Gennady Zyuganov in the context of Union of Communist Parties – Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Presidential elections were held in Russia on 26 March 2000. Incumbent prime minister and acting president Vladimir Putin, who had succeeded Boris Yeltsin after his resignation on 31 December 1999, sought a four-year term in his own right and won in the first round.

As of 2024, this is the last Russian presidential election in which losers (Gennady Zyuganov and Aman Tuleyev) carried federal subjects. In all subsequent presidential elections, the winner carried all federal subjects.

Presidential elections were held in Russia on 16 June 1996, with a second round being held on 3 July 1996. It resulted in a victory for the incumbent Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who ran as an independent politician. Yeltsin defeated the Communist Party of the Russian Federation challenger Gennady Zyuganov in the second round, receiving 54.4% of the vote. Yeltsin's second inauguration ceremony took place on 9 August 1996.

Yeltsin would not complete the second term for which he was elected, as he resigned on 31 December 1999, eight months before the scheduled end of his term on 9 August 2000; he was succeeded by his chosen successor, Vladimir Putin, whom he had appointed prime minister of Russia a few months earlier. This was the first presidential election to take place in post-Soviet Russia. As of 2024, this has also been the only Russian presidential election in which no candidate was able to win on the first round, and as such a runoff election was necessary.

Presidential elections were held in Russia on 2 March 2008. Incumbent president Vladimir Putin was ineligible to run for a third term. Dmitry Medvedev was elected for a four-year term with the support of Putin and five political parties (United Russia, Fair Russia, Agrarian Party, Civilian Power, and Russian Ecological Party "The Greens"), receiving 71% of the vote and defeating Gennady Zyuganov of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and Vladimir Zhirinovsky of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia.

The fairness of the election was disputed, with official monitoring groups giving conflicting reports. Some reported that the election was free and fair, while others reported that not all candidates had equal media coverage and that the opposition to the Kremlin was treated unfairly. Monitoring groups found a number of other irregularities. The European election monitoring group PACE characterized the election as "neither free nor fair."