Alwaght- Russian presidential candidate and incumbent head of state Vladimir Putin cast his vote in Sunday’s presidential election in an election held across 11 time zones.
Putin visited ballot station number 2151 in the Russian Academy of Sciences on Moscow’s Kosygina Street.
The Russian leader cast his vote at this ballot station during the presidential election on March 4, 2012.
Several dozens of Russian and foreign journalists gathered in the hall of the Academy of Sciences. Observers from parties and candidates monitor the process.
Vladimir Putin said he will consider successful any percentage of votes allowing him to fulfill presidential duties. "Any [percentage] that allows fulfilling presidential duties," Putin said when asked which percentage of votes he would consider as successful.
Putin stressed: "I’m sure that the program which I suggest for the country is right."
Later Putin had a brief meeting with mass media representatives. "I will have several meetings with workers today," he said.
Russians are casting their ballots in the presidential election, as polls opened from the Far East region of Kamchatka to the western exclave of Kaliningrad. Eight candidates are vying for the post of president.
The vote will last for a total of 22 hours, as Russians across all the country’s 11 time zones, spanning from Kamchatka and Chukotka in the East to the westernmost enclave of Kaliningrad, will be heading to polls on Sunday.
First polling stations welcomed early voters at 8:00 am local time [20:00 GMT] on Saturday in Kamchatka and Chukotka regions, followed by the island of Sakhalin an hour later. In Moscow, the voting started nine hours later, at 5:00 am GMT, and will proceed until the polls close at 8:00 pm [17:00 GMT].
The incumbent Putin, who is running as an independent, the Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin, the liberal Yabloko party candidate Grigory Yavlinsky, Liberal Democratic Party of Russia candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Russian All-People's Union candidate Sergey Baburin, Maksim Suraykin from the Communists of Russia, and Civic Initative’s Ksenia Sobchak have all cast their votes at polling stations in Moscow. Boris Titov, the Party of Growth candidate, voted along with his family in the village of Abrau-Durso in the southern Krasnodar region.
