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 had already been decided, but which resulted in more than half of the names on the electoral list being voted out. The vote was marked by drone attacks on Belgorod by Ukraine, sabotage and vandalism by Russian activists, and cyberattacks by foreigners in Russia's first election using electronic voting.
As Ukrainians in regions illegally annexed by Russia are forced to vote, Ukrainian forces and Russian volunteers against Putin's regime are trying to destabilize the electoral process that the Kremlin wants to present as a victory. Two people were killed in a Ukrainian drone strike in Belgorod, 80 kilometers from Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city.
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 TASS news agency. However, if Russian volunteers are believed to be fighting for Ukraine, through the so-called Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), they would have captured 25 Russian soldiers. The group said: “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.”
Kiev also claimed responsibility for a drone attack in the Samara region, which is closer to Kazakhstan than Ukraine. The attack caused a fire at an oil refinery belonging to Rosneft. Also using drones, but in the occupied Zaporizhya region, a polling station was bombed. On the first day of voting, an explosion occurred near a polling station in the town of Skadovsk, in Kherson, on the left bank of the Dnieper River, wounding five Russian soldiers.
Attacks also occurred in cyberspace. Russian authorities said election infrastructure was the target of 90,000 cyberattacks on Friday alone. Among the cyberattacks that Moscow says originated in Ukraine, Western Europe and North America, the most notable was “two million false votes per second” at one point.
But the attacks did not come only from abroad. Cases of vandalism were recorded at polling stations, including a fire and several people pouring a green liquid into the ballot boxes, in what will be a tribute to Alexei Navalny, who in 2017 was attacked in the face with a green disinfectant. Russian lawmakers have already proposed more repressive laws to punish election saboteurs with sentences of up to eight years in prison.
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