Russians are being asked to sabotage Vladimir Putin’s presidential election on its last day.
After two days of lightning strikes, fires, and cross-border strikes by Ukrainian forces, voters were instructed to swarm voting places at once and destroy votes.
Massive demonstrations at Russian polling places on Sunday, the last day of a presidential election that will undoubtedly solidify Vladimir Putin’s hardline rule, have been called for by opponents of the Russian president and his Kremlin government.
Bombings from Ukraine and many intrusions into Russian territory by anti-Putin sabotage groups have already disrupted the three-day voting. Two people died during drone strikes in the Russian city of Belgorod on Saturday, while a drone attack early on Sunday triggered a fire at a refinery at Slavyansk in the Krasnodar area of southern Russia, where officials reported one person died of a heart attack.
Thirty-five Ukrainian drone invasions were reported by the Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday morning. Of them, four occurred in the Moscow region and two were in the neighboring regions of Kaluga and Yaroslavl. According to the defense ministry, more Ukrainian drones attacked in the southern Krasnodar region as well as the bordering regions of Belgorod, Kursk, and Rostov.
In the lead-up to the election, Yulia Navalnaya, his widow, repeated his appeal and suggested that demonstrators turn up in big numbers at the same time to overrun polling places.
She urged demonstrators to vote for candidates other than Putin or to tamper with ballots by putting “Navalny” on them.
Since the beginning of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, any public dissent in Russia has been met with severe consequences, and the authorities have issued numerous warnings against electoral protests.
There have been protests as Russians have cast their ballots, such as throwing dye into ballot boxes and setting polling places on fire.
The leader of the main opposition in Russia, Alexei Navalny, who inspired large-scale anti-Putin rallies, urged Russians to demonstrate on Sunday before his death in an Arctic prison last month.
The Russian opposition has invited citizens to vote at noon in an attempt to legally demonstrate their power against Putin.
A twentysomething Moscow resident declared that he will participate in the demonstration in the capital at midday, “just to see young supportive faces around… feel some support around me, and see the light in this dark tunnel.”
For security considerations, the guy, who wished to remain anonymous, expressed his hope that the protest would demonstrate to the government “that there are people in this nation opposing the fight… against the regime”.