Voters in Russia but also in the occupied regions of Ukraine voted for the second and penultimate day in a vote in which the winner was already determined, but which still led to more than half of the names on the electoral roll voting. The vote was marked by drone attacks on Belgorod by Ukraine, sabotage and vandalism by Russian activists, and cyberattacks from foreigners in the first Russian elections with electronic voting.
While in regions illegally annexed by Russia Ukrainians are coerced into voting, Ukrainian forces and Russian volunteers against Putin’s regime try to destabilize the electoral act that the Kremlin wants to present as a triumph. Two people were killed in Ukrainian drone bombings in Belgorod, which is 80 kilometers from Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv.
The region’s governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov, ordered the closure of shopping centers and schools next week due to insecurity. Local authorities denied reports of explosions at polling stations in the border city, according to the Russian news agency Tass. However, if Russian volunteers fighting for Ukraine, through the so-called Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), are to be believed, they will have captured 25 Russian soldiers. “The limited military operation in the Belgorod and Kursk regions continues and here is the confirmation: a new batch of prisoners from the Russian Armed Forces,” the group said.
Kiev also claimed an attack with unmanned aircraft in the Samara region, closer to Kazakhstan than Ukraine. The attack caused a fire at an oil refinery belonging to Rosneft. Also with drones, but in the occupied region of Zaporíjia, a polling station was hit. On the first day of voting, an explosion near a polling station in the town of Skadovsk, in Kherson, on the left bank of the Dnieper, injured five Russian soldiers.
Attacks have also taken place in cyberspace. Russian authorities said election infrastructure was the target of 90,000 cyberattacks on Friday alone. Among the computer attacks that Moscow says originated in Ukraine, Western Europe and North America, the highlight was “two million false votes per second” at one point.
But the attacks didn’t just come from abroad. Cases of vandalism were recorded at polling stations, including a fire and several people pouring green liquid into the ballot boxes, in what will be a tribute to Alexai Navalny, who in 2017 was attacked in the face with a green disinfectant. Russian deputies have already suggested more repressive laws to punish election saboteurs with sentences of up to eight years in prison.
