The start of a vote decided in advance.
The inhabitants of the Russian Far East have started to vote in the presidential election which should renew Vladimir Putin for a new term without opposition, at a time when Ukraine, faced with a Russian offensive for two years, is increasing its attacks on the other end of the country.
Polling stations opened at 8:00 a.m. local time on Friday (8:00 p.m. GMT Thursday) on the Kamchatka Peninsula and in Chukotka, two remote regions located in the far east of Russia, and will close on Sunday at 8:00 p.m. (6:00 p.m. GMT) in Kaliningrad, an enclave Russian within the EU.
Due to the time difference, residents of the Far East begin to vote at a time when residents of the western part of this country with eleven time zones are just getting ready to go to bed.
The vote will be held over three days, including in the territories occupied by Russia in Ukraine and in Transnistria, a pro-Russian separatist territory in Moldova.
Call to rally
Shortly before the start of the vote, Vladimir Putin, in power for 24 years, urged his compatriots not to “deviate from the path” and to vote “patriotically” in these “difficult” times.
The outgoing head of state will face three candidates without scope who oppose neither the offensive in Ukraine nor the repression which eradicated all opposition and culminated with the death in prison in mid-February of the main opponent , Alexei Navalny.
The only opponent to have attempted to run, Boris Nadejdine, saw his candidacy rejected.
Alexeï Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaïa, who vowed to continue her fight, called on Russians to protest by voting for any of the candidates except Putin.
She also called on Russians supporting the opposition to go to the polling stations at the same time, Sunday at 12:00 p.m., to show that there are many of them.
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This call provoked a warning from the Moscow Prosecutor's Office, which stressed on Thursday that any form of protest would be “punishable under current legislation”.
The repression against voices critical of the Kremlin has accelerated markedly since the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine in February 2022, with the authorities sending most opponents and thousands of other Russians behind bars, and pushing many others into exile.
Vladimir Putin's victory in this election, which is beyond doubt, should allow him to remain in power until 2030. Thanks to a constitutional revision in 2020, he will be able to run again and stay until 2036, the year of his 84 years.
The election has already been criticized by the United States, which denounced “sham elections organized in the occupied Ukrainian territories”.
Ukrainian diplomacy has called for rejecting the result of this vote, which it describes as a “farce”.
Improvised polling stations in Mariupol
In the Russian-occupied city of Mariupol in southern Ukraine, election officials on Thursday opened makeshift polling stations on small tables in the street and on the hoods of cars.
Banners were displayed with a red, white and blue “V” logo, one of the symbols of the army used as a sign of support for the offensive.
Ukraine, for its part, has increased pressure on Russian border regions over the past three days by increasing drone attacks and armed incursions by pro-Ukraine Russian volunteers.
The Russian National Guard said Thursday in the middle of the day that it was repelling with the army and border guards the assault of a group of “saboteurs” near the town of Tiotkino, in the Kursk region, bordering Ukraine. .
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Attacks against this village carried out by units from Ukraine and claiming to be composed of Russians opposed to the Kremlin had already taken place on Tuesday.
Moscow then assured that the attackers had been decimated.
The “Freedom of Russia Legion,” one of the groups behind previous incursions, promised Thursday to “liberate the Russian regions” of Belgorod and Kursk.
At the same time, drone attacks are increasing in Russian border regions but also hundreds of kilometers from the front, kyiv having promised retaliation for the bombings that Ukraine has been suffering for more than two years.
The Belgorod region is particularly targeted.
On Thursday, two civilians died there and at least 19 others were injured in several waves of Ukrainian drone attacks, according to its governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.