Hello, and welcome to the Guardian's live coverage of the Russian presidential election, with me, Paul Owen, and Luke Harding, our former Moscow correspondent, in London, and Miriam Elder reporting live from the Russian capital.

There is no real question about who will win. Vladimir Putin, president from 2000 to 2008, prime minister from 2008 to date, has no serious rival among the contenders standing.

But he must get over 50% of the vote to avoid a second round, where the two leading candidates would go head to head. If he fails to achieve this, the humiliation may indicate that the start of Putin's third term as president will mark the beginning of the end of his time as Russia's leading political figure. To fail to achieve 50% of the vote in Moscow and St Petersburg would also be very damaging.

Here are the candidates:

• Vladimir Putin, United Russia - the man who has dominated Russian politics since 2000, first as president, then as prime minister.

• Gennady Zyuganov, Communist - head of the Communist party since 1993 and presidential candidate in 1996 and 2008.

• Sergey Mironov, A Just Russia - former chairman of the upper house of the Russian parliament who stood in the 2004 presidential election despite remarking at the time: "We all want Vladmir Putin to be our president."

• Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Liberal Democratic - far right leader and vice-chairman of the lower house of parliament.

• Mikhail Prokhorov - billionaire oligarch hoping to appeal to urban liberals.

A VTSIOM poll on 19 February gave Putin 53.5%, Zyuganov 10.8%, Zhirinovsky 8.9%, Prokhorov 5.6%, and Mironov 4.3%. 7.8% said they would not vote and 8% said they did not know.

We should get the first exit polls soon after voting ends at 5pm GMT (9pm Moscow time).

Reuters reports indications that turnout is high. Officials said almost 48% of voters had cast their ballots by 3pm Moscow time (11am GMT).

Election fraud is already being reported by opposition activists; this follows the use of fraudulent practices in the parliamentary elections won by Putin's United Russia party on 4 December.

Some state employees in the southern Chechnya region, where Putin's party won more than 99% support in December, told Reuters they had been ordered by officials to vote for Putin. "I came here ... because we were forced to come here and vote for Putin," Zarf, who did not give her last name, told the news agency.

Vote monitors from the opposition and bloggers posted allegations of election rigging countrywide. Golos, an independent monitoring group, said it had already registered 2,283 reports of violations nationwide – including so-called "carousel voting", in which busloads of voters are driven around to cast ballots many times.

"There have been many people voting more than once, driven around in buses in large numbers" in Moscow, Golos head Lilia Shibanova told the Associated Press, adding that similar reports had been received from Novosibirsk, Russia's third-largest city, and the city of Barnaul in southern Siberia.

Golos said monitors have recorded fewer obvious violations than during the December election, but they still believe that violations are extensive.

Alexei Navalny, one of the opposition's most charismatic leaders, said observers trained by his organisation also reported seeing extensive use of carousel voting.

"These are not going to be honest elections, but we must not relent," Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union who has grown increasingly critical of Putin, said as he cast his ballot. "Honest elections should be our constant motto for years to come."

In an attempt to allay fears of vote rigging, Putin ordered 182,000 web cameras to be installed at 91,000 polling stations to stream footage of ballot boxes and vote-counting onto a website during the election. Thousands of opposition activists as well as an international observer mission were also monitoring the polls.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said there had been no major violations, but election officials dismissed reports of fraud in December too. Since then tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets, mainly in urban areas, posing an unprecedented challenge to Putin's rule. He has responded in part by portraying the demonstrators as symbols of the chaos that he says will engulf Russia if he is not re-elected. The protesters are planning a demonstration on Monday whatever today's result.

The police presence was heavy throughout Moscow today. There were no immediate reports of trouble, although police arrested three young women who stripped to the waist at the polling station where Putin cast his ballot; one of them had the word "thief" written on her bare back.

We'll be following events as they happen all evening here.

You can follow Luke Harding on Twitter here and Miriam Elder here.

The Moscow Times's election live blog has what it says are photographs of carousel voting.

The photos purport to show a bus ferrying voters to different polling stations around the Kurkino district of north-west Moscow.

The blog reports that according to Gazeta.ru around 100 buses with licence plates from regions around Moscow arrived at Bolotnaya Ploshchad in the centre of the capital carrying young people to vote at polling stations there. The Moscow Times estimated around 5,000 people were bused in this way. "The square is being guarded by police, and the buses were accompanied by traffic police cars." One student from Petrozavodsk told Gazeta.ru he did not vote in his home city because "here is better".

The Moscow Times's blog says that police have begun to arrive in central Moscow in preparation for pro-Putin rallies this evening.

A protest by a group called For Honest Elections is scheduled to take place tomorrow at 7pm Moscow time in Pushkin Square.

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny said: "It's become completely obvious that violations that are completely irrefutable are significantly influencing the results of the vote," and called on people to protest tomorrow "wherever they want".

Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, was quoted as attacking the idea of planning protests before the election results are known.

He also said that Putin's campaign team considered it "a necessity to win in the first round".

You can watch the webcams set up to monitor polling stations here.

The webcams have been set up since Saturday morning. This one shows a retirement party taking place in a polling station in Tyumen last night.

Miriam Elder is reporting from Moscow. She tweets:

Even most people I've talked to who are voting for Putin don't think vote result will be fair. — Miriam Elder (@MiriamElder) March 4, 2012

Here are some intimidating photos of police and police vehicles around Moscow.

The polls have just closed in Russia and we are expecting the first exit polls shortly.

The BBC is reporting that the pro-Putin demonstrators are gathering in the centre of Moscow now.

The exit poll is in: Vladimir Putin has won with 59.3%, it reports.

If the poll is correct Putin will avoid the humiliation of a run-off round against the second-placed candidate.

The BBC cautions against taking the poll at face value, saying that younger people, who are less likely to back Putin, may have waited until later in the evening to have voted and might not have been covered by the exit polls. But even if that is true, it would take a lot of young people voting at the last minute to overhaul that figure of 59.3%.

The 59.3% figure comes from the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) exit poll.

Another exit poll, from the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VTSIOM), showed Putin winning 58.3%.

The official results from most polling stations will be published tomorrow.

The Moscow Times is giving figures based on 14.5% of ballots being counted. Citing Russia's Channel One, it lists:

• Vladimir Putin, United Russia: 61.7%.

• Gennady Zyuganov, Communist: 17.85%.

• Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Liberal Democrat: 8.01%.

• Mikhail Prokhorov, independent: 7.5%.

• Sergei Mironov, 3.67%.

So far, the three sets of results all show Putin fairly comfortably above the 50% threshold needed to avoid a second round.

Here are the full exit poll results from the state controlled All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VTsIOM) and the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM).

VTsIOM

• Vladimir Putin, United Russia: 58.3%.

• Gennady Zyuganov, Communist: 17.7%.

• Mikhail Prokhorov, independent: 9.2%.

• Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Liberal Democrat: 8.5%.

• Sergei Mironov, 4.8%.

FOM

• Vladimir Putin, United Russia: 59.3%.

• Gennady Zyuganov, Communist: 18.2%.

• Mikhail Prokhorov, independent: 9.6%.

• Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Liberal Democrat: 7.4%.

• Sergei Mironov, 4.3%.

Here's a gallery of pictures from today's election.

What now for Dmitry Medvedev (left), the man drafted in to replace Vladimir Putin as president for the last four years while Putin took on the role of prime minister? Medvedev has been promised the job of prime minister under the newly-elected President Putin, but my colleagues David Hearst and Miriam Elder feel that he has become a lame duck and may not after all become PM.

Observers have long speculated that Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister and close Putin ally whom Medvedev fired after he criticised the job swap, could become prime minister instead ... Kremlin insiders say Igor Shuvalov, a first deputy prime minister who focuses on investment issues, is another potential candidate, as is Igor Sechin, a deputy prime minister who is believed to head the Kremlin's siloviki faction, a clan of former defence and KGB officials. "If he doesn't become prime minister, then Dmitry Medvedev will become head of the 'justice vertical'", [Alexei Mukhin, head of the Political Information Centre, a Russian thinktank] said, referring to the corrupt legal system. Medvedev, a lawyer, made justice reform a key plank of his presidency, but his rhetoric was backed up by little action. He himself once mused on a life outside politics, starting with teaching at his pet project, an international business school in Moscow called Skolkovo. "If everything there is working well, I would certainly like to teach there," Medvedev said last April. "I would like to do that not only at Skolkovo, but in other places because it seems to me that any politician who has headed the state simply must speak about his experience, negative and positive."

Opposition activists have posted videos showing examples of ballot-box stuffing, Luke Harding reports.

Here's one from Dagestan (above).

The two men feeding papers into the electoral urn seem oblivious to the fact they can be seen via web camera. It is quite dark, though. The North Caucasus are traditionally the scene of egregious voting fraud, according to opposition activists, and routinely deliver 95% plus "victories" for Putin and his United Russia party. Kremlin spin-doctors have in the past explained these extraordinary figures by pointing to the tribal nature of societies in Chechnya and other southern Muslim Russian republics.

And here's another alleged example of carousel voting at a suburb in Moscow.

Mikhail Kasyanov, who was Putin's first prime minister before going into opposition, has said: "These elections are not free ... that's why we'll have protests tomorrow. We will not recognise the president as legitimate."

The Moscow Times reports that Stanislav Govorukhin, the head of Putin's campaign, has called the election the "cleanest in the history of Russia".

Opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov said on Twitter:

This is not elections, this is a disgrace. They spit in all our faces again. Tomorrow we go out on the streets! Moscow, March 5, 19:00.

Here are a couple of quotes from pro-Putin voters. Alexander Pshennikov, 51, from Moscow, said:

Under Boris Nikolayevich [Yeltsin], life was simply a nightmare, but, you know, now it's OK. Now it's good, I'm happy with the current situation.

Maria Fedotova, 92, said:

I voted for Putin because he was a good president and our children were looked after and that's all. That's how I feel.

As newenergyspace rather forcefully points out in the comments below, the Economist ran a great piece on Putin this week.

It points out why some people were unhappy with the choice facing them today.

Three of the men running against Mr Putin—Gennady Zyuganov of the Communist Party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the clown nationalist, and Sergei Mironov, the leader of Just Russia, a party initially created by the Kremlin as fake competition for Mr Putin's United Russia—have for years been in the business of losing elections. The only fresh face is that of Mikhail Prokhorov, a liberal business tycoon. He actually has his own agenda, but was allowed to run despite this handicap because his support is seen as very narrow.

The article explains why Putin's troubles are far from over:

The problem is not what Mr Putin says, but that he is the person saying it. People are tired of him. More fundamentally, they are fed up with the personalised system that he presides over. It looks not just corrupt but increasingly anachronistic. Ever more Russians want legitimate institutions. They want to know power can change hands. And because this is exactly what Mr Putin cannot offer, the conflict between him and them is irreconcilable.

But that does not mean the protesters will benefit, the magazine reckons:

If the past two months have generated a sense of euphoria, they have also revealed the movement's limitations. The protesters mistrust all political parties and organisations, says Mr Dmitriev, making it hard for them to channel their protest into formal politics. They are happy to organise themselves into civil-society groups, observe elections for fairness and participate in politics on a municipal level, even possibly a regional one. They are not prepared to delegate their power to representatives—at least not yet.

Luke Harding sends a couple more examples of alleged ballot-box stuffing. As Luke points out, sliding might be a more appropriate verb.

Above is the first one.

This one (above) is from Dagestan again.

The Moscow Times is reporting that large crowds are descending in central Moscow to celebrate Vladimir Putin's victory, writes Luke Harding.

Even before the results were officially announced, workers were already erecting a stage at the Kremlin, The pro-Putin rally started at 8pm local time at Tverskaya Street, with supporters waving the Russian tricolour flag moving towards the Kremlin.

The Moscow Times reports that many of those on the rally have been bussed in from the provinces, with one worker admitting he'd been promised "double pay and a comp day for coming along".

The Independent's Shaun Walker, who is in the square, reports that many participants don't exactly look ecstatic. He tweets:

a lot of very cold and pretty bored folk at manezh listening to patriotic speeches — Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) March 4, 2012

Tanya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch has just been speaking on CNN.

She said that the next president, which looked likely to be Putin, "will have to deal with a country that is not faithful to him, with a country where the voice of discontent is growing stronger and stronger."

She said the Russian authorities had already had to make some concessions to the protesters, including changes to the election laws relating to new parties and regional governors.

The BBC is showing pro-Putin demonstrators celebrating in Moscow.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, said the west did not understand that the once and future president was actually a liberal.

Luke Harding sends another apparent example of carousel voting at a polling station in Moscow. The video is taken by an election observer from the liberal Yabloko party - whose leader, Grigory Yavlinksy, was banned from taking part in the presidential election, writes Luke. She claims that the queue of "voters" at the station had been bussed in from outside the area.

The Russian Central Election Commission has now counted 20% of the votes. So far, Putin is on 63%, it reports.

Mikhail Prokhorov, the billionaire oligarch who was an independent candidate for the presidency, said on Russia's Channel One television after the vote that authorities kept his observers away from some polling stations and were beaten on two occasions.

Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist party candidate, said his party would not recognise the official results of the election, calling it "illegitimate, dishonest and untransparent".

Ivan Melnikov, a deputy chief of the Communist party, said the "vote was neither free nor fair". He claimed that the authorities set up numerous additional polling stations and alleged that hundreds of thousands of voters cast ballots at the ones in Moscow alone in an apparent attempt to rig the vote.

Oksana Dmitriyeva, a Duma deputy from the Just Russia party, tweeted that there were "numerous cases of observers being expelled from polling stations" across St Petersburg just before the vote count.

"We do not consider these elections legitimate," said Vladimir Ryzhkov, a leader of the opposition protesters.

Putin is speaking to the crowd in Moscow now. He says: "We will win. We have won. Glory to Russia."

Putin also said this: "We are appealing to all people to unite, for our people, for our motherland."

Putin told the Moscow crowd that this was a very important test of the political maturity of Russia. "We proved that no one and nothing could hold us back." He claimed there were attempts to usurp power and the Russian people had stopped them.

Here are more quotes from the speech Vladimir Putin made to supporters in Moscow tonight, outgoing president Dmitry Medvedev by his side:

Nobody can really impose anything on us. We have proved that our people are capable of distinguishing desire for novelty from political provocations, who have only one aim: to dissolve Russian statehood and usurp power. The Russian people proved today that such scenarios in our land won't pass. Will they? No, they won't. We have won today also because of the prevailing support of our electorate. We have gained clear victory. We will work hard and intensely. We will succeed and we will organise around the interests of our nation. Did I promise you that we will win? We have won. Glory to Russia.



There seemed to be a tear in his eye as he began speaking.

The BBC points out that in many areas of western Russia counting the votes has barely begun.

Putin's apparent blubbing at his victory party is provoking much comment on Twitter, points out Luke Harding. There are plenty of puns alluding to the popular Soviet film Moscow Does not Believe in Tears.

The Guardian's Miriam Elder tweets:

I. Can't. Believe. Putin. "Cried". — Miriam Elder (@MiriamElder) March 4, 2012

Hehe RT @KermlinRussia No Putin no cry — Miriam Elder (@MiriamElder) March 4, 2012

Russia's Central Election Commission has now counted up 40% of all votes. Putin is on 64%. The figure seems to be gradually going up.

Golos, the independent election watchdog, has been tallying up its own figures based on polling stations attended by its observers. These show Putin on 55% – still comfortably above the 50% threshold needed to avoid a run-off.

Here is a quote from another person who voted for Putin, 20-year-old student Anastasia Lushnikova from Rostov-on-Don:



Putin is a brave and persistent man who can resist the US and EU pressure.

Reuters is now reporting that Putin claimed victory "with tears rolling down his cheeks" - which I think is taking it a bit far.

The Moscow Times has filed an intriguing post on the independent candidate and billionaire oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov:

Prokhorov has said he will not accept any post in the government if appointed by Vladimir Putin, RIA-Novosti reported. "I will build a political party that will fight for power," he said, adding that he plans to run for president again in the 2018 election. Many commentators have pointed out that Prokhorov seems to have collected more votes than predicted by opinion polls, and has done particular well in larger metropolitan areas.

Here's a video of Putin and Medvedev's speeches to the crowd tonight (in Russian). The two colleagues seem to have perfected an identical walk.

Alexey Navalny, the opposition leader and anti-corruption blogger, is calling on protesters to descend on Moscow's Pushkin Square at 7pm local time tomorrow, Luke Harding reports. It was Navalny, of course, who coined the phrase "the party of thieves and crooks" to describe the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. Navalny describes today's election as "unfree and illegitimate". He points out that independent candidates weren't allowed to register and take part - and that Russia's state media "worked for only one candidate". (No prizes for guessing who he means). He also says today's poll contained numerous "violations" of Russia's criminal codex.

You can see Navalny giving his reaction to Putin's victory here (in Russian).

Here is a summary of tonight's key events so far.

• Vladimir Putin has won the Russian presidential election, with 48% of ballots counted and according to two exit polls. He won 64% of the vote, according to the ballots counted so far, allowing him to avoid the humiliation of a second round election which would have been triggered had he won with less than 50%.

• Putin will now return to the presidency he left four years ago because of the job's two-term limit, serving since then as prime minister. Dmitry Medvedev, the president since 2008, is now expected to become PM. The presidential term has been increased to six years, and Putin could now remain president until 2024. If that happened he would have been the dominant figure in Russian politics for 24 years. A teary-eyed Putin addressed a crowd of tens of thousands of supporters in Moscow, telling them: "Nobody can really impose anything on us. We have proved that our people are capable of distinguishing desire for novelty from political provocations, who have only one aim: to dissolve Russian statehood and usurp power … Did I promise you that we will win? We have won."

• As in December's parliamentary elections, the vote was marked by accusations of voting fraud. Ivan Melnikov of the Communist party said the authorities set up numerous additional polling stations and alleged that hundreds of thousands of voters cast ballots at the ones in Moscow alone in an apparent attempt to rig the vote. Just Russia politician Oksana Dmitriyeva said there were "numerous cases of observers being expelled from polling stations" across St Petersburg just before the vote count. Numerous videos purported to show "carousel voting" - where voters are bussed from polling station to polling station to cast multiple votes - and people methodically stuffing voting machines with large number of ballots. "These are not going to be honest elections, but we must not relent," said former USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev. "Honest elections should be our constant motto for years to come." Golos, the independent election watchdog, said it had registered at least 3,100 reports of violations nationwide. An Interior Ministry spokesman denied there had been any major violations and Putin said he had won a "clean" victory. The figures tallied up by Golos based on polling stations attended by its observers still showed Putin comfortably over the 50% threshold, with 55%.



• His opponents, unusually, refused to go quietly. Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist party candidate and runner-up, said his party would not recognise the official results of the election, calling it "illegitimate, dishonest and untransparent". Far-right Liberal Democrat candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky also refused to recognise the result. Independent candidate and billionaire oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, whose share of the vote, although small, seemed bigger than expected, said he would now set up his own political party and would fight again in 2018. He said authorities kept his observers away from some polling stations and were beaten on two occasions.

• Opposition protesters are planning a mass rally tomorrow evening in Moscow to demonstrate against the alleged election irregularities and against Putin. Mikhail Kasyanov, who was Putin's first prime minister before going into opposition, said: "These elections are not free ... that's why we'll have protests tomorrow. We will not recognise the president as legitimate." Opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov said: "This is not elections, this is a disgrace. They spit in all our faces again. Tomorrow we go out on the streets!"

I'm going to wrap up there. Thanks for all your comments.