Presidential election: Election continues in Russia – threats against Kremlin opponents

Overshadowed by the war and with the exclusion of the opposition, Russia is continuing its presidential election on Saturday to keep Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin in power. On the afternoon of the second of three days of voting, Russia’s Central Election Commission reported voter turnout at more than 50 percent. However, observers point to fraud and manipulation.

State workers in particular have reportedly already been pressured to vote en masse. Ahead of a planned protest on Sunday, Kremlin opponents in Moscow are also reporting threatening messages.

At 4 p.m. Moscow time (2 p.m. CET) on Saturday, more than one in two eligible voters had already cast their vote either at a polling station or online, said the deputy head of the electoral commission, Nikolai Bulayev, according to the Interfax agency. Voter turnout is considered an important value for the Kremlin so that Putin can ultimately show that a large part of the population actively supports him and his war of aggression against Ukraine. If you look at the data from state pollsters, the Kremlin is aiming for a participation rate of more than 70 percent.

Buses go to voting locations

However, according to reports from independent observers, large numbers of employees of state-owned companies were pressured to vote. Hundreds of companies have already published group photos of their employees in front of the respective polling station on social networks. Videos also show how people were driven to voting locations in buses. Great pressure on Ukrainian people was also reported. They are supposed to take part in votes in the occupied territories that are contrary to international law and therefore not internationally recognized.

The vote in Russia, which is intended to secure Putin a fifth term as president, continues until Sunday evening at 7:00 p.m. CET. The 71-year-old Kremlin chief has no real opposing candidates. Serious opposition figures have either not been accepted as candidates, have fled abroad, are in prison camps or are dead. Kremlin opponents are therefore calling for protests.

Protest planned for Sunday

On the first day of voting on Friday, men and women at various polling stations poured paint into ballot boxes to invalidate the ballot papers inside. In some cases they even started small fires. Several people were arrested. On Saturday, a woman in Yekaterinburg in the Urals was stopped by police from trying to pour green liquid into a ballot box.

However, the main protest is planned for Sunday: Various opposition members are calling on Russians to appear in front of the polling stations at exactly 12 noon local time in the huge country with its eleven time zones. It is hoped that the long queues will reflect the dissatisfaction in the country. It is feared that there will be arrests again. Russian authorities have already warned against taking part in the operation, claiming that they saw “signs of extremist activity” in it.

In advance, people critical of the Kremlin in the capital Moscow reported threatening text messages that they had received on their cell phones. The independent portal Meduza, among others, published screenshots of a collective message that said: “Regardless of the fact that you support the ideas of extremist organizations, we are pleased that you will vote in Moscow.” This is followed by a request to take part in the election “quietly” – “without queues and provocations”. It is not yet known who is behind the messages sent on Telegram and Signal and how the recipients were selected.

Another shelling in the Russian border region of Belgorod

In total, Moscow is calling on 114 million people to take part in the vote, which has been criticized as completely undemocratic – more than 4.5 million of them in the occupied parts of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson. Votes are also being organized on the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014. Kremlin opponents are calling on the international community not to recognize the result.

But the vote on Russian territory is also being overshadowed by the war that Putin ordered more than two years ago. The border region of Belgorod again reported heavy shelling on the second day of voting. According to Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, two people were killed on Saturday. According to Russian authorities, there were also drone attacks on two oil refineries far from the front in the Samara region. A fire broke out in a facility. Sources in the Ukrainian secret service SBU spoke of three refineries being attacked.