Moscow, March 5 (RHC)-- The president of Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC), Vladimir Churov, announced the preliminary results of the country's presidential election after 99 percent of the ballots were counted early on Monday.

Vladimir Putin led the election with 63.75 percent of the votes, while Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov came in second with 17.19 percent.  In third place was Mikhail Prokhorov, an independent candidate, with 7.82 percent.

According to the head of Russia's Central Election Commission, about 6.23 percent of the votes went to Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and 3.85 percent to Sergei Mironov, the leader of Just Russia.

Churov said the error between the preliminary results and the final one would be no more than 0.1 percent.  He added that the turnout in the election was 65.3 percent -- slightly lower than the 69.7 percent in 2008, but higher than the 64.3 percent in 2004.

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