Russians are voting on Sunday to elect a president for the fifth time in the nation’s post-Soviet history, with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin bidding to return to the Kremlin for a third term

Russians are voting on Sunday to elect a president for the fifth time in the nation’s post-Soviet history, with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin bidding to return to the Kremlin for a third term.

Four other candidates, 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 - are also running in the March 4 vote. Putin, 59, who was Russia's president from 2000 to 2008 and has been prime minister since then, has led the race.

Putin's victory was not in doubt in voting from the Pacific coast to western borders with the European Union, and from the Arctic north to the frontier with China.

The man credited by many Russians with rebuilding the country's strong image and overseeing an economic boom in his 2000-08 presidency hoped to win outright in the first round and portray this as a strong mandate for six more years in power, Reuters said. Early signs were that turnout would be high. Officials said more almost 48 percent of voters had cast their ballots by 3 p.m. Moscow time (1100 GMT), more than at this stage in the 2008 vote that elected Putin's ally, Dmitry Medvedev, to the Kremlin.

"I think the elections will be legitimate, fair, and Putin will win in the first round, unless the court rules otherwise," Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, was shown saying confidently on Internet and cable television channel TV Dozhd.

Opinion polls showed Putin, who has remained Russia's dominant leader despite stepping aside in 2008 because he was barred from a third straight term by the law, would win 59 to 66 percent of the vote, enough to avoid a second-round runoff.