As of: March 15, 2024, 5:44 p.m
By: Tadhg Nagel
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Press
Split
Russia will vote in the next three days.
Protests took place on the first day of the election.
Numerous arson and paint attacks are carried out.
Moscow - On the first voting day of the Russian presidential elections, which will take place from March 15th to 17th, there have already been several disruptions to the voting process by protesters.
Apparently arson attacks were carried out on polling stations in various regions of the country;
There was also an increase in paint attacks.
Vladimir Putin will almost certainly be re-elected - but there is still protest.
© IMAGO/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin Pool
As the independent Russian news agency
Sota
reports, an elderly woman was arrested in Moscow for setting fire to a voting booth.
A video posted by the agency on the short messaging service X (formerly Twitter) shows police officers holding the woman while she appears to be filming the fire with her cell phone.
Moscow's Central Investigative Committee later said it had opened a criminal investigation into the arson.
Election officials told Russia's state news agency
RIA Novosti
that no ballot papers were damaged.
The election workers could have continued their work immediately.
At least three arson attacks on Putin's ballot boxes - received a sabotage order from Telegram?
There was also an incident in St. Petersburg in which a young woman tried to throw a Molotov cocktail into a polling station and was immediately arrested.
This is reported by the local news agency
Fontanka
;
A video recorded by a surveillance camera can be seen on the agency's website.
However, the attempted attack was not very successful - the projectile ricocheted twice and was picked up again by the young woman, and finally it shattered on the ground in front of the building.
She was arrested anyway.
The news agency claims that she is a student of the Pedagogical University, comes from the “Far East” and received the “sabotage order from a certain Ukrainian Telegram channel.”
In the northern Russian autonomous region of Khanty-Mansi, another woman is said to have tried to set fire to a ballot box with a Molotov cocktail.
This is reported by the independent Russian newspaper
The Moscow Times,
citing a local news agency.
Seven people have been arrested so far and are facing penalties for “obstructing the right to vote”.
Green paint is said to have been poured into ballot boxes on several occasions.
Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC) has called for security measures to be improved after incidents occurred in the southern Russian region of Rostov and the Republic of Karachayevo-Cherkessia, Russian media reported.
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Two ballot boxes were also damaged in the city of Borisoglebsk in the southern Russian region of Voronezh, as well as another in Moscow and in the annexed Crimea.
The brilliant green dye, called “zelyonka” (literally: green stuff) in Russian, was widely used in attacks on opposition activists in the 2010s.
Later it became a symbol of resistance and green the color of hope.
Even if Vladimir Putin's re-election is unlikely to be prevented, there are protests.
In total, according to official information, at least seven people were arrested for vandalism at polling stations, according to the
Moscow Times
.
The head of the electoral authority, Ella Pamfilova, said that those arrested had been promised money and that they did not know that their actions would be prosecuted.
They are now accused of “obstructing the right to vote,” which in Russia carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
(tpn)