Vladimir Putin has addressed thousands of people in Moscow's Red Square, after claiming a landslide election win
The Moscow rally is to mark the 10th anniversary of Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea - Putin says it has "returned to its home harbour"
On Sunday, Vladimir Putin won a fifth term as Russian president by a landslide of 87%
He faced no credible opposition as the Kremlin tightly controls Russia's political system, media and elections
Germany called it a "pseudo-election", while the US said the vote is "obviously not free nor fair"
But China, India, Iran, and North Korea backed the result - with the Indian PM Narendra Modi offering "warm congratulations"
Fighting has been raging for two years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
Military control of Ukraine has changed considerably since the invasion.
In recent weeks, however, Moscow’s forces appear to have made a breakthrough after regaining control of the strategic key eastern town of Avdiivka.
Image source, AFPThe final day of a vote set to confirm Vladimir Putin in office is under way in Russia, occupied regions of Ukraine and at Russian embassies around the world.
Here is what has happened so far today:
Vitaly Shevchenko
BBC Monitoring
Image source, RUSSIAN-CONTROLLED DONETSK ELECTION COMMISSIONMoscow launched a wide-ranging campaign telling residents of occupied parts of Ukraine to vote in Russia's presidential election.
For the first time, the national vote is taking place over three days (15 - 17 March), although voting began early in the occupied parts of four Ukrainian regions: Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk.
One resident complained of pro-Russian collaborators with ballot boxes going from house to house looking for voters accompanied by armed soldiers.
Vladimir Putin will certainly win another term of office, but a high turnout would help the Kremlin's efforts to legitimise his continued rule.
It would also be used to justify Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin is one of four candidates on the ballot, but none of the others poses a realistic challenge.
All of his most outspoken critics have either been forced into exile, jailed, or have died.
Image source, RUSSIAN COMMUNIST PARTYNikolai Kharitonov is portrayed in a campaign video walking to his imagined new job in the Kremlin
A Vladimir Putin victory is guaranteed, most likely by a landslide, and yet there are three other names on the ballot paper.
None of the three is considered credible, so who are they?
Nikolai Kharitonov, 75,is the official candidate of the Communist Party. When the BBC's Steve Rosenberg met him a few days ago, he had more praise for Putin than himself.
Leonid Slutsky, 56, is the leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. He is a regular on Russian state TV where he voices anti-Western views.
Vladislav Davankov, 40, is parliament deputy speaker and has refused to criticise the other candidates.
Despite their vastly different political standings, all three broadly back the Kremlin's policies.
Established opposition voices have long gone been silenced. But two Ukraine war critics did try to stand. Boris Nadezhdin (a veteran politician) and Yekaterina Duntsova (a former TV journalist) were both banned from running.
Image source, REUTERS/MAXIM SHEMETOVBoris Nadezhdin was barred from running more than a month before the election
Local Moscow councillor Boris Nadezhdin announced his candidacy last year, generating a rare moment of optimism for opposition-minded voters.
He was a frequent guest on talk shows on state TV and had been relatively critical of Moscow's war in Ukraine.
But in a country where many have been jailed for speaking out against the war, he would never make the ballot paper. The most prominent Kremlin critic, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic penal colony last month and his supporters say he was murdered.
Image source, SPUTNIK/KREMLINVladimir Putin has been Russia's dominant political figure since he was handpicked by an ailing President Boris Yeltsin in 1999.
Much of his early career was in the old KGB security service but in the late 1990s he was recruited to join the presidential administration and he was appointed prime minister months before being given the top job.
He has been president ever since 2000, apart from four years as prime minister from 2008-12 and even then he was widely seen as holding the reins of power.
He faced down rising opposition protests in 2011 and one by one critical voices have been silenced. Putin's opponents are now in exile, in jail or dead.
Putin has also adopted a stridently nationalist course and appealed to memories of Soviet-era power to shore up domestic support.
The president presents himself as a strong leader who took Russia out of the economic, social and political crisis of the 1990s, and defends Russia's national interests, particularly against alleged Western hostility.
He unleashed Europe's biggest war since World War Two in February 2022 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Image source, Twitter / Kira_YarmyshA woman grabs a selfie with Yulia Navalnaya
Alexei Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, is in Germany's capital Berlin and has been attending a protest at midday against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Navalny's spokesperson Kira Yarmysh has been posting pictures on X, formerly Twitter, of Navalnaya posing with people.
Following Navalny's death last month, Yulia vowed to continue her husband's work and fight for a "free" Russia.
Image source, Twitter / Kira_YarmyshYulia Navalnaya queuing alongside other protesters in Berlin
Vitaliy Shevchenko
BBC Monitoring
More than 50 people have been arrested across Russia during the third and final day of voting in presidential elections, the human rights monitoring group OVD-Info reports.
Among this number at least 23 people have been arrested in Kazan, 10 in Moscow and five in St Petersburg.
Steve Rosenberg
reporting from Moscow
At Borisovsky Cemetery, Muscovites are placing flowers at the grave of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died last month in a penal colony. Messages, too.
Written on one piece of paper: “This is the candidate we wanted.”
What looks like a ballot paper has also been placed here, with Navalny’s name replacing Vladimir Putin’s.
Someone has left a sign that says "this is the candidate we wanted"
Several hours before the polls close in some parts of Russia, the turnout for Russia's presidential election has hit 67.54%, according to the Russian news agency Tass.
This is just higher than the turnout of 67.5% reported for the last presidential election in 2018.
For the Kremlin, turnout is a key factor in this election as a means of highlighting popular approval of Vladimir Putin. There is no way of corroborating the figures as the only foreign observers have come from Putin-supporting countries and vote-monitoring organisation Golos has been labelled a foreign agent.
Golos has pointed to suspicious turnout figures in St Petersburg that could point to election fraud.
Vitaliy Shevchenko
BBC Monitoring
Image source, REUTERS/Maxim ShemetovPeople stand in a line outside a polling station in Russia's capital
Ivan Zhdanov, a close associate of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has described the opposition’s protest at polling stations at noon local time as a success.
“I think the event has reached its objectives. There are a lot of people at many polling stations. People have come to show solidarity,” Zhdanov has said.
“They tried to intimidate people but they turned out for this event nonetheless. It is true that this event was to a large extent symbolic, but it allowed people to show support for each other,” he has said in a live stream on the Navalny Live channel on YouTube.
Zhdanov is the head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation set up by Navalny and now banned in Russia.
Sarah Rainsford
Reporting from Kyiv
Ukraine has confirmed that its drones targeted an oil refinery in southern Russia.
A source has told the BBC that the strike caused a fire and said the aim was to undermine the Russian economy and its oil exports.
There’s been an increase in such attacks in recent weeks and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has hailed what he calls a new "strike force" in the sky.
Drones were intercepted close to Moscow, overnight, too. Russia claims Ukraine’s trying to "disrupt" the presidential election there, which has been engineered to return Vladimir Putin to power.
In fact, Russia itself launched another wave of drones and missiles against Ukrainian cities overnight - as it has done ever since Putin launched his full-scale invasion.
For the Kremlin, the vote taking place in occupied areas of Ukraine is especially important. Two years ago, Russia falsely claimed people there needed "protecting" from Kyiv. So it wants to show major support for Moscow now.
But residents we’ve spoken to say they’re being pressured into voting – and describe armed men accompanying election officials and ballot boxes taken to markets and other busy places to boost the vote.
They say there is resistance though: that people are hiding, or damaging, their passports, so they can’t be forced to take part.
Rayhan Demytrie
BBC News Tbilisi
“Enough of Putin! Down with the tsar! Russia will be free!" is the chant from several hundred Russians that have gathered in central Tbilisi - the capital of Georgia - at midday today.
People have been holding anti-war placards, while others have been continuing to make posters on site.
Anton has been creating a poster with red marker pen that reads “Putin is a killer”.
My feeling is that blood is dripping from this person, Anton says.
Then I spoke to Lidia, who made it to Georgia just a week ago. Back home she was under investigation and accused of discrediting the Russian Army for writing anti-war posts on social media.
“I could not stay silent, I was seeing in the news that they were killing children in Ukraine, and I have small kids," she says.
Lidia also says the Russian authorities (Investigative Committee) have summoned her nine-year old child to be questioned and to give evidence against her. The letter Z was written on the door of her house.
She had to get out and says her children are still traumatised by the experience.
Many of the Russians in Georgia feel powerless because they can't vote, there is no Russian embassy here and no diplomatic ties since the 2008 Russo-Georgian war.
But if they did get a chance to vote, they say they would vote for anybody but Vladimir Putin.
More images are coming in now of queues building outside polling stations in various locations across Russia following the call by the widow of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalnaya.
She had urged people to gather at midday as part of an election day protest against President Vladimir Putin.
"We need to use the election day to show that we exist and there are many of us," she has said in a video message about her "Midday against Putin" protest.
Russia stretches 11 time zones, so midday falls at different times across the country, but here are some of the pictures we've seen so far:
Image source, Getty ImagesA long line of people has formed outside this polling station in Saint Petersburg
Image source, ReutersIn the capital city of Moscow people have also been forming long queues
Image source, ReutersThere are similar scenes in the town of Kudrovo, in Russia's Leningrad region
Aisymbat Tokoeva
BBC Russian, reporting from Bishkek
By noon a queue of Russians who came to the Russian Embassy in Bishkek - the capital of Kyrgyzstan - became pretty massive, stretching for two streets and exceeding 500 meters.
People, mostly young, are in a good mood and have been cheering each other in their attempt to influence the future.
People are patiently waiting for their turn, despite the scorching sun.
Among those voting were also Kyrgyz natives who now hold Russian passports, but they are a minority here.
Steve Rosenberg
reporting from Moscow
By midday a queue of people had suddenly formed outside the Moscow polling station we were at.
Young and old. Several dozen Muscovites. They were allowed into the building in small groups.
No placards, no slogans. Very much a silent protest.
Ivan told me why he was taking part in "Midday Against Putin".
Quote MessageIt was important for me to see the faces of other people who would come here today and to see I am not alone in my political views."
Ivan
"There are a lot of Muscovites and other people who believe Russia can be another country with another future,” Ivan adds.
Watch: The moment a polling booth is set on fire
Russia has already seen some protests at polling stations in recent days since the presidential vote opened, with several people having been detained for vandalism, according to Russian officials.
In the last couple of days there have been incidents involving green dye poured into ballot boxes, the boxes being set alight and fireworks set off inside polling stations.
Most of the incidents have been reported at polling stations in Moscow, Voronezh in south Russia, and the region of Karachay-Cherkessia in the north Caucasus, according to Russian state news agency Tass.
BBC Verify has verified footage of several incidents across Russia, including a video showing a woman throwing a petrol bomb near a St Petersburg polling station.
Image source, ReutersA woman pours a liquid into a ballot box in Moscow
Other authenticated videos have shown paint being poured into ballot boxes at various polling stations.
In one, a woman could be seen pouring bright green liquid into a box in Moscow. Another showed a fire breaking out at a voting booth.
Election Commission chief Ella Pamfilova has described the saboteurs as "scumbags" and says some of those detained for vandalising the boxes with dye admitted they had done it for money. They could be jailed for up to five years, she adds.
Steve Rosenberg
reporting from Moscow
The first thing I notice at this Moscow polling station is the official logo of the 2024 election: a large letter “V”.
It’s on signs and posters all around here.
This particular Latin letter also happens to be one of the symbols of Russia’s "special military operation": the war in Ukraine.
The portraits of the four candidates are up on the wall, along with a few paragraphs of information on each of them.
There’s much more written here about the three challengers than about Candidate Putin: mind you, after nearly a quarter of a century in power, Vladimir Putin is already pretty well known to Russian voters.
The other three candidates - Leonid Slutsky, Nikolai Kharitonov and Vladislav Davankov - are all MPs from the Kremlin-friendly parliament.
Russia's presidential election candidates
Estonian PM says Putin is "afraid" of war with Nato
Estonia's Prime Minister Kaja Kallas has told the BBC that Vladimir Putin is "afraid" of a war with Nato.
She has described the Russian president as "very good in sowing fear within our societies" but also says his threats of nuclear action should be taken seriously.
"We also have to think [of] what Putin is afraid of, and he's actually afraid of going to war with Nato, so he doesn't want that," she said, adding: "And we, of course, don't wait that either."
Vitaly Shevchenko
BBC Monitoring
Crowds of people have been gathering at polling stations at midday in Moscow after Aleksei Navalny's wife Yulia's call for an election day protest.
They have formed orderly queues and there have been no reports so far of them demonstrating or shouting political slogans.
There are no reports of arrests yet either.
Image source, Twitter / teamnavalny
Image source, Twitter / teamnavalny
Image source, Telegram - Meduza Live
Image source, Telegram - PlushevChannelAlexei Navalny: Widow urges Russians to protest against Putin on election day
The widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalnaya, has called for an election day protest against President Vladimir Putin.
Dubbed "Midday against Putin", the protest aims to see people form long queues at polling stations at midday today, an idea put forward by Navalny two weeks before his death.
Protesting is a dangerous activity in Russia, but Navalnaya says turning up at polling stations at the same time was a "very simple and safe action" that could not be prohibited by the authorities, and would allow like-minded people to "see that there are many of us and we are strong".
People can then vote for any candidate except Putin, spoil their ballot or write "Navalny" in big letters, she says.