The U.S. State Department issued a statement on Monday praising the results of presidential elections in Russia, which will return Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin for a third, non-consecutive term.
"The United States congratulates the Russian people on the completion of the presidential elections and looks forward to working with the president-elect after the results are certified and he is sworn in," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.
She also called for a probe into alleged electoral violations.
“We urge the Russian Government to conduct an independent, credible investigation of all reported electoral violations,” Nuland said.
“As underscored in the OSCE report, we also note the new steps that the Central Election Commission took to increase transparency of the voting process since the parliamentary elections last December.”
“We urge Russian authorities to build on these steps to ensure that the procedures for future elections will be more transparent,” she said in a statement.
The number of Russian election observers who monitored this vote is unprecedented and a sign that Russian society seeks to participate in the improvement of Russia’s democratic institutions, the statement said.
“We also recognize the government’s efforts to reform the political system, including the reintroduction of direct elections for governors, the simplification of party registration procedures, and the reduction in the numbers of signatures needed to register presidential candidates.”
With 100 percent of the ballots counted, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin won 63.6 percent of the vote in Sunday’s presidential election, securing victory in the first round to take the post of the president for the next six years, the Central Election Commission (CEC) reported on Monday.
Putin’s closest rival, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, got 17.18 percent. Independent candidate Mikhail Prokhorov secured 7.98 percent, Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, 6.22 percent, and A Just Russia Party leader Sergei Mironov, 3.85 percent.
The figures are preliminary. The CEC is expected to publish the final results of the vote by March 14.
Putin will be inaugurated on May 7.
