Are elections in Russia valid? Doubts about Putin's victory

The presidential election in Russia may have been a colossal electoral fraud, one of the largest ever so far.
This is supported by Novaya Gazeta Europe, an independent Russian weekly directed by Dmitrij Andreevič Muratov, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2021.
Vladimir Putin won the presidential elections held last weekend with 88.5% of the votes, a percentage that is difficult to even define as "Bulgarian".
The president will thus remain at the helm of Russia until 2030.
A victory that has great symbolic as well as political value, a sort of message that Putin wanted to send to the West of how the Russian people are all on his side, a detail not of little importance given the war waged against Ukraine more than two years ago.
The death in mysterious circumstances of the dissident Alexey Navalny would thus not have had the hoped for impact beyond the borders of the Federation, even if there were no shortage of protests at the polling stations where over 70 people were arrested.
But can these presidential elections in Russia be considered credible? The European Union does not seem to have such doubts as to have explained that the "so-called 'elections' held even in the temporarily (and illegally) occupied territories of Ukraine are to be considered null and void".
read also Putin's assets: here's how much the Russian president earns Russian elections: doubts about Putin's victory So far, few countries have congratulated Vladimir Putin for the plebiscite victory obtained in the presidential elections in Russia.
Among these, China and North Korea stand out, Moscow's iron allies like Iran.
The leaders of the 27 countries of the European Union, however, in a joint statement, stated that the elections in Russia took place in a "highly repressed environment exacerbated by Russia's illegal war of aggression against Ukraine".
For Brussels, the elections in Russia would thus be considered "null and void", also due to the refusal to allow international observers from the OSCE to participate.
Novaya Gazeta Europe instead launched more direct accusations at Vladimir Putin, explaining why approximately half of the votes obtained by the president should be considered false.
The accusation against the Russian president is based on the calculations of the mathematician and independent analyst Sergey Shpilkin.
Here's what Adnkronos writes about it.
Excluding electronic votes, official data report that 74.5 million voters went to the polls.
Of these, approximately 64.7 million voted for Putin, but Shplikin's calculations indicate that at least 31.6 million of these votes were falsified.
To obtain these numbers, the analyst compared the distribution of votes obtained by the candidates with the turnout in each polling station, in order to understand how many votes were 'added' to the winner.
The Kremlin's position immediately came: “If we say that the elections in our country are illegitimate, then we should probably say that the 87% of the population of our country who cast their vote for President Putin is illegitimate.
This is absurd." There will probably still be a lot of talk about these elections in Russia, but the only certain thing is that Putin will now remain in office until 2030, war events permitting.