Putin spent $6.8m on presidential election campaign – Election Commission

President Vladimir Putin who won in a presidential election in February, spent 399.8 million rubles (6.8 million dollars) on his campaign, the Russian Central Election Commission’s (CEC) data released Thursday shows.

According to the information, Putin spent most of his fund on campaigning on TV and radio, as well as distribution of printed, audiovisual and other types of campaign materials.

Our correspondent reports that the CEC on March 5, said eight candidates in the 2018 Russian presidential election spent a total of 1.63 billion rubles (28 million dollars) on campaigning.

The CEC refers to the information on election funds flow recorded on March 17, one day before the presidential election.

According to the CEC, eight registered candidates collected 1,660,334,418 rubles (29 million) of financial contributions, while accumulated election expenses amounted to 1,630,198,515 rubles (28.6 million dollars).

Moreover, 29,974,048 rubles (525,745 dollars) that were above the allowable amount or transferred to candidates with violations were returned to senders or transferred to the federal budget.

Putin won the election with 76.68 per cent of the vote after 99.94 per cent of the ballots had been counted, according to preliminary figures of the CEC.

Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin is second with about 11.8 per cent, while head of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia Vladimir Zhirinovsky has come in third place with around 5.7.

Civil Initiative party candidate Ksenia Sobchak comes in fourth with 1.68 per cent of the vote, followed by Yabloko party candidate Grigory Yavlinsky with 1.05 per cent.

The remaining three candidates, Communists of Russia party chairman Maxim Suraykin, Sergey Baburin of the All-People’s Union party, and Presidential Commissioner for Entrepreneurs’ Rights Boris Titov — each received less than one per cent of the vote.