Vladimir Putin won re-election as Russia’s president in a landslide on Sunday for which Moscow partly credited the diplomatic storm with Britain over the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal.

“Turnout is higher than we expected, by about 8-10 per cent, for which we must say thanks to Great Britain,” said Andrei Kondrashov, Mr Putin’s campaign spokesman, as preliminary results suggested Mr Putin had won 75.6 per cent of the vote in Sunday’s presidential election.

“We were pressured exactly at the moment when we needed to mobilise [voters]. Whenever Russia is accused of something indiscriminately and without any evidence, the Russian people unite around the centre of power. And the centre of power is certainly Putin today,” Mr Kondrashov said at a victory party for Mr Putin’s campaign.