MOSCOW: Russians elect a replacement to President Vladimir Putin on Sunday in a poll all but pre-ordained to give victory to his chosen successor Dmitry Medvedev — and allow Putin to keep major power.

Medvedev, currently first deputy prime minister, goes into the election as anointed heir to an all-powerful Putin, 55, who says he will shift to the prime minister’s post.

Heavily censored state television networks have transformed the colourless 42-year-old bureaucrat into one of the country’s most recognisable faces, with blanket coverage of his every move.

Yet Medvedev has refused to debate his three opponents and Russia’s streets are almost bare of political posters.

Polls forecast he will win at least 60 per cent of the vote, easily clearing the minimum 50-per cent barrier needed to win outright, and trouncing Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, nationalist rabble rouser Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and nearly unknown Andrei Bogdanov.

Already the credibility of the contest is under strong attack.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which refused to send observers to Russia’s December parliamentary elections, decided also to boycott Sunday’s poll, citing restrictions on its monitors.

The international human rights watchdog Amnesty International this week denounced a “clampdown on freedoms of assembly and expression.” Amnesty cited “arbitrary interpretation of vague legislation” and “increasing harassment” in the name of limiting “so-called Western influence.” If elected as expected, Medvedev will take the reins to a country of 143 million people that KGB veteran Putin has transformed since rising from obscurity in 2000 to replace an ailing and deeply unpopular Boris Yeltsin.

The world’s leading energy exporter has used soaring gas and oil revenues to rebuild a collapsed military and to pay off international debts racked up in the post-Soviet 1990s.

New economic confidence is also fuelling a bullish foreign policy that puts Moscow at odds with the United States and Western Europe over many international issues, most recently including US and European-backed independence for Kosovo from Serbia.

Putin’s few remaining outspoken opponents accuse him of dismantling democratic freedoms established in the 1990s — reducing parliament to a rubber stamp, failing to investigate murders of opposition figures and journalists, and committing massive war crimes in Chechnya.

Putin points to huge popular approval ratings and describes his presidency as a triumphant period following the trauma of the Soviet collapse.

However, Sunday’s election will be the least competitive since the Soviet Communists lost power, with voters being told essentially that they can keep Putin by electing his alter ego Medvedev.—AFP