By Leila Sackur—
NBC News
Russian citizens poured dye into ballot boxes, lit explosives and attempted to set fires in sporadic acts of protest during a presidential election that guaranteed Vladimir Putin his fifth term in office.
The incidents occurred on Friday on the first day of a three-day voting period in Russia and parts of occupied Ukraine.
Election officials said the incidents would have no impact on the election, in which Putin is competing against three candidates who have little chance of winning.
With no doubt about the outcome of the election, the focus for both protesters and officials is on turnout and the number of legitimate votes.
A high turnout – including votes for a candidate running against Putin – is seen as beneficial to the Kremlin, as it gives the appearance of legitimacy to the election results.
Protests at the polls
Two women were arrested after pouring dye into ballot boxes on the outskirts of Moscow with the aim of destroying the ballots, according to Russian media, in an act of protest that is punishable by prison terms of up to five years, authorities said.
A woman stained a voting ballot box with dye in Moscow, March 15, 2024.Reuters
"These are the methods used by our traitors who fled the country, which are used both tail and mane by those fighting against Russia," Ella Pamfilova, chairwoman of Russia's Election Commission, said at an election briefing on Friday in which he described protesters as “scum.”
Pamfilova reported that there were eight arson attempts and that 214 ballots had been “irreparably” damaged, according to the Russian state news agency Tass.
In a remote region of the Urals and in Putin's hometown of St. Petersburg, protesters attempted to destroy ballot boxes using homemade Molotov cocktails in separate incidents, according to state media.
Tensions over the election have been growing in Russia since the death of leading opposition figure Alexei Navalny in an Arctic prison last month.
Navalny, an outspoken critic of Putin and the Kremlin's war in Ukraine, “lost consciousness” and died while walking while imprisoned, according to authorities.
Navalny's wife, Yulia Navalnaya, along with numerous international governments, including the United States, blamed Putin for his death.
A Russian soldier casts her vote in Moscow, during the presidential election this Saturday, March 15, 2024. Natalia Kolesnikova / AFP - Getty Images
Taking advantage of protest tactics proposed by her late husband, Navalnaya urged her supporters to flock to the polls at noon on Sunday to protest the election and called on Western governments not to recognize its result.
In one of Navalny's last public messages, he encouraged people to protest against Putin by going to polling stations at noon on March 17 with the aim of overwhelming them.
"We are not alone," said Navalny's widow
“This is a very simple and safe action, it cannot be prohibited and it will help millions of people to see like-minded others and realize that we are not alone,” Navalnaya said in a YouTube speech days ago.
“We are surrounded by people who are also against war, corruption and anarchy.”
But the intended effects of the action, dubbed “noon without Putin,” were vague, with little guidance on whether protesters should conduct sit-ins, vote and void votes, or attempt to block access to polling places.
[Close to Navalny claim that Putin ordered him killed because his release was being negotiated]
Wives of mobilized soldiers attempted to lay flowers outside the Kremlin before being blocked by secret service agents, according to activist group
The Way Home
, which campaigns for Russian men to be allowed to return from the front.
A student from the State Maritime University leaves a voting booth in the city of Vladivostok, Russia, this March 15, 2024AP
The women were forced to move their protest to Victory Park in central-southwest Moscow, the group said on Telegram on Saturday, and were harassed by police who were “breathing down their necks.”
It was unclear how many people attended that protest.
The organization said military wives carried out simultaneous actions across the country.
[“Russia without Putin!” Opposition Alexei Navalny is buried in Moscow with hundreds of people defying fear of the regime]
The Kremlin is treating voter turnout in the presidential election as a referendum on the Ukraine war, and a high turnout to vote for Putin potentially indicates continued support for the president despite ongoing Western sanctions and growing diplomatic isolation.
Pressure to vote in occupied Ukraine
In 2018, 67% of eligible voters turned out to vote and the Kremlin will want to boast that it has surpassed that number.
In the Russian-ruled republic of Chechnya, turnout on Saturday reached 75%, according to the local electoral commission's Telegram channel.
In the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, the city council accused authorities on Telegram of working with construction companies to bus teams of “Russian builders” to vote in the electoral district, inflating turnout in the area. .
Numerous reports from occupied Ukraine, in places such as Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, included accusations from locals that the Russian military was going door-to-door and forcing Ukrainian citizens to vote at gunpoint.
Photos uploaded to Telegram by the Mariupol city hall on Saturday claimed to show small-scale acts of protest by Ukrainians forced to vote, including invalid votes.
Only one of the three candidates opposing Putin in the elections, Vladislav Davankov, supports peace negotiations with Ukraine.
[Putin redoubles his warning to the West about nuclear war: “We are ready”]
Davankov, a former businessman, has called for a peace deal with Ukraine “on our terms and without pushback,” while saying Russia should not cede any occupied territory to Ukraine.
More than 114 million Russians have the right to vote in elections, including almost 2 million abroad.
The results are expected to be announced on Sunday, with a landslide victory for Putin all but guaranteed.