An analysis used to detect statistical anomalies has shown that 31.6 million votes attributed to Vladimir Putin in Russia’s presidential election this weekend were added by hand, independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reports.

Efforts to rig the vote were so extensive that it is nearly impossible to determine the exact tally in the presidential election that gave Putin a new term, Novaya Gazeta said, indicating that Russia had faced the highest level of election fraud in its modern history.

The journalists explained that in their work they used the methodology of mathematician Serhii Shpilkin, which determines the number of votes that do not fit into the normal mathematical distribution, and the data obtained as a result of processing 97% of the CEC ballots. Russia.

According to official information, 74.5 million voters took part in the elections, excluding electronic voting. Of them, 64.7 million, according to the Central Election Commission, voted for Putin.

Shpilkin’s method, by adding ballots and rewriting the final protocols, determines how many votes were “given” to the winner. To do this, the distribution of votes for all candidates in the race was compared with the turnout at each individual precinct to detect anomalies.

If the elections were fair, Novaya Gazeta writes, the distribution of votes for the winning candidate and for all other candidates should be identical, that is, they differ only in absolute value due to the different number of votes, and not in form.

Adding votes for one of the candidates, however, would affect the even distribution and increase both the turnout and the result – something that happened in the Russian elections, writes Novaya Gazeta.

As a result, the president officially won the election with a result of 87.28%.

Mykola Kharitonov from the CPRF (officially scored 4.31%), Vladyslav Davankov from the New People’s Party (3.85%) and Leonid Slutsky from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) were the three “counter-candidates” of Putin in these elections.

Voter rights NGO Holos on Monday published a report on Russia’s presidential election, citing a lack of independent observers and an atmosphere of fear and coercion that prevailed during the vote.

The public organization also said that the increase in powers given to the police led to an unprecedented increase in violent incidents. The authors of the report called the Russian elections a farce.

The Kremlin wanted more than 80% support. Regions competed to provide it

The goals set by the Kremlin for these elections changed over time, the independent Russian publication Meduza also showed.

Initially, Kremlin officials instructed regional governments to ensure a 70 percent voter turnout and 80 percent support for Putin.

According to the pre-election strategy document obtained by Meduza, the leadership of the Russian region set exactly such a goal and planned to achieve it primarily by mobilizing state employees and employees of companies close to the state.

But a few weeks before the vote, Putin’s administration began expressing a “wish” for the incumbent to win more than 80%, two regional officials told Meduza on condition of anonymity.

Therefore, 80% support was perceived as an absolute minimum and many regions decided to reach 85%. According to a Meduza source close to the administration, the head of the political bloc in the Kremlin, Serhiy Kiriyenko, even “wanted to show the president very big numbers – and he did it.”

A political technologist working with the Putin administration in one of Russia’s regions also pointed to another factor that contributed to Putin’s very high results. According to him, the regions of the east of Russia raised the bar in terms of the number of votes, forcing the rest of the country to follow their example.

“The Far East reports results earlier, and then other regions want to show better numbers,” this strategist explained to Meduza.

In search of perceived legitimacy

Despite Putin’s clear victory, the Kremlin reportedly spent more than €1 billion on propaganda in the run-up to the election. A large part of this budget was allocated to infotainment programs to promote nationalism, unity and traditional values.

Considering the expected results, Novaya Gazeta also tried to find an explanation for the Kremlin’s election attempts.

According to Russian journalists, Putin, among other things, tried to avoid any perception of illegitimacy.

Research has also shown that while elections can pose some short-term risk to dictatorships, they can also help perpetuate autocracies.

Despite all the doubts about their authenticity, they are often presented in such a way as to give the winner some legitimacy – both at home and abroad – and also to help the regime gather information about its popularity.

The Kremlin and Putin have dismissed Western criticism of the integrity of the vote, stressing that Russia will be stronger after these elections.