The vote for Putin in the occupied territories is asked door to door and by stopping in the street

The farce of Russian democracy offers its worst version in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

Officials from the electoral commissions combed neighborhoods and towns accompanied by military patrols to demand the vote in the Russian presidential elections that end this Sunday.

Door to door or in the streets, nearly four million Ukrainians in the provinces annexed by the Kremlin find themselves, even if they don't want it, with a ballot box in front of them.

Except for the Crimean peninsula, illegally annexed in 2014, it is the first time that the rest of the regions under Russian control are included in the presidential elections controlled by the Kremlin so that Vladimir Putin wins for the fifth time.

The province of Lugansk, part of the provinces of Donetsk - including its capital -, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson have been experiencing an early voting process since the beginning of March.

The more days, the more options there are to increase participation.

The same thing happened in the 2022 annexation referendums, in which the voting period lasted five days and in which the vote was also sought door to door with military patrols accompanying the electoral delegations.

The international community rejected en bloc the validity of those referendums and now also rejects the legitimacy of the presidential elections in the Ukrainian areas occupied by weapons.

Twenty parliamentary foreign committees, including that of the Spanish Congress, released a statement on this matter on March 14: “We reject the legitimacy of the elections organized by Russia in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

“These actions by Russia in an internationally recognized territory of Ukraine are completely illegitimate and will not be recognized by the international community.”

A statement from the occupying government in Zaporizhzhia province released on March 2 warned: “Dear voters, we are concerned about your safety, you do not have to attend the polling stations.

We will go to your house with the ballots and the ballot boxes.”

The same thing was made public on March 11, Artem Lisogor, governor of the occupying administration of Lugansk: “From today voting is taking place in Lugansk.

Voting will be organized in municipalities where transportation is poor or non-existent.

The electoral commissions will go to these places and will begin to demand the vote on the street during the mornings.”

Urns hanging from a belt

The images published by Russian media and international agencies show representatives of the electoral boards with a ballot box hanging from a belt and accompanied by a couple of soldiers with their rifles.

The processions appear calling homes or planting the box in front of passers-by on public roads.

The risk of attacks by the Ukrainian opposition is also real.

An election commission official in the city of Berdiansk (Zaporiyia) was killed on March 6 by a bomb planted in her car.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry published a statement on March 14 underlining the illegality of the elections and the fact that “millions of Ukrainians in the temporarily occupied territories or who have been forced to move to Russia are forced to participate in these elections.” called

elections

”.

Russia occupies 26% of the country, as stated last February by the president, Volodymyr Zelensky - until now, the lost territory was estimated at 18%.

The Institute of Social Studies and Demography of Ukraine estimates that about four million people reside in the provinces under the invader's control, half the population that existed before the war began in February 2022, according to this institution.

The United Nations estimated this March that more than 1 million displaced Ukrainians live in Russia.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry also warned the population not to participate in the elections for security reasons and to avoid gatherings of people at polling stations.

This is one of the reasons why Ukraine has postponed its legislative and presidential elections, due to the risk of deaths in the event of bombing.

Other reasons are the difficulty of guaranteeing the participation of millions of displaced people or of organizing the vote for the 880,000 soldiers involved in the defense of the country.

The Russian authorities are facilitating participation with measures that fail to comply with any democratic process with guarantees, according to the Ukrainian Government.

The intelligence services of the Ministry of Defense assure that Russian troops can vote without identifying themselves.

The National Center of Resistance, a government agency that reports on the situation in the occupied territories, has indicated that the invading authorities are even allowing people to participate in the presidential elections with a Ukrainian passport — in the regions under Russian control, an intense campaign of coercion so that the population assumes the Russian passport.

Only with this can procedures be managed or benefits obtained from the occupying administration.

The National Center of Resistance has warned that some 100,000 foreign workers, mainly from Central Asia, without Russian nationality, are also being allowed to vote.

It has been confirmed, from official Russian information channels, that participation has been encouraged with festive events in which free food was distributed in exchange for voting.

In the illegal 2022 referendums, the Russian authorities concluded that more than half of the vote had participated and that the results were favorable to annexation in a range of between 87% and 99%, depending on the province.

Then, as in the presidential elections this March, kyiv warned that Ukrainian citizens who participate in the organization of the elections could be prosecuted for collaboration with the enemy.

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