First day of voting in presidential election kicked off in Russia
The Russian presidential election will be held on March 15th-17th. For the first time, voting will take place over three days, TASS reports
The candidates for the post of President of Russia are the current Head of State, Vladimir Putin, Leonid Slutsky from the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), Nikolay Kharitonov from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) and Vladislav Davankov from the New People party.
Polling stations have opened across Russia. The country's Election Commission said that the turnout in the presidential elections as a whole across the county was 2.89 per cent as of 10:19am local time. Almost 2.6m voters voted ahead of schedule from February 25th to March 14th.
In Moscow, more than 1m people received electronic ballots. The Public Services Portal of the Russian Federation and the remote electronic voting platform have already reported high voter activity.
There are 333,600 people watching the voting process in Russia, including more than 700 from 106 countries.
