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A polling station in Vladivostok: the election ends on Sunday
Photo: Yuri Smityuk / picture alliance / dpa / TASS
In Russia these days you could get the feeling as if Alexei Navalny was personally taking part in the Duma elections.
The Kremlin critic has been in custody for eight months.
The Russian leadership has done everything to prevent Navalny’s strategy of “smart voting”.
The opposition team had published an election recommendation app specifically for this purpose.
Russian users can no longer find this in the Apple and Google app stores.
The US IT companies deleted the Navalny app on the first day of the election.
Even if the vote on the lower house of the State Duma continues until Sunday evening, it can already be said that the decision by the technology companies will mean a turning point for Russia.
So far, it is the biggest concession made by western IT companies to the Kremlin, which is increasingly taking action against critics on the Internet.
Against the Navalny team
For the Russian leadership it is about two things.
She wants to demonstrate that the Navalny team's “Smart Voting” strategy is failing.
The organizations of the opposition are now considered "extremist" in Russia.
There is no question that the ruling party United Russia will emerge as the election winner again at the end of the three-day vote.
But this time the show of strength for those responsible in Putin's power apparatus is a lot bigger.
Before the vote, the Kremlin party only received less than 30 percent approval in polls, five years ago it was more than ten percentage points more.
In addition, from the Kremlin's point of view, direct mandates represent a potential weak point: in each constituency, the candidate who receives a simple majority of the votes wins the Duma seat.
Half of the 450 parliamentary seats are awarded in this way.
This is where the Navalny people come in: They are trying to bundle the protest voters with their smart voting strategy in order to prevent the candidate from United Russia.
To this end, they recommend voting for what they consider to be the most promising opponent - regardless of which party.
Most of the Navalny team now lives in exile.
The Kremlin wants to prove that it no longer has any influence in the country, said the political scientist Kirill Rogov recently on the independent online channel TV Rain.
But the bigger goal is far more critical: the fight for the Russian Internet.
Extend control on the Internet
For this, the Russian leadership is relying on increasingly drastic threats against Western technology companies. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, one of United Russia's top candidates, repeatedly criticized alleged "interference" by the USA in the Duma elections and even had the US ambassador summoned in matters of the Navalny app. Members of the committee "for the protection of state sovereignty" summoned representatives from Apple and Google to the Duma to warn them clearly against violations of the law.
They weren't the only threats.
Russian officials have attempted intimidation and threats of criminal investigations not only to the company address of Google, but also directly to employees, SPIEGEL learned from people who are familiar with the events on site.
The US company has around one hundred employees in Russia.
Apple has not yet commented.
For western technology companies, this means that they not only have to weigh up profit interests and ideals such as freedom of expression on the Internet, but also have to protect local employees.
Strange behavior by Telegram
The two IT giants Apple and Google have now collapsed.
Navalny's colleagues speak of a "shameful act of political censorship".
But they had probably seen this step coming, quickly published a YouTube video with the names of the candidates they recommended, and set up bots on Telegram as a back-up. However, Telegram boss Pavel Durow had this blocked on Saturday night. He justified this in a message with the prescribed "days of election rest".
His post raises a number of questions: According to Russian law, no election campaigns are allowed on the day before votes. However, this regulation was repealed in this first three-day Duma election. So what exactly does Durow mean? That no political action is allowed on any of the election days? But then he would have had to have the bots blocked earlier and not until midnight on the first election day. And why did he even make that decision? Has Telegram been put under pressure too? Durow, who likes to portray himself as the guardian of the free Internet, does not write anything about this.
In 2018 he had a cat-and-mouse game with the Russian network regulator Roskomnadzor.
At the time, she tried to block Telegram.
That went completely wrong because Durow switched to constantly changing IP addresses with his messenger app.
At that time, Navalny supported the Telegram founder with a speech at a demonstration for Internet freedom in Moscow.
The pressure from the security authorities will increase
For the Kremlin, the decisions by Apple, Google and Telegram are an important achievement.
This will spur the security authorities to increase the pressure to further limit the freedom for critics on the Internet.
The situation is already tense:
Several virtual private network (VPN) providers have recently been blocked.
These networks make it possible to bypass the blockades of the Russian authorities and to surf safely.
Operators of western platforms such as Facebook and YouTube are already under massive surveillance.
In the first half of 2021 alone, they had to pay heavy fines for failing to block content to the extent required by the media supervisory authority.
The speed of the short message service Twitter has already slowed.
This year the tech giants have seen a constant retreat, writes intelligence expert Andrei Soldatov on Twitter.
"That provokes the Kremlin to put more pressure on." And this will increase even more, "because it is not about the election, but about an offensive against Internet freedom."
Collaboration: Max Hoppenstedt, Berlin