Tunde Sulaiman 
Vladimir Putin was always going to claim his fifth term as president with a landslide, faced with three other candidates all rubber-stamped by the Kremlin.
But when election officials said results gave him more than 87% of the vote, he said Russia’s democracy was more transparent than many in the West. In truth no credible opposition candidate was allowed to stand, reports the BBC. Supporters of dead Putin critic Alexei Navalny did stage symbolic protests. Western countries lined up to condemn the vote as neither free nor fair.
