Russia Votes: Putin's Six More Years

Russia began voting in an election set to prolong President Vladimir Putin's rule by six more years, as Kyiv branded the vote a "farce" and launched a barrage of deadly attacks on border regions.

Officials in Moscow warned against any protests during the presidential vote, after calls from the opposition for anti-Putin demonstrations.

The Kremlin says the vote will show that the country is fully behind his assault on Ukraine and polling stations have been set up in Russian-held territories.

Ahead of the election, Kyiv ramped up its aerial bombardment of Russian regions just across their shared border.

And the Russian national guard said it was fighting off attacks from pro-Ukrainian militias in Kursk, the latest in a string of border clashes.

"I am convinced: you realize what a difficult period our country is going through, what complex challenges we are facing in almost all areas," Putin said in an address to Russians on the eve of the vote.

Polling stations opened in Russia's easternmost Kamchatka peninsula at 8:00 am local time and are set to close at 8:00 pm on Sunday in Kaliningrad -- a Russian exclave bordering Poland and Lithuania.

All of Putin's major critics are dead, in prison or in exile, and authorities blocked the few genuine competitors who tried to stand in the contest.

Alexei Navalny, Putin's most high-profile opponent over the last decade, died in February in an Arctic prison colony. He was serving 19 years for "extremism", a sentence widely seen as retribution for his campaigning against the Kremlin leader.

Election victory will allow Putin to stay in the Kremlin until at least 2030, a longer spell in power than any Russian leader since Catherine the Great in the 18th century.

He called on Russians to use the vote to show their unity behind his leadership.