It's official! Medvedev is Russian President

Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev has been elected post-Communist Russia's third president for a four-year term, according to the official results of last Sunday's poll announced on Friday.

According to the Deputy Chair of the Central Election Commission Stanislav Vavilov, Medvedev got 52,530,712 votes (70.28 per cent) and the turnout was little over 64 per cent of the total 190 million registered voters.

Medvedev's nearest rival Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov got 13,243,550 million votes (17.72 per cent) followed by ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky with 9.35 per cent (6,988,510 votes) and Andrei Bogdanov 1.3 per cent votes (968,344 thousand votes).

Representative of the Communist Party in the CEC, Yevgeny Kalyushin, who did not question the victory of Medvedev, however, intervened by saying that the unusual high turnout of 74,849,264 voters was the result of "use of administrative resource" by the authorities and not all the candidates had equal access to the government controlled media.

Immediately after the announcement of official results, Medvedev thanked the voters for backing him, saying the high percentage and a turnout of over 64 per cent is a "credit of trust" for pursuing radical economic and social reforms in the country.

Medvedev, who for the first time in the Russian history has got the official status of "president-elect", will be sworn in on May 7.