Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has won a third term in office with more than three quarters of the vote, Russia’s Central Electoral Commission reported in the early hours of Monday.
With 95% of total votes counted, Sobyanin is leading with 76.38%, ahead of Communist Party candidate Leonid Zyuganov with 8.12%. The right-wing Boris Chernyshov, centrist Vladislav Davankov, and conservative Dmitry Gusev were all trailing with less than 6% of the vote.
Sobyanin thanked Moscovites for their support. “The voters have put their trust in us, which means that we have difficult and important work ahead of us,” he said.
A member of President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, Sobyanin was appointed mayor of Moscow by then-President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010. He put his mayoralty to a vote in 2013 and won, and then earned a second term in 2018.
Sobyanin has invested heavily in expanding Moscow’s public transport system, but has been criticized for allowing the demolition of historic buildings in favor of new construction projects. He won plaudits from environmentalists for shutting down two waste incineration facilities, and from voters for increasing social welfare spending.
Days before the election, city officials opened five new Metro stations, including the sleek, aviation-themed Pykhtino.
According to the Moscow City Election Commission, more than 3.2 million residents of the capital took part in the elections, a turnout of approximately 50%. Muscovites could vote online from Friday onwards, and around two million votes were cast this way, the commission stated.
Outside Moscow, local elections were held in 21 Russian regions, including the former Ukrainian territories of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, which voted to join the Russian Federation last September.