Vladimir Putin voted online on Friday, the first day of a presidential election that marked his new six-year term, Russian public television showed, Reuters and AFP reported.

The video shows how the head of the Kremlin enters the office, sits down at the computer in front of two Russian flags, and then waves at the camera, and then the message “thank you, you voted successfully” flashes on the screen.

According to TASS, this is the first time online voting has been available during the presidential election, which is now available in about a third of all Russian regions.

The Federation Council of the Russian Federation, or the upper house of the parliament, officially designated March 17, 2024 as the day of the presidential elections. Then the Central Electoral Commission of Russia (CEC) announced that voting will take place over three days, from March 15 to 17.

Stanislav Andreychuk, co-chairman of the independent monitoring group “Holos”, on the other hand, says that these elections

are the most opaque of those that took place in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“This is the most closed, most secret election in the history of Russia,” Andreychuk told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Andreychuk said electronic voting, available for the first time in presidential elections in about a third of the country, is particularly worrisome because it is open to manipulation and the results cannot be verified.

Spreading voting over three days made it more likely that ballot boxes could be changed overnight, he said.

Attacks in Russia and on the territory of Ukraine annexed by Russia on election day

Russian-appointed officials in part of Ukraine’s Moscow-controlled Kherson region on Friday accused Kyiv forces of shelling two polling stations during voting on the first day of the presidential election.

At the same time, AFP wrote that on Friday, there was an explosion in front of the polling station in Skadovsk in the Kherson region, without any casualties.

Problems arose on the first day of elections in the Russian capital, Moscow, where a woman set fire to a voting booth.

The Moscow Times also mentions the case of a woman who threw green ink, which is often used by Putin’s opponents, into the ballot box.

As a result, Vladimir Putin on Friday accused Ukraine of trying to disrupt Russia’s presidential election and said Moscow would punish Kyiv for the latest attacks.

“These hostile strikes will not go unpunished,” Putin told a meeting of Russia’s Security Council, visibly angry.

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