The overall turnout on the second day of the presidential election in Russia, in which Vladimir Putin will receive a new mandate, is approaching 60%, instead, the entire voting process is agitated by the attacks on the border with Ukraine, which they at least carried out. two dead and to which the head of the Kremlin promised to respond.

On the second of three days of voting, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Kyiv had “stepped up its terrorist activities” in connection with the election, “to demonstrate its activity” to its Western allies, “to demand even more financial aid and lethal weapons.”

Thus, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, a Ukrainian drone fired a shell at a polling station in the Russian-controlled district of the Zaporizhia region of Ukraine.

State news agency TASS quoted a representative of the local election commission as saying that there was no damage or injuries when the explosive device fell five to six meters from the building where the polling station is located before detonating in a village about 20 km away. east of the city of Energodar. .

Dozens of cases where people tried to destroy ballots

At the same time, the head of the election commission, Ella Pamfilova, reported that during the first two days of voting, there were 20 cases when people tried to destroy ballots by pouring various liquids into the ballot boxes, as well as eight cases of attempted arson. and fumigant.

Commenting on the incidents, Medvedev said that the guilty could be punished for treason with 20 years in prison.

“This is direct help to those degenerates who are bombing our cities today,” he wrote on social media, referring to the Ukrainian attacks.

Supporters of the late opposition leader Oleksii Navalny called on people to come out en masse on Sunday at noon for a protest against Putin.

Russia claims to have repelled attacks on Belgorod and Kursk

Russian media quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying that in recent days, Putin had received military reports of attempts to attack Russian territory in the border regions of Belgorod and Kursk, including several attempted incursions overnight.

“All attacks have been repelled,” Interfax quoted him as saying.

In Belgorod, a city located very close to Ukraine, which is often attacked by Ukrainians and Russian insurgents, “two people, a man and a woman, died,” said the governor of the region of the same name, Vyacheslav Gladkov.

According to him, the man died when his truck was hit, and the woman died in the parking lot. The latter’s son was seriously injured, “doctors are fighting for his life”. Two more people were injured.

A video published on social networks shows a powerful explosion in a parking lot, and one of the parked cars was thrown back by the force of the explosion.

Because of these attacks, the shopping centers of Belgorod will remain closed for two days, as well as the city’s schools.

In the afternoon, the governor announced that fifteen more rockets had been shot down by air defenses as they approached the city.

On Saturday, a separate drone attack set fire to an oil refinery.

Dmytro Azarov, the governor of the Samara region, 850 km southeast of Moscow, said that the Syzran Refinery had caught fire, but that an attack on the second refinery had been prevented.

A Ukrainian source reported that the Security Service of Ukraine attacked three Rosneft oil refineries in Russia’s Samara region with drones during the night, Reuters reports.

“The SBU continues to implement its strategy of undermining the economic potential of the Russian Federation, which allows it to wage war in Ukraine,” the source said. According to the source, the attacks were successful, but did not provide further details.

On Friday, Russia carried out its deadliest strike in weeks when its missiles hit a residential area of ​​the Ukrainian Black Sea port city of Odesa, killing at least 20 people and injuring more than 70.

Russian rebels deliver a message to Putin from Belgorod

The Russian Volunteer Corps, which is conducting a military operation in Russia’s Belgorod and Kursk regions, said the Russian Defense Ministry lied when it claimed the insurgents had been completely eliminated.

The group said it had taken several prisoners of war and presented an “interview” with one of the captives, who said he had not seen the Russian Volunteer Corps soldiers killed.

At the same time, the “Russian Legion of Freedom” and the “Siberian Battalion” in a joint appeal to Vladimir Putin stated that he “lost his legitimacy a long time ago” and allowed the evacuation of the civilian population from Belgorod and Kursk. “Russia needs immediate and fundamental changes.”

Putin’s dominance is not broken by the current election

Putin’s hold on power in the elections is not threatened. At 71 years old and serving as president or prime minister since the last day of 1999, he dominates Russia’s political landscape.

None of the three other candidates on the ballot – veteran communist Mykola Kharitonov, nationalist Leonid Slutsky, or Vladyslav Davankov, vice-speaker of the lower house of parliament – ​​poses a serious challenge.

Overall voter turnout – an important indicator for Putin as he seeks to demonstrate that the entire country supports him – rose to more than 58 percent on the second day of voting, Reuters reported.

The turnout in the Belgorod region was more than 76 percent, and there was also a high turnout in the Russian-controlled regions of Ukraine.

Pamfilova, a senior election official, said the people who tried to disrupt the vote were “scoundrels” and could face up to five years in prison.

She stated, without providing any evidence, that the Ukrainian special service and its “accomplices”, “manipulators” are behind the protests at the polling stations – probably meaning the West.

Russia’s ruling United Russia party said on Saturday it faced a large-scale denial-of-service attack, a form of cyber attack that increases internet usage, on its online presence and suspended non-essential services to repel it.

• Russia’s online voting system crashes / Electoral Commission says system crashed due to mass voting, Ukraine says it cyberattacked the system

The state news agency RIA quotes a high-ranking telecommunications official who blamed Ukraine and Western countries for the cyber attacks.

• Pancakes and gynecological consultations. Russians were lured to the polls to give Putin a record turnout in the presidential election

Pressure at workplaces for Russians to vote

We remind you that 114 million Russians have the right to vote in the presidential elections, which began on Friday and will end on Sunday with the almost inevitable victory of President Vladimir Putin, but the monitoring group “Holos” says that these elections are the most unelected. – transparent about what is happening in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Stanislav Andreychuk, co-chairman of the independent monitoring group Holos, noted that the high voter turnout on the first day of the election — more than 33% across the country — is a reflection of pressure on people from their work management to vote.

“People go and vote first in the morning because their superiors force them to. It’s very convenient to follow them because it’s a working day,” he said.

Six sources told Reuters ahead of the election that heads of state-owned companies and organizations pressured staff to vote. Four of them said people were told to provide proof that they had voted.

“At our plant, everyone was told to vote on March 15 and send a selfie to the boss,” said an employee of the state-owned company.

The high turnout is important for the Kremlin as Putin, two years into the war in Ukraine, tries to show he still has the country’s support.

At the same time, more than 50 countries condemn the illegal elections organized by Russia in the occupied Ukrainian territories, while Russian propaganda presents the residents of the occupied territories as willing to vote.

And Romania condemned the holding of Russian elections in the temporarily occupied and illegally annexed territories of Ukraine, as well as the opening of polling stations in Transnistria and two regions of Georgia without the consent of the authorities, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. , which emphasizes that the voting results in these regions will be zero.

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