RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin has won his fifth term with a record number of votes, according to election officials. 

The results on Monday came after Putin unleashed the country’s harshest crackdown on the opposition and free speech since Soviet times.

Only three token candidates – and no one who opposes his war in Ukraine – were allowed to run against Putin as he sought another six years in power.

Putin has led Russia as president or prime minister since December 1999, a tenure marked by international military aggression and an increasing intolerance for dissent.

Russia’s Central Election Commission said that with nearly 100% of all precincts counted, Putin got 87.29% of the vote.

Central Election Commission chief Ella Pamfilova said that nearly 76 million voters cast their ballots for Putin, his highest vote tally ever.

Putin said that protests during the election had “no effect” and any “crimes” would be punished after the vote.

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He also said that he was informed of an idea to release his fiercest political foe, Alexei Navalny, from prison, days before the opposition leader’s death in an Arctic prison last month.

He said that he agreed to the idea, on condition that Navalny did not return to Russia.

The election took place after a relentless crackdown on dissent — and amid attacks within Russia by Ukrainian missiles and drones, which have killed several people.

Polling happened in a tightly controlled environment where Putin faced competition from only three token rivals and any public criticism of him or his war in Ukraine is stifled.

Critics are either in jail or in exile. Beyond the fact that voters have virtually no choice, independent monitoring of the election was extremely limited.

The National: Alexei Navalny (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File)

Navalny’s associates had urged those unhappy with Putin or the war to protest by coming to the polls at noon on Sunday — and lines outside a number of polling stations both inside Russia and at its embassies around the world appeared to swell at that time.

Among those heeding call was Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s widow, who joined a long line at the Russian Embassy in Berlin as some in the crowd applauded and chanted her name.

She spent more than five hours in the line and told reporters after casting her vote that she wrote her late husband’s name on the ballot.

Asked whether she had a message for Putin, Navalnaya replied: “Please stop asking for messages from me or from somebody for Mr. Putin. There could be no negotiations and nothing with Mr. Putin, because he’s a killer, he’s a gangster.”

The OVD-Info group that monitors political arrests said 80 people were arrested in 20 cities across Russia on Sunday.