MOSCOW, April 16. /TASS/. The Russian presidential election held at polling stations abroad were successful despite the West's attempts to disrupt them, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"The election process took place against the backdrop of a hybrid war against Russia unleashed by the West, and before the election this war became particularly fierce," Lavrov said at a meeting of the the United Russia Party General Council Commission on International Cooperation and Support for Compatriots Abroad, which he heads. "The malefactors actively used various methods of pressure and blackmail, intimidation of voters and tried with all their might to disrupt the elections, to question their legality and legal purity," the top diplomat pointed out.
"Our ministry and foreign institutions successfully coped with the task. Hundreds of thousands of Russians were able to exercise their constitutional right," the minister added.
According to him, an additional complicating factor in the organization was the significant reduction of the Russian diplomatic presence in most Western countries, "both in terms of the number of diplomats and the number of diplomatic institutions." "There were also numerous cases of refusal to open additional polling stations to compensate for the closure of consular offices," Lavrov emphasized.
Russia held its first three-day presidential election over the period March 15-17. Remote electronic voting, also a first, was available to voters in 29, or about one-third, of the country’s regions. According to the Central Election Commission (CEC), after 100% of the votes were tallied by local election commissions, incumbent head of state Vladimir Putin beat out his three rivals with 87.28% of the vote.