Russian workers 'paid to vote Putin'

Putin is set to win the elections in what critics say will be a massively rigged election. 

Orders came from above to get 25% of Moscow's 200,000 utility sector workers to falsely obtain five votes per person. In return they would receive the equivalent of €250 each, according to an unidentified Sky News source. The end result would be quarter of a million fraudulent votes for Putin.

Each worker was told to register at five different polling stations using absentee forms.

Legitimately they are designed for re-registering people who, for work reasons, cannot vote in their home polling. Workers are being driven by general fear and worry for their jobs.

Opposition group Solidarity claims to have secretly filmed a woman attempting to buy absentee forms which they say have become hot property because they allow people to cast more than one vote.

Putin has pre-empted such opposition claims of vote-rigging, saying: "Our opponents are getting ready to use certain mechanisms that would prove that the election has been falsified. They will stuff the ballot boxes themselves, observe this and then report on it."

Outwardly, it has been a very low-profile campaign for Putin, but there is a broad sense among his critics that while things are muted on the surface, underneath there is a hidden campaign that has never been more aggressive.

Independent monitoring website Golos has already recorded hundreds of reports of corrupt vote schemes from across Russia. 

Some analysts argue that this election will be fraudulent on an unprecedented scale.

Twenty thousand volunteers have been drafted and trained by the opposition to curb what is widely seen as inevitable fraud. 

Scrutiny of this vote will be more intense than ever before.