2024-03-17 02:01:30
This content was published on March 17, 2024 – 04:01
(Keystone-ATS) Russian regions bordering Ukraine suffered new strikes on Saturday in the middle of the presidential election, attacks which left at least two dead and to which Vladimir Putin, promised a triumphant re-election, has vowed to respond.
In Belgorod, a town very close to Ukraine and often targeted, “two people died, a man and a woman,” said the governor of the region of the same name, Vyacheslav Gladkov, adding that eight rockets had been hit. slaughtered.
He said the man died when his truck was hit and the woman was killed at a parking lot. The latter’s son was seriously injured and doctors are “fighting for his life”. Two other people were injured.
A video, posted on social networks, shows a strong explosion at a parking lot, with one of the parked cars being thrown by the force of the blast.
Due to these attacks, Vyacheslav Gladkov announced that shopping centers in Belgorod would remain closed for two days, as would schools in that city and several districts.
Not “unpunished”
On Friday, President Putin assured that Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory would not go “unpunished”.
Ukraine has been promising for months to take the conflict across the border, in response to the offensive and bombings it has suffered for more than two years.
In recent weeks, air raids have intensified and fighters, presenting themselves as Russians opposed to Vladimir Putin, say they are carrying out armed incursions.
The Russian army said on Saturday that it had repelled infiltration attempts by groups from Ukraine in the Belgorod region.
Authorities in the occupied part of the Kherson region in southern Ukraine have also claimed that a Ukrainian drone strike caused the death of one person and left four injured.
“Our regions are suffering”
These attacks occur at a time when the Kremlin wants, with the presidential election which began Friday and which will end on Sunday, to display the image of a Russia united behind its leader.
Hundreds of kilometers from Belgorod, the Russians who voted on Saturday in Sergiev Posad, in the Moscow region, had these military actions in mind.
Inessa Rojkova, 87, hopes above all for the “end of the special operation”, a euphemism imposed to describe the offensive in Ukraine. “Can you imagine how many people died and now our areas near the front are suffering,” she laments.
Elena Kirssanova, 68, thinks the strikes are intended to “frighten” Russia. “But it is not a nation that allows itself to be intimidated,” proclaims this woman whose vote goes to Vladimir Putin.
The result of the vote is beyond doubt, the opposition having been eradicated.
Damage to polling stations
But the electoral process was marred by a certain number of damage to polling stations.
As of Friday, around fifteen people were arrested in several regions for pouring coloring into ballot boxes, throwing a Molotov cocktail at a polling station or setting fire to a voting booth.
On Saturday, a woman was arrested for pouring a green liquid into a ballot box in Kaliningrad, authorities in this Russian territory landlocked in the European Union said. Another was arrested while “trying to introduce” green paint into a polling station in Yekaterinburg, in the Urals, according to the Tass news agency.
The substance poured into urns resembles “zelionka”, a surgical antiseptic which has been used during attacks against Russian opponents, including Alexeï Navalny, in recent years.
The precise motives for these acts are not known. The head of the electoral commission, Ella Pamfilova, claimed that their authors were acting for money promised by “bastards, from abroad”.
These incidents have in any case caused a strengthening of security measures in polling stations in Crimea, the authorities of this annexed peninsula told the Ria Novosti news agency. The vote is also taking place in the occupied Ukrainian territories, which kyiv denounces.
Attacks on refineries
“We are all used to the idea that everything has already been decided for us, there is nothing we can do about it,” commented Nadezhda, 23, in a Moscow polling station.
She said she went to vote because otherwise she would have had “problems” with her employer.
At each election in Russia, administrations and public companies are accused by specialized NGOs, the opposition and the media of orchestrating the vote of their employees, under penalty of sanctions.
According to the independent Russian media The Bell, classified as a “foreign agent”, the Russian airline Aeroflot thus forced its staff to go to the polls.
Drone attacks have also been reported in the Russian region of Samara, some 1,000 km from the Ukrainian border. They targeted two refineries, causing a fire in one of them, according to the regional governor.
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