The Russian Central Election Commission (CEC) said eight candidates in the 2018 Russian presidential election spent 1.63 billion rubles (28 million dollars ) on campaigning.
The CEC refers to the information on election funds flow recorded on March 17, one day before the presidential election.
According to the CEC, eight registered candidates collected 1,660,334,418 rubles (29 million) of financial contributions, while accumulated election expenses amounted to 1,630,198,515 rubles (28.6 million dollars).
Moreover, 29,974,048 rubles (525,745 dollars) that were above the allowable amount or transferred to candidates with violations were returned to senders or transferred to the federal budget.
On Sunday, Russia held its presidential election.
Putin is winning with 76.68 percent of the vote after 99.94 per cent of the ballots have been counted, according to preliminary figures of the CEC.
Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin is second with about 11.8 per cent, while head of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia Vladimir Zhirinovsky has come in third place with around 5.7.
Civil Initiative party candidate Ksenia Sobchak comes in fourth with 1.68 per cent of the vote, followed by Yabloko party candidate Grigory Yavlinsky with 1.05 percent.
The remaining three candidates, Communists of Russia party chairman Maxim Suraykin, Sergey Baburin of the All-People’s Union party, and Presidential Commissioner for Entrepreneurs’ Rights Boris Titov — each received less than 1 percent of the vote.