Russian Google declares Vladimir Putin the winner of March 2018 presidential election two months BEFORE it takes place
Google engineers scrambled to fix the mistake after hundreds of confused citizens spotted the error
GOOGLE has announced Vladmir Putin as the winner of the 2018 Russian Election - even though the polls don't open until March.
Searches of "elections 2018" on the Russian-language version of the search giant bring up a beaming portrait of Putin labelled "winner".
Google engineers scrambled to fix the mistake after hundreds of confused citizens spotted the error.
One web user joked: "Using Google, the Americans have interfered in our elections, putting forth a candidate that will be favorable for them."
The glitch is thought to be a result of Google's search algorithm, which allegedly misread a Wikipedia entry for the contest.
Stanislav Kozlovskiy, the director for the Russian department of Wikimedia, Wikipedia’s parent company, said: "Someone added Putin’s name to the preamble of the article on the elections, after which the search engine indexed it and reflected the new variant in its results.”
Ex-KGB agent Putin is expected to secure an unprecedented fourth term as Russian president.
His campaign was handed a massive boost in December, when Moscow opposition leader Alexei Navalny was barred from running for president following a long-running row over a what he calls a "trumped up" prison sentence.
In November Putin revealed he was scared of American interference in the vote.
He told factory workers in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk: "In response to our alleged interference in their election, they want to create problems for the election of the president of Russia.
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Russia has repeatedly denied allegations of interfering in the US election last year that brought Trump to power.
Former US President Barack Obama ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats in response to claims the Kremlin meddled in the contest.
Sun Online has approached Google for comment.
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