Vladimir Putin takes landslide victory in Russian election making him the longest serving leader - 2

Vladimir Putin has won the Russian Presidential election by a landslide, according to exit polls.RIA puts his victory at 76.3% of the vote, VTsIOM has his success at 73.9% and TASS reported a figure of 71.9%.Putin was vying for a new six-year term to make him the longest-serving Kremlin leader since feared Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.He has been either President or Prime Minister since 1999 and the term, which under Russia's constitution would have to be his last, is set to run until 2024.Opinion polls had given Putin 70% support - nearly 10 times that of his nearest challenger.But vocal critic Alexei Navalny was barred from the race due to a corruption conviction he says was fabricated by the Kremlin.Mr Navalny called for a boycott as an aide branded it a "shuttle bus election" amid claims voters were offered cheap goods, bussed in, forced to vote and told to report back to bosses.Claims of "ballot-box stuffing" by critics also emerged when videos on social media appeared to show people casting ballot paper after ballot paper.Critics said that with Putin's victory looking inevitable, pushing up turnout was a way to tighten his grip on power.It comes after Britain's diplomatic relations with Moscow plummeted to their lowest since the Cold War over the nerve agent attack on ex-spy Sergei Skripal two weeks ago.The UK triggered a diplomatic stand-off this week by booting 23 Russian diplomats out of London and severing high-level ties.Moscow hit back yesterday by expelling 23 Brits, blocking the UK from opening a consulate in St Petersburg and terminating British Council activities in Russia.Prime Minister Theresa May will consider Britain's "next steps" at a National Security Council meeting on Tuesday.Those reportedly include emergency laws to make it easier to seize money laundered through Britain by Russian residents; a stronger visa regime to stop Vladimir Putin 's cronies travelling to London; and forcing Russian oligarchs in the UK to account for "unexplained" wealth.Vladimir Chizhov, Russia's ambassador to the EU, today suggested British chemical weapons lab Porton Down could have been the source of the Novichok agent - because it is only eight miles from where the attack happened.Mr Chizhov claimed Russia has never produced Novichok, saying it had “no stockpiles whatsoever” of any nerve agent and "Russia has stopped production of any chemical agents back in 1992".But British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said that was a "direct lie", and accused Putin's Russia of secretly making and stockpiling the deadly nerve agent within the last decade.Experts from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) will arrive in Britain tomorrow to test the poison used on Skripal.Ex-KGB spy Putin, 65, was one of eight candidates in today's election but opinion polls put his nearest rival Pavel Grudinin, of the Communist Party, on just 7%.A day of voting across the vast nation's 11 time zones began at 8pm UK time on Saturday and ended at