this is bbc world news today. i'm lucy hockings live in moscow. the headlines. vladimir putin will lead russia for another six years. translation: i can see trust and hope, hope of our people that we will continue working in the same way with the same great results. the exit polls show that with more than half of ballots counted, president putin has almost three—quarters of the vote. he has also been speaking about the poisoning of a russian spy that has led to a stand—off with the british government. translation: i learned about it from the media, and the first thing that came into my mind is that if it was a military operation, people would have died straightaway. i'm karin giannone in london. our other top stories.

after two months of fighting and many deaths, turkey drives a kurdish militia from the northern syrian city of afrin. senior republicans urge president trump not to close down the special counsel investigation into suspected russian collusion with his campaign. hello and welcome to moscow, where president putin has indeed won a fourth term in office. there were eight candidates running in this presidential election but there was really no doubt that president putin was indeed going to win, when he has done so convincingly. they have already been seems ofjubilation at already been seems ofjubilation at a pro—putin rally. you can see the kremlin and red square behind me, beyond that a big concert tape and placed an ad with people celebrating. the date of the election was moved to today to

celebrate the fourth anniversary of the annexation of crimea. let's take you through some of the results. we know there was an boating lake allowa nces know there was an boating lake allowances reported in some parts of russia but these are the official figures we are starting to get now. the exit polls showing 73.9% for the russian president vladimir putin, absolutely eclipsing all of those other candidates. and i think the thing people will be talking about around the world who are looking at this election over the next few days will be the turnout. vladimir putin had wanted 70% in order to give the result some legitimacy, and he hasn't achieved that. what we are hearing is that there has been a turnout of 60% in this presidential election, and that is down from the last time russians voted here in a presidential election from 48% in 2016, in the parliamentary elections, which are often less, and

then in the presidential election in 2012, 60 5%, so vladimir putin may indeed be disappointed with that, and that is also with some stuff in the ballots we have seen we will be talking about in a moment. but first i had mentioned the celebrations that had been taking place here in moscow. vladimir putin arrived just a short time ago to address his supporters. let's have a listen. translation: i am a member of your team and everyone who voted today is one big team. in this i can see the recognition of what's being done over the last few years. i can see trust and hope, hope of our people that we will continue working in the same way with the same great results. thank you for this wonderful multi—million member team. thank you.

success is waiting for us! vladimir putin there and his supporters. counting is under way in the russian presidential election. a huge effort, you can imagine in a ca nd reva a huge effort, you can imagine in a candreva size of this, 11 different time zones, 97,000 polling stations we re time zones, 97,000 polling stations were open today across russia. we saw some scenes of cosmonauts boating in space, even down in antarctica, polling stations were open there. it has been an incredibly busy day, quite festive at some of the polling stations, i was at one earlier, there were people singing, a man with an accordion, people playing sports as well. there was all very festive, but with a wrap—up of what has been happening around the country for us, here's our moscow correspondent, steve rosenberg. it looked more like a show than an election. russian polling stations providing free entertainment to boost the turnout. inside, you could cast a ballot, and cast an eye at the art.

pride of place here reserved for a legendary russian ruler, who had battled the west. the current leader is facing international pressure after salisbury. still, vladimir putin was relaxed as he voted. i believe in the programme i am offering my country, the president said. and his supporters agreed. he is a genius, he says. putin wants russia to prosper and for russians to live in happiness. it is thanks to putin, she says, that russia still exists. but, critics of the kremlin said the election was fixed, that only those candidates who stood no chance of unseating vladimir putin were allowed to run. the problem with russia is that there is no such thing as russian politics. politics has been eliminated in russia altogether. there is only one political institution in russia and that is the physical body

of vladimir putin. which is why the result of this vote was never in doubt. this election is less about choosing a new president, and more about reappointing the old one. the political system vladimir putin has built ensures he doesn't face any challenge. he's set for a fourth term in the kremlin. but these images will embarrass the kremlin. caught on cctv, a woman stuffs the ballot box at a polling box at a polling station in moscow. suddenly there are two of them at it. and something suspicious in siberia, during the vote count, someone moves a tricolore of balloons so they cover over the camera. election officials say they will investigate alleged violations. but that won't change who will be running russia for the next six years. steve rosenberg, bbc news, moscow. so, as steve was mentioning there,

russia's key opposition leader alexei navalny was banned from running in this election, and he said to his supporters that he wa nted said to his supporters that he wanted them to boycott the election, and what is interesting is that he is very active on social media, and many young people of course are thought to have possibly not shown up thought to have possibly not shown up to vote because of record for that boycott, but there are also some young people passionate about putin and i spoke to one earlier, darius sher overfrom putin and i spoke to one earlier, darius sher over from united putin and i spoke to one earlier, darius sher overfrom united russia party. you know what i will say that you can come for example to south arabia and say you guys have to be democratic here — well you have to come to russia to be for example international observers to see how it works in russia. you as the international community should not humiliate our rights to vote for the putin that we support as president. even if you don't like his policy — we like his policy. you have to respect our right to choose our president

and you have to work with him — because his citizens choose him. so about 60% of the votes have been counted, though there is some talk of voting irregularity. let's speak to the co—chairman of the electoral observers in russia. tell us about what your observers saw today. so ordinary elections in russia, maybe you can give me more exact questions. what is an ordinary election in russia because that would be very different to how we see elections. i know, but the main problem is we don't have any so—called alternative candidates and elections are not interesting and the same man has been running for 20 yea rs, the same man has been running for 20 years, it is a boring procedure, so they went to any expense to

entertain people, to invite them with cheap goods, foodstuff, entertainment, singing, dancing, all that stuff, it is not elections, it is just that stuff, it is not elections, it isjust a that stuff, it is not elections, it is just a sham. that stuff, it is not elections, it isjust a sham. what did your electro observers see in terms of the staffing of ballot boxes across the staffing of ballot boxes across the country? actually ballot box staffing was found by video broadcast, not found by people on the ground live because usually fraudsters are afraid of any present witnesses and so on. in the first video you can see the policeman in the corner, the policeman was present. we have a report where a policeman himself was stuffing. so all sorts of people can participate in the ballot box staffing in this fraud, but not observers, observers area fraud, but not observers, observers are a deterrent, and yes, over there in the corner you will see behind your titles a policeman with

shoulder straps, so yes, they are doing, but not observers, observers scare them away, real observers. not fa ke scare them away, real observers. not fake ones. if your observers see things like this happening, what do they do? in 2008 i found ballot box staffing in 2008 in a moscow school. they pretended it was, they said, let's look into that into the evening, but before the evening they said that the school was mind, somebody planted a bomb inside the school so it had to be evacuated, and later they destroyed all evidence, but i still have photo and video of that. so their main idea is to destroy evidence, but since we have a lot of mobile phones now, and boxes are transported, so it is very ha rd to boxes are transported, so it is very hard to hide for them, and nobody is punished. since 2012, i can show you hundreds of official videos, and

nobody is punished since. thank you very much forjoining us. we have been hearing from president putin, and he has also given a press conference. in the last hour or so, he has been talking about this diplomatic row between russia and the united kingdom, he has said he has only had about the poisoning for the first time of sergei skripal and his daughter, and the very first time he heard about it was actually in the media. translation: in relation to the tragedy you mentioned, i learnt about it from the media and the first thing that came into my mind was that if it was a military operation, people would have died straight away. this is number one. secondly, russia does not have those weapons, russia has demolished all its chemical weapons under international supervision, unlike some of our partners who haven't done it

yet. vladimir putin addressing what has happened. further developments to bring you, international experts from the chemical weapons body will be arriving in the uk on monday. they will be testing samples in the uk. we have been hearing from the russian ambassador to the eu and also from britain's foreign secretary, borisjohnson, with a wrap—up of today's events on the diplomatic fallout and everything that has happened with sergei skripal and the poisoning of him and his daughter yulia. here's daniel sandford. today, despite the bad weather, troops and police officers continued the delicate and dangerous work of decontamination and preserving the scenes in salisbury. it is clear now that the focus of this investigation is sergei skripal‘s burgundy bmw car, with detectives still seeking more information on its movements on the day of the nerve agent attack. this morning, the russian ambassador to the eu chose to hint that britain might have been responsible

for the whole thing. porton down, as we now all know, is the largest military facility in the united kingdom that has been dealing with chemical weapons research. and it's actually only eight miles from salisbury. you are not suggesting that porton down is responsible for this nerve agent attack? i don't know, i don't know. immediately afterwards, on the same programme, this was the foreign secretary's riposte. this is not the response of a country that rarely believes itself to be innocent. their response has been a sort of mixture of smug sarcasm and denial, obfuscation and delay. and with 23 diplomats due to leave the russian embassy this week, after being expelled as spies, the foreign secretary made his most direct accusation yet that russia has been doing recent nerve agent research.

we actually had evidence within the last ten years that russia has not only been investigating the delivery of nerve agents for the purposes of assassination, but has also been creating and stockpiling novichoks. however, the foreign secretary then had to concede that a wife of a former minister under vladimir putin had paid £160,000 in a conservative party auction to play tennis with him. did the tennis game actually happen? it did. but the labour leadership's position on the salisbury attack now seems much closer to the government's than it was in the middle of last week. putin has questions to answer, because this is highly likely this could have been a state execution. but what we don't do in this country is that we don't leap to conclusions without the evidence. tomorrow, international specialists from the organisation for the prohibition of chemical weapons will arrive at porton down to start their own independent analysis of what left yulia and sergei skripal fighting for their lives. daniel sandford, bbc news. so as we continue to see russia

isolated on the international stage, it is quite a different message here in moscow with vladimir putin addressing his supporters as he wins his fourth term in office, and he is talking about rising to the challenges that lie ahead, how working together as a team is the way forward here in russia. 60% of the votes counted will continue to keep across all the development is here in moscow. for now, back to you in the studio. stay with us on bbc world news today. still to come, british mps want to know more about how a data firm that supported donald trump's campaign used the personal information of millions of facebook users. today we have closed the book on

apartheid. more than 3000 subway passengers we re apartheid. more than 3000 subway passengers were affected, nausea, bleeding, headaches and a dimming of vision, all caused by an apparently organised attack. the trip itself was on the pedestal in the middle of the cabinet here. this was an international trophy and we understand now that the search for it has become an international search. above all, this was a triumph of the christian democrats of the west, offering reunification as quickly as possible, and that is what the voters wanted. you are watching bbc world news

today. syria's president bashar al—assad has visited soldiers in eastern ghouta — an area his forces have been trying to retake from the rebels. these images — published on a syrian presidency facebook page — show him surrounded by troops. a monitoring group has confirmed that government forces and their allies now control some 80% of eastern ghouta. thousands more civilians fled on sunday. but a pro—rebel website says there's been relative calm for the first time in a month. the turkish president says the northern syrian city of afrin is now under turkish control after its troops backed by syrian allies, entered the city centre. turkey has been engaged in a two—month battle with kurdish fighters over the city, in northern syria. the kurdish administration of afrin says its forces will now strike turkish and allied militia positions at "every opportunity". mark lowen reports from istanbul.

the sound, not of battle, but of celebration, syrian rebel fighters backed by turkey, taking the town of afrin after a lightning advance. their flags marked the new order here. the ypg, kurdish militia, had promised to fight to the death in afrin, but in the end, their resistance looked to melt away. afrin fell within hours, the vestiges of the ypg ripped away. in the name of god the merciful, we are now inside afrin liberated from terrorism, says this fighter, the city has returned to the syrian revolution and we call on all residents to come back. the scars of this two month—long offensive are everywhere, a town in circles and besieged, residents fleeing the turkish advance. over 150,000 people are said to have

escaped in recent days. a triumphant president erdogan announced the success. turks from all sides have rallied behind an offensive, targeting a group they say are linked to kurdish militants within turkey. crushing age—old foes is a rare uniting force in this otherwise polarised country. translation: most of the terrorists have already fled with their tails between their legs. our special forces and members of the free syrian army are clearing the remaining pockets of resistance. in the centre of afrin, symbols of trust and stability are waving, instead of the rags of terrorists. as a kurdish statue in central afrin was torn down, a bad omen for the much needed reconciliation. many residents who will return are kurds, hostile to turkey and syrian arab fighters. but in some areas of afrin, the rebels were welcomed as liberators, the question now is whether turkey

will push on to other ypg—held territory, that will be discouraged by the west, which sees the kurds as vital allies. but for now, victory is being savoured, and eight years into syria's war, each side continues to carve it up. mark lowen, bbc news, istanbul. well, this is clearly a military victory for turkey on a highly celebrated anniversary for turks, the gallipoli victory a century ago. that was partly due to the ypg ‘s strategic calculation, and they ever accurate of the city, they enabled the civilians more than 150,000 civilians evacuated from the city, not calling them for a mass

resistance. they now vowed to expel turkish forces. there will be implications that next to afrin, where us shoots dunn troops. do you believe we will see turkey fission to syria against the ypg even further? for the east in your freebies —— you freelys, it is dubious. that is why that calculation from turkey, it is simply because the united states probably make a deal over the region. but when washington would make such a deal, the eastern new

3—ds would be the red —— the eastern yafridis would be the red line. there is division in washington, close sources towards micro—washington and pesetas wrote critical for the raqqa security. others close to the state department, with the idea of the negotiation with turkey so that they could secure the east new 3—d is, and perhaps they would convince ypg forces —— eastern yafridis, so they could secure their games in the eastern yafridis where the sdf forces are very much powerful and secure. the head of cambridge analytica, the data firm used by donald trump's election campaign, has been called back before a committee of mps. they believe alexander nix has fresh questions to answer about the way his company used the personal details of up to 50 million facebook users.

the social media giant, which will also be asked to appear, says it is conducting a ‘comprehensive review‘ into the allegations. the bbc‘s business correspondent joe lynam has this report. the idea that all women should receive the same message... meet alexander nix. he's the eton—educated boss of the data mining company cambridge analytica, which specialises in something called psycho graphics. that is an understanding of your personality because it's personality that drives behaviour and behaviour obviously influences how you vote. but now a committee of mps thinks he may have given parliament false statements about what his company did with millions of facebook profiles. he's been recalled for more questions. the facebook boss mark zuckerberg will also be called. it looks like facebook were trying to avoid difficult questions about this and people will rightly be concerned, are there other data breaches we don't know about, how effective are facebook at stopping people from taking data from their platform and using it in a way that suits them

and that facebook can't control? at the heart of this was an app designed here in britain in 2014. it was supposed to tell you a lot more about your own personality. but if you logged in .. allowed the app and its users access to some very personal and we're going to make campaign used personal data acquired from cambridge analytica to try and influence the election, something flatly denied by the company. and it was also at the top table when the leave.eu campaign was launched in 2015 but now denies that it did any work at all on the brexit referendum. but it does raise the issue though of what happens when we click "ok" online. we see these quizzes pop up on our facebook timelines, we think it will be fun, which famous star am i... but what you are really doing is handing every bit of your profile

data onto a data collection service. much of this has come to light because this former cambridge analytica employee chris wiley has now claimed facebook knew what data the company held and how it could used. facebook strongly denies his claims and has suspended his own facebook account. the social media giant said that it was doing so because mr wylie had exploited facebook to harvest millions of people's profiles. joe lynam, bbc news. let's remind you of our main story. president putin has been addressing his supporters in central moscow after being re—elected for another six years in office. with almost half of the ballots counted, he's heading for a landslide victory with three—quarters of the vote. but the was turnout lower than the 70% he had hoped for. from me caryn giannone e, goodbye. good evening. sunday has been

another wintry day. we have had ice and snow across many parts of the country and average is very low for the time of year. —— average temperatures very low. an amber * 7 —— average temperatures very low. an amber '* the untilfzigéé could , . untilfzigéé could be ' . south—west until 3am. could be another five centimetres overnight. further north across the country, one or two scattered snow showers in parts of north—east england and the eastern parts of northern ireland, scotla nd eastern parts of northern ireland, scotland mostly dry. easterly wind across all of the country. high pressure in charge as we have threw into monday. that will keep a lot of dry weather on the scene. it will be a cold start to monday morning. here the temperatures in the towns and

cities lower than this in the countryside, it could be as low as -8 countryside, it could be as low as —8 rural'iq—zz =— on countryside, it could be as low as —8 - ruralfifi on monday, —8 across rural scotland. on monday, a dry day, if you snow showers. most other places look try through the day. there will be some sunshine but bit more cloud moves in four parts of eastern scotland and eastern england as well. heading through the week ahead, things will turn milder. there will be some rain hit on in the week but we start off on a largely dry note with this big area of high—pressure slipping its further southward across western parts of the uk. that keeps us with that north—easterly breeze through tuesday. still fairly chilly, particularly in the south and east where was he a weather front bringing a few rain showers. the best of the sunshine through parts of western scotland, north—west england and wales. temperatures six to9 england and wales. temperatures six to 9 degrees, so creeping closer to where they should be for the time of

year. heading into the middle of the year, you will notice the yellow colour starting to return to the map. milderair colour starting to return to the map. milder air moving in from the colour starting to return to the map. milder ai will‘ving in from the this is bbc world news. the headlines. president putin has hailed his victory in the russian election as approval of its policies. he told us victory rally in central moscow he saw the result is an expression of trust and hope and appealed for national unity. speaking after the vote he spoke about the ongoing diplomatic row with britain over the poisoning of a former russian spy. he said the first he knew of it was when he saw it in the media. president assad had visited the former rebel and slave of eastern gouta subjected to an onslaught, thousands have fled the area. meanwhile turkey has driven kurdish militia from the