Mop in front of the camera – Russia “chooses”
“About 5,000 cases of manipulation”
For President Putin, the election of Russia’s new State Duma is an important test of sentiment. There are many allegations that everything was not clean when the vote was taken. WELT correspondent Christoph Wanner reports from Moscow.
Vladimir Putin’s party will maintain its majority in the Russian parliament despite heavy losses. Huge allegations of electoral fraud overshadowed Russia’s elections. Some cases have been documented with the help of surveillance cameras.
DrRussia’s parliamentary and regional elections have been overshadowed by massive allegations of fraud. With the help of surveillance cameras, some cases have been documented – and shared on social media.
A video recording shows a mop in front of a surveillance camera that is supposed to have a ballot box. The Electoral Commission had previously promised that the videos should be shown on the Internet.
Another video clip shows a worker at a polling station in the city of Kemerovo, western Siberia. I clearly stood in front of the ballot box. Behind her you can see a hand, next to the Russian flag, probably putting ballot papers into the ballot box over and over again. The woman looks awkward in the room.
After a quarter of the votes cast were counted, the “United Russia” party of Vladimir Putin received 44.26 percent of the vote. In the last general election in 2016, the party achieved 54 percent. The Communist Party came in second place on Sunday evening with 22.31 percent of the vote, followed by the nationalist party LDPR with 8.5 percent.
Thousands of violations across the country
GOLOs’ independent election observers have recorded thousands of violations across the country. They reported, for example, that voters had already received the cross of the Kremlin party, United Russia. At another polling station, it was said that the ballpoint pen did not work – only a pencil was on hand.
In the Chelyabinsk region in the Urals, a woman, Golos said, reported that she wanted to vote with her husband. According to the transcript, she has already voted. Presumably someone else voted for her. According to Golos, there were also similar examples in other regions of the world’s largest country by area – for example in Saint Petersburg. A Russian woman living in Israel said she was able to vote twice – both online and at a polling station.
The parliamentary election is the last vote before the 2024 presidential election. Putin, who turns 69 next month, did not say whether he would run.
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