Russian citizens poured dye into ballot boxes, lit explosives and attempted arson in sporadic acts of protest during a presidential election guaranteed to deliver Vladimir Putin his fifth term in office.
The incidents occurred on the first day of a three-day voting period across Russia and parts of occupied Ukraine on Friday. 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 around the outcome of the election, the focus for both protesters and officials is on turnout and the number of legitimate ballots. High turnout, including votes for a candidate who is running against Putin, is seen as beneficial to the Kremlin as it gives the appearance of legitimacy to the election results.
Two women were arrested after pouring green dye into ballot boxes on the outskirts of Moscow with the aim of destroying voting slips, according to Russian media, in an act of protest that is punishable by imprisonment of up to five years, authorities said.
“These are the methods used by our traitors who fled the country, who are used both in the tail and in the mane by those who fight Russia,” said Ella Pamfilova, chair of Russia’s Election Commission, at an election briefing on Friday in which she described the protesters as “scum.”
In a separate update, she said there had been eight attempts at arson and that 214 ballots had been “irretrievably” damaged, according to Russian state news agency Tass.
Elsewhere, 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 around the election have been growing in Russia since the death of primary opposition figure Alexei Navalny in an Arctic penal colony last month.
Navalny, an outspoken critic of Putin and of the Kremlin’s ongoing war in Ukraine, “lost…
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