The last day of the presidential elections in Russia is underway, in which Vladimir Putin wants to be confirmed in office. The Russian state media reports that voter turnout was already more than 60 percent in the morning and that it could reach 80 percent in the end. Most of them will vote for Putin; there are no notable opposing candidates. Nevertheless, the vote is not going as smoothly as the Kremlin imagines.
The team around the dead Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny reports on numerous protest participants against Putin’s re-election. Accordingly, thousands of people came together in many parts of the country to join the “Lunch against Putin” campaign. Putin opponents are called upon to visit the polling stations at lunchtime.
The opposition activist Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who lives in exile in London, explained: “At the ‘Lunch Against Putin’ campaign we can look each other in the eyes, see like-minded people and experience that those who are against Putin are numerous. We have them Majority”. According to Navalny’s team, people in the far east of Russia in Vladivostok, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Irkutsk and other Siberian cities are said to have taken part. There are said to have been hundreds of people in Yekaterinburg. Thousands of people are said to have gathered in the megacities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg for silent protest.
Putin opponents should see that they “are numerous”
At the polling stations, Russian citizens have the choice between incumbent Putin and the three other candidates Vladislav Dawankov, Leonid Slutski and Nikolai Kharitonov. All three support Putin more or less directly, giving the sham election its democratic veneer.
The opposition in Russia has encouraged its supporters to cast invalid votes, for example by ticking all four candidates. Navalny’s team has thought of another way to disrupt the election. Even before his death, he programmed the app “Foton-2024”: a random generator that randomly selects one of the three opposing candidates to whom you can then vote.
The Kremlin intimidates with threatening text messages and armed soldiers
There were already protests against the sham election on Saturday. In some cities, men and women poured paint into ballot boxes to invalidate the ballots inside. In some cases they started smaller fires. Several people were arrested.
In the run-up to the election, the Russian authorities had already tried to prevent emerging protests. Independent Russian media report threatening text messages that residents in Moscow received. “Regardless of the fact that you support ideas of extremist organizations, we are pleased that you will vote in Moscow,” it said. People should take part in the election “quietly” – “without queues and provocations”.
There are also unconfirmed video recordings from Russian polling stations, some of which show armed soldiers going into the booths. There are also reports of intimidation and manipulation from the occupied Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson.
In addition to concerns about greater resistance among the population, the Kremlin is concerned with Ukraine’s military actions on this election day. The Russian Defense Ministry reports that 35 drones have been intercepted. An oil refinery near Krasnodar was apparently hit, and drones were also intercepted over Moscow. In the meantime, traffic at Moscow’s three international airports was restricted. According to the occupation authorities, a polling station burned down in Zaporizhia, which was occupied in violation of international law. The fire is said to have been triggered by a drone attack.
Fighting and attacks are also occurring again in the border regions of Kurs and Belgorod, where pro-Ukrainian volunteer units were already fighting against the Russian military a few days ago. This week, Ukraine attacked its neighboring country more massively than ever since Russia’s invasion two years ago. The aim is obviously to disrupt Putin’s re-election.
With material from dpa.