There were allegations of widespread electoral fraud, including ballot box stuffing, forced voting, and threats against election observers.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky from the Liberal Democratic Party, a perennial candidate having unsuccessfully run in five previous presidential elections, finished third with 6% of the vote.

Anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny announced his intent to run in December 2016 but was barred from doing so due to a prior criminal conviction, which was widely seen as politically motivated,[2][3][4] for corruption.

Independent candidates have to collect at least 300,000 signatures with no more than 7,500 from each federal subject of Russia[citation needed] and also from action groups made up of at least 500 people.

[7] The nomination process took place during Russia's winter holiday period, and 31 January 2018 was the last day for submitting signatures in support of contested access candidates.

On 3 March 2017, senators Andrey Klishas and Anatoly Shirokov submitted to the State Duma draft amendments to the electoral legislation.

[13] Political parties represented in the State Duma or the legislative bodies of not less than one-third of the federal subjects could nominate a candidate without collecting signatures.

On 1 July 2017, Chairman of Rodina Aleksey Zhuravlyov announced that his party would only support incumbent president Vladimir Putin in the election.

[22] On 2 November 2017, the Left Front headed by Sergei Udaltsov started online primaries for the nomination of a single left-wing candidate.

The candidates included: Andrei Bogdanov, Andrey Getmanov, Olga Onishchenko, Stanislav Polishchuk, Sirazhdin Ramazanov, Ildar Rezyapov, Vyacheslav Smirnov, Irina Volynets and Alexey Zolotukhin.

[88][89] At the end of November 2017, Pavel Grudinin won the primaries of Left Front, a coalition of left-wing parties with no representation in the State Duma.

[93] In early 2017, he traveled to different cities across Russia to open campaign offices and meet with his supporters, despite his involvement in legal cases that might have barred him from running.

The primary focus of Navalny's campaign was combating corruption within the current government under Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

[95] On 2 March, Navalny published a documentary on YouTube titled He Is Not Dimon To You, detailing the corrupt dealings of Prime Minister Medvedev.

[96][97] He then called for mass rallies to be held on 26 March to bring attention to this after the government did not respond to the documentary, which only about 150.000 people attended across Russia.

[101] On his website, Navalny listed the main principles of his presidential program: combating government corruption, improving infrastructure and living standards in Russia, decentralizing power from Moscow, developing the economy instead of remaining in isolation from the West, and reforming the judicial system.

[106] However, his eligibility was put into question by his five-year suspended sentence for embezzlement of timber from the company Kirovles, when Navalny was working as an aide to Governor Nikita Belykh of the Kirov Oblast.

Navalny promised to appeal the result to the ECHR, and said he would continue campaigning,[109] while in early May the deputy head of the Russian Central Election Commission (CEC) commented that he would not be allowed to run unless the sentence is overturned.

[110] In August, the head of the CEC, Ella Pamfilova, reinforced this sentiment, saying that it would "take a miracle" for Navalny to be granted permission to run.

[138] According to Titov, the main task of participation in the election is to promote the party's Growth Strategy economic program, which was prepared by the Stolypin Club and presented to President Vladimir Putin in May 2017.

[141] Economist Grigory Yavlinsky announced his presidential bid in February 2016 as the candidate for the liberal party Yabloko, though suggestions that he would run were first voiced in 2013 after he was barred from taking part in the 2012 election.

[142] He was nominated by the party leader, Emilia Slabunova, who stressed the need to unite all "democratic forces" behind one candidate and noted his political experience and also received an endorsement from opposition politician Vladimir Ryzhkov.

[154] Opinion polls published in the months preceding the election consistently showed Putin with an overwhelming lead over his competitors.

The European Union had already announced in advance that it would not recognize the results of the Russian presidential election in the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.

[157] President of Austria Alexander Van der Bellen also warned that Moscow could not hold a legal election on the Crimean peninsula because the annexation of Crimea was illegal.

Russian authorities then invited a number of friendly and sometimes marginalized foreign politicians to give the elections in Crimea the appearance of international acceptance.

Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the parliament's foreign affairs committee, named Andreas Maurer[159] from the Left, Hendrik Weber from an organization called People's Diplomacy Norway, Pedro Agramunt and Thierry Mariani.

[163] India was the first world power to react to the election results, saying in a congratulatory message to Putin that it vowed to push ties with Russia to a "higher level.

"[164] Other countries which sent their congratulations included: Algeria,[165] Azerbaijan, Armenia, Austria,[165] Belarus, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Chad,[165] Croatia,[166] Cuba, Czech Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo,[165] Egypt, Guatemala,[167] Hungary, China,[164] Iran, Iraq,[165] Israel,[168] Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia,[165] Madagascar,[165] Malaysia,[169] Mexico,[165] Moldova, North Korea,[170] Philippines,[171] Saudi Arabia,[165] Serbia,[172] Singapore,[173] Sudan,[174] Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United States,[175] Uzbekistan and Venezuela.

[177] The European Union said that violations and shortcomings in the election flouted international standards while the White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley initially said that there was no congratulatory phone call scheduled between U.S. president Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.