Sixty percent of Russian voters believe the March 4 elections which secured Vladimir Putin a third term in the Kremlin were “open and fair,” a state-controlled pollster said on Monday.
But of the 1,600 people polled on March 10-11 by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VTsIOM), 21 percent said the elections were neither “free” nor “democratic.”
In a VTsIOM opinion poll released on Thursday, less than half – 44 percent - said the result of the elections was “reliable” and “in line with the will of the voters.”
Putin’s victory in the first round of presidential elections was marred by allegations of vote fraud and state media bias.
Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said the vote was "clearly skewed" in Putin's favor.
Russian election chief Vladimir Churov called the polls the "most open, honest and transparent" in the world.
But three members of the Kremlin’s council on human rights refused on Monday to recognize the elections as “legitimate.”
Rights activists Lyudmila Alekseeva and Svetlana Gannushkina, as well as political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin also said in a statement signed by other leading rights figures that there was “no legal basis” for Putin’s inauguration in May.
A poll released on Monday by the independent Levada Center indicated that a mere eight percent of respondents believe genuine democracy exists in today’s Russia.
