Like it or not, Russians and Ukrainians in occupied territories head to the polls

Voters headed to the polls in Russia on Friday for a three-day presidential election that is all but certain to extend President Vladimir Putin’s rule by six more years after he stifled dissent.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with residents following a visit to the Solnechniy Dar greenhouse complex outside Stavropol, Russia, on March 5. He has no opposition at this weekend’s elections.Voters will be casting their ballots until Sunday at polling stations across the vast country’s 11 time zones, as well as in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine where voters are being coerced to vote for their wartime occupier.

A woman walks past a billboard promoting the presidential election with a V and words in Russian: “Together we are strong, we vote for Russia!” on a bus stop in Luhansk, the capital of Russian-controlled Luhansk region, eastern Ukraine.In addition to setting up polling stations, Volunteers perform for voters on the eve of the election in Donetsk, the capital of Russian-controlled Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine.Only registered candidates or state-backed advisory bodies can assign observers to polling stations, decreasing the likelihood of independent watchdogs. With balloting over three days in nearly 100,000 polling stations in the country, any true monitoring is difficult anyway.

In many ways, Ukraine is at the heart of this election, political analysts and opposition figures say. They say Putin wants to use his all-but-assured electoral victory as evidence that the war and his handling of it enjoys widespread support. The opposition, meanwhile, hopes to use the vote to demonstrate their discontent with both the war and the Kremlin.

“We need to use election day to show that we exist and there are many of us, we are actual, living, real people and we are against Putin. ... What to do next is up to you. You can vote for any candidate except Putin. You could ruin your ballot,” his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said.Golos, Russia’s renowned independent election observer group, said in a report this week that authorities were “doing everything so that the people don’t notice the very fact of the election happening”.

Source: Real Estate Daily Report (realestatedailyreport.net)

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