Russians vote for president

Russians began voting on Sunday to elect a president for the fifth time in the nation’s post-Soviet history, the first in which the president will serve a six-year term, and not four years as previously, RIA Novosti reports.

Five candidates - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, nationalist Liberal Democratic Party head Vladimir Zhirinovsky, A Just Russia Party leader Sergei Mironov and the only independent, billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov - vie for the Russian presidency in the March 4 vote.

Putin, who was Russia's president from 2000 to 2008 and has been prime minister since then, has led the race but may be forced into a second round if he gets less than 50 percent of the vote in the first.

The winner in the first round will be inaugurated as president in early May and President Dmitry Medvedev, a junior member of the ruling tandem with Putin, will step down.

The vote is taking place to the backdrop of mass demonstrations that were triggered by allegations of vote fraud at December's parliamentary polls. None of the candidates opposing Putin represent the burgeoning protest movement, although all have - to some extent - expressed sympathy with its aims.