The veteran Russian leader faces no opposition following the death of Alexei Navalny in the Arctic penal colony.
Russian voters went to the polls Friday in the country’s 11 time zones for a three-day presidential election that is all but expected to make Vladimir Putin’s 24-year rule bigger until at least 2030.
The veteran Russian leader is not facing any significant opposition after the Russian government barred two candidates who had expressed opposition to the war in Ukraine from running. Three other politicians running for election are not directly challenging Putin’s authority and their participation is aimed at giving a façade of legitimacy to the race.
The first presidential election since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began without incident. Local governments in at least five regions, in addition to Russian-annexed Crimea, reported cases of voters spilling green antiseptic dye on ballot boxes and arson at polling stations.
Russia’s election commission said it had faced more than 10,500 cyberattacks and that a key online government page used for online voting was unavailable in some Russian regions for much of the day.
In comments on Friday, Putin criticized Kyiv for its ongoing incursion along the Russian border, which he called an attempt to “disrupt the electoral procedure [and] intimidate other people at least in the border spaces with Ukraine. “
The start of voting came hours after one of the deadliest Russian measures ever taken in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, which killed at least 20 other people when two rockets fired from Crimea hit a residential area.
The Kremlin needs to show that it can succeed in holding elections despite the war. Putin won last election in a landslide victory, but independent watchdogs say they were marred by widespread fraud.
Ahead of the election, state pollster Vtsiom predicted that Russians would give Putin 82% of the vote, their highest result to date, with a turnout of 71%. On Friday afternoon, Russia’s election commission said turnout had already surpassed 25%. , with more than 2. 6 million votes cast online. Putin was among those who voted online on Friday, the Kremlin said.
Russia’s best-known opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, died last month in an Arctic penal colony, and other prominent Kremlin critics are in exile or in prison.
Navalny’s widow, Yulia, who blamed Putin for her husband’s death, suggested her supporters protest against Putin, 71, by casting mass votes at noon local time on Sunday, forming giant crowds and overwhelming polling stations. to Putin” and the plan approved through Navalny before his death.
Navalny’s team ruins the ballot, writes “Alexei Navalny” on the ballot or votes for one of the 3 candidates opposed to Putin.
Russian prosecutors on Thursday threatened a five-year criminal sentence for any electorate that takes part in the midday action against Putin, but it is not yet clear how the government plans to crack down on the protest given that it has no legal basis to disperse the participants.
A number of Russians took more direct steps to undermine the vote. In several incidents filmed on Friday, Russians approached polling stations with ballots and poured antiseptic dye on them before being arrested by police.
In Kogalym, western Siberia, a woman had a small fireplace inside a polling station. The video showed the chimney heading toward a polling station before a poll worker jumped over the chimney to intervene. Another video showed a polling booth on fire at a polling station in Moscow.
Ella Pamfilova, Russia’s longtime election commissioner, said those who annulled the ballots were “bastards” and called for their arrest.
Investigators in the southern region of Rostov announced the arrest of a 62-year-old man for obstructing the right to vote, a penalty that carries a five-year prison sentence.
Footage from St. Petersburg showed a woman throwing a Molotov cocktail at a polling station. According to the Fontanka newspaper, the woman has been arrested and could be prosecuted on terrorism charges.
To increase turnout, the Kremlin rolled out a series of new equipment for its “get out the vote” campaign, adding a three-day voting era and electronic voting in 29 regions, adding Moscow. These measures are in addition to the same old efforts by the heads of state-owned enterprises to attract or force thousands of employees to go to the polls.
In the Siberian city of Omsk, a young electorate won a reduced-price ticket for a Ferris wheel ride at a local amusement park, the Moscow Times reported.
On the other hand, the Russian electorate was presented with the opportunity to win iPhones and designer devices produced by the British appliance company Dyson for sending selfies to polling stations.
And at a polling station in the oil-rich city of Tyumen, voters were to take a cardboard picture of conservative U. S. anchor Tucker Carlson, a friend of the Kremlin, who traveled to Russia last month to interview Putin.
Under constitutional reforms he orchestrated in 2020, Putin is eligible to run for two more terms six years after his term expires next year, potentially allowing him to remain in power until 2036.
If he remains in power until then, his tenure will surpass even that of Joseph Stalin, who was in the Soviet Union for 29 years, making Putin the country’s longest-serving leader since the Russian Empire.
Earlier this week, Moscow opened polling stations in the four regions of Ukraine occupied by Russia and annexed in September 2022. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry declares the votes in the four territories illegal.
Ahead of the election, three pro-Ukrainian battalions made up of Russian conscripts introduced a series of incursions into southern Russia, while Ukraine stepped up drone attacks on oil refineries in Russia’s heartland in a bid to damage the country’s economy.