2024-02-25 23:45:00
In elections whose results appear to be predetermined in favor of Russian President Vladimir Putin, voters in remote areas began early voting on Sunday. The areas where early voting began included parts of Ukraine that Russia occupied during its war, which entered its third year last weekend. This comes regarding 10 days following the death of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny in one of his country’s prisons.
Published on: 02/26/2024 – 00:45
3 minutes
seem Russian voters Sunday in remote areas early voting in the presidential elections. Early voting is also organized in Ukrainian regions occupied by Russia during the ongoing war between the two countries since February 24, 2024. Regular voting will take place in the rest of Russia in the middle of next month. President Vladimir Putin is seen as a winner in advance, thus serving as President of Russia until 2030. The Election Commission banned all opposition candidates from running.
The authorities sent helicopters and vehicles to collect the votes of reindeer herders and others, amid a ban on criticizing Moscow’s attack on Ukraine that has been ongoing for two years, and following the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in prison.
Russia also organized early voting in the occupied regions of Ukraine, in a move considered sham.
The Russian authorities confirmed that they would hold presidential elections in The four regions Which it annexed from Ukraine, namely Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson, although it does not control its entire territory.
The elections are being held without actual opposition candidates.
The Election Commission said its officials used “helicopters, ATVs and other off-road vehicles” to reach remote areas of Siberia to set up voting centers for a handful of voters.
In the Khabarovsk region in the far east of the country, officials traveled by helicopter to the remote Kor meteorological station to collect the votes of two people who work there.
Although Putin did not allow actual competition in the elections, securing a high turnout is of great importance to the Kremlin, which has repeatedly stressed that Russian society is united behind Putin and the attack once morest Ukraine.
In the republic of Sakha in the Siberian Arctic, election officials said they traveled for five hours in off-road vehicles to reach a tribal community on Bolshoi Begichev Island in the Laptev Sea.
“The head of the family was happy to see the guests,” they reported on social media. “Four electors voted.” They posted pictures of hundreds of reindeer in the snow.
In the Ukrainian regions occupied by Moscow, officials installed by Moscow said that soldiers had also begun voting in the elections.
The Kremlin-appointed official for the Moscow-occupied part of the Zaporizhya region posted a photo on social media of soldiers inside a makeshift polling station that had been camouflaged.
Last December, Putin announced on the sidelines of a medal ceremony in the Kremlin that he had “no other choice” but to run for the presidential elections, and that he had decided to run in the presidential elections next March, according to Russian news agencies.
Analysts say that Putin will not face any Major competitorsRather, he seeks to obtain the largest possible mandate to erase the internal dispute regarding the conflict in Ukraine.
France 24/AFP/Reuters
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