Anastassia Zlatopolskaya
BBC Russian, in Tel Aviv

Posters hold slogans that say "Stop war" and "Open your eyes". They hold white-blue flags, which have become a semi-official symbol of Russian opposition movement, as well as the Russian tricolour as they gather at the Russia's Consulate in Tel Aviv at noon.

The queue on Kaufman Street started forming much earlier and quickly stretched for more than half a kilometre, crossing the intersection and turning around the corner for another couple of hundred meters.

Many came to vote not only from the neighbouring cities but even from the southern part of the country - Be'er Sheva, Ashkelon, Ashdod.

The hardly-moving line includes both those who came for the rally and those who just wanted to vote. Igor came from Ashdod but doesn't intend to vote: "I didn't even bother to take my passport; I don't want to have anything in common with them."

Passers-by stop to find out what the crowd is about and smile approvingly.

Konstantin came with friends from Givatayim: "It's a way to speak out against Putin and show that there are many of us. It's a way in these absolutely fake elections to convey to other people something that propaganda says - that the majority supports Putin - is an absolute lie."

"For people who oppose the regime that seized Russia it's very important to see each other. The actions of the Putin regime are aimed precisely at dividing all people, showing that we are a small marginal bunch. But in reality, no, there are many of us!".

Image source, bbc

Natalia Zotova
BBC Russian, in Riga

In Latvian capital, Riga, so many Russian nationals show up to the embassy to vote that by noon the queue stretches around the corner of the building.

Many of those waiting their turn came here either shortly after the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine or not long before it. Next to them are older people — Latvian residents with Russian passports, some have been living here since the USSR. Although they are reluctant to speak to the media, many of them support Putin.

“Who am I voting for? We haven’t decided yet, the queue is long, we still have time to think”, says playfully one of the older ladies.

She says she doesn’t understand any questions about the war, saying “they just need to sit down and make a deal”.

“Election is election, and war is war”, one older man says.

A small protest assembles in front of the embassy. The participants are holding posters “Putin=death” and “Fake elections”.

Tatiana is holding a poster “Putin is a killer” in one hand and her Russian passport in the other. She is outraged by the war and says that since its beginning she has not once travelled to Russia: “I cannot breathe that air.” A man named Alexei with huge photograph of Navalny behind prison bars is facing the queue. He says he was born in Latvia and used to have a Russian passport but decided to change his documents to become a Latvian national.

He says he came to spite those voting for Putin. “I want to remind them what this regime has done to Ukrainian people, to Russian people and to Alexei Navalny. I hope they will make the right choice”.

Grigor Atanesyan
BBC Russian, in Yerevan

Image source, Getty Images

At noon, the Russian Embassy building in Yerevan is surrounded by a hundreds of young Russians - the majority here are in their twenties. They are those who fled the country from the war and mobilisation to Armenia, and those who came from Georgia.

In the absence of a Russian embassy in Tbilisi, many of those who are now in exile came to express their position in the neighbouring country.

A young man with a poster that says “Putin is a crap” is handing out charlotte cake.

The long line began at the entrance to the Russian Embassy and was up to Yerevan City Hall building. At 12:00 local time the City Hall clock struck, and those gathered responded with applause - but there were no other signs of a protest.

I asked a young man with a loudspeaker in his hands if we should expect a protest. He said that his name was Dmitry and that he was trying to organise a rally in a nearby park, in front of the monument to the Bolshevik Stepan Shaumyan.

Dmitry added that he was going to vote for one of Vladimir Putin's opponents because he considered this a more meaningful protest than damaging ballots.

The line to vote was so long that a group of young Russians standing in the middle told us they did not expect to get to the embassy before the polling station closed.

One of the young women in this group, Tatyana, says that she and her friends have been living in Armenia for two years, having moved here on the second day after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Tatyana adds that they are grateful to Armenia for the way they have been received, but they are not making plans for the future.

Will Vernon
BBC News, Washington

Over the course of the day, protesters - and voters - gathered at noon at Russian embassies around the world. In the next few posts we'll bring you the view from Yerevan, Riga and Tel Aviv. We kick off with Washington:

Protesting earlier outside the Russian embassy in Washington, DC is lawyer and activist Lyubov Sobol.

She was one of the closest aides of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic penal colony last month.

She tells me that Alexei Navalny would be “very happy” to see the anti-Putin events across Russia and abroad today.

“Obviously we know that the final results will show whatever number the Kremlin decides to put out,” Sobol says.

“We probably won’t see the votes being made now in the results. But this solidarity, this symbol, is nonetheless important.”

Repression in Russia now, she says, has reached “maximum levels”.

The people here of course are not in Russia, they are in the United States, and therefore the risk to them for taking part in such an event is lower.

For people still inside Russia, participating in any kind of protest whatsoever can lead to arrest.

Image source, Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin was also asked by an NBC journalist - in English - about Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal journalist held by Russia in detention, as well as Boris Nadezhdin who was barred from running in the election.

"Mr President, is this what you call democracy?".

"This is life," Putin replies.

Putin talks about Nadezhdin, saying he did not participate in this election campaign due to "unsatisfactory work" in the run-up to these elections, adding that from what he understands he did not have enough votes to participate in the election.

Putin then moves on to talk about Navalny - you can see his comments on him in our previous post. He then continues to express his opinion on democracy but does not say a word about Evan Gershkovich.

Gershkovich was arrested last year on espionage charges, marking the first time Moscow had accused a US journalist of espionage since the Soviet era. His detention was extended for the fourth time in January and the end of the moth will make a year since he was first detained.

Image source, EPA

Putin says he was in favour of a swap deal involving Alexei Navalny proposed to him by "colleagues" days before the jailed critic died in prison last month.

Navalny's ally Maria Pevchikh has previously said Navalny was due to be released and allowed to travel abroad in exchange for the return of Vadim Krasikov, a Russian hitman serving a life sentence in Germany.

When reports of the deal first emerged, a Kremlin spokesperson said he was "not aware of such agreements".

Commenting on the proposed deal for the first time and seemingly confirming its existence, Putin says the only condition would have been that Navalny would never be able to return to Russia.

Using his name in public for the first time in years, Putin does not specify who Navalny would have been traded for, saying only "some people who are behind bars in Western countries".

Putin continues: "But when things like that happen you can not do anything about it – that’s life."

You can read more about the circumstances around Navalny's death here.

Victoria Prisedskaya
Reporting from Warsaw

Image source, Russian-controlled Donetsk election commission

Russian electoral commission has awarded Putin more than 90% of the vote in Russian-occupied Donetsk.

Donetsk is the largest city in eastern Ukraine that’s now occupied by Russia and it’s where Moscow has wished to boast most loyalty.

When he announced his “special military operation” in Ukraine more than two years ago, President Vladimir Putin justified it with the need to “defend the people of Donbas”.

The Russian-installed authorities there launched a large campaign to attract voters. They sent people with ballot boxes to residents’ homes, adapting, and adopting, a famous slogan: “It’s not the voter who goes to the polling station, but the polling station comes to the voter.”

Photos on local social media showed people with ballot boxes, heavily equipped with the official symbols of the 2024 presidential election, the V-sign, also associated with what Russia has been calling a "special military operation”.

They invited residents to tick the ballot paper no matter where they happened to be - using table tennis tables at playgrounds, car hoods, or benches in the courtyards.

The residents’ attitude towards this event seem rather apathetic, even in Donetsk where the Kremlin propaganda has been relentlessly doing its job for a decade.

"Are these elections? No one pays attention to this fiction. The number of votes has been already fixed and approved," a resident of Donetsk told BBC Ukrainian.

"There was something on billboards and in schools too, I can’t read it – have bad eyesight. It's absolutely absurd," he added.

Image source, Reuters

Vladimir Putin has just been asked what he makes of the "Noon against Putin" protests staged in a number of Russian cities and at polling stations abroad.

He's not particularly impressed, although he thinks as head of state they actually helped him do his job by asking voters to come and perform their civic duty.

"No matter who you vote for, that was a good thing - although from what I understand it didn't yield any result," he says.

Anti-Putin voters were asked to descend on polling stations at midday, and Putin said the problem came when some of them destroyed their ballots.

"If you want to ruin other people's attempts to vote... that's not democratic."

BBC Monitoring

Vladimir Putin is still answering questions at his campaign HQ, where a few minutes ago he thanked Russian citizens who came to vote.

As we've been reporting, at least 80 people have been arrested across Russia for allegedly vandalising polling stations and Russian Interior Ministry now says it has launched 33 criminal investigations into the incidents:

"A large amount of work was carried out both from the point of view of documentation and from the point of view of preventing the entry of dyes and flammable liquids," says Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Gorov, according to Interfax news agency.

Speaking in Moscow at a Central Electoral Commission press conference, he says 52 acts of vandalism were recorded, and 33 criminal cases had been opened as a result.

Earlier it was reported that at least 50 people had to be evacuated from a polling station in the Urals city of Perm after a woman set off a firework and had to be hospitalised.

Several people were also detained in Moscow, Voronezh, Volgograd and Novosibirsk regions, the Karachay-Cherkessia Republic, and in occupied Crimea on the first day of voting after ink or green dye was poured into ballot boxes, according to news outlet Meduza.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

President Vladimir Putin says his win in the election will allow Russia to become stronger and more effective.

Speaking at his campaign headquarters, Putin says: "Out of every voice, we are building a common will of the people of Russian Federation."

He also thanks the citizens who came to the polling stations and expresses "special gratitude to our warriors on the line of contact", referring to the front line of the war in Ukraine.

"No matter how hard they tried to scare us, suppress our will, our conscience, no-one has ever succeeded in history. They failed now, and they will fail in the future," he adds.

The Russian election has been described as neither free nor fair by some of his international counterparts.

The former KGB leader, who has been in power since 1999 will lead the country for a fifth term.

But tonight's results were no surprise, as any credible opposition to Vladimir Putin is either in jail, in exile or dead.

Image source, Reuters

Vladimir Putin has already been in power for 24 years in one way or another and is now on course for another six.

As he heads into a fifth term, he's already served 20 years as president and four as prime minister, when he was widely considered as in charge anyway.

At 71, he's already led Russia longer than any ruler since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who spent almost 31 years in power.

Russia's constitution was amended in 2020, increasing the presidential term from four to six years and giving Putin a clean slate to run again by cancelling out his previous terms.

Theoretically, he could seek a sixth term and continue until 2036, which would give him longer in power than Catherine the Great in the 18th Century.

A bit more reaction to bring you from Western governments.

In a statement, the UK's foreign office has criticised Russia for "illegally holding elections on Ukrainian territory," saying that this demonstrates Russia "is not interested in finding a path to peace".

"The UK will continue to provide humanitarian, economic and military aid to Ukrainians defending their democracy," it added.

Poland's foreign ministry has also spoken out against Russia's "so-called presidential elections".

Image source, Yulia Navalnaya

The widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has thanked those who took part in protests today as the last of votes were cast.

Supporters of Navalny, who died in prison last month, had been encouraged to turn up to polling stations at 12:00 local time and vote en masse, as a protest against President Putin.

Yulia Navalnaya appeared at one such gathering at Russia's embassy in Berlin, casting her vote after several hours in the queue.

In a message on X (formerly Twitter), she thanked everyone involved in the protests worldwide.

"It’s not me, but you who give me hope that everything is not in vain, that we will still fight," said Navalnaya. "I love you all very much."

Andrei Kozenko
BBC Russian

Image source, Getty Images

Ahead of the vote, Vladimir Putin toured various Russian regions, meeting factory workers, the military, scientists, farmers and college students.

But he never mentioned the word "elections" and they were a far cry from anything like a campaign rally. That's because Putin doesn’t like electoral campaigns, calling them “unscrupulous acts”.

He didn't take part in presidential debates either, saying once they were “uninteresting” and had "no point”.

When he first ran for president he would talk about the “terrorist threat” in the 2000s. In 2012, when he ran for a third term, he thanked factory workers who wanted to save Moscow from “the liberals“ in 2012.

So what did Putin talk about this time?

“Vladimir Vladimirovich, what do you like more: cucumbers or tomatoes?” one of the farmers in Stavropol region in Russia’s North Caucasus asked him in early March.

“Depends on what we’re snacking on,” Putin joked, before adding “seriously though, I like them both”.

When asked by a Moscow-based Belgian doctor how to understand the “mysterious Russian soul”, Putin said Belgium owed its existence on the map "largely thanks to Russia“. Belgian media accused Putin of “re-writing history”.

The day Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny died in prison in the Arctic, a woman approached Putin in Chelyabinsk and said: “The organisers allowed me to ask you any question. I was thinking and thinking, and realised: I have nothing to ask you."

Francis Scarr
BBC Monitoring

Image source, Rossiya 24

Russian state TV has reacted predictably to the initial election results by showering President Vladimir Putin with praise.

A presenter on state rolling news channel Rossiya 24 told viewers that results coming in from across the country showed “unbelievable consolidation around the incumbent president”.

Her co-presenter said that the nation was showing its backing for Putin at a time when it was “in a state of armed conflict” and subjected to “unprecedented international pressure”.

Despite widespread criticism of the election from abroad, Russia’s state media have also made every effort to present it as a vote held in full accordance with democratic norms.

Image source, Channel One

Shortly after polling stations closed in Moscow, a correspondent on state-controlled Channel One said that counting had begun in the Russian capital, “naturally with observers present”.

This message was echoed by Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Electoral Commission.

In a televised press conference this evening, she said the country had held the election with “unbelievable dignity, like a united nation which understands what this election means for us and our future”.

People waited hours to cast their vote in the Russian elections outside the country's embassy in London.

A group of protesters also gathered nearby, condemning the re-election of President Putin and paying tribute to opposition leader, Alexei Navalny.

Vitaly Shevchenko
BBC Monitoring

Russia refers to the Ukrainian territories it has occupied as its "new regions" and the election commission has declared an emphatic win for Putin in all four areas under Russian control.

But Russian officials used a variety of ways to coerce residents under occupation into voting.

Occupation authorities set up polling stations, but voters had no need to visit them as ballot boxes were sent direct to their homes.

"Dear voters, we worry about your safety! You do not have to go anywhere to vote - we will come to your home with ballots and boxes!" the Russian-installed electoral commission in the Zaporizhzhia region told Ukrainians on social media.

Tried-and-tested Soviet methods were also deployed to attract them to polling stations, such as free concerts and food.

Ukraine has dismissed the vote as an illegitimate sham and those involved in organising it have been targeted by attacks. One commission official in the restive town of Berdyansk was killed by shelling, according to state news agency Tass.

Read the full story here.

Steve Rosenberg
BBC Russia editor

Russia’s presidential election was not a level playing field; the Kremlin tightly controls the political system here (including the media, and elections). Vladimir Putin faced no serious challenger. Still, there are Russians who genuinely like him and are happy to vote for him.

I remember talking about Putin last year with an ice fisherman in the town of Orekhovo-Zuyevo. “No-one can imagine the future without Putin,” he told me.

“He’s done a lot for Russia. I remember the 1990s and the 1980s. I remember ration cards. I only used to see tangerines at New Year. Now you can buy them every day.”

Putin…the citrus king? The Kremlin constantly reminds Russians how tough the 1990s were and portrays Putin as the man who brought order to his country. Even after two years of war, it’s a message which still strikes a chord with some Russians.

Vladimir Putin’s increasingly nationalistic, anti-Western tone also appeals to some.

But in my conversations with Russians, I often here the phrase: “If not Putin, then who?”

Many people who vote for Vladimir Putin seem to do so because they see no alternative, no one else on the political stage who could do the job. The Kremlin has engineered that by clearing the political landscape of any potential rivals and challengers.

Image source, EPA

The polls have now closed across Russia, so let's take a moment to review what's happened today:

• As expected, exit polls have shown Russian President Vladimir Putin heading for a fifth term, with nearly 88% of the vote

• One Russian state TV correspondent labelled the win as a signal to Western countries
• Ukrainian territories occupied by Russia were included in voting, and the electoral commission awarded Putin victories ranging from 88% to 94% in those areas
• Opposition to Putin is dangerous in Russia, and at least 80 protesters were arrested across the country today
• The widow of Russia's opposition leader, Yulia Navalnaya cast her vote in Berlin, writing her late husbands name on the ballot
• Navalnaya had called for Russians who oppose Putin to arrive at polling stations at midday, and there were clear spikes in voter numbers registered in several cities including Moscow and St Petersburg
• Western governments have reacted to Putin's projected win, with Germany calling the election "neither free, nor fair" and the US highlighting that Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him