Putin set to reclaim Kremlin despite protests

Russians voted on Sunday in an election set to send strongman Vladimir Putin back to the Kremlin but which the opposition said was marred by fraud and would be followed by mass protests against his rule.

Observers scrutinising the polls and opposition parties said there were clear signs of foul play in the election, including multiple voting, despite the installation on Putin's orders of webcams to ensure transparency.

Voters from Vladivostok on the Pacific to the Kaliningrad exclave on the Baltic cast their ballots in the marathon 21-hour election process in which victory for 59-year-old ex-KGB spy Putin appears certain.

The main suspense is not the final result but whether Putin -- who has spent the past four years as Russia's premier -- can win easily in the first round against his four rivals, and if the protests will be a serious challenge.

Putting on a trademark show of confidence as he cast his vote in Moscow in a rare appearance with his wife Lyudmila, Putin boasted that he had come "straight from sport" and had not been in touch with his campaign headquarters.

With voting passed halfway in European Russia, turnout was already over 47.6 percent, the election commission said, indicating a higher turnout than in December's parliamentary polls.

None of Putin's challengers have been wholeheartedly involved with the protest movement and pollsters have forecast he will win 60 percent with his Communist rival Gennady Zyuganov trailing in second place with 15 percent.

Tycoon turned politician Mikhail Prokhorov and the flamboyant populist Vladimir Zhirinovsky are expected to battle for third place, while the former upper house speaker Sergei Mironov is tipped to finish last.

"I'm choosing a new Russia. Everything is just beginning," said Prokhorov as he voted in the Krasnoyarsk region of Siberia.

In a bid to counter the allegations of vote-rigging that tarred December's parliamentary elections, authorities installed web cameras in 90,000 polling stations across the country.

But Communist Party official Valery Rashkin called the polls the "dirtiest" in eight years while tens of thousands of volunteer observers have already posted complaints about alleged violations.

An AFP correspondent saw a fleet of 100 buses had arrived in the capital carrying workers from outlying regions to vote in Moscow, an action organised by the Nashi (Ours) pro-Kremlin youth group but which the opposition says risks allowing multiple voting.

For many Russians, Putin saved the country from descending into anarchy and poverty after the chaos of the 1990s. "I know Putin for practical actions, not words," pensioner Zinaida Bykova told AFP in Vladivostok.

But for others he has suppressed civil society and long overstayed his welcome in his 12-year rule. "We live under Putin's hand already many years, and nothing is changing in the country," said 45-year-old Yulia in Moscow.

In a tense contest of rival protests, Nashi will try and seize the initiative with a rock concert-style mass rally on Manezh Square outside the Kremlin walls on Sunday night that is expected to gather 20,000 people.

But this will be followed on Monday night by an opposition demonstration of at least 30,000 on the central Pushkin Square for "Russia without Putin".

That rally has been sanctioned by the authorities but police -- who have brought in 6,300 extra officers from across Russia -- have warned they will break up any unauthorised gatherings.

Putin served two terms as president from 2000-2008 and then became prime minister under his protege Dmitry Medvedev.

But under a change to the constitution, the next presidential mandate will last six years and analysts have warned that Putin risks facing serious unrest in that period if he does not respond to Russia's changing society.

"The possibility, even probability, of things going badly wrong for Russia during the next six years is real," analysts at the London Chatham House think-tank said in a report.

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