Voters arrested on final day of Russian election, hundreds protest

Hundreds of people lined up outside polling stations on the final day of Russia’s presidential election as Vladimir Putin’s critics called on voters to take action against his assurances of victory.

Allies of Putin’s fiercest political foe Alexei Navalny, whom Navalny supported shortly before his death in an Arctic prison last year, urged those dissatisfied with the Russian leader or the war in Ukraine to go to the polls at noon on Sunday to protest. adopted this strategy. moon.

Navalny’s team called it a success and posted photos and videos of people gathering near polling stations in various Russian cities around noon.

At least two people were arrested at polling stations in the cities of Moscow and Ufa on Sunday morning, including a man wearing a T-shirt bearing the label “Navalny” and another trying to push the opposition leader Photos of people are posted inside the ballot box.

Vyacheslav Golikov was asked to change his T-shirt at a polling station in the Russian capital and when he refused, he was taken to a police station, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political repression in Russia.

Bulat Khalikov told OVD-Info that he was detained in Ufa, the capital of Russia’s Bashkortostan region, after trying to throw Navalny’s photo into a ballot box.

At least 47 people were detained in 12 Russian cities during midday protests against Putin, OVD-Info reported.

Police and plainclothes officers refused to let voters cast their ballots at a polling station in Kazan, southwestern Russia, at noon. According to local media reports. Voters were told to “come back later, in a few hours.”

Russia’s TASS news agency quoted the Russian Embassy as saying that a man threw two petrol bombs into the courtyard of the Russian Embassy in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, where voting was taking place. The embassy said the man was detained by Moldovan police.

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Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, reiterated her husband’s call for action, asking supporters to disrupt ballots by writing “Navalny” on them.

“Alexei is fighting for very simple things: for free speech, for fair elections, for democracy and for our right to live without corruption and war,” she told a rally in Budapest on March 15 said in his speech.

“Putin is not Russia. Russia is not Putin.”

On Sunday, she was seen queuing outside the Russian embassy in Berlin, the German capital.

In Armenia, an estimated 2,500 to 5,000 people queued outside the Russian embassy in the capital, Yerevan.

As of Sunday morning, a total of 125,428 people had voted overseas at 230 polling stations in 111 countries, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

The three-day vote that began on Friday was hit by Ukrainian bombings, with an oil refinery in Slavyansk, southern Russia, hit by an airstrike on Sunday morning.

This follows an attack in Ukraine on Saturday in the Russian city of Belgorod that killed two people.