Extract from ABC News
Vladimir Putin's grip on Russia's presidency has tightened after early results in an election some Western governments said was illegitimate indicated he'd won almost 90 per cent of the vote.
Although not everything went his way.
Mr Putin, who has held the office of prime minister or president continuously since 1999, was one of four candidates on the ballot paper, but it was an opposition figure no longer alive who landed the largest blow against him.
Thousands of people turned up at polling stations across Russia, and abroad, to take part in a protest dubbed "noon against Putin" on Sunday, which had been endorsed by the anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny before he died in custody last month.
While organised gatherings critical of the government are seldom seen in Russia — and can draw harsh jail sentences — the peaceful demonstration involved people simply turning up to vote at the same time to highlight that opposition to Mr Putin exists, even if the official results don't reflect it.
Just after 9pm on Sunday local time (5am AEDT), Russia's Central Election Commission announced preliminary results showed Putin had won with 87.97 per cent of the vote.
The White House immediately issued a statement saying the vote was "obviously not free nor fair", while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose country is at war with Russia, said the vote was illegitimate.
Large queues could be seen outside polling stations around midday in Russia, and abroad.
Aysoltan Niyazova, a member of the dissident feminist punk group Pussy Riot, was among hundreds of protesters outside the Russian embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania, where people could vote.
"I'm here to support the 'noon against Putin' and express my protest against this government, the war, and Putin," said Ms Niyazova, who spent six years in a Russian jail after being convicted on fraud charges she describes as trumped up.
"I won't be voting because I believe this is not an election; this is a crime against the election law."
Many international observers have described the election as a sham, arguing the results are manipulated, the country's state-run media peddles only pro-Putin propaganda, and that the most high-profile opposition figures are barred from running.
One of them, Boris Nadezhdin, drew a large crowd when he turned up to cast his ballot at a polling booth on Moscow's outskirts on Sunday.
His anti-war platform had begun to gain traction with younger voters in particular, before Russia's electoral commission disqualified him several weeks ago, citing irregularities in his paperwork.
Last month he told the ABC, that elections in Russia were neither free nor fair.
On Sunday he bravely admitted he did not vote for Mr Putin: "I believe that the Russian people today have a chance to show their real attitude to what is happening by voting not for Putin, but for some other candidates or in some other way, which is exactly what I did."
Several hours before polls closed, the state-run Russian news agency TASS reported voter turnout had reached 67.54 per cent, a number higher than when the last presidential election was held in 2018.
Vilnius is where Navalny's team has been orchestrating its opposition to the election in exile.
Maria Pevchikh, the chair of the late opposition figure's Anti-Corruption Foundation, told the ABC the people taking part in the noon protest inside Russia were "heroes".
"It's very nice to see all of those people who came here today in solidarity with Navalny, and with our movement in general," she said.
"It's always always good to have proof like-minded people exist."
She urged people not to give up hope for Russia's future, despite the fact Putin had extended his reign.
"I've never lost hope, despite the fact that we're going through the darkest times I can remember," she said.
"People are living through a massive tragedy. Massive loss. One of the last words that Alexei has written from prison was that the hope still exists. So I have absolutely no reason to question that."
Mr Navalny, who survived a poisoning attempt in 2020, last year had his jail term extended by more than two decades after being convicted of several charges, including supporting extremism, which he said were fabricated.
In February, officials at the Arctic penal colony where he was being held announced he had died — something many world leaders, including US President Joe Biden, have blamed Putin directly for.
Mr Navalny's wife, Yulia Navalnaya, voted in Berlin, where she reportedly wrote her late husband's name on the ballot.
The queue was so long it took her six hours to get inside the Russian embassy's compound.
She described Mr Putin as a "gangster" and told reporters "one day we will win".
Oleg Stepanov, who formerly ran Mr Navalny's Moscow headquarters, said while Russians couldn't control the outcome of the vote, they could make their voice heard through the protest.
"We are against Putin and we exist and we want to show that Russia is not Putin," he told the ABC in Vilnius.
While protesters were largely peaceful, there were isolated incidents of violence.
TASS reported a man had thrown two petrol bombs into the courtyard of the Russian embassy in Moldova where people were able to vote, while on Friday, vision emerged of a woman launching a Molotov cocktail at a polling station in St Petersburg.
The Russian human rights group OVD said 80 people had been detained in 20 cities around the country on Sunday in connection with the election.
After the initial results were announced, Germany's foreign ministry said Mr Putin relied on "censorship, repression and violence" to maintain power.
The other candidates on the ballot paper were Leonid Slutsky from the Liberal Democratic Party, Nikolai Kharitonov from the Communist Party, and Vladislav Davankov from the New People Party, who posed no real threat to the incumbent.
Independent election monitors argued the fact the vote was held across three days also opened it to manipulation because ballots could be substituted at night when polling stations were closed.
Online voting was also permitted in 29 regions, for the first time. Election monitor Roman Udot told the ABC this new system was open to manipulation.
"When you vote with paper, you just can count people, you can count papers, you can see it with your own eyes. With digital, electronic voting in the Russian system, you don't know what happened all of a sudden, out of the cloud, the results come," he said.
Russia's parliament also altered the constitution four years ago, giving Mr Putin a personal exemption to extend his term limits — which would previously have prevented him from running this time.
This, coupled with the fact that voting took place in the parts of occupied Ukraine that Russia illegally annexed, has further undermined the credibility of the election.
Australia's embassy in Moscow described the voting in Ukraine as "a gross violation of international law".
On Sunday evening, the British foreign office said holding elections in occupied Ukraine demonstrated Russia "is not interested in finding a path to peace".
No comments:
Post a Comment