Aleksei Navalny, the anti-corruption crusader and persistent thorn in the Kremlin's side, was prevented from running in the election, due to a criminal conviction his supporters say was trumped up. That hasn't stopped him and his team from fanning out around the country to document voting irregularities.
Meanwhile, his team is running a live election-day broadcast, being streamed live on his YouTube channel. Even if you don't speak Russian, it's worth taking a peek at.
- By Carl Schreck
Amid reports of election irregularities, ballot box stuffing, “carousel voting,” and other weirdness, this one from the Siberian coal mining town of Kemerovo is a head-scratcher.
Like all voting precincts around the country, Precinct Number 268 has a video camera recording, and broadcasting via web stream, activity in the main balloting room. At the exact moment when a group of precinct workers went to count ballots and the clear plastic box containing ballots was dumped onto a table, a woman who appeared to be the precinct’s chairwoman strolled over to the video camera and maneuvered a collection of balloons in front of the camera, blocking the view of the room.
According to this tweet, the camera was blocked for around 90 seconds…
A bit of dark Russian election humor, directed at Americans, it would seem:
A poster circulating on social media that reads: "We Chose The U.S. President; And Now We're Choosing The Russian President!"
- By Glenn Kates
Ksenia Sobchak, the socialite and TV personality whose father was President Vladimir Putin's mentor years ago, showed up at the studio where Aleksei Navalny was doing his live election-day broadcast, and demanded to go on the air.
Sobchak is the only woman running in the race. For many critics, her presence has been derided as Kremlin-organized window dressing aimed at making the election more credible.
Navalny agreed and let Sobchak on the air... and then proceeded to rip into her.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, a leading Russian opposition figure, engaged in his own bit of ballot-defacing protest, by writing the name of his late friend and colleague, Boris Nemtsov, on his ballot.
Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, was gunned down on a bridge near the Kremlin in February 2015, a killing that shocked Russia’s opposition.
Kara-Murza writes in his tweet: “my candidate isn’t here; they killed him.”
- By Mike Eckel
In normal times, a tweet from the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., about voter turnout for expatriate Russians might not merit much attention.
But these aren’t normal times we’re living through.
Here, the Russian Embassy says that as of 12 p.m. Eastern Time, 524 Russian citizens had cast ballots. That included Ambassador Anton Antonov, who was one of the first to vote.
And for some lucky Russian expatriates, who cast ballots in New York City, they came away with their very own coffee cups, emblazoned with the logo of the Russian election. (If you read Russian, you'll be able to pick up exactly how the author of this post feels about the entire process...)
- By RFE/RL
Golos, the respected independent election monitor, reported that as of late afternoon, Moscow time, it had received at 2,263 reports of alleged violations, including ballot boxes placed out of sight of observation cameras and observers being blocked from carrying out their job.
At this voting precinct in Makhachkala, Daghestan, an observer caught on video an unidentified man trying to stuff a pile of paper ballots into the ballot box.
- By RFE/RL
Polls have closed in Moscow and the first exit polls are out. State-run pollster VTsIOM says incumbent Vladimir Putin received 73.9 percent of the vote, as shown by this graphic shown on state television.