15 March 2024 , 14:14
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A Molotov cocktail has been thrown at a polling station situated at a school in Russia's second biggest city of St. Petersburg - an act which is punishable by up to five years in prison.
The deputy head of the Russian Central Election Commission said people poured green liquid into ballot boxes in five places, including the capital city. News sites also reported on Telegram that a woman in Moscow set fire to a voting booth. Such acts are incredibly risky since interfering with elections is can lead to a five-year prison sentence.
Kommersant media said, citing reports from the Electoral Commission, that the woman was a resident from Kogalym town in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug in central Russia. The "unsuccessful" attack caused a fire that was "promptly extinguished", meaning no-one was hurt and no damage to ballots or technological equipment has been reported.
And the Commission has confirmed that voting is continuing at the polling station. Russian authorities remain on high alert during the voting as they believe attacks could happen to boycott the polls in which President Putin has no major opponents. Voters are heading to the polls in Russia for a three-day presidential election that is all but certain to extend President Vladimir Putin's rule by six more years after he stifled dissent. At least half a dozen cases of vandalism at polling stations were reported, including a firebombing.
The election takes place against the backdrop of a ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and prominent rights groups and given Mr Putin full control of the political system. It also comes as Moscow's war in Ukraine enters its third year. Russia has the advantage on the battlefield, where it is making small, if slow, gains. A Russian missile strike on the port city of Odesa killed at least 14 people on Friday, local officials said.
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Footage caught the moment a woman pensioner set fire to a voting booth in Moscow (SOTA/east2west news)Ukraine, meanwhile, has made Moscow look vulnerable behind the front line: Long-range drone attacks have struck deep inside Russia, while high-tech drones have put its Black Sea fleet on the defensive. Russian regions bordering Ukraine have reported several attempts by Ukrainian fighters to take towns this week. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that "it is beyond any doubt that they are related one way or another to attempts to cast a shadow on the elections".
Voters are casting their ballots from Friday through to Sunday at polling stations across the vast country's 11 time zones, in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine and online. Officials said that voting was proceeding in an orderly fashion. But alongside the Molotov cocktail being thrown in St Petersburg, the deputy head of the Russian Central Electorial Commission said people have poured green liquid into ballot boxes in five places in total, including in Moscow.
The election holds little suspense since Mr Putin, 71, is running for his fifth term virtually unchallenged. His political opponents are either in jail or in exile abroad, and the fiercest of them, Alexei Navalny, died in a remote Arctic penal colony last month. The three other candidates on the ballot are low-profile politicians from token opposition parties.
Observers have little to no expectation that the election will be free and fair. Beyond the fact that voters have been presented with little choice, the possibilities for independent monitoring are very limited. Only registered candidates or state-backed advisory bodies can assign observers to polling stations, decreasing the likelihood of independent watchdogs. With balloting over three days in nearly 100,000 polling stations in the country, any true monitoring is difficult anyway.
"The elections in Russia as a whole are a sham. The Kremlin controls who's on the ballot. The Kremlin controls how they can campaign. To say nothing of being able to control every aspect of the voting and the vote-counting process," said Sam Greene, director for Democratic Resilience at the Centre for European Policy Analysis in Washington.
A service member casts his ballot in Russia's presidential election in Moscow (AFP via Getty Images)Ukraine and the West have also condemned Russia for holding the vote in Ukrainian regions that Moscow's forces have seized and occupied. In many ways, Ukraine is at the heart of this election, political analysts and opposition figures say. They say Mr Putin wants to use his all-but-assured electoral victory as evidence that the war and his handling of it enjoys widespread support. The opposition, meanwhile, hopes to use the vote to demonstrate their discontent with both the war and the Kremlin.
The Kremlin banned two politicians from the ballot who sought to run on an anti-war agenda and attracted genuine - albeit not overwhelming - support, thus depriving the voters of any choice on the "main issue of Russia's political agenda", said political analyst Abbas Gallyamov, who used to work as Mr Putin's speechwriter.
Russia's scattered opposition has urged those unhappy with Mr Putin or the war to show up at the polls at noon on Sunday, the final day of voting, in protest. The strategy was endorsed by Mr Navalny not long before his death. "We need to use election day to show that we exist and there are many of us, we are actual, living, real people and we are against Putin. What to do next is up to you. You can vote for any candidate except Putin. You could ruin your ballot," his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said.
A woman in Moscow is seen running away after setting fire to a voting booth (BAZA/east2west news)How well this strategy will work remains unclear. Golos, Russia's renowned independent election observer group, said in a report this week that authorities were "doing everything so that the people don't notice the very fact of the election happening". The watchdog described the campaign ahead of the vote as "practically unnoticeable" and "the most vapid" since 2000, when Golos was founded and started monitoring elections in Russia. Mr Putin's campaigning was cloaked in presidential activities, and other candidates were "demonstrably passive", the report said.
State media dedicated less airtime to the election than in 2018, when Mr Putin was last elected, according to Golos. Instead of promoting the vote to ensure a desired turnout, authorities appear to be betting on pressuring voters they can control - for instance, Russians who work in state-run companies or institutions - to show up at the polls, the group said.
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The watchdog itself has also been swept up in the crackdown: Its co-chair, Grigory Melkonyants, is in jail awaiting trial on charges widely seen as an attempt to pressure the group ahead of the election. "The current elections will not be able to reflect the real mood of the people," Golos said in the report. "The distance between citizens and decision-making about the fate of the country has become greater than ever."