Putin set for poll triumph

Millions of Russians voted on Sunday to elect a new president, with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a former president, the strong favorite.

Voting ended at 8 pm in each of Russia's nine time zones. Preliminary results were expected to be announced in the early hours on Monday.

With Putin, who held the presidency for two terms from 2000 to 2008, widely expected to secure more than half the vote and win directly in the first round, his supporters planned for early celebrations near Manezh Square on Sunday night.

If Putin wins in the first round, he will be inaugurated president in early May, replacing the current office holder, Dmitry Medvedev. Putin has promised to appoint Medvedev as prime minister.

Authorities in the Russian capital mobilized 16,000 police officers, 14,000 volunteers, more than 4,000 guards and 2,000 police academy students for security on election day.

More than 380,000 police officers were deployed for the event across Russia, the Interior Ministry said.

Two webcams have been installed in each of the nearly 95,000 polling stations throughout Russia. The $478 million project was a core promise by Putin in the wake of protests against alleged fraud in Russia's parliamentary elections in December.

Some 600,000 people had registered on a website to monitor the voting process via the Internet, according to the chief of the Moscow municipal electoral commission.

In a pre-election televised address on Friday, Putin called on all voters to "make their deliberate choice" to "define Russia's destiny".

Although there will be no street demonstration on election day, Moscow city hall has approved protests on Monday. While acknowledging that protests were expected no matter how the election turns out, Putin on Friday said all Russians must unite together and "work smoothly and constructively, without shocks or revolutions".

Putin seeks to transform Russia toward a more modern, rule-of-law based society. He also aims for six-to-seven percent annual growth in the economy to put Russia, now ranked 11th, into the top five by the end of this decade.

But this will not be easy.

Parliamentary elections in December saw the ruling United Russia Party narrowly securing a majority - with a sharp drop in seats - in the new State Duma. The protests against alleged fraud in those elections have continued.

Putin, already seeing his support decline in major cities, now has to curb discontent from further penetrating into his major power bases throughout the countryside and industrial towns.

His public approval rating has fallen from 85 percent in mid-2008 to between 63 and 66 percent this month, figures from independent pollster Levada Center showed.