Shortly after the polling stations were closed at 8pm in a presidential runoff, the breakaway region's security service claimed that one of the candidates was intending to bring supporters into the street with a goal "to mount pressure on the central election commission."

"Such actions may lead to disorders and large-scale clashes," a spokesman for the breakaway region's committee for state security, Aleksandr Smirnov, said without specifying which of the candidates he was referring to.

After the announcement, couple of hundred law enforcement officers were deployed on the central square of the breakaway region's capital Tskhinvali, according to local and Russian media reports.

Alla Jioyeva, ex-education minister and the presidential candidate, said that "certain forces" were intending "to stage provocations with an attempt to thwart elections in case of unfavorable outcome [in the election]."

Anatoly Bibilov, the breakaway region's emergency situations minister, whose candidacy has been openly supported by the Kremlin, said that he and his supporters had not intention to hold street rallies.

The central election commission has yet to start releasing early results of the Sunday's runoff. The candidates' campaign teams, however, are already announcing conflicting figures of the early results with each of them claiming victory.