Candidates against Putin or the war in Ukraine are not allowed to run. The winners are determined in advance in the Kremlin, while there are often extra ballots in the ballot boxes, ghost voters on the lists, pressure on students and civil servants. The communists are the only ones who dare to protest…
The Russian Federation has begun a three-day “electoral marathon,” dubbed “the only day of voting.” Governors are being elected in 3 Regions, local parliaments in 20 Regions, and city councils in 11 cities. From Leningrad in the West to Kamchatka in the Far East, polling stations are opening to the sounds of folk songs, masked characters, and food distribution. In the 25th year of Vladimir Putin’s rule, the election process seems orchestrated down to the smallest detail.
According to the head of the Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova, only 228 violations were recorded, mainly false bomb alarm calls.
But independent monitors report violence against observers, arrests of young people with anti-governor banners, and police detentions of opposition candidates. In Tomsk, a city symbolic of Navalny’s opposition, communist candidate Igor Nuzhny was held for three hours by police simply for having a sticker with an electoral message on his car.
Candidates against Putin or the war in Ukraine are not allowed to run. The winners are determined in advance in the Kremlin, while there are often extra ballots in the boxes, ghost voters on the lists, pressure on students and civil servants. The communists are the only ones who dare to protest!
Voter turnout has never exceeded 50%. In Irkutsk, where a real race was expected, the convincing victory of Putin loyalist Igor Kobzev brought turnout below 20%. The Kremlin has long discouraged turnout, so as not to risk a wave of no votes. The leaders of the regime’s parties did not mention the campaign at all: Zyuganov, Medvedev, Mironov and Nechaev preferred to talk about emigrants, even proposing the creation of special units with soldiers returned from Ukraine.
The real protagonists of these elections are the veterans of the “special operation” in Ukraine. There are 1 military candidates returned from the front, up from just 616 last year. The Kremlin calls them “Russia’s new elite” and has created a special program “Time of Heroes” to introduce them into politics. In Regions like Buryatia and Tyva, where more troops were recruited for the war, the percentage of veterans on the lists reaches up to 495%. While they are presented as an elite, there are journalists who have discovered that some of them are the perpetrators of the massacres of civilians in Bucha, the executions of prisoners in Berdyansk, and the bombings of cities like Sumy and Dnipro.