Early results indicate that Russian President Vladimir Putin has coasted to a fourth term in office. Exit polls showed Putin picking up 73.6% of the vote in an expected landslide, granting him another six years in power, reports the AP.
The controversy: Incidents of ballot stuffing were reported at voting stations across Russia, and the country's Central Election Commission said it was "immediately reacting" to all such claims. And prominent opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was barred from running because of a criminal conviction handed down by Putin's government, had urged his supporters to boycott today's vote because the seven contenders running against Putin had refused to voice concerns about electoral manipulation.
North Korea's senior diplomat for North American affairs, Choe Kang-il, will meet with former U.S. diplomatic officials and South Korean security experts in Finland this week, the Associated Press reports. South Korea's Yonhap cited "diplomatic sources" that stated Kathleen Stephens, the former U.S. ambassador to South Korea under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, would be among the U.S. officials involved in the meeting.
The backdrop: This development comes ahead of a potential meeting between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who earlier this month expressed his willingness to negotiate with the U.S. on abandoning his country’s nuclear weapons.
The Treasury Department is ending a 10-year-old line of formal economic communication with China — the U.S.-China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue — because the Trump administration is "disappointed" with perceived unfair trade practices by China, per Bloomberg. Treasury Sec. Steven Mnuchin will still continue to engage in private, informal talks with high-ranking Chinese officials.
“Above all, their markets are not reciprocal in the sense that there’s not an ability for other countries to work in China the way that China works in elsewhere."
— David Malpass, Treasury’s undersecretary for international affairs, to Bloomberg TV
The backdrop: President Trump is making moves against Chinese economic influence on several fronts. He reportedly wants to curtail Chinese investment in U.S. companies and hit the country with another round of steep tariffs, after his recent actions on steel and aluminum.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is on track to secure a resounding victory for his fourth term in office as voters head to the polls today. "The only possible blemish for the Kremlin [is] if large numbers of voters do not bother taking part because the result is so predictable," per Reuters. According to the AP, expect the results to come in after the last polls close in Kaliningrad at 2 p.m. ET.
Russia on Saturday said it’s expelling 23 British diplomats from Moscow within a week and will close the British Council in Russia, which advances cultural ties between the countries, the BBC reports.
Why it matters: This further escalates a diplomatic strife and standoff that erupted after former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve agent on British soil.
Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe was informed (with his lawyers cc'd) at least nine minutes before the media late last night that he'd been fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The big picture: The firing came "a little more than 24 hours before McCabe was set to retire — a move that McCabe alleged was an attempt to slander him and undermine" the Russia probe, per the WashPost lead story:
This Sunday Vladimir Putin will win his fourth term as Russian president. One of the only uncertainties ahead of the vote is how big the turnout will be. The Kremlin had initially set a target of a 70 percent result for Putin with 70 percent turnout, though it may have backed off on that in the past few days.
Still, why does Putin care about these numbers at all? Isn’t he going to win no matter what? Won’t he remain the near-Tsar of today’s Russia no matter how many people vote for him, or don’t? Yes and yes. But…
