While making an initial judgment that Russia's elections were conducted fairly, observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have strongly criticised the official media bias in favour of the president-elect, Mr Vladimir Putin.
Ms Helle Degn, head of the team of OSCE observers, expressed misgivings at what she described as the "lack of political debate" in the campaign and said the delegation was concerned at the media's coverage. She also said that the voting process in Chechnya was not up to democratic standards.
Mr Putin, in one of his first post-election statements, said the election had shown that the majority of people in Chechnya wanted their region to remain part of Russia and that a democratic election had taken place there.
Russia's state-controlled media have been criticised for bias in previous elections but never so severely or so openly. The two main TV channels, ORT and RTR, which cover the entire vast Russian Federation, shamelessly plugged Mr Putin throughout the campaign and made virulent attacks on his opponents. ORT perpetrated a particularly nasty attack late in the campaign on the leader of the Liberal Yabloko Party, Mr Grigory Yavlinsky, resorting to anti-Semitism and homophobia as part of its tactics.
Mr Yavlinsky and the Communist candidate, Mr Gennady Zyuganov, have alleged widespread falsification of the results. Mr Zyuganov mentioned unspecified incidents in Kursk, Lipetsk, Tatarstan and Dagestan while Mr Yavlinsky produced a document which proved, he claimed, that in Ulan Ude, in eastern Siberia, there were 14,000 more votes than voters.
No abuses of this nature have been reported by observers although it should noted that there were fewer than 1,000 observers covering more than 90,000 polling stations. In Russia, because of its vastness and remoteness of many population centres, votes are counted at the polling stations rather than in central counting stations. "Protocols" containing the results at each station are sent to the central counting posts.
There has been some concern that electronic boxes containing scanners which count the votes as they are cast might have been open to possible tampering, but no concrete evidence of this has been forthcoming.
Many allegations centred on a four-hour period in which Mr Putin's vote remained at 47 per cent. This was followed by a sudden jump to 49.5 per cent and then onwards past the 50 per cent barrier needed for election in the first round. He finished on 52 per cent with Mr Zyuganov on 29 per cent in second place.
The head of the Central Election Commission, Mr Alexander Veshnyakovk, explained that this was due to a simultaneous influx of results from the Urals, Moscow and St Petersburg. At one stage it was reported that Mr Yavlinsky was outpolling Mr Zyuganov in Moscow and St Petersburg, but this did not show up in his final figure of just 5.8 per cent.
Mr Putin is not entitled to appoint a full cabinet until after his inauguration, which is likely in early May. He may, however, set up an interim cabinet. Diplomatic sources in Moscow suggest that cabinet appointments, even that of prime minister, may not be of major significance as Mr Putin is expected to exercise tight personal control over all ministries.
Mr Putin's victory received a warm welcome from China yesterday, but a rather more cautious response from the West.
The Chinese President, Mr Jiang Zemin, called for deeper strategic partnership between the two countries. The German Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, said: "The priority now must be for an immediate halt to the fighting and a rapid political solution for lasting peace in Chechnya", while the French Foreign Minister, Mr Hubert Vedrine, said: "We expect Mr Putin to confront and resolve the Chechen problem differently."