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Critics of Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin regime have called for massive protests at Russian polling stations on Sunday, the final day of a presidential election that is guaranteed to cement his hardline rule.
The three-day vote has already been hit by Ukrainian bombardments and a series of incursions into Russian territory by anti-Putin sabotage groups. Early on Sunday, a drone attack caused a fire at a refinery at Slavyansk in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia, where officials said one person died of a heart attack, while two people died after drone strikes in the Russian city of Belgorod on Saturday, according to officials.
On Sunday morning the Russian defence ministry reported 35 Ukrainian drone incursions, including four in the Moscow region and two in the neighbouring Kaluga and Yaroslavl regions. More Ukrainian drones attacked in the Belgorod, Kursk and Rostov regions bordering Ukraine, and in the southern Krasnodar region, the defence ministry said.
As Russians have gone to the polls, there have been acts of protest including pouring dye into ballot boxes and arson attacks at polling stations.
Before his death in an Arctic prison last month, the main Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, who galvanised mass anti-Putin rallies, urged Russians to protest on Sunday.
His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, reiterated his call in the run-up to the election and said protesters should show up in large numbers at the same time to overwhelm polling stations.
She called for protesters to spoil ballots by writing “Navalny” on them, or vote for candidates other than Putin.
Any public dissent in Russia has been harshly punished since the start of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine on 24 February 2022 and there have been repeated warnings from the authorities against election protests.
Russian opposition has called on people to head to the polls at noon in what they hope will be a legal a show of strength against Putin.
A Moscow resident in his twenties said he would take part in the protest at noon in the capital, “just to see young supportive faces around … feel some support around me, and see the light in this dark tunnel”.
The man, who declined to give his name for security reasons, said he hoped the demonstration would show the authorities “that there are people in this country against the conflict … against the regime”.
Putin, 71, former KGB agent, has been in power since the last day of 1999 and is set to extend his grip over Russia until at least 2030. If he completes another Kremlin term, he would have stayed in power longer than any Russian leader since Catherine the Great in the 18th century.
He is running without any real opponents, having barred two candidates who opposed the conflict in Ukraine, as well as having Navalny jailed, leading to his death.
The Kremlin has cast the election as an opportunity for Russians to show they are behind the assault on Ukraine, where voting is also being staged in Russian-held areas.
The voting will wrap up in Kaliningrad, Russia’s westernmost time zone, and an exit poll is expected to be announced shortly after that.
A concert on Red Square is being staged on Monday to mark 10 years since Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula – an event that is also expected to serve as a victory celebration for Putin.
Ukraine has repeatedly denounced the elections as illegitimate and a “farce”, and its foreign ministry has urged western allies not to recognise the result.
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, and more than 50 member states have slammed Moscow for holding the vote in parts of Ukraine, with Guterres saying that the “attempted illegal annexation” of those regions has “no validity” under international law.
Russian state media have played up recent gains on the front and portrayed the conflict as a fight for survival against the west.
Moscow has sought to press its advantage on the frontline as divisions over western military support for Ukraine have led to ammunition shortages, although Ukraine says it has managed to stop the Russian advance for now.
A Russian missile strike on Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa on Friday killed 21 people including rescue workers responding to an initial hit – an attack that the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, described as “vile”.
On the Russian side, the army has reported repeated attempts by Ukrainian sabotage groups to cross into Russia and the local governor in Belgorod region on Saturday decreed that shopping malls and schools would be shut for two days in Belgorod city and surrounds.
With Agence France-Presse in Moscow
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