China's President Hu Jintao on Monday congratulated Vladimir Putin on his victory in the Russian presidential elections, the foreign ministry said.

Putin won back the Russian presidency, which he held from 2000-2008 before his four-year stint as prime minister, after securing almost 64 percent of the vote in an election the opposition said was undermined by fraud.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin crushed his rivals in presidential elections with almost 64 percent of the vote, according to results published Monday based on an almost complete vote count.

Putin won 63.75 percent of the vote in Sunday's polls, well ahead of his nearest rival the Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov who won 17.19 percent, based on a count of the vote from 99.3 percent of polling stations.

Vladimir Putin, who has ruled Russia in an era where stability was restored but liberties curtailed, may have won Sunday's polls with ease but he is reclaiming the Kremlin in unpredictable new times.

Barely troubled by serious opposition and sitting pretty at the top of an authoritarian power structure, Putin was jolted by the mass protests that broke out in the aftermath of December's parliamentary elections.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin Sunday reclaimed the Kremlin in a crushing presidential election victory that he declared was honest but the opposition said was undermined by serial violations.

Putin was on course for a first round election knockout with over 60 percent of the vote, initial results showed, with his main rival the Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov in a distant second.

Russians started voting Sunday in presidential polls likely to return strongman Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin for a record third term amid protests unseen since the Soviet era.

Voters in the far east of the world's largest country began casting their ballots at 2000 GMT in a marathon election straddling nine time zones which will close in the western exclave of Kaliningrad 21 hours later at 1700 GMT.

Russia on Friday offered to restore diplomatic ties with Georgia for the first time since the neighbors waged a five-day war in 2008 over the status of two of Georgia's breakaway regions.

The foreign ministry said it welcomed a proposal from Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili this week to offer visa-free travel to Russians and was looking to build on this gesture of good will.

The Iranian ambassador to Moscow on Friday accused a state-run Russian bank of closing Iranian embassy staff accounts to please the United States.

Iran's ambassador to Moscow, Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi, wrote on his blog that the VTB 24 bank had issued orders to embassy staff on Thursday to clear out their accounts on orders from the bank's "top management."

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stopped short of backing Bashar Assad in the Syrian crisis, saying Russia had no special relationship with his regime and refusing to predict that the president would stay in power.

With pressure mounting on Moscow to harden its line against Assad, Putin called on both the Damascus regime and opposition rebels to agree a ceasefire but also criticized the West for backing the rebels in the conflict.

Al-Qaida combatants are fighting alongside armed Syrian opposition militants, Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich was quoted Thursday as saying by the Itar-Tass news agency.

"It is not a secret that our proposals are being rejected by the West or blocked by Syria's radical opposition, not to mention armed units fighting against governmental forces that include al-Qaida fighters and other extremists," he said.

Russia on Thursday confirmed it had agreed to discuss its approach to the Syria crisis with critical Gulf foreign ministers, but denied that a firm date had been set for next week.

"We have received the agreement in principle from member states of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf to organize such a meeting," foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told ITAR-TASS.