we'll take a look at what putin's hold on the country means for the people of russia and ukraine. hello. i'm caitriona perry. you are very welcome. 2024 is the year of elections. more than half the world are taking to the polls with elections in more than 64 countries. many will be tightly fought. but this weekend's ballot in russia will not. russians are now casting their ballots for president. 112 million people are eligible to vote. among them, residents of what russia is claiming as its new territories in the east of ukraine. territories that ukraine is still fighting hard to gain back control of. ukraine and its allies say they will not recognise the election�*s results. with vladmir putin's opponents in exile, imprison or dead, his victory is practically certain. if mr putin serves out the full six—year term he's likely to win, he'll become the longest—serving russian leader since

catherine the great. over the next half hour we will look at the impact of the election for those in russia, ukraine and around the world. but first, we start our coverage with this report from our russia editor, steve rosenberg, in moscow. russia's democracy is the best in the world, the kremlin says. and at polling station 38 in moscow, we found a choice of candidates and plenty of voters. democracy in action, right? not quite. realistically, only one man can win this. vladimir putin! the man who's been on russia's political stage for the last quarter of a century. vladimir putin faces no serious challenger. his fiercest rivals are in exile or in prison. not that this woman, whose son is fighting in ukraine, wants any change at the top. "of course i voted for putin," she says. "i trust him."

but not everyone who came out today was actually voting. this, one of a string of attacks on polling stations across russia. they are unprecedented. after chaotic scenes here... ..an arsonist is detained. and green ink poured into a ballot box. the authorities called the attackers scum. some voters were greeted with a show. well, it's one way to bang the drum for russian elections. there is voting, too, in parts of ukraine, which are under russian occupation — what russia calls its new territories. the ukrainian government called the election here illegal. polls close on sunday night. expect a putin landslide.

unpredictability is very much a feature of life now in russia, but that does not apply to elections. the political system here is built around one man — vladimir putin — and the kremlin tightly controls that system, including elections. so mr putin's re—election is not in doubt. and neither is the message the kremlin will be sending after this. that vladimir putin has the full support of his people. steve rosenberg, bbc news, moscow. earlier i spoke tojohn tefft, distinguished chair in diplomacy and security at the rand corporation, and former us ambassador to russia and ukraine. thank you for being with us. there are three other names on the ballot paper but given that this election will most likely lead to vladimir putin's fifth term in office, setting him up to be the longest—serving

leader since catherine the great in the 1700s, what is important about this particular election? these elections are important to vladimir putin because he looks at them as a form of legitimation or validation, if you will, of his status as the unchallenged leader of russia. we all know the results of the election will be and if we had any question about making sure that was the case, we saw that with the candidacy of the politician, mr nadezhin who got the requisite number of votes but the central election commission found some technical problems which disqualified him. he had come out against the war. clearly, he was not going to be allowed to run as a protest candidate. so, fundamentally, i think putin wants to show the international world and also his own people and his elites that he is still the unchallenged

leader of russia. you mentioned him sending a message to the international world but no significant international observers are present to overseas these elections. the main opposition leaders are eitherjailed, exiled or in the case of alexei navalny, dead. what impact has his killing had on vladimir putin's standing in russia? in the international world it had a substantial impact. the fact that he was sentenced and moved to an arctic prison which, when i read that the first time i said to my wife, i said this is a death sentence. there is no way he will survive living up there. they are horrible conditions. and, you know, sadly, alexei navalny died. but alexei navalny looms over this all. i was reading earlier today

accounts that on sunday at noon opponents of the election are going to go en masse or are urged to go en masse to try to vote at the same time, to flood the ballot boxes, the polling places, with people as a form of protest. apparently the night before he died alexei navalny endorsed this strategy. so we will see what happens on sunday. put into context for us the level of bravery or courage that it takes to manage of protest in vladimir putin's russia. many people have been struck by the number of people who went to navalny�*s funeral. and the thousands who have gone to put flowers on his grave. today i saw that there have been several cases already have people in russia going to polling places and putting

their ballot and then putting into the box and then pouring either green dye or in a couple of cases where they actually lit the ballot box on fire as a form of protest. those people were arrested and will obviously be published. we are at a point now in russia where the repression against anybody who protests the war or the election will be pretty severe. the repression is higher now than it had been in any time since the end of the soviet union. voting is also under way in the regions of ukraine that moscow has seized and occupied and ukraine has called those elections illegal. what is your view of that? i think the ukrainians are correct. these are illegal and there have been accounts that in order for people to get passports, to get any kind of service, they have to be required to be pressed

hard to actually vote. in this case it is not that they want them to stay away. they want them to be there so that they can show that these regions, the four oblasts that putin annexed at the end of september 2022, that they are part of russia. this is the other big thing that we will probably see from this election, and i suspect it is one of the kremlin�*s real goals which is to show that putin's war in ukraine is in fact supported by a large body of russians. in fact, i think we know from pollsters and other people in russia who have analysed this, there are many people who are acquiescing. as long as the war does not bother them, it is no big deal. but i think the kremlin will use this as a means

to demonstrate and show that in fact the russian people "support" the special military operation, as it is called, inside ukraine. thank you forjoining us with your thoughts. former us ambassador to russia john tefft. the kremlin has been trying to prove that it can successfully stage elections despite the war in ukraine, including holding voting in the ukrainian regions that moscow's forces have seized and now occupy. more than 50 un member states officially condemned russia bid to hold a presidential poll in occupied ukraine, including the us and the uk. the state department says the united states will not recognise the legitimacy or outcome of the elections in those soverneign ukraine regions. the start of the voting came hours after one of the deadliest russian strikes yet on the ukrainian port city of odesa, which killed at least 20 people when two rockets fired from crimea struck a residential area. our correspondent, sarah rainsford, is in kyiv with more. this is the deadliest attack

in some time on odesa. and it is the details that are particularly grim, because ukrainian officials are saying two missiles were fired by russia from crimea — the first one landed on the city, and it was when emergency teams rushed to the spot that a second missile was fired from crimea and hit exactly the same place. now we know that a medic was killed, a young firefighter was also amongst those killed and injured. many dozens of people are in hospital. now we are being told that those missiles were fired from crimea — we are saying we don't know exactly what russia was targeting, but we do know there were some interior ministry personnel amongst the casualties. now president zelensky has called this a vile attack, saying ukraine's military will respond, but i do think it is a stark reminder of what that vote in russia means for here in ukraine. because of course, more vladimir putin in the kremlin means more war here in ukraine, more missile attacks, and more days like today in odesa, with dozens dead and injured.

in the west, the election is largely seen as a sham. observers have little to no expectation the election will be free and fair. long before the polls close, the president of the european council charles michel wrote friday on x: "would like to congratulate vladimir putin on his landslide "victory in the elections starting today. "no opposition. "no freedom. "no choice." the organisation for security and cooperation in europe's monitors were not invited, and only registered candidates or state—backed advisory bodies can assign observers to polling stations, lowering the likelihood of independent watchdogs. to understand how the international community views this year's election, i spoke to angela stent, former national intelligence officer for russia and eurasia and author of putin's world: russia against the west and with the rest.

as we said, there are no independent observers, no sce, no real opposition. how do world leaders view what is happening in russia this weekend? it depends where you are. certainly in the west — the united states, europe, japan, south korea, australia, new zealand, canada, western countries understand that this is a plebiscite to give legitimacy to a man who has been conducting a ruthless war and wants to continue it. on the other hand, you know, russia has numerous countries that are either neutral in this war or supporting it, pointing at china being one where they do not have competitive elections either. and then a number of countries in the global south and some countries in the post—soviet space have authoritarian governments and, so, they just think this is, russia's way of being ruled and they are not going to criticise the elections. so this is very much a western condemnation of this but not

much of the rest of the world. if we then look in terms on the war of ukraine, does another vladimir putin term emboldened him in his approach to ukraine? i think it does. this terrible attack in odesa coinciding with the elections, we know that he has sites on odesa and repeatedly said that odesa is a russian city. i think it will embolden him because he is looking upon this as the population support him and his war effort and wanting victory for russia. we will not ever really know what the real numbers are because as, steve rosenberg was saying, there is no independent monitoring organisation left in russia. there are opposition groups outside the country that have encouraged people to photograph the things we saw today. fires, pouring ink,

ballot box stuffing, which i've seen video of today. but we will probably never know what the numbers are. as long as putin wants to believe he got whatever, 80, 85% of the vote, he will continue what he is doing and we could even see more russian aggression in ukraine. beyond that point and beyond further funding the ukrainian war effort, what approach should the us be taking to dealing with russia in this term of president putin? funding the war effort is the most important one and there are still a domestic debate going on in the us about this and hopefully that will be resolved soon. i think it is beefing up our own military. beefing up military production because we do not have the same amount of weapons that we used to have. they have been worn down by what we have supplied to ukraine, so beefing up our own military and that of our nato allies is very important. trying to deter russia from doing any more in ukraine

or sitting at sites on other countries in the neighbourhood is also very important. the most important thing at the moment is continued financial and weapon support for ukraine. earlier you mentioned how perhaps china may be viewing this election. if we could speak about the relationship between russia and china. not strictly unwavering allies but very close friends. how do you see that relationship developing through another term of vladimir putin? the relationship has many facets and is very much also a personal relationship between xijinping and vladimir putin. we know that the chinese, whatever reservations they have about what russia is doing in ukraine and reservations about putin's threats of using nuclear weapons, they do not want russia to lose this war and they do not want someone else to come to power in moscow who would revisit russia's turn to the eastern break

with the west and consider establishing ties with the west again. that would not be in china's interest. i think that vladimir putin's re—election will again strengthen this relationship. the chinese, as far as we know, have not supplied lethal weapons to russia for this war but they are supplying components that go into the industrial base and military production. so i think this willjust strengthen the relationship. angela stent there. let's take a look now at how the media inside russia has been covering the election. as you might expect, there has been wall—to—wall coverage, highlighting widespread support for president putin in the polls and claiming that the elections have been open and fair. vitality shevchenko from bbc monitoring has been following the coverage on state tv networks closely, and sent us this report. it is a festival of voting on russian state tv. casting a ballot is described as an honour and a duty. voters are said to have turned out in force and pictures of happy citizens abound. state tv is proud of voting in occupied

parts of ukraine. but it does not mention that it is carefully stage—managed and often involves armed men. it is clear why state media is so focused on turnout. high figures would help the kremlin's efforts at using this election to legitimise the rule of putin. kremlin—controlled media is dominant in writer and it has spent years telling russians how great he is as a president. today, they do not even have to try very hard to remind them of that. "we must show unity and vote," is the message on state tv�*s channel one. "we shall prevail and our enemy will be defeated," it says. there will be little doubt in viewers�* minds as to who exactly they are supposed to unite behind. you will not see in the mainstream media is any criticism of vladimir putin or his policies, particularly with his so—called military

operation in ukraine. if you don't like it, you're supposed to stay quiet or you will be fined, jailed or worse. that's how russian media has been covering the election but what about the russian people? discuss what a fifth putin term it would look like, i was earlier joined by regina smyth, professor of political science at indiana university and adam lenton, assistant professor of politics and international affairs at wake forest university. thank you forjoining us. regina, for russians, what does another term of vladimir putin look like? more of the same or something else? russians feel uncertain about what comes next. russians, pollsters traditionally ask the question, how far ahead are you thinking about your life, and that time has gotten shorter and shorter and now

it is just a matter of months. and so i think that for russians personally, they'd do not want to even think about what will come next. conditions are deteriorating, the death toll is becoming revealed, economics conditions are poor, and i think they are worried about the future. adam, would you agree with that? i certainly would. certainly people are very concerned and the status quo has been ruptured in the past two years so there is a lot of uncertainty. we are seeing sanctions continuing and fresh sanctions issued in the wake of the death of alexei navalny. what impact does that have on those living in russia? what is life like there at the moment? there is a mixture of things, really. on one hand the economy has gone

through a whopping. industrial production is at a high. there are wage increases because of labour shortages and i think you see that on one hand then you have inflation still very high at the moment and one of the issues is that with sanctions there will still be some time until we really see long—term effects kicking in. so at the moment the government is also running a deficit and that is maybe sustainable for a year or so but we are starting to see some of the pressures that come with this in the ramped—up economy and wartime conditions. regina, some of the war effort and economic conditions that is described there that engender support within russia for vladimir putin, military pay for soldiers, compensation for those who are injured and for the family of those have been killed fighting in ukraine? it does engender some support

but we have to remember that russia is a very large country, so even the wage increases really go to russian regions where there are high levels of military industry, whereas other regions are suffering. i think that the benefits of having fought in the war are also highly uneven and many are not been delivered. so responsibility for delivering these benefits has gone down to the regional level and during this campaign president putin made a big show of increasing those, but really, it is the governors who are responsible in many regions are having trouble meeting those obligations. and adam, without the independent election observers there to monitorjust how these elections proceed, is there any way of truly knowing the level of support for vladimir putin versus people feeling they have no other option?

it is very difficult to tell. these elections are not competitive as we may expect from a democratic election. and i think that what you will see is pressure being piled on regional governments and may be, again, if they are able to dish out a high result for putin, around 80%, then they will be in a good position. the pressure is on for them otherwise i think it will be difficult to tell from these elections what the actual support is although there will be some who do support putin, but many, again, who are forced to vote through being a state employee or affiliated with a state employee and others who are pressured by the local administration to do so because of one of these events taking place. it is difficult to tell from the elections alone what support is.

we saw some protest votes already today and there is an organised turnout to vote for sunday. how do you anticipate that going? it is hard to tell how many are going to turn out. i think it will be interesting to look at, especially in the big cities, to see how many will do so but again i think the state is going to be on maximum alert in terms of trying to prevent such unauthorised meetings from even taking place. so at that point i think there will be some brave people who do go out but the risks also incredibly high. people are spoiling ballots and engaging in protest actions is a testament to the fact that there is a groundswell of dissatisfaction and again i would not be looking at thousands of people, perhaps not as many keen to lay flowers at the grave of navalny. but there will be some and i think

it will be interesting to see how the authorities deal with that. i it will be heavy— handed. regina, adam mentioned those coming out for navalny�*s grave. his wife, yulia, has vowed to continue his work. what do you think opposition looks like after this election? one of the most interesting changes that have happened in russia over the past decade is that putin's core support which used to be women has shifted to the older man. i think yulia will gain a lot of sympathy and that opposition will be gendered, with women out in front, as we saw through the war which many of the women not only in russia but outside of russia and so i expected to continue from a low level

protest that are mostly regional or locally defined but will continue to challenge the regime. regina smyth, professor of political science at indiana university and adam lenton, assistant professor of politics and international affairs at wake forest university. thanks for waching this special on russia's elections. we will have coverage of the voting and results over the weekend. and there's plenty more coverage of the elections on our website bbc.com/news, where you can read analysis from all our correspondents. stay with us on bbc news. i am caitriona perry. from all the team with us in washington, thank you for watching. take care. hello again. friday was a day of sunny spells and passing showers, as those shower clouds started to collapse down late in the day, and we had some pretty still conditions there in the highlands.

temperatures in scotland, northern ireland and wales generally quite close to average, but across large parts of england, in contrast, it was very mild — 17 degrees in east anglia, six above average for the time of year. now the showery conditions on friday were caused by this area of low pressure that's working out of the way now. it will be bringing some heavy snow to parts of sweden and norway into saturday. get a quiet ridge of high pressure, a weather window, if you like, ahead of the next system that's working in off the atlantic. what all that means is over the next few hours, increasingly, the skies will tend to clear. and what that means is we'll see temperatures drop like a stone. and heading into the first part of saturday morning, there'll be quite a widespread frost, scotland, northern ireland, parts of northern england as well. a chilly start to the day then, but a lovely sunny morning through most of the uk on saturday. however, rain will quickly spread into northern ireland along with some strengthening winds, and we'll see some splashes of rain getting into wales and southwest england. the rain probably not too heavy here through the course of the morning. across eastern england, eastern areas of scotland after that sunny but chilly start to the day, ok, the weather will tend to turn a bit cloudier,

but it should stay dry until after dark, really. temperatures 10—14 celsius. now for the second half of the weekend, we've got a band of rain that's going to come through saturday night. the dregs of that still around across eastern england as we start the day on sunday. following that, we'll have southwesterly winds bringing mild air across the uk, and we'll be looking at some showery conditions moving back in. so, sunday weather—wise we start off with rain across east anglia, southeast england. that clears away. sunny spells follow widely, but there will be some scattered showers, some of them turning quite heavy through the course of the afternoon. the southwesterly winds drudging up some mild air across all parts of the country. temperatures about 13 celsius in glasgow and belfast, but up to around 15—16 celsius in the warmest parts of england. beyond that, southerly winds are going to kind of dominate into the early part of the new week. however, with low pressure never far away, there will be some showers or longer spells of rain affecting western areas at times. however, it does stay mild, 13 celsius, the top temperature in edinburgh through monday and tuesday, and it stays mild,

really, through the week in london with highs of around 16 celsius or so.

voice-over: this is bbc news. we will have the headlines for you at the top of the hour, which is straight after this programme. this week i'm in turkey where they're gearing up for the country's 100th anniversary.

rising from the remains of the ottoman empire a century ago, turkey inherited a disparate group of cultures and began a process of rapid modernisation under its founder, ataturk. i'm travelling the country to understand how all of these diverse cultures were brought together. from the burial grounds of the god kings of ancient anatolia. to the turquoise coast, where queen cleopatra is claimed to have once bathed. to an original ottoman coffee house in gaziantep. and the hotel frequented by the founder of the republic here in istanbul. welcome to turkey.