Russian Presidential Election 2022: Elections, Candidates, and Controversies

2024-03-14 21:28:00
File photograph showing a man participating in a Russian election. EFE/EPA/MAXIM SHIPENKOV

Voting offices opened in the Russian Far East, kicking off a presidential election that will last three days, in which Vladimir Putin, in power for 24 years, seeks a new mandate.

The elections began on Friday at 8:00 a.m. (20 GMT on Thursday) in the Kamchatka peninsula and in Chukotka, in the far east of Russia, and will conclude on Sunday at 8:00 p.m. (18 GMT) in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave. in the middle of countries of the European Union.

The elections are being held against the backdrop of relentless repression that has paralyzed independent media and prominent rights groups and given Putin complete control of the political system.

They also come as Moscow’s war in Ukraine enters its third year. Russia has an advantage on the battlefield, where it is making small, if slow, advances. Ukraine, meanwhile, has made Moscow appear vulnerable behind the front line: long-range drone strikes have struck deep inside Russia, while high-tech drones have put its Sea fleet Black on defense.

Voters will cast their ballots from Friday to Sunday at polling stations in all 11 time zones of the vast country, as well as in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalni and his wife Yulia in April 2015 (REUTERS/Tatyana Makeyeva)

The elections have little uncertainty, as Putin, 71, is running for his fifth term virtually unopposed. His political opponents are in jail or exiled abroad, and the fiercest of them, Alexei Navalny, recently died in a remote Arctic penal colony. The other three candidates on the ballot are low-profile politicians from token opposition parties who toe the Kremlin line.

Only registered candidates or state-backed advisory bodies can assign observers to polling stations, reducing the possibility of independent monitors. With three days of voting in almost 100,000 polling stations in the country, it is difficult to have true control. Only registered candidates or state-backed advisory bodies can assign observers to polling stations, reducing the likelihood of independent observers. With voting lasting three days in nearly 100,000 polling stations in the country, any real control is difficult anyway.

Ukraine and the West have also condemned Russia for holding the vote in Ukrainian regions that Moscow’s forces have seized and occupied.

The Kremlin excluded from the vote two politicians who sought to run on an anti-war program and who had genuine, though not overwhelming, support, thus depriving voters of any choice on the “main issue on Russia’s political agenda,” he said. political analyst Abbas Gallyamov, who used to work as Putin’s speechwriter.

The scattered Russian opposition has urged those dissatisfied with Putin or the war to go to the polls on Sunday at noon, the last day of voting, in protest. The strategy was endorsed by Navalny shortly before his death.

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