MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s party secured a triumph in parliament elections Sunday, giving the highly popular Kremlin leader the mandate he sought to exert his will over Russia after his presidency ends in the spring.

While on paper the election was about picking 450 lawmakers for parliament’s lower chamber, the Duma, the president and his team transformed it into a popularity contest centered on Putin and his leadership over the past eight years

For Washington and Western Europe, the election likely foretells the continuation of a tempestuous relationship with an emboldened Kremlin, which has adopted an aggressive, antagonistic policy toward the Bush administration on issues including Iran and energy security, and U.S. plans for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

But for many Russians, a resounding victory by Putin’s party, United Russia, means adherence to Putin’s agenda, which has relied on the country’s oil and natural gas wealth to resurrect the economy from the post-Soviet chaos and poverty the country endured in the 1990s.

“Putin has done more for this country in eight years than what other leaders have done over 70 years,” said Valentina Zhenkova, a 65-year-old retired hairstylist, after voting at a children’s music school near downtown Moscow. “I trust him and I see our country showing more confidence with him as our leader.”

Though Putin has evolved into one of Russia’s most popular leaders in decades, much of that popularity has been crafted by the Kremlin’s ever-increasing influence over the media and civil society, and its suppression of dissent.

An opposition movement led by former chess champion Garry Kasparov has been effectively neutralized; state controlled media outlets ignore him, and his street rallies have been swiftly dispersed, often violently.

“On Monday, we will go to the Russian Central Election Commission and bring flowers there, because we consider this to be the funeral of Russian democracy,” Kasparov said outside a Moscow school where he cast his vote by drawing a line through the ballot and writing in the name of his party, Other Russia. “They’re not just rigging the vote. They’re raping the democratic system.”

The election went as expected for United Russia, which had more than 62 percent of the vote with nearly two-thirds of votes tallied and will likely now have a majority in the Duma large enough to change the constitution.