Elections are the celebration of democracy, but not in Russia. For years, these terms have given way to others such as patriotism, tradition, stability, heroism or leadership. The streets of Moscow yesterday had no remnants of posters, balloons, banners or banners, all the paraphernalia that in Western elections are part of an electoral campaign. This has been of very low intensity; it has been known for years that the current Russian president, Vladimir Putin, would win.
The public schools with election months suspended classes yesterday Friday, so you could not feel the revelry and joy when entering and leaving class. Only a police car in front of some centers suggested that something was happening.
From time to time it was seen that someone arrived to vote. Then he left, but in his voice you could not hear the bells of someone who believes that something will change for the better in his country. “Putin is the only one who can keep us together in these times”, said a middle-aged woman, Anna, a housewife, after participating in the first of three days of these atypical Russian presidential elections .
With the re-election, Putin will enter his fifth term as president. His victory is expected to be decisive. The Center for Public Opinion Studies (VTsIOM) gave him 82% of the votes this week.
The other three candidates have no chance. Little known, Nikolai Kharitonov (Communist Party), Leonid Slutski (Liberal-Democratic Party) and Vladislav Davankov (New People), belong to the systemic opposition, present in the Duma, but which never faces the Kremlin.
The real opposition is out. After years of repression, its main figures are in prison, exiled or dead.
One of the unknowns of these elections is what effect the “Midday against Putin” initiative will have, launched from exile by the team of opposition leader Aleksei Navalni, who died last month in an Arctic prison. His ex-collaborators and his widow, Iúlia Navàlnaia, have asked their supporters to come to the schools at exactly twelve noon tomorrow Sunday, March 17, the last day of voting, to line up to pick up a ballot and express their protest by voting for someone other than Putin.
The second unknown is how many Russians will go to the polls. According to official data, voting on the first day was at a good pace (31.38% across the country), in line with the wishes of the Kremlin, which wants to present Putin’s victory as completely legitimate. In Moscow, with a population of 12 million, almost three million people voted, more than 2.3 million of them electronically. One of those who voted that way was Putin, the Kremlin announced.
The day recorded several incidents, which could have been acts of protest. Several people threw an antiseptic similar to mercromine but green in color called zelionka into ballot boxes in Moscow, Crimea and Karachayevo-Cherkessia (Caucasus). According to the digital Fontanka.ru, a 21-year-old woman was arrested for throwing a Molotov cocktail at a voting center in St. Petersburg. And the Electoral Commission reported more than 10,000 cyberattacks against the electronic voting system, which it managed to resist.
Another element of these elections is the war with Ukraine. This week, Kyiv has carried out a wide deployment of rocket and drone strikes against Russian territory, and Russian militias opposed to the Kremlin have launched incursion attempts from Ukraine into the border regions of Belgorod and Kursk. Putin accused Ukraine on Wednesday of trying to interfere in the elections and yesterday added that “these attacks will not go unpunished”.
