info, a rights organisation that monitors detentions, said it had received reports of police detaining 1,599 people across Russia, nearly half of them in Moscow.

It cited its sources at the Moscow protest as saying pro-Kremlin Cossacks had beaten protesters with leather whips, sparking a fight.

A police spokesman said around 1,500 people had protested in Moscow, of whom around 300 had been detained, the Interfax news agency reported. Reuters reporters estimated the crowd numbered several thousand.

Vladimir Putin was re-elected for a fourth Kremlin term in March

Mr Putin, 65, has been in power, either as president or prime minister, since 2000.

Backed by state TV and the ruling party, and credited with an approval rating of around 80%, Mr Putin is lauded by supporters as a father-of-the-nation figure who has restored national pride and expanded Moscow’s global clout with interventions in Syria and Ukraine.

The authorities regard most of the protests as illegal, arguing that their time and place was not agreed with them beforehand.

Police have broken up similar demonstrations in the past, sometimes harshly, detaining hundreds.

Mr Putin has dismissed the opposition leader, who was barred from running in the presidential election, as a troublemaker bent on sowing chaos on behalf of Washington.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, a close Putin ally, has called Mr Navalny a political charlatan.

Mr Putin is due to be inaugurated on Monday in a Kremlin ceremony heavy on pomp and circumstance.

With almost 77% of the vote and more than 56 million votes, his March election win was his biggest ever and the largest by any post-Soviet Russian leader, something he and his allies say gave him an unequivocal mandate to govern.

However, European observers said there had been no real choice in the election, and complained of unfair pressure on critical voices.

Critics like Mr Navalny accuse Mr Putin of overseeing a corrupt authoritarian system and of illegally annexing Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, a move that isolated Russia internationally.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is inaugurated at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow for a fourth term as President of Russia following his victory in March's presidential election.