MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 10th September, 2018) Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated incumbent Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who is currently leading in the mayoral election with 70.02 percent of the votes after 99 percent of ballots have been counted, on his re-election as the head of the Russian capital, the presidential office said on Monday.

"In a phone conversation Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Sergei Sobyanin on his victory in the Moscow mayoral election," the Russian presidential office told journalists.

Sobyanin, who has already declared his victory in the mayoral vote, said that for him, this election was different from the previous vote, stressing that this time, he ran for his last term as Moscow's mayor.

Under the Russian law, one person cannot be re-elected for the mayor's position more than twice.

"We have planned to do so many things, we have taken so many obligations that during these coming years we will have to work harder than during the past years. We will have to do far more than we have done during the past five years. This means that tomorrow the whole team will roll up their sleeves and work," Sobyanin said in a speech at his election headquarters.

He also expressed gratitude to Moscow residents for their support.

Sobyanin came to power in 2010 after the previous long-time mayor Yuri Luzhkov was dismissed. In 2013, Sobyanin was elected at the mayoral vote with 51.4 percent of the vote.</s>Moscow’s incumbent Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has been re-elected to office after Sunday’s vote, Russia Today reports.

According to official data released on Monday morning, with about 99 percent of ballots counted, Sobyanin garnered just over 70 percent of the vote, meaning he has secured his new five-year term after the first round.

He is followed by Vadim Kumin from the Communist Party with 11.44% votes. Ilya Sviridov (A Just Russia) won 7.06% of votes, Mikhail Degtyaryov (LDPR) and Mikhail Balakin (The Citizens’ Union) won 6.76% and 1.87% respectively.</s>Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has been re-elected to office after Sunday’s vote, securing the backing of Muscovites for a major program of city renovation. It was, however, more difficult in the Moscow Region for the incumbent governor.

According to official data released on Monday morning, with about 99 percent of ballots counted, Sobyanin garnered just over 70 percent of the vote, meaning he has secured his new five-year term after the first round.

Communist candidate Vadim Kunin was second in the race but his support was much more modest, winning less than 12 percent of votes. A representative of another leftist party – Ilya Sviridov from the Fair Russia – was third with just over 7 percent and Mikhail Degtyaryov of the populist-nationalist opposition party LDPR came in fourth with under 7 percent, still more than twice what he got in his previous mayoral bid in 2013. Professional developer Mikhail Balakin, backed by the minor party Union of City Dwellers came in last in the race with under 2 percent.

The man who polled strongly in the 2013 election – anti-corruption blogger-turned-opposition activist Aleksey Navalny – could not participate in this year's elections because of an unserved conviction for corruption. Still, Navalny and his allies attempted to affect the situation in the city by launching protests on election day – despite the fact that such action is forbidden by Russian law.

According to the opposition and Moscow police, the number of participants in Sunday’s unsanctioned protests numbered about 2,000. Several senior activists were briefly detained over calls for illegal action and now face civil lawsuits, with court hearings scheduled on Monday. At least two protesters were detained for attacking police and now face criminal charges and punishments of up to five years behind bars.

The turnout at the Moscow mayoral polls was about 30 percent, one of the lowest in modern Russian history. However, election officials and political analysts noted that the low turnout was typical for countries where people are relatively content with the status quo and also for major cities in general. The head of Sobyanin's elections HQ, Konstantin Remchukov, noted that the 2013 mayoral elections had a similar turnout of about 32 percent and large US cities had recently demonstrated similar stats – 28 percent in the recent mayoral elections in New York City and 27 percent in Houston.

Sunday also saw the gubernatorial election in the Moscow Region – the large territory surrounding the Russian capital and the second-most populated area of the Russian Federation with about 7.5 million residents. Here, the incumbent Governor Andrey Vorobyov also won the race but with a more modest 62.5 percent of the vote amid a turnout of just under 38 percent. Communist candidate Konstantin Cheremisov was second with just under 13 percent and representative of the Alliance of the Greens, Liliya Belova, was third with about 7.5 percent. LDPR candidate Kirill Zhigarev claimed about 5.8 percent of the vote and candidates from the Fair Russia party and the pro-business Party of Growth got under 5 percent each.

The difference can be explained, at least in part, by the fact that over the past six months the Moscow Region saw numerous, intense protests over the construction of landfills and many participants of these events blamed the dire situation in certain districts directly on Governor Vorobyov. The tensions reached their climax in March when Vorobyov attempted to personally intervene and calm the situation. Yet things only got worse when the official was mocked by a 10-year old girl, whose ‘slit-throat’ gesture at Vorobyov was caught on camera and went viral.

In post-election interviews the freshly re-elected Moscow Region governor acknowledged the problems and agreed that his victory was, to a large extent, due to the efforts of his team of political consultants and activists.

Like this story? Share it with a friend!</s>Kremlin ally, Sergei Sobyanin has been re-elected as Moscow's mayor, according to results released by Moscow election commission.

Sobyanin, mayor of the Russian capital since 2010, received 70.02 percent of the vote, the city electoral commission reported on Monday.

The candidate thanked voters on social media, "thanks to all who voted for me or other candidates," he wrote.

"Regardless of the difference in views, we all love our city," he added.

In 2013, Sobyanin barely escaped a second-round runoff after a strong challenge from protest leader Alexei Navalny, winning 51.4 percent of the vote, with Putin's top critic unexpectedly picking up over a quarter of the ballots.

In advance of the vote, a Moscow court jailed Navalny for 30 days, just a couple weeks before he planned to stage a rally on election day.

On Tuesday, Russia also warned Google against "meddling" in local elections by hosting Navalny's videos calling for mass protests.

In a nationwide day of polls, members of the ruling United Russia party also won in elections for governors and legislators in other Russian cities.

But elections were overshadowed by dissatisfaction with government plans to raise the pension age by at least five years as the country struggles with a demographic crisis.

Putin, who is 65, has attested that the pension age should be raised to 60 for women and 65 for men because there is an escalating burden on the pension system.

However, life expectancy in Russia remains low, at 66 for men and 77 for women, meaning that 43 percent of Russian men are not expected to reach the age of 65, according to data from the World Bank.

Putin promised in 2005 never to raise the age for Russians to receive a pension, but Russia is facing a crisis, and President Putin seems not to have other alternatives.</s>Ahead of Sunday’s elections, the multifunctional Sobyanin brand was promoted like the latest washing machine.

Sunday’s mayoral elections in Moscow marked a turning point. Until this weekend, the capital had a democratically elected mayor: Sergei Sobyanin was the victor of an unexpectedly fierce electoral battle back in September 2013, and he has presided over the capital since. Although Sobyanin was again chosen to be the capital mayor, his victory this time around was not the result of an election in the true sense of the word. Rather, it was the product of a marketing campaign.

The multifunctional Sobyanin brand was promoted like the latest washing machine, or in this case, the latest, most cutting-edge construction company. After all, the almost continuous repaving of Moscow’s streets is the signature policy of the man in charge of the Russian capital. This year, the Kremlin decided they weren’t going to allow candidates from the liberal opposition (such as former Duma deputy Dmitry Gudkov) to take part in the vote. These contenders failed to collect the required number of signatures from local lawmakers to be able to run. The authorities likely took this decision to avoid repeating the mistakes of their 2013 campaign, when opposition leader Alexei Navalny took 27.24 percent of the vote, almost forcing Sobyanin, who won with 51.37 percent, into a runoff. Sobyanin’s haul on Sunday was not too far off Vladimir Putin’s share of the vote in presidential elections earlier this year in March — 70 percent compared with Putin’s 71 percent. But despite an unprecedented campaign to boost turnout, the overall figure of 30 percent will have been disappointing for the authorities. In 2013, the margin was slightly higher at 32 percent. One reason that so few Muscovites went to the polls was likely because there was a complete lack of intrigue around the vote and no real competition from opposition candidates. The Kremlin was confident that if they allowed anti-corruption crusader Navalny to run, he would not be able to secure more than a small percentage of the vote. But ultimately, the mayor’s office wasn’t even prepared to simulate electoral competition and risk disturbing the city’s political hibernation by allowing Navalny to run. In the end, it decided to only promote the Sobyanin brand. City Hall’s marketing goals included transforming polling stations into mobile playgrounds (making them more attractive to families with children); handing out free concert tickets to voters; and opening a concert venue in the popular new Zaryadye park near the Kremlin, attended by Sobyanin and President Vladimir Putin.

All told, the day was characterized by a mixture of sophisticated marketing techniques, the suppression of the opposition and banning of any anti-government demonstrations.

 The problem with this approach is that it affects voter turnout. As the municipal elections of September 2017 demonstrated, the fewer people at polling stations, the more votes for the ruling authorities, and vice versa. On Sunday, Sobyanin’s team was striving to achieve a decent turnout. But given the electorate’s loyalty to ritual ballots and giving the Kremlin the outcome it wants, this goal seemed attainable. The dearth of real alternatives is the most obvious explanation for Sobyanin’s artificial popularity. Yet many representatives of the capital’s creative class do support him. Sobyanin’s team has created the image of a forward-looking mayor, open to urban modernization. Digitalization, gentrification, reconstruction, regeneration: all these buzzwords sound seductive to Moscow’s progressive and young population. For them, open urban spaces are sometimes more important than an open society. Sobyanin mercilessly suppresses any signs of opposition activity. He is prepared to use any tools at his disposal to realize his personal vision of Moscow. He is ready to enter into conflict with local communities that defend parks and courtyards from sometimes barbaric reconstruction work. But in the eyes of the new urban conformists, the mayor is implementing an authoritarian modernization utopia in Moscow. And if he were to become prime minister or president, these dreamers reason, Sobyanin could realize this utopia on a nationwide scale. Admittedly it would be in a technocratic way, but Moscow’s experience has demonstrated that the city can manage quite well without democracy. These loyal Sobyanin supporters people don’t take into account that as Moscow mayor, Sobyanin has a vast fortune at his disposal: about 20 percent of all the country’s regional revenues. That is to say: We know who Mr. Sobyanin is with money, but we don’t know who he would be without money, as prime minister, for example. A promotion like this is conceivable: he has demonstrated to Putin his efficiency in quelling social upset on more than one occasion, such as over plans to demolish many Khrushchev-era, five-story apartment buildings in the city. Not to mention that Sobyanin is the only pro-Putin politician to have taken on Navalny in an election — and won. Andrei Kolesnikov is a senior associate and the chair of the Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center. The views expressed in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the position of The Moscow Times.</s>The best friend of Sergei Skripal has revealed the Russian spy suspected ‘retribution was coming’ in the weeks before he was poisoned.

Speaking for the first time, Ross Cassidy said Mr Skripal – who betrayed dozens of his old comrades to MI6 – seemed ‘spooked’ and changed his mobile phone amid concern it was being monitored.

On the day before the Novichok attack, Mr Cassidy and his wife drove the 67-year-old to Heathrow to pick up his daughter Yulia, 33, who had flown in from Moscow.

Sources close to the investigation said Mr Skripal told detectives they were then followed home to Salisbury.

This newspaper has learned that the security services believe a second team – in addition to the two-man hit squad accused last week of the attempted murder of the Skripals – were involved in the operation.

Interpol has been put on red alert to detain the two GRU intelligence agents, who use the aliases Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.

But others, also still at large, are suspected of tracking the Skripals’ movements.

Mr Cassidy, 62, a former submariner, said: ‘In hindsight, with some of the things Sergei said, he suspected retribution was coming.’

‘Sergei was very apprehensive. It was as though he knew something was up. Had he been tipped off or heard that things were moving against him back in Russia?

‘One thing is for sure. He was unusually twitchy. He was spooked.’

The Mail on Sunday can also reveal that the security services are investigating the possibility that UK Border Force’s computer systems were hacked to enable Petrov and Boshirov to pass easily through Gatwick passport control. ‘Something has overridden the system to allow them to come in unhindered – that is what is being investigated now,’ said a highly placed source.

Petrov and Boshirov arrived at Gatwick from Moscow at 3pm on Friday, March 2. Police said that the next day they travelled to Salisbury by train on a reconnaissance mission, arriving at 2.25pm.

By this time Sergei Skripal, Mr Cassidy and his wife Mo were at Heathrow awaiting Yulia’s flight.

Police say Novichok was sprayed on to the front door handle of the Skripal’s house the following afternoon between midday and about 1pm. Sergei and Yulia became ill around three hours later.

But Mr Cassidy questions the police timeline. It is his understanding that Sergei and Yulia were at home until 1pm. And he said Mr Skripal’s ‘heightened state of awareness’ would have frustrated any attack in broad daylight.

He said: ‘I spent hours and hours with the Counter Terrorism Command being interviewed and talking about this attack.

‘I found their work on this inquiry very thorough and meticulous. Every little detail was talked about and refined over and over again.

‘I have the utmost respect for these officers. I find it very difficult to dispute their findings.

Russia has set up a 70,000-strong private army, the Wagner Group, which has been deployed in Ukraine, Syria, Sudan and central Africa while allowing the Kremlin to deny any official involvement. The force, inspired by the controversial American private contractor Blackwater, is the brainchild of a former GRU spetsnaz commando colonel, Dmitry Utkin, an admirer of Hitler whose nom-de-guerre comes from the Fuhrer’s favourite composer, Richard Wagner. The Wagner Group is registered in Argentina but has a training base next to the GRU’s 10th Independent Special Forces base at Molkino in south-west Russia. It is believed the business brain behind the Wagner Group is Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as ‘Putin’s chef’, who served nine years in jail in the Soviet era for running teenage prostitutes. Prigozhin ran a hot dog stall in St Petersburg and became a celebrity chef with restaurants such as New Island, where Putin takes foreign dignitaries. He became hugely wealthy by providing most of the catering for Russia’s huge military. He has since been accused of running internet troll factories. The Wagner Group was first detected in Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014. Three Russian journalists investigating the group were murdered in July.

‘However, I was surprised that they said the Novichok was placed on the Sunday lunchtime. I have always thought it was placed on the Saturday afternoon when we were collecting Yulia from Heathrow, or even Saturday night.

‘These guys are professional assassins. It would have been far too brazen for them to have walked down a dead end cul-de-sac in broad daylight on a Sunday lunchtime.

‘Sergei’s house faces up the cul-de-sac. He had a converted garage that he used as his office – this gives a full view of the street.

‘Almost always, Sergei used to open the door to us before we had chance to knock. Whenever we visited, he’d see us approaching.

‘Something had spooked Sergei in the weeks prior to the attack. He was twitchy, I don’t know why, and he even changed his mobile phone.

‘You might say the precise timings don’t matter. But they do matter because they don’t currently make sense.’

Mr Cassidy was among the first Britons to befriend Mr Skripal when he arrived in the UK after a 2010 spy-swap with the Kremlin.

He said: ‘While I was aware he was a former Russian agent, we never discussed it because I felt it was none of my business. And besides we had good fun.

‘To me, Sergei was just a nice guy, very approachable and funny and liked a drink. All the aspects that appealed to me in a friendship.’
The Russian presidential office confirms that mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin is reelected for a second and final term.