GROZNY, Russia — Officials declared Chechnya's Kremlin-appointed leader the winner in the region's presidential vote, a widely expected outcome after his main challengers withdrew or were removed from an election condemned by critics as a sham but promoted by Moscow as a step toward peace.

With more than 77 percent of the votes counted, acting President Akhmad Kadyrov had 81.1 percent, regional election commission chairman Abdul-Kerim Arsakhanov told reporters in Grozny on Monday.

Chechnya, a region of about 1 million people in southern Russia, has been ravaged by two separatist wars since 1994. Russian troops and rebels are now locked in a bloody stalemate.

In the war-shattered capital of Grozny, where ruined hulks of buildings rise like broken teeth, and in impoverished villages, many Chechens turned out in suits and fine dresses to vote Sunday. But others disdained the proceedings as a farce.

"In my view all of Russia is far from democracy, and not just Chechnya," said Liza Vishayeva, passing a polling station that was the only building on her Grozny block without holes chewed into it by artillery. She said she hadn't voted and doubted the election would bring significant improvements.

Even Kadyrov said the region's suffering would be hard to halt.

"I would like to say that tomorrow the sun will rise from the place where it sets," Kadyrov told a news conference Sunday in the tree-lined courtyard of his house in the village of Tsentoroi. "But what will be different tomorrow is that I will be legally elected."

Russian officials have promised that Chechnya will have a high degree of autonomy after the election, but the specifics have yet to be determined. Stanislav Ilyasov, Russia's minister for Chechen affairs, said Monday that Russian and Chechen officials would sign a treaty outlining the regional authorities' sphere of control by the end of the year, according to ITAR-Tass.

Chechnya "will engage in the rehabilitation of its facilities on its own and manage its own resources," Ilyasov was quoted as saying.

Kadyrov said he would ask the Russian parliament to renew an amnesty that was offered to rebels during the summer and expired in September. He said 171 fighters had surrendered under the amnesty and that many of them were now serving in his security service, headed by his son Ramzan, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.

Kadyrov's security service is widely feared and accused of kidnappings and killings.

Some voters said they shared the Kremlin's conviction that the election — held as the war enters its fifth year — was a sign of civil order returning to Chechnya.

"It's the road to life, the road to justice," said Said Ami Saidov, 65, who voted in a crowded schoolhouse in the hamlet of Bachi-Yurt.

More than 86 percent of Chechnya's 561,000 eligible voters cast ballots, Arsakhanov said. Some 30,000 Russian servicemen permanently stationed in Chechnya had the right to vote.

No Western observers were present for the low-tech voting. At some polling places, paper ballots were dropped into taped-up cardboard cartons.

Human rights advocates questioned the fairness of a vote held during a war and said the election was heavily tilted in favor of Kadyrov. Major Western governments including the United States have been cautious about criticism, expressing hope that the vote can help foster a political solution of the conflict.

The election was widely criticized after two candidates who rated higher than Kadyrov in early opinion polls disappeared from the ballot — one withdrawing to become an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the other barred from running by the Chechen Supreme Court. Six virtually unknown candidates ran against Kadyrov, who was once allied with the rebels.

Kadyrov had promised that if elected, he would create a commission to investigate "all the crimes" committed in Chechnya since the 1991 Soviet collapse.

Russian forces are widely alleged to have killed and raped civilians during the current war, which began in September 1999 with a massive air and ground assault but has devolved into a standoff in which the Russians pound rebels with heavy weaponry and insurgents stage daily ambushes.

The war followed a 1994-96 conflict that ended with Russian forces withdrawing after rebels fought them to a standstill.
Chechen rebels also have mounted attacks outside the region, including the hostage-taking raid on a Moscow theater last October and suicide bombings at a Moscow rock concert this summer.

A pro-rebel Web site, kavkazcenter.com, quoted Aslan Maskhadov, the separatist leader elected president of Chechnya in 1997 who is now denounced by Russian authorities as a terrorist, as calling Sunday's vote "a criminal action by the occupation forces" that was "doomed to failure."

Kadyrov told ITAR-Tass Monday that Maskhadov had no future in Chechnya.

Kadyrov also said there would be no major personnel changes in his government and that he would continue working with Chechen Prime Minister Anatoly Popov.