Friday marked the initiation of a three-day electoral process as Russians cast their votes across the nation's 11 time zones. The outcome, almost guaranteed, is expected to extend Vladimir Putin's tenure by an additional six years as the head of the world's foremost nuclear power.
Amidst the Ukraine war, deemed the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two, the 71-year-old Kremlin leader remains the central figure in Russia's political sphere.
None of the other candidates listed on the ballot pose a credible threat to Putin's reelection.
The Kremlin says Putin, leading since 1999 as president or prime minister, is likely to win. He garners significant support for his efforts in navigating Russia through the aftermath of the Soviet collapse and for his stance against what it views as Western arrogance and hostility, said Reuters.
Some of Russia's more than 190 ethnic groups turned out to vote in national costume, from Chukotka on the Pacific 6,300 km (3,900 miles) away from Moscow to the Kaliningrad exclave on the Baltic Sea bordering Poland.
In Yakutskan, an eastern Siberian city, the descendent of a Yukaghir shaman asked spirits to bring good luck to the winner during a ceremony at one polling station. Other Russian cities saw one woman dressed up as Barbie at a polling station and another woman dressed as a tiger.
However, despite Putin's guaranteed win, the effects of the Ukraine war heavily loom over the election.
Russia reportedly has more than 1 million men in arms and several hundred thousand fighting an artillery and drone war along the front line in Ukraine.
Should Putin achieve an additional six-year term, he will surpass Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to become Russia's longest-serving ruler since Empress Catherine the Great in the 18th century.
Perhaps Russia's most well-known adversary stood a chance to persuade the election to go a different direction, however, Alexei Navalny died abruptly in an Arctic penal colony last month. And any other opposing Kremlin critics are exiled or in jail.
Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, alongside his supporters, has called on citizens across Russia to protest the election by voting at the same time at noon on Sunday in each of the country's 11 time zones.
Positioned as a means for individuals to voice opposition without facing arrest, the "Noon Against Putin" movement encourages participation in lawful voting lines.
Despite this, the Kremlin has warned people against participating in unauthorized gatherings.
But not all Russians are abiding by Kremlin's strict orders, as a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a polling station in St. Petersburg on Friday. It was reported that authorities apprehended a woman attempting to ignite a ballot box using a Molotov cocktail, according to voting officials. Additionally, in the Chelyabinsk region, law enforcement detained an individual who sought to set off firecrackers at a polling station
