Vladimir Putin scored a record election victory in post-Soviet Russia on Sunday, as the 71-year-old former KGB officer won a new six-year term. If he completes his term, he will surpass Joseph Stalin and become Russia’s longest-reigning leader in 200 years. According to the exit poll of the FOM institute, Putin won 87.8% of the vote, which is the highest result in the entire post-Soviet history of Russia. Asked by American television NBC whether his re-election was democratic, Putin criticized the American political and judicial system: “The whole world is laughing at what is happening (in the US). This is a disaster, not a democracy.” Asked by Reuters about Macron’s statements and the risks and possibility of a conflict between Russia and NATO, Putin replied: “anything is possible in today’s world. It is clear to everyone that this would mean being one step away from a full-scale World War III. I think almost no one is interested in this.”

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07:31 Asked by Reuters about Macron’s statements and the risks and possibility of a conflict between Russia and NATO, Vladimir Putin replied: “anything is possible in today’s world.”

“Everyone understands that this will mean that we are one step away from the third world war on a large scale. I think almost no one is interested in this,” he told reporters.

Putin said that NATO troops are already present in Ukraine, adding that Russia has noticed that both English and French are spoken on the battlefield. “There is nothing good in this, first of all for them, because they are dying there en masse,” he said.

A brief retelling of the last events of the war:

• Vladimir Putin said in a speech on Sunday night, as his supporters chanted his name, that his victory would make the country stronger and more efficient. Putin received a new mandate, receiving, according to the first results, 87.97% of the vote in the election, which lasted three days.
• Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev hailed Putin’s “resounding victory” in Russia’s presidential election on Sunday. Zelenskyi said that “the Russian dictator is falsifying the next election”, and the same international reaction was to the Russian vote.
• Dozens of Russians gathered at the grave of Alexei Navalny in Moscow on Sunday to symbolically cast their vote for the late opposition politician. Yulia Navalny, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, took part in the Noon Against Putin protest in Berlin on Sunday.
• Russian Defense Minister Serhiy Shoigu called for increased training and increased armaments to repel Ukraine’s attacks on the Black Sea Fleet.
• Long-range Ukrainian drones launched by the SBU Internal Security Service have hit 12 Russian oil refineries since the start of the war, a Ukrainian intelligence source told Reuters on Sunday.
• Ukraine’s armed forces may run out of air defense projectiles by the end of March, several Ukrainian officials told The Washington Post.
• Valery Kuzmin, the ambassador of the Russian Federation in Bucharest, was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to whom was conveyed the deep dissatisfaction of the Romanian side with the “deformed, truncated and non-conforming manner” of consideration of important topics, including in the public message of the Embassy of the Russian Federation, “which have bilateral significance, which go back to the historical past”.
• The International Olympic Committee will allow only a few athletes from Russia and Belarus (with strict restrictions) to participate in the Paris Olympics due to sanctions imposed due to the war in Ukraine.
• Ground operations in Ukraine by Western forces may be needed “at some point,” French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated in an interview published Saturday evening by Le Parisien.

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• Sunday’s most important information about Russia’s aggression was LIVE on HotNews.ro