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A 50-year-old university professor was imprisoned Saturday for 15 days after she tried to throw green liquid into a ballot box in the Urals city of Ekaterinburg, local news site Ura.ru reported. In Podolsk, a town close to Moscow, a woman was fined 30,000 roubles ($493) and charged with “discrediting the Russian army” after spoiling her ballot with an unspecified message, according to OVD-Info, a police monitoring group.
Russian Security Council deputy chairman Dmitry Medvedev, also the head of the United Russia party, casts his ballot at a polling station in Moscow.Credit: AP
Ahead of the election, Putin cast his war in Ukraine, now in its third year, as a life-or-death battle against the West seeking to break up Russia.
Putin has boasted about recent gains in Ukraine, where Russian troops have made slow advances relying on their edge in firepower. Ukraine has fought back by intensifying cross-border shelling and raids, and by launching drone strikes deep inside Russia.
Air raid sirens sounded multiple times Saturday in the Russian border city of Belgorod, where two people were killed by Ukrainian shelling, regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had thwarted attempts to enter the country by “Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups,” following claims by Ukraine-based Russian opponents of the Kremlin last week that they had made an armed incursion into the Belgorod and Kursk regions.
Western leaders have derided the election as a travesty of democracy.
Beyond the lack of options for voters, the possibilities for independent monitoring are very limited.
No significant international observers were present. Only registered, Kremlin-approved candidates, or state-backed advisory bodies, can assign observers to polling stations, decreasing the likelihood of independent watchdogs.
Kyiv regards the election taking place in parts of its territory controlled by Russia as illegal and void.
Military analysts see the daily pounding by Kyiv that chiefly targets energy and other key infrastructure as an attempt to shake Russians’ feeling of stability and undermine Moscow’s war effort.
The Ukraine war has been the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II. None of the other three candidates on the ballot presents any credible challenge to Putin, 71, who dominates Russia’s political landscape.
AP, Reuters
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