Some of the cases in which ballot boxes were deliberately damaged during the vote were broadcast live in Ukraine, the Ministry of Internal Affairs said.

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❗️ Putin has been informed on the first election results, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said

🗳🇷🇺 Latest results of vote counting

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Scott Ritter: Putin’s ‘quarter century of dedicated work’ added to reinvigorated Russia

Reinvigorating the Russian nation is one of the key achievements of President Vladimir Putin, who is headed towards a landslide re-election victory.

His victory, according to the analyst, “didn't happen in a vacuum” and was “the byproduct of a quarter century of dedicated work on behalf of Vladimir Putin for Russia and the Russian people,” Ritter stresses.

He recalls the country’s times of trouble in the 1990s, when “the very existence of the Russian state and the Russian nation was being called into question.”

“It was a decade where criminal oligarchs took over and hijacked the Russian economy on behalf of ostensibly Western allies, who weren't true allies, rather people […] who were seeking to dominate Russia politically and economically. This was the decade that Vladimir Putin grew into political prominence,” Ritter said.

“Putin was a product of the 1990s. He saw the reality of the 1990s and he understood that his country could never allow itself to go back to those times. He understood that if Russia didn't break free of the path that it was headed on during the decade of the 90s, there would be no Russia,” the former US Marine Corps Intelligence Officer emphasizes.

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🇷🇺 Foreign Ministry spokeswoman fires back at Germany’s criticism of Russia’s presidential race

"The only thing I can agree with in the German Foreign Ministry's commentary is that there is nothing surprising about the outcome of the Russian election. That's for sure. Especially after NATO repeatedly denigrates our country several times a day, threatening it, fanning the flames of conflict along our borders and throughout the world at large, raising money and weapons to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia," she maintained.

"No wonder the whole country united and fought back!" Zakharova concluded.

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🗳🇷🇺 Latest results of vote counting

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🗣 Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT and Rossiya Segodnya, Sputnik's parent media group, congratulated Russians on the preliminary results of the presidential election

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US blogger Jackson Hinkle announced that he'll be meeting with the winner of the Russian presidential election.

"It's election night in Russia and I'm meeting a winner," he said.

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What's behind US push to meddle in Russia’s internal affairs?

The US’ ultimate goal is to “try to create a Russia that will be obedient to the United States, to make it submit to the will of the West,” Larry Johnson, a retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official, tells Sputnik.

“The West sees itself as this leader of the world," in terms of moral, economic, and military clout, with Russia perceived as “a thorn in Western side, which must be compelled to submit,” Johnson says.

Touching upon information that Russian Foreign Intelligence Chief Sergey Naryshkin claimed that the US wanted to create a "fifth column" in Russia to meddle in the 2024 Russian presidential elections and discredit the country's leadership on social media, Johnson made it clear that all this is only too evident, adding: “Naryshkin might as well have been saying dogs like to chase cars.”

“That's the best America can come up with, you know, trying to discredit [now re-elected Russian President] Vladimir Putin. No matter what Russia does, its election will not be accepted in the US or recognized as legitimate,” according to the retired CIA intelligence officer.

Johnson also said he sees “no willingness on the part of the US to deal with Russia in a rational, logical manner," adding that, “this notion of creating a fifth column in Russia has always been and will always be a pipe dream.”

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🇻🇪 Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro congratulated Putin on his victory in the presidential elections, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry said

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❗️ Vladimir Putin stopped in at his election campaign headquarters, and thanked the volunteers there for their work

❗️ WATCH LIVE: Putin Visits Campaign Headquarters in Moscow

👉 Follow the live here or on Sputnik's website