Exit polls say Putin winning Russian vote in landslide as thousands protest election

President Vladimir Putin won a record 88 per cent in Russia's presidential election on Sunday, exit polls and first results showed, cementing his grip on power, though thousands of opponents staged a symbolic noon protest at polling stations.

The early result means Putin, who came to power in 1999, looks to have easily won a new six-year term that would enable him to overtake Joseph Stalin and become Russia's longest-serving leader for more than 200 years.

Putin won 87.8 per cent of the vote, the highest ever result in Russia's post-Soviet history, an exit poll by pollster FOM showed. The Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) put Putin at 87 per cent. First official results indicated the polls were accurate.

The election comes just over two years since Putin triggered the deadliest European conflict since the Second World War by ordering the invasion of Ukraine. He casts it as a "special military operation."

The war has hung over the three-day election: Ukraine has repeatedly attacked oil refineries in Russia, shelled Russian regions and sought to pierce Russian borders with proxy forces — a move Putin said would not be left unpunished.

While Putin's re-election is not in doubt given his control over Russia and the absence of any real challengers, the former KGB spy wanted to show that he has the overwhelming support of Russians. Several hours before polls closed at 9 p.m. Moscow time, the nationwide turnout surpassed 2018 levels of 67.5 per cent.

Supporters of Putin's most prominent opponent, Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison last month, had called on Russians to come out at a "Noon Against Putin" protest to show their dissent against a leader they cast as a corrupt autocrat.

There was no independent tally of how many of Russia's 114 million voters took part in the opposition demonstrations, amid extremely tight security involving tens of thousands of police and security officials.

Reuters journalists saw an increase in the flow of voters, especially younger people, at noon at polling stations in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, with lineups of several hundred people and even thousands.

Some said they were protesting, though there were few outward signs to distinguish them from ordinary voters.

As noon arrived across Asia and Europe, crowds hundreds strong gathered at polling stations at Russian diplomatic missions. Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, appeared at the Russian Embassy in Berlin to cheers and chants of "Yulia, Yulia."

Exiled Navalny supporters broadcast footage on YouTube of protests inside Russia and abroad.

"We showed ourselves, all of Russia and the whole world that Putin is not Russia, that Putin has seized power in Russia," said Ruslan Shaveddinov of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation. "Our victory is that we, the people, defeated fear, we defeated solitude — many people saw they were not alone."

Leonid Volkov, an exiled Navalny aide who was attacked with a hammer last week in Vilnius, Lithuania, estimated hundreds of thousands of people had come out to polling stations in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and other cities.