On video: Residents of a village near St. Petersburg vote for the presidential elections in Russia/Reuters
There have never been transparent absentee elections in Russia like the ones that opened today.
This is what Stanislav Andreychuk claims, who heads an independent body that monitors the presidential elections.
According to him, the fact that this is the first time that Russia uses electronic voting, and that the elections last three days, are used to prevent a fair vote.
"These are the most closed, most secret elections in the history of Russia," Andreychuk said, referring to the period after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
On the first day of the elections, a particularly high voter turnout was recorded, which Andreychuk claims reflects pressure on the public from the employers to go out and vote.
"People are going to vote first thing in the morning because their bosses are forcing them. It's very convenient to follow the voters because it's a working day," he said.
Russian citizens vote in Moscow, March 15, 2024/Reuters
The Kremlin claims that the election process, which Putin is expected to win with an overwhelming majority, is completely democratic.
706 foreign observers participate in the elections, and more than 300 thousand Russian observers appointed by the candidates, the parties participating in the elections and social organizations.
Six sources told Reuters that managers of state-owned companies pressured workers to vote.
Four of them said the workers were required to provide proof that they had voted.
"In our factory, everyone was told to vote on March 15 and send a selfie to the managers," said one of the employees at the state-owned factory.
A high voter turnout is especially important to the Kremlin, as after two years of war in Ukraine, Putin is determined to show that the public is behind him.
According to the official data, 33% of those entitled to vote already voted on the first day.
However, in the Ukrainian regions annexed to Russia, Donetsk and Kherson, the voting rate reaches 70%.
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Polling stations in the Moscow region/Reuters
Mobile polls in a rural area near Omsk/Reuters
Andreychuk expressed particular concern about the possibility given to a third of the country to vote by electronic means.
This is because such results can be easily biased, and there is no way to check them.
Also the fact that the elections last for three days, according to him, opens the door for forgeries during the night.
During the day, several Russian citizens were arrested on the grounds that they were involved in acts of vandalism at the polling stations.
In some cases, voters spilled ink into the ballot boxes.
In other cases polling stations were set on fire.
Most of the cases happened in Moscow, the city of Voronezh in southern Russia, and in the North Caucasus.
A woman threw a petrol bomb at a polling station in St. Petersburg.
However, the authorities did not admit that the acts of vandalism were related to the protest against the government.
In the videos published on Telegram, some of the perpetrators of the acts of vandalism were heard chanting pro-Ukrainian slogans.
Ela Pampilova, the chair of the election commission, called the protestors "scum", and said that some of them committed the acts for greed of money.
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