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By Guy Faulconbridge and Andrew Osborn
MOSCOW, Russia (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine on Friday of trying to disrupt Russia’s presidential election by shelling Russian territory and 2,500 armed troops to try to violate his country’s borders, and vowed to punish Kiev for its actions.
The first day of the election was also marked by disruptions: dye was added to the ballot box, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a polling station in Putin’s hometown, and cyberattacks were reported.
Millions of Russians voted in the country’s 11 time zones at the start of the three-day election, which will nearly give Putin another six years in the Kremlin.
The shadow of the war in Ukraine has fallen over the elections, with what Putin has described as repeated shelling of Russia’s western regions and attempts through Ukrainian proxies to enter Russian territory in two Russian regions.
“These enemy moves will not go unpunished,” Putin visibly told an assembly of Russia’s Security Council, which includes army and intelligence chiefs, as well as the state’s most hardline civilian officials.
Putin said there were 4 attacks in the Belgorod region and one in the Kursk region by Ukrainian armed agents, totaling about 2,500. He said they had 35 tanks and 40 armored vehicles and that 60% of them had been killed.
Ukrainian officials said Friday that Russian armed teams in Ukraine and opposed to the Kremlin carried out attacks in the Belgorod and Kursk regions.
Amid the war in Ukraine, the deadliest confrontation in Europe since World War II, Putin, 71, dominates the Russian political landscape and none of the three candidates in the poll pose a credible challenge.
More than 114 million Russians have the right to vote, adding what Moscow calls its “new territories” — four regions of Ukraine that its forces partially control but claim to be part of Russia. Ukraine claims that the holding of elections in that country is illegal and null and void.
Dyeing, CYBERATTACKS
According to Russian media, dye was poured at polling stations in Moscow, Russian-annexed Crimea and the Caucasian region of Karachyyevi-Cherkessia, blatant anti-Kremlin protests.
CCTV footage of an incident in which dye was poured showed a young woman casting her vote before calmly pouring a green liquid into the ballot box. A police officer realized he was arresting him without delay.
A Molotov cocktail was thrown at a polling station in St. Petersburg and a 21-year-old woman was detained, the Fontanka news site reported. Arson attempts were reported at polling stations in Moscow and Siberia.
The head of Russia’s election commission, Ella Pamfilova, said the perpetrators faced up to five years in jail and warned they had been paid through those who tried to disrupt the vote.
“Listen to everyone,” Pamfilova said, before recalling the article of the Penal Code that deals with disturbing the work of election commissions.
Around 6:40 p. m. Moscow time (15:40 GMT), the national turnout was at its highest, around 26. 6 percent. The call for electronic voting was such that the formula was overloaded.
The Kremlin says Putin, who has been in office as president or prime minister since the last day of 1999, will win because he has ample possibilities to save Russia from post-Soviet chaos and oppose what it sees as an arrogant and hostile West.
The election commission said there were more than 10,000 attacks on electronic voting systems and they persisted.
VETERAN LEADER
Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine between Kyiv’s forces on the one hand and proxies proxies and proxies on the other.
If Putin completes another six-year term, he will surpass Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and Russia’s longest-serving leader since Empress Catherine the Great in the 18th century.
The West sees Putin as an autocrat, a war criminal, a murderer who, according to U. S. officials, has enslaved Russia in a corrupt dictatorship that is leading to its strategic ruin.
But in Russia, the war has helped Putin tighten his grip on the force and boost his popularity among Russians, according to polls and interviews with high-level Russian sources.
Russia’s best-known opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, died last month in an Arctic penal colony and other Kremlin critics are in exile or in prison.
The opposition considers the vote a sham and has called on others across Russia to protest by going to the polls at noon on Sunday at the same time in one of the country’s 11 time zones.
(Reporting via Reuters, Writing by Guy Faulconbridge/Andrew Osborn/Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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