Short answers, pulled from the story.
Vladimir Putin won the 2000 Russian presidential election outright in the first round, taking 53.4 percent of the vote on the 26th of March 2000. He had been serving as acting president since Boris Yeltsin's resignation on the 31st of December 1999.
The 2000 Russian presidential election was held on the 26th of March 2000. Russian law required the vote within three months of Yeltsin's resignation as president.
Boris Yeltsin's resignation on the 31st of December 1999 triggered a legal requirement for an election within three months. That moved the vote up from the June or July date the Duma had originally scheduled.
Putin held no rallies, gave no speeches, and refused to debate his challengers. His visible campaign consisted of a biographical interview on state television, interviews financed by Boris Berezovsky, and an open letter to voters printed in national newspapers on the 25th of February 2000.
State television gave Putin over a third of all candidate coverage, as much as Zyuganov, Yavlinsky and Zhirinovsky received combined. The PACE observers delegation concluded that unequal access to television was one of the main reasons for unfairness in the campaign.
Putin's highest vote share was 85.42 percent in Ingushetia, and his lowest was 29.65 percent in neighboring Chechnya.