This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones in time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest against a presidential election expected to virtually gift Vladimir Putin another six years of rule, making him the country’s longest-serving leader.
Voting on March 17, the last day of the election held over a span of three days, took place with virtually no opposition to the long-serving incumbent.
Russians not in favor of seeing Putin serve yet another term settled on showing up at polling places simultaneously at midday in large numbers, with some taking steps to spoil their ballots.
Dozens of detentions were reported around the country as the vote took place under tight security, with Russia claiming that Ukraine, which it accused of launching a wave of air attacks that reached as far as Moscow, was attempting to disrupt voting.
Putin’s greatest political rival, Aleksei Navalny, died a month before the polls in an Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances while serving sentences widely seen as politically motivated.
Other serious opponents to Putin are either in jail or exile or were barred from running against him amid a heightened crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The situation left only three token rivals from Kremlin-friendly parties on the ballot — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party.
Despite Navalny’s death, his support for the idea of using the “Noon Against Putin” action to show the strength of the opposition lived on. The protest, a workaround of Russia’s restrictive laws on public assembly, called on people to assemble at polling stations precisely at noon.
While it was difficult to determine voters’ reasoning for showing up to vote, many appeared to be answering the call to protest across the country as the deadline moved from Russia’s Far East toward Moscow, and from then to the western area of the country and parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia.
Videos and images posted on social media showed long lines of voters formed at noon in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“The action has achieved its goals,” said Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, on YouTube. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The protests were accompanied by a heavy police presence and the threat of long prison terms for those seen as disrupting the voting process.
The OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests in Russia, said that more than 65 people were arrested in 14 cities across the country on March 17.
Twenty people in Kazan, in the Tatarstan region, were detained and later released, according to Current Time. One Ufa resident was reportedly detained for trying to stuff a photograph of Navalny into a ballot box. And in Moscow, a voter was detained after he appeared at a polling station wearing a T-shirt bearing Navalny’s name.
In St. Petersburg, a woman was reportedly arrested after she threw a firebomb at a polling station entrance, others were detained elsewhere in the country for spoiling ballots with green antiseptic into ballot boxes.
Some activists were reportedly summoned to visit Federal Security Service branches precisely at 12 p.m., the same time the protest was expected.
Outside Russia, Russian citizens also reportedly took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, including in Tokyo, Istanbul, and Phuket. In Moldova, voting at the Russian Consulate in Chisinau was reportedly delayed after an apparent fire-bombing.
The Moscow prosecutor’s office earlier warned of criminal prosecution of those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there are “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
The OVD-Info human rights group issued a statement labeled “How to Protect Yourself” ahead of the planned protest, also saying not to bring posters or banners and “do not demonstrate symbols that can attract the attention of the police, do not shout slogans. If you are asked why you came at noon, do not give the real reason.”
Russian election officials, officially, said that as of late afternoon on March 17 more than 70 percent of the country’s 114 million eligible voters had cast ballots either in person or online.
Observers widely predict that there was virtually no chance that Putin would not gain another term in office. A victory would hand him his fifth presidential term over a span of 24 years, interrupted only by his time spent as prime minister from 2008-2012.
Over the first two days, some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule by vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids, with Russian officials and independent media reporting at least 28 cases.
Incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd.
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
On March 16, independent media reported that Russian police had opened at least 28 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, a number expected to grow.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of the Security Council, on March 16 denounced election protesters as “villains” and “traitors” who are aiding the country’s enemies, particularly Ukraine.
“This is direct assistance to those degenerates who are shelling our cities today,” he said on Telegram. “Criminal activists at polling stations should be aware that they can rattle for 20 years in a special regime [prison],” he added.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the full-scale war Moscow launched against Ukraine in February 2022.
Meanwhile, Ukraine stepped up attacks on Russia leading up to the election, including strikes deep inside the country.
On March 17, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported downing 35 Ukrainian drones overnight, including four in the Moscow region. Other drones were reportedly downed in the Kaluga and Yaroslavl regions neighboring the Moscow region, and in the Belgorod, Kursk, and Rostov regions along Russia’s southwestern border with Ukraine.
On March 16, Ukrainian forces shelled the border city of Belgorod and the village of Glotovo, killing at least three people and wounding eight others, Russian officials said.
The same day, a Ukrainian drone strike caused a fire at an oil refinery that belongs to Russian oil giant Rosneft in the Samara region, some 850 kilometers southeast of Moscow, regional Governor Dmitry Azarov said. An attack on another refinery was thwarted, he added.
Ukraine generally does not comment on attacks inside Russia, but Reuters quoted an unidentified Ukrainian source as saying that Kyiv’s SBU intelligence agency was behind strikes at three Samara region Rosneft refineries — Syzran, Novokuibyshevsky, and Kuibyshevsky, which is inside the Samara city limits.
“The SBU continues to implement its strategy to undermine the economic potential of the Russian Federation that allows it to wage war in Ukraine,” the news agency quoted the source as saying.
Russian authorities, who have accused Kyiv of launching assaults designed to disrupt voting, claimed that Ukraine on March 16 dropped a missile on a voting station in a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region, although the report could not be verified.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Reuters, and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones in time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest against a presidential election expected to virtually gift Vladimir Putin another six years of rule, making him the country’s longest-serving leader.
Voting on March 17, the last day of the election held over a span of three days, took place with virtually no opposition to the long-serving incumbent.
Russians not in favor of seeing Putin serve yet another term settled on showing up at polling places simultaneously at midday in large numbers, with some taking steps to spoil their ballots.
Dozens of detentions were reported around the country as the vote took place under tight security, with Russia claiming that Ukraine, which it accused of launching a wave of air attacks that reached as far as Moscow, was attempting to disrupt voting.
Putin’s greatest political rival, Aleksei Navalny, died a month before the polls in an Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances while serving sentences widely seen as politically motivated.
Other serious opponents to Putin are either in jail or exile or were barred from running against him amid a heightened crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The situation left only three token rivals from Kremlin-friendly parties on the ballot — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party.
Despite Navalny’s death, his support for the idea of using the “Noon Against Putin” action to show the strength of the opposition lived on. The protest, a workaround of Russia’s restrictive laws on public assembly, called on people to assemble at polling stations precisely at noon.
While it was difficult to determine voters’ reasoning for showing up to vote, many appeared to be answering the call to protest across the country as the deadline moved from Russia’s Far East toward Moscow, and from then to the western area of the country and parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia.
Videos and images posted on social media showed long lines of voters formed at noon in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“The action has achieved its goals,” said Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, on YouTube. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The protests were accompanied by a heavy police presence and the threat of long prison terms for those seen as disrupting the voting process.
The OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests in Russia, said that more than 65 people were arrested in 14 cities across the country on March 17.
Twenty people in Kazan, in the Tatarstan region, were detained and later released, according to Current Time. One Ufa resident was reportedly detained for trying to stuff a photograph of Navalny into a ballot box. And in Moscow, a voter was detained after he appeared at a polling station wearing a T-shirt bearing Navalny’s name.
In St. Petersburg, a woman was reportedly arrested after she threw a firebomb at a polling station entrance, others were detained elsewhere in the country for spoiling ballots with green antiseptic into ballot boxes.
Some activists were reportedly summoned to visit Federal Security Service branches precisely at 12 p.m., the same time the protest was expected.
Outside Russia, Russian citizens also reportedly took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, including in Tokyo, Istanbul, and Phuket. In Moldova, voting at the Russian Consulate in Chisinau was reportedly delayed after an apparent fire-bombing.
The Moscow prosecutor’s office earlier warned of criminal prosecution of those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there are “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
The OVD-Info human rights group issued a statement labeled “How to Protect Yourself” ahead of the planned protest, also saying not to bring posters or banners and “do not demonstrate symbols that can attract the attention of the police, do not shout slogans. If you are asked why you came at noon, do not give the real reason.”
Russian election officials, officially, said that as of late afternoon on March 17 more than 70 percent of the country’s 114 million eligible voters had cast ballots either in person or online.
Observers widely predict that there was virtually no chance that Putin would not gain another term in office. A victory would hand him his fifth presidential term over a span of 24 years, interrupted only by his time spent as prime minister from 2008-2012.
Over the first two days, some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule by vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids, with Russian officials and independent media reporting at least 28 cases.
Incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd.
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
On March 16, independent media reported that Russian police had opened at least 28 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, a number expected to grow.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of the Security Council, on March 16 denounced election protesters as “villains” and “traitors” who are aiding the country’s enemies, particularly Ukraine.
“This is direct assistance to those degenerates who are shelling our cities today,” he said on Telegram. “Criminal activists at polling stations should be aware that they can rattle for 20 years in a special regime [prison],” he added.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the full-scale war Moscow launched against Ukraine in February 2022.
Meanwhile, Ukraine stepped up attacks on Russia leading up to the election, including strikes deep inside the country.
On March 17, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported downing 35 Ukrainian drones overnight, including four in the Moscow region. Other drones were reportedly downed in the Kaluga and Yaroslavl regions neighboring the Moscow region, and in the Belgorod, Kursk, and Rostov regions along Russia’s southwestern border with Ukraine.
On March 16, Ukrainian forces shelled the border city of Belgorod and the village of Glotovo, killing at least three people and wounding eight others, Russian officials said.
The same day, a Ukrainian drone strike caused a fire at an oil refinery that belongs to Russian oil giant Rosneft in the Samara region, some 850 kilometers southeast of Moscow, regional Governor Dmitry Azarov said. An attack on another refinery was thwarted, he added.
Ukraine generally does not comment on attacks inside Russia, but Reuters quoted an unidentified Ukrainian source as saying that Kyiv’s SBU intelligence agency was behind strikes at three Samara region Rosneft refineries — Syzran, Novokuibyshevsky, and Kuibyshevsky, which is inside the Samara city limits.
“The SBU continues to implement its strategy to undermine the economic potential of the Russian Federation that allows it to wage war in Ukraine,” the news agency quoted the source as saying.
Russian authorities, who have accused Kyiv of launching assaults designed to disrupt voting, claimed that Ukraine on March 16 dropped a missile on a voting station in a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region, although the report could not be verified.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Reuters, and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones in time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest against a presidential election expected to virtually gift Vladimir Putin another six years of rule, making him the country’s longest-serving leader.
Voting on March 17, the last day of the election held over a span of three days, took place with virtually no opposition to the long-serving incumbent.
Russians not in favor of seeing Putin serve yet another term settled on showing up at polling places simultaneously at midday in large numbers, with some taking steps to spoil their ballots.
Dozens of detentions were reported around the country as the vote took place under tight security, with Russia claiming that Ukraine, which it accused of launching a wave of air attacks that reached as far as Moscow, was attempting to disrupt voting.
Putin’s greatest political rival, Aleksei Navalny, died a month before the polls in an Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances while serving sentences widely seen as politically motivated.
Other serious opponents to Putin are either in jail or exile or were barred from running against him amid a heightened crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The situation left only three token rivals from Kremlin-friendly parties on the ballot — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party.
Despite Navalny’s death, his support for the idea of using the “Noon Against Putin” action to show the strength of the opposition lived on. The protest, a workaround of Russia’s restrictive laws on public assembly, called on people to assemble at polling stations precisely at noon.
While it was difficult to determine voters’ reasoning for showing up to vote, many appeared to be answering the call to protest across the country as the deadline moved from Russia’s Far East toward Moscow, and from then to the western area of the country and parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia.
Videos and images posted on social media showed long lines of voters formed at noon in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“The action has achieved its goals,” said Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, on YouTube. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The protests were accompanied by a heavy police presence and the threat of long prison terms for those seen as disrupting the voting process.
The OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests in Russia, said that more than 65 people were arrested in 14 cities across the country on March 17.
Twenty people in Kazan, in the Tatarstan region, were detained and later released, according to Current Time. One Ufa resident was reportedly detained for trying to stuff a photograph of Navalny into a ballot box. And in Moscow, a voter was detained after he appeared at a polling station wearing a T-shirt bearing Navalny’s name.
In St. Petersburg, a woman was reportedly arrested after she threw a firebomb at a polling station entrance, others were detained elsewhere in the country for spoiling ballots with green antiseptic into ballot boxes.
Some activists were reportedly summoned to visit Federal Security Service branches precisely at 12 p.m., the same time the protest was expected.
Outside Russia, Russian citizens also reportedly took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, including in Tokyo, Istanbul, and Phuket. In Moldova, voting at the Russian Consulate in Chisinau was reportedly delayed after an apparent fire-bombing.
The Moscow prosecutor’s office earlier warned of criminal prosecution of those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there are “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
The OVD-Info human rights group issued a statement labeled “How to Protect Yourself” ahead of the planned protest, also saying not to bring posters or banners and “do not demonstrate symbols that can attract the attention of the police, do not shout slogans. If you are asked why you came at noon, do not give the real reason.”
Russian election officials, officially, said that as of late afternoon on March 17 more than 70 percent of the country’s 114 million eligible voters had cast ballots either in person or online.
Observers widely predict that there was virtually no chance that Putin would not gain another term in office. A victory would hand him his fifth presidential term over a span of 24 years, interrupted only by his time spent as prime minister from 2008-2012.
Over the first two days, some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule by vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids, with Russian officials and independent media reporting at least 28 cases.
Incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd.
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
On March 16, independent media reported that Russian police had opened at least 28 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, a number expected to grow.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of the Security Council, on March 16 denounced election protesters as “villains” and “traitors” who are aiding the country’s enemies, particularly Ukraine.
“This is direct assistance to those degenerates who are shelling our cities today,” he said on Telegram. “Criminal activists at polling stations should be aware that they can rattle for 20 years in a special regime [prison],” he added.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the full-scale war Moscow launched against Ukraine in February 2022.
Meanwhile, Ukraine stepped up attacks on Russia leading up to the election, including strikes deep inside the country.
On March 17, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported downing 35 Ukrainian drones overnight, including four in the Moscow region. Other drones were reportedly downed in the Kaluga and Yaroslavl regions neighboring the Moscow region, and in the Belgorod, Kursk, and Rostov regions along Russia’s southwestern border with Ukraine.
On March 16, Ukrainian forces shelled the border city of Belgorod and the village of Glotovo, killing at least three people and wounding eight others, Russian officials said.
The same day, a Ukrainian drone strike caused a fire at an oil refinery that belongs to Russian oil giant Rosneft in the Samara region, some 850 kilometers southeast of Moscow, regional Governor Dmitry Azarov said. An attack on another refinery was thwarted, he added.
Ukraine generally does not comment on attacks inside Russia, but Reuters quoted an unidentified Ukrainian source as saying that Kyiv’s SBU intelligence agency was behind strikes at three Samara region Rosneft refineries — Syzran, Novokuibyshevsky, and Kuibyshevsky, which is inside the Samara city limits.
“The SBU continues to implement its strategy to undermine the economic potential of the Russian Federation that allows it to wage war in Ukraine,” the news agency quoted the source as saying.
Russian authorities, who have accused Kyiv of launching assaults designed to disrupt voting, claimed that Ukraine on March 16 dropped a missile on a voting station in a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region, although the report could not be verified.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Reuters, and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Male students who enrolled in Taliban-run religious schools say that sexual and physical abuse has led some to end their pursuit of an education in Afghanistan.
The students, all of whom were aged 10 to 17 and spoke to RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi on condition of anonymity out of fears of repercussion, described numerous instances in which they and fellow classmates were pressured to engage in sexual acts with teachers and subjected to corporal punishments.
The reported cases took place in western and southwestern Afghanistan at Taliban-run madrasahs, part of the network of religious schools that the extremist group has expanded significantly as part of its drive to foster religious education more in keeping with its hard-line Islamist views.
One 16-year-old student, a resident of Farah Province, described being propositioned by a teacher at the madrasah he attends.
“One day at school a Taliban member who teaches there made an inappropriate offer, but I did not accept it,” the boy told Radio Azadi, using inexplicit language to describe sexual abuse, a culturally taboo topic in Afghanistan. “When the lessons were over, he bothered me again.”
The boy said he reported the incidents to a “qari,” a person who has memorized the Koran and serves as a religious authority at the school, to no avail.
“I told the qari that the teacher was doing bad things to me, and the qari told him not to do these things, that he was a teacher,” the boy said. “The teacher admitted doing it, but it had no effect. He has continued to do bad things and made sexual requests to numerous students at the school.”
A Taliban-controlled madrasah in Afghanistan Another student in southwestern Afghanistan, a 17-year-old in the 10th grade, gave a similar account of his experience during his six months studying at a Taliban-run madrasah.
“A Taliban member who teaches at the school proposed having a relationship with me and said some other things that I did not accept,” the boy said.
After being refused, the teacher swore and issued threats, the boy said, adding that his fellow students have faced similar treatment.
“He also harassed several of my classmates, and one of them left the school,” the boy said. “He told me I should not go to school anymore because the same teacher is harassing me.”
The boy said the experience has left him “damaged” and unsure of whom he can confide in. “I can’t tell my family,” he said.
The Taliban has come under widespread criticism for the severe restrictions it has placed on the daily lives of the Afghans since seizing power in August 2021. In its pursuit to impose its extreme interpretation of Islam, the Taliban has restored many of the draconian rules it was infamous for during its first stint in power from 1996 to 2001.
The ban on the education of girls past the sixth grade, and the erasure of women’s role in society stand out among the measures the Taliban has taken. But other steps — including prohibitions on music and idolatry through art, and pressure against students and teachers — have affected all walks of life regardless of sex.
Since the Taliban returned to power, many educators have left the country, while female teachers have been left at home without work due to restrictions on women’s freedom of movement and their ability to teach males.
Meanwhile, the Taliban has steadily worked to replace secular state schools and informal madrasahs with a system of religious schooling. The system does allow for girl students, including those of university age, but critics say it falls far short of the standards of modern education for girls and boys alike and often promotes extremism.
According to a report on Afghanistan issued by the United Nations in February, the Taliban has established 6,836 madrasahs for males and 380 for females and was expected to finalize a standardized religious curriculum in time for the new school year beginning this month.
Afghan boys read the Koran at a madrasah in Kabul. The recruitment of madrasah teachers is also in full swing, according to the report, following a decree by the Taliban’s spiritual leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada to have 100,000 new madrasah teachers in place.
In December, Human Rights Watch gave a stinging assessment of the state of education in general, saying that in addition to the obstacles to the education of girls and women, the Taliban had “also inflicted deep harm on boys’ education” in Afghanistan.
“Many boys were previously taught by women teachers; the Taliban has prohibited women from teaching boys, depriving women teachers of their jobs and often leaving boys with unqualified replacement male teachers or sometimes no teachers at all,” HRW said. “Parents and students said that corporal punishment, which has long been a problem at Afghan schools, has become increasingly common. The curriculum in many schools appears to be under revision to remove important school subjects and promote discrimination.”
The rights watchdog said the circumstances had “led many boys to leave school altogether” and “left boys struggling with mental health problems such as anxiety and depression.”
Shortly after the Taliban regained power, the United Nations highlighted the dire situation for children in Afghanistan, including exposure to sexual violence and increased risk of students dropping out of school.
A madrasah in Kandahar Difficulties in ensuring the protection of children are exacerbated, according to the UN, by the Taliban’s refusal to consider people below the age of 18 to be children, as is the international standard, instead using the onset of puberty as the basis for adulthood.
Younger madrasah students in western and southwestern Afghanistan below or at the age of puberty said they were not spared physical abuse and sexual harassment from teachers.
One young man who spoke to Radio Azadi said he recently learned that his young brother was being subjected to sexual abuse at a madrasah in western Afghanistan.
The young man said his brother was being assigned extracurricular “homework by a teacher, or to put it bluntly, he was being asked for sex, [the teacher] fondled his hands and feet and kissed him.”
As a result, the young man said he told his brother not to go to school anymore.
Fear of sexual harassment and sexual and physical abuse were cited as a common factor leading boys in western and southwestern Afghanistan to give up their studies.
“Some teachers harass our students and make immoral requests,” said one 14-year-old boy who also described common methods of corporal punishment at his madrasah. “They strike our faces or beat our hands and feet under the pretext of disciplining us for not learning our lessons properly.”
Afghan boys peek out from inside a madrasah in Kandahar. The boy said many students were studying hard in fear of being taken to a special room for punishment, and that “some even drop out of school.”
Another student, aged 10, said his teacher separated him and other students from their class to beat the soles of their feet.
Afterward, he told Radio Azadi, he stopped going to class because he was afraid. And upon hearing about the incidents, his and his classmates’ parents “did not allow us to go to school.”
The Taliban authorities did not respond to requests for comment on the allegations of abuse at madrasahs it has established. And efforts to speak to individuals aware of the situations at madrasahs in other areas of Afghanistan were met by refusals to comment due to fear of reprisals.
A women’s rights activist who asked that her name not be published told Radio Azadi that families have no avenue to lodge complaints about the abuse their children encounter at Taliban-run madrasahs because they, too, would face threats.
The activist said that not only had she been made aware of sexual harassment against both girls and boys at Taliban-run madrasahs, but the curriculum also serves to “increase the level of extremism in the country.”
Reducing the risks of both threats, she said, would require greater oversight by the Taliban authorities and ideally, she said, a reduction in the number of madrasahs.
Najib Amini, a civil society activist in western Afghanistan, said that for now, the onus falls on families to be aware.
“Children are subjected to sexual abuse in madrasahs established under the Taliban regime,” Amini said. “Families have an important and essential role in this regard. If they do not want their children to be abused in schools, if they want their children to get a basic education…then they should not send their children to madrasahs under the control of the Taliban.”
Written by Michael Scollon based on reporting by RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones in time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest against a presidential election expected to virtually gift Vladimir Putin another six years of rule, making him the country’s longest-serving leader.
Voting on March 17, the last day of the election held over a span of three days, took place with virtually no opposition to the long-serving incumbent.
Russians not in favor of seeing Putin serve yet another term settled on showing up at polling places simultaneously at midday in large numbers, with some taking steps to spoil their ballots.
Dozens of detentions were reported around the country as the vote took place under tight security, with Russia claiming that Ukraine, which it accused of launching a wave of air attacks that reached as far as Moscow, was attempting to disrupt voting.
Putin’s greatest political rival, Aleksei Navalny, died a month before the polls in an Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances while serving sentences widely seen as politically motivated.
Other serious opponents to Putin are either in jail or exile or were barred from running against him amid a heightened crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The situation left only three token rivals from Kremlin-friendly parties on the ballot — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party.
Despite Navalny’s death, his support for the idea of using the “Noon Against Putin” action to show the strength of the opposition lived on. The protest, a workaround of Russia’s restrictive laws on public assembly, called on people to assemble at polling stations precisely at noon.
While it was difficult to determine voters’ reasoning for showing up to vote, many appeared to be answering the call to protest across the country as the deadline moved from Russia’s Far East toward Moscow, and from then to the western area of the country and parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia.
Videos and images posted on social media showed long lines of voters formed at noon in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“The action has achieved its goals,” said Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, on YouTube. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The protests were accompanied by a heavy police presence and the threat of long prison terms for those seen as disrupting the voting process.
The OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests in Russia, said that more than 65 people were arrested in 14 cities across the country on March 17.
Twenty people in Kazan, in the Tatarstan region, were detained and later released, according to Current Time. One Ufa resident was reportedly detained for trying to stuff a photograph of Navalny into a ballot box. And in Moscow, a voter was detained after he appeared at a polling station wearing a T-shirt bearing Navalny’s name.
In St. Petersburg, a woman was reportedly arrested after she threw a firebomb at a polling station entrance, others were detained elsewhere in the country for spoiling ballots with green antiseptic into ballot boxes.
Some activists were reportedly summoned to visit Federal Security Service branches precisely at 12 p.m., the same time the protest was expected.
Outside Russia, Russian citizens also reportedly took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, including in Tokyo, Istanbul, and Phuket. In Moldova, voting at the Russian Consulate in Chisinau was reportedly delayed after an apparent fire-bombing.
The Moscow prosecutor’s office earlier warned of criminal prosecution of those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there are “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
The OVD-Info human rights group issued a statement labeled “How to Protect Yourself” ahead of the planned protest, also saying not to bring posters or banners and “do not demonstrate symbols that can attract the attention of the police, do not shout slogans. If you are asked why you came at noon, do not give the real reason.”
Russian election officials, officially, said that as of late afternoon on March 17 more than 70 percent of the country’s 114 million eligible voters had cast ballots either in person or online.
Observers widely predict that there was virtually no chance that Putin would not gain another term in office. A victory would hand him his fifth presidential term over a span of 24 years, interrupted only by his time spent as prime minister from 2008-2012.
Over the first two days, some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule by vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids, with Russian officials and independent media reporting at least 28 cases.
Incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd.
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
On March 16, independent media reported that Russian police had opened at least 28 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, a number expected to grow.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of the Security Council, on March 16 denounced election protesters as “villains” and “traitors” who are aiding the country’s enemies, particularly Ukraine.
“This is direct assistance to those degenerates who are shelling our cities today,” he said on Telegram. “Criminal activists at polling stations should be aware that they can rattle for 20 years in a special regime [prison],” he added.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the full-scale war Moscow launched against Ukraine in February 2022.
Meanwhile, Ukraine stepped up attacks on Russia leading up to the election, including strikes deep inside the country.
On March 17, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported downing 35 Ukrainian drones overnight, including four in the Moscow region. Other drones were reportedly downed in the Kaluga and Yaroslavl regions neighboring the Moscow region, and in the Belgorod, Kursk, and Rostov regions along Russia’s southwestern border with Ukraine.
On March 16, Ukrainian forces shelled the border city of Belgorod and the village of Glotovo, killing at least three people and wounding eight others, Russian officials said.
The same day, a Ukrainian drone strike caused a fire at an oil refinery that belongs to Russian oil giant Rosneft in the Samara region, some 850 kilometers southeast of Moscow, regional Governor Dmitry Azarov said. An attack on another refinery was thwarted, he added.
Ukraine generally does not comment on attacks inside Russia, but Reuters quoted an unidentified Ukrainian source as saying that Kyiv’s SBU intelligence agency was behind strikes at three Samara region Rosneft refineries — Syzran, Novokuibyshevsky, and Kuibyshevsky, which is inside the Samara city limits.
“The SBU continues to implement its strategy to undermine the economic potential of the Russian Federation that allows it to wage war in Ukraine,” the news agency quoted the source as saying.
Russian authorities, who have accused Kyiv of launching assaults designed to disrupt voting, claimed that Ukraine on March 16 dropped a missile on a voting station in a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region, although the report could not be verified.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Reuters, and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones in time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest against a presidential election expected to virtually gift Vladimir Putin another six years of rule, making him the country’s longest-serving leader.
Voting on March 17, the last day of the election held over a span of three days, took place with virtually no opposition to the long-serving incumbent.
Russians not in favor of seeing Putin serve yet another term settled on showing up at polling places simultaneously at midday in large numbers, with some taking steps to spoil their ballots.
Dozens of detentions were reported around the country as the vote took place under tight security, with Russia claiming that Ukraine, which it accused of launching a wave of air attacks that reached as far as Moscow, was attempting to disrupt voting.
Putin’s greatest political rival, Aleksei Navalny, died a month before the polls in an Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances while serving sentences widely seen as politically motivated.
Other serious opponents to Putin are either in jail or exile or were barred from running against him amid a heightened crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The situation left only three token rivals from Kremlin-friendly parties on the ballot — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party.
Despite Navalny’s death, his support for the idea of using the “Noon Against Putin” action to show the strength of the opposition lived on. The protest, a workaround of Russia’s restrictive laws on public assembly, called on people to assemble at polling stations precisely at noon.
While it was difficult to determine voters’ reasoning for showing up to vote, many appeared to be answering the call to protest across the country as the deadline moved from Russia’s Far East toward Moscow, and from then to the western area of the country and parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia.
Videos and images posted on social media showed long lines of voters formed at noon in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“The action has achieved its goals,” said Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, on YouTube. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The protests were accompanied by a heavy police presence and the threat of long prison terms for those seen as disrupting the voting process.
The OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests in Russia, said that more than 65 people were arrested in 14 cities across the country on March 17.
Twenty people in Kazan, in the Tatarstan region, were detained and later released, according to Current Time. One Ufa resident was reportedly detained for trying to stuff a photograph of Navalny into a ballot box. And in Moscow, a voter was detained after he appeared at a polling station wearing a T-shirt bearing Navalny’s name.
In St. Petersburg, a woman was reportedly arrested after she threw a firebomb at a polling station entrance, others were detained elsewhere in the country for spoiling ballots with green antiseptic into ballot boxes.
Some activists were reportedly summoned to visit Federal Security Service branches precisely at 12 p.m., the same time the protest was expected.
Outside Russia, Russian citizens also reportedly took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, including in Tokyo, Istanbul, and Phuket. In Moldova, voting at the Russian Consulate in Chisinau was reportedly delayed after an apparent fire-bombing.
The Moscow prosecutor’s office earlier warned of criminal prosecution of those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there are “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
The OVD-Info human rights group issued a statement labeled “How to Protect Yourself” ahead of the planned protest, also saying not to bring posters or banners and “do not demonstrate symbols that can attract the attention of the police, do not shout slogans. If you are asked why you came at noon, do not give the real reason.”
Russian election officials, officially, said that as of late afternoon on March 17 more than 70 percent of the country’s 114 million eligible voters had cast ballots either in person or online.
Observers widely predict that there was virtually no chance that Putin would not gain another term in office. A victory would hand him his fifth presidential term over a span of 24 years, interrupted only by his time spent as prime minister from 2008-2012.
Over the first two days, some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule by vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids, with Russian officials and independent media reporting at least 28 cases.
Incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd.
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
On March 16, independent media reported that Russian police had opened at least 28 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, a number expected to grow.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of the Security Council, on March 16 denounced election protesters as “villains” and “traitors” who are aiding the country’s enemies, particularly Ukraine.
“This is direct assistance to those degenerates who are shelling our cities today,” he said on Telegram. “Criminal activists at polling stations should be aware that they can rattle for 20 years in a special regime [prison],” he added.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the full-scale war Moscow launched against Ukraine in February 2022.
Meanwhile, Ukraine stepped up attacks on Russia leading up to the election, including strikes deep inside the country.
On March 17, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported downing 35 Ukrainian drones overnight, including four in the Moscow region. Other drones were reportedly downed in the Kaluga and Yaroslavl regions neighboring the Moscow region, and in the Belgorod, Kursk, and Rostov regions along Russia’s southwestern border with Ukraine.
On March 16, Ukrainian forces shelled the border city of Belgorod and the village of Glotovo, killing at least three people and wounding eight others, Russian officials said.
The same day, a Ukrainian drone strike caused a fire at an oil refinery that belongs to Russian oil giant Rosneft in the Samara region, some 850 kilometers southeast of Moscow, regional Governor Dmitry Azarov said. An attack on another refinery was thwarted, he added.
Ukraine generally does not comment on attacks inside Russia, but Reuters quoted an unidentified Ukrainian source as saying that Kyiv’s SBU intelligence agency was behind strikes at three Samara region Rosneft refineries — Syzran, Novokuibyshevsky, and Kuibyshevsky, which is inside the Samara city limits.
“The SBU continues to implement its strategy to undermine the economic potential of the Russian Federation that allows it to wage war in Ukraine,” the news agency quoted the source as saying.
Russian authorities, who have accused Kyiv of launching assaults designed to disrupt voting, claimed that Ukraine on March 16 dropped a missile on a voting station in a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region, although the report could not be verified.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Reuters, and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones in time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest against a presidential election expected to virtually gift Vladimir Putin another six years of rule, making him the country’s longest-serving leader.
Voting on March 17, the last day of the election held over a span of three days, took place with virtually no opposition to the long-serving incumbent.
Russians not in favor of seeing Putin serve yet another term settled on showing up at polling places simultaneously at midday in large numbers, with some taking steps to spoil their ballots.
Dozens of detentions were reported around the country as the vote took place under tight security, with Russia claiming that Ukraine, which it accused of launching a wave of air attacks that reached as far as Moscow, was attempting to disrupt voting.
Putin’s greatest political rival, Aleksei Navalny, died a month before the polls in an Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances while serving sentences widely seen as politically motivated.
Other serious opponents to Putin are either in jail or exile or were barred from running against him amid a heightened crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The situation left only three token rivals from Kremlin-friendly parties on the ballot — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party.
Despite Navalny’s death, his support for the idea of using the “Noon Against Putin” action to show the strength of the opposition lived on. The protest, a workaround of Russia’s restrictive laws on public assembly, called on people to assemble at polling stations precisely at noon.
While it was difficult to determine voters’ reasoning for showing up to vote, many appeared to be answering the call to protest across the country as the deadline moved from Russia’s Far East toward Moscow, and from then to the western area of the country and parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia.
Videos and images posted on social media showed long lines of voters formed at noon in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“The action has achieved its goals,” said Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, on YouTube. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The protests were accompanied by a heavy police presence and the threat of long prison terms for those seen as disrupting the voting process.
The OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests in Russia, said that more than 65 people were arrested in 14 cities across the country on March 17.
Twenty people in Kazan, in the Tatarstan region, were detained and later released, according to Current Time. One Ufa resident was reportedly detained for trying to stuff a photograph of Navalny into a ballot box. And in Moscow, a voter was detained after he appeared at a polling station wearing a T-shirt bearing Navalny’s name.
In St. Petersburg, a woman was reportedly arrested after she threw a firebomb at a polling station entrance, others were detained elsewhere in the country for spoiling ballots with green antiseptic into ballot boxes.
Some activists were reportedly summoned to visit Federal Security Service branches precisely at 12 p.m., the same time the protest was expected.
Outside Russia, Russian citizens also reportedly took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, including in Tokyo, Istanbul, and Phuket. In Moldova, voting at the Russian Consulate in Chisinau was reportedly delayed after an apparent fire-bombing.
The Moscow prosecutor’s office earlier warned of criminal prosecution of those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there are “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
The OVD-Info human rights group issued a statement labeled “How to Protect Yourself” ahead of the planned protest, also saying not to bring posters or banners and “do not demonstrate symbols that can attract the attention of the police, do not shout slogans. If you are asked why you came at noon, do not give the real reason.”
Russian election officials, officially, said that as of late afternoon on March 17 more than 70 percent of the country’s 114 million eligible voters had cast ballots either in person or online.
Observers widely predict that there was virtually no chance that Putin would not gain another term in office. A victory would hand him his fifth presidential term over a span of 24 years, interrupted only by his time spent as prime minister from 2008-2012.
Over the first two days, some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule by vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids, with Russian officials and independent media reporting at least 28 cases.
Incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd.
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
On March 16, independent media reported that Russian police had opened at least 28 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, a number expected to grow.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of the Security Council, on March 16 denounced election protesters as “villains” and “traitors” who are aiding the country’s enemies, particularly Ukraine.
“This is direct assistance to those degenerates who are shelling our cities today,” he said on Telegram. “Criminal activists at polling stations should be aware that they can rattle for 20 years in a special regime [prison],” he added.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the full-scale war Moscow launched against Ukraine in February 2022.
Meanwhile, Ukraine stepped up attacks on Russia leading up to the election, including strikes deep inside the country.
On March 17, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported downing 35 Ukrainian drones overnight, including four in the Moscow region. Other drones were reportedly downed in the Kaluga and Yaroslavl regions neighboring the Moscow region, and in the Belgorod, Kursk, and Rostov regions along Russia’s southwestern border with Ukraine.
On March 16, Ukrainian forces shelled the border city of Belgorod and the village of Glotovo, killing at least three people and wounding eight others, Russian officials said.
The same day, a Ukrainian drone strike caused a fire at an oil refinery that belongs to Russian oil giant Rosneft in the Samara region, some 850 kilometers southeast of Moscow, regional Governor Dmitry Azarov said. An attack on another refinery was thwarted, he added.
Ukraine generally does not comment on attacks inside Russia, but Reuters quoted an unidentified Ukrainian source as saying that Kyiv’s SBU intelligence agency was behind strikes at three Samara region Rosneft refineries — Syzran, Novokuibyshevsky, and Kuibyshevsky, which is inside the Samara city limits.
“The SBU continues to implement its strategy to undermine the economic potential of the Russian Federation that allows it to wage war in Ukraine,” the news agency quoted the source as saying.
Russian authorities, who have accused Kyiv of launching assaults designed to disrupt voting, claimed that Ukraine on March 16 dropped a missile on a voting station in a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region, although the report could not be verified.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Reuters, and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The Iranian government “bears responsibility” for the physical violence that led to the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman who died in police custody in 2022, and for the brutal crackdown on largely peaceful street protests that followed, a report by a United Nations fact-finding mission says.
The report, issued on March 8 by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran, said the mission “has established the existence of evidence of trauma to Ms. Amini’s body, inflicted while in the custody of the morality police.”
It said the mission found the “physical violence in custody led to Ms. Amini’s unlawful death…. On that basis, the state bears responsibility for her unlawful death.”
Amini was arrested in Tehran on September 13, 2022, while visiting the Iranian capital with her family. She was detained by Iran’s so-called “morality police” for allegedly improperly wearing her hijab, or hair-covering head scarf. Within hours of her detention, she was hospitalized in a coma and died on September 16.
Her family has denied that Amini suffered from a preexisting health condition that may have contributed to her death, as claimed by the Iranian authorities, and her father has cited eyewitnesses as saying she was beaten while en route to a detention facility.
The fact-finding report said the action “emphasizes the arbitrary character of Ms. Amini’s arrest and detention, which were based on laws and policies governing the mandatory hijab, which fundamentally discriminate against women and girls and are not permissible under international human rights law.”
“Those laws and policies violate the rights to freedom of expression, freedom of religion or belief, and the autonomy of women and girls. Ms. Amini’s arrest and detention, preceding her death in custody, constituted a violation of her right to liberty of person,” it said.
The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran hailed the findings and said they represented clear signs of “crimes against humanity.”
“The Islamic republic’s violent repression of peaceful dissent and severe discrimination against women and girls in Iran has been confirmed as constituting nothing short of crimes against humanity,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the center.
“The government’s brutal crackdown on the Women, Life, Freedom protests has seen a litany of atrocities that include extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape. These violations disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in society, women, children, and minority groups,” he added.
The report also said the Iranian government failed to “comply with its duty” to investigate the woman’s death promptly.
“Most notably, judicial harassment and intimidation were aimed at her family in order to silence them and preempt them from seeking legal redress. Some family members faced arbitrary arrest, while the family’s lawyer, Saleh Nikbaht, and three journalists, Niloofar Hamedi, Elahe Mohammadi, and Nazila Maroufian, who reported on Ms. Amini’s death were arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to imprisonment,” it added.
Amini’s death sparked mass protests, beginning in her home town of Saghez, then spreading around the country, and ultimately posed one of the biggest threats to Iran’s clerical establishment since the foundation of the Islamic republic in 1979. At least 500 people were reported killed in the government’s crackdown on demonstrators.
The UN report said “violations and crimes” under international law committed in the context of the Women, Life, Freedom protests include “extrajudicial and unlawful killings and murder, unnecessary and disproportionate use of force, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture, rape, enforced disappearances, and gender persecution.
“The violent repression of peaceful protests and pervasive institutional discrimination against women and girls has led to serious human rights violations by the government of Iran, many amounting to crimes against humanity,” the report said.
The UN mission acknowledged that some state security forces were killed and injured during the demonstrations, but said it found that the majority of protests were peaceful.
The mission stems from the UN Human Rights Council’s mandate to the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran on November 24, 2022, to investigate alleged human rights violations in Iran related to the protests that followed Amini’s death.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones in time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest against a presidential election expected to virtually gift Vladimir Putin another six years of rule, making him the country’s longest-serving leader.
Voting on March 17, the last day of the election held over a span of three days, took place with virtually no opposition to the long-serving incumbent.
Russians not in favor of seeing Putin serve yet another term settled on showing up at polling places simultaneously at midday in large numbers, with some taking steps to spoil their ballots.
Dozens of detentions were reported around the country as the vote took place under tight security, with Russia claiming that Ukraine, which it accused of launching a wave of air attacks that reached as far as Moscow, was attempting to disrupt voting.
Putin’s greatest political rival, Aleksei Navalny, died a month before the polls in an Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances while serving sentences widely seen as politically motivated.
Other serious opponents to Putin are either in jail or exile or were barred from running against him amid a heightened crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The situation left only three token rivals from Kremlin-friendly parties on the ballot — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party.
Despite Navalny’s death, his support for the idea of using the “Noon Against Putin” action to show the strength of the opposition lived on. The protest, a workaround of Russia’s restrictive laws on public assembly, called on people to assemble at polling stations precisely at noon.
While it was difficult to determine voters’ reasoning for showing up to vote, many appeared to be answering the call to protest across the country as the deadline moved from Russia’s Far East toward Moscow, and from then to the western area of the country and parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia.
Videos and images posted on social media showed long lines of voters formed at noon in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“The action has achieved its goals,” said Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, on YouTube. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The protests were accompanied by a heavy police presence and the threat of long prison terms for those seen as disrupting the voting process.
The OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests in Russia, said that more than 65 people were arrested in 14 cities across the country on March 17.
Twenty people in Kazan, in the Tatarstan region, were detained and later released, according to Current Time. One Ufa resident was reportedly detained for trying to stuff a photograph of Navalny into a ballot box. And in Moscow, a voter was detained after he appeared at a polling station wearing a T-shirt bearing Navalny’s name.
In St. Petersburg, a woman was reportedly arrested after she threw a firebomb at a polling station entrance, others were detained elsewhere in the country for spoiling ballots with green antiseptic into ballot boxes.
Some activists were reportedly summoned to visit Federal Security Service branches precisely at 12 p.m., the same time the protest was expected.
Outside Russia, Russian citizens also reportedly took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, including in Tokyo, Istanbul, and Phuket. In Moldova, voting at the Russian Consulate in Chisinau was reportedly delayed after an apparent fire-bombing.
The Moscow prosecutor’s office earlier warned of criminal prosecution of those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there are “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
The OVD-Info human rights group issued a statement labeled “How to Protect Yourself” ahead of the planned protest, also saying not to bring posters or banners and “do not demonstrate symbols that can attract the attention of the police, do not shout slogans. If you are asked why you came at noon, do not give the real reason.”
Russian election officials, officially, said that as of late afternoon on March 17 more than 70 percent of the country’s 114 million eligible voters had cast ballots either in person or online.
Observers widely predict that there was virtually no chance that Putin would not gain another term in office. A victory would hand him his fifth presidential term over a span of 24 years, interrupted only by his time spent as prime minister from 2008-2012.
Over the first two days, some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule by vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids, with Russian officials and independent media reporting at least 28 cases.
Incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd.
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
On March 16, independent media reported that Russian police had opened at least 28 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, a number expected to grow.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of the Security Council, on March 16 denounced election protesters as “villains” and “traitors” who are aiding the country’s enemies, particularly Ukraine.
“This is direct assistance to those degenerates who are shelling our cities today,” he said on Telegram. “Criminal activists at polling stations should be aware that they can rattle for 20 years in a special regime [prison],” he added.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the full-scale war Moscow launched against Ukraine in February 2022.
Meanwhile, Ukraine stepped up attacks on Russia leading up to the election, including strikes deep inside the country.
On March 17, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported downing 35 Ukrainian drones overnight, including four in the Moscow region. Other drones were reportedly downed in the Kaluga and Yaroslavl regions neighboring the Moscow region, and in the Belgorod, Kursk, and Rostov regions along Russia’s southwestern border with Ukraine.
On March 16, Ukrainian forces shelled the border city of Belgorod and the village of Glotovo, killing at least three people and wounding eight others, Russian officials said.
The same day, a Ukrainian drone strike caused a fire at an oil refinery that belongs to Russian oil giant Rosneft in the Samara region, some 850 kilometers southeast of Moscow, regional Governor Dmitry Azarov said. An attack on another refinery was thwarted, he added.
Ukraine generally does not comment on attacks inside Russia, but Reuters quoted an unidentified Ukrainian source as saying that Kyiv’s SBU intelligence agency was behind strikes at three Samara region Rosneft refineries — Syzran, Novokuibyshevsky, and Kuibyshevsky, which is inside the Samara city limits.
“The SBU continues to implement its strategy to undermine the economic potential of the Russian Federation that allows it to wage war in Ukraine,” the news agency quoted the source as saying.
Russian authorities, who have accused Kyiv of launching assaults designed to disrupt voting, claimed that Ukraine on March 16 dropped a missile on a voting station in a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region, although the report could not be verified.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Reuters, and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The Iranian government “bears responsibility” for the physical violence that led to the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman who died in police custody in 2022, and for the brutal crackdown on largely peaceful street protests that followed, a report by a United Nations fact-finding mission says.
The report, issued on March 8 by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran, said the mission “has established the existence of evidence of trauma to Ms. Amini’s body, inflicted while in the custody of the morality police.”
It said the mission found the “physical violence in custody led to Ms. Amini’s unlawful death…. On that basis, the state bears responsibility for her unlawful death.”
Amini was arrested in Tehran on September 13, 2022, while visiting the Iranian capital with her family. She was detained by Iran’s so-called “morality police” for allegedly improperly wearing her hijab, or hair-covering head scarf. Within hours of her detention, she was hospitalized in a coma and died on September 16.
Her family has denied that Amini suffered from a preexisting health condition that may have contributed to her death, as claimed by the Iranian authorities, and her father has cited eyewitnesses as saying she was beaten while en route to a detention facility.
The fact-finding report said the action “emphasizes the arbitrary character of Ms. Amini’s arrest and detention, which were based on laws and policies governing the mandatory hijab, which fundamentally discriminate against women and girls and are not permissible under international human rights law.”
“Those laws and policies violate the rights to freedom of expression, freedom of religion or belief, and the autonomy of women and girls. Ms. Amini’s arrest and detention, preceding her death in custody, constituted a violation of her right to liberty of person,” it said.
The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran hailed the findings and said they represented clear signs of “crimes against humanity.”
“The Islamic republic’s violent repression of peaceful dissent and severe discrimination against women and girls in Iran has been confirmed as constituting nothing short of crimes against humanity,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the center.
“The government’s brutal crackdown on the Women, Life, Freedom protests has seen a litany of atrocities that include extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape. These violations disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in society, women, children, and minority groups,” he added.
The report also said the Iranian government failed to “comply with its duty” to investigate the woman’s death promptly.
“Most notably, judicial harassment and intimidation were aimed at her family in order to silence them and preempt them from seeking legal redress. Some family members faced arbitrary arrest, while the family’s lawyer, Saleh Nikbaht, and three journalists, Niloofar Hamedi, Elahe Mohammadi, and Nazila Maroufian, who reported on Ms. Amini’s death were arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to imprisonment,” it added.
Amini’s death sparked mass protests, beginning in her home town of Saghez, then spreading around the country, and ultimately posed one of the biggest threats to Iran’s clerical establishment since the foundation of the Islamic republic in 1979. At least 500 people were reported killed in the government’s crackdown on demonstrators.
The UN report said “violations and crimes” under international law committed in the context of the Women, Life, Freedom protests include “extrajudicial and unlawful killings and murder, unnecessary and disproportionate use of force, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture, rape, enforced disappearances, and gender persecution.
“The violent repression of peaceful protests and pervasive institutional discrimination against women and girls has led to serious human rights violations by the government of Iran, many amounting to crimes against humanity,” the report said.
The UN mission acknowledged that some state security forces were killed and injured during the demonstrations, but said it found that the majority of protests were peaceful.
The mission stems from the UN Human Rights Council’s mandate to the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran on November 24, 2022, to investigate alleged human rights violations in Iran related to the protests that followed Amini’s death.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Russians have begun a second day of voting in a presidential election that has seen sporadic protests as some, defying threats of stiff prison sentences, showed their anger over a process set up to hand Vladimir Putin another six years of rule.
By midday of March 16, Russian police had opened at least 15 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, independent media reported.
More than one-third of Russia’s 110 million eligible voters cast ballots in person and online on the first day of the country’s three-day presidential election, the Central Election Commission (TsIK) said after polls closed on March 15 in the country’s westernmost region of Kaliningrad.
Balloting started up again on March 16 in the Far East of Russia and will continue in all 11 time zones of the country, as well as the occupied Crimean Peninsula and four other Ukrainian regions that Moscow partially controls and baselessly claims are part of Russia.
Putin is poised to win and extend his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched, but has been ratcheted up since.
Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.
Some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule on March 15, vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids.
Among them was a 43-year-old member of the local election commission in the Lenin district of Izhevsk city, the Interior Ministry said on March 16.
The official was detained by police after she attempted to spill zelyonka into a touchscreen voting machine, the ministry said. Police didn’t release the woman’s name, but said she was a member of the Communist Party.
Similar incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd, while at least four voters burned their ballots in polling stations.
In Moscow, police arrested a woman who burned her ballot inside a voting booth in the city’s polling station N1527 on March 15, Russian news agencies reported, citing election officials in the Russian capital.
The news outlet Sota reported that that woman burned a ballot with “Bring back my husband” handwritten on it, and posted video purportedly showing the incident.
There also was one report of a firebombing at a polling station in Moscow, while In Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, a 21-year-old woman was detained after she threw a Molotov cocktail at an entrance of a local school that houses two polling stations.
“It’s the first time I’ve see something like this — or at least [such attacks] have not been so spectacular before,” Roman Udot, an election analyst and a board member of the independent election monitor Golos, told RFE/RL.
“The state launched a war against [the election process] and this is the very striking harvest it gets in return. People resent these elections as a result and have started using them for completely different purposes [than voting].”
Russia’s ruling United Russia party claimed on March 16 that it was facing a widespread denial-of-service attack — a form of cyberattack that snarls internet use — against its online presence. The party said it had suspended nonessential services to repel the attack.
Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers proposed amendments to the Criminal Code to toughen punishments for those who try to disrupt elections “by arson and other dangerous means.” Under the current law, such actions are punishable by five years in prison, and the lawmakers proposed to extend it to up to eight years in prison.
No Serious Challengers
Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule.
He called on voters to cast their ballot at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action “Noon Against Putin.” HIs wife and others have since continued to call for the protest to be carried out.
Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct.
Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.
Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the TsIK because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.
“Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter, on March 15.
“No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”
Ukraine and many Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in regions it occupies parts of, calling the move illegal.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added his voice to the criticism on March 15, saying he “condemns the efforts of the Russian Federation to hold its presidential elections in areas of Ukraine occupied by the Russian Federation.”
His spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, added that the “attempted illegal annexation” of those regions has “no validity” under international law.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.
With reporting by Reuters and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Russians have begun a second day of voting in a presidential election that has seen sporadic protests as some, defying threats of stiff prison sentences, showed their anger over a process set up to hand Vladimir Putin another six years of rule.
By midday of March 16, Russian police had opened at least 15 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, independent media reported.
More than one-third of Russia’s 110 million eligible voters cast ballots in person and online on the first day of the country’s three-day presidential election, the Central Election Commission (TsIK) said after polls closed on March 15 in the country’s westernmost region of Kaliningrad.
Balloting started up again on March 16 in the Far East of Russia and will continue in all 11 time zones of the country, as well as the occupied Crimean Peninsula and four other Ukrainian regions that Moscow partially controls and baselessly claims are part of Russia.
Putin is poised to win and extend his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched, but has been ratcheted up since.
Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.
Some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule on March 15, vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids.
Among them was a 43-year-old member of the local election commission in the Lenin district of Izhevsk city, the Interior Ministry said on March 16.
The official was detained by police after she attempted to spill zelyonka into a touchscreen voting machine, the ministry said. Police didn’t release the woman’s name, but said she was a member of the Communist Party.
Similar incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd, while at least four voters burned their ballots in polling stations.
In Moscow, police arrested a woman who burned her ballot inside a voting booth in the city’s polling station N1527 on March 15, Russian news agencies reported, citing election officials in the Russian capital.
The news outlet Sota reported that that woman burned a ballot with “Bring back my husband” handwritten on it, and posted video purportedly showing the incident.
There also was one report of a firebombing at a polling station in Moscow, while In Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, a 21-year-old woman was detained after she threw a Molotov cocktail at an entrance of a local school that houses two polling stations.
“It’s the first time I’ve see something like this — or at least [such attacks] have not been so spectacular before,” Roman Udot, an election analyst and a board member of the independent election monitor Golos, told RFE/RL.
“The state launched a war against [the election process] and this is the very striking harvest it gets in return. People resent these elections as a result and have started using them for completely different purposes [than voting].”
Russia’s ruling United Russia party claimed on March 16 that it was facing a widespread denial-of-service attack — a form of cyberattack that snarls internet use — against its online presence. The party said it had suspended nonessential services to repel the attack.
Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers proposed amendments to the Criminal Code to toughen punishments for those who try to disrupt elections “by arson and other dangerous means.” Under the current law, such actions are punishable by five years in prison, and the lawmakers proposed to extend it to up to eight years in prison.
No Serious Challengers
Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule.
He called on voters to cast their ballot at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action “Noon Against Putin.” HIs wife and others have since continued to call for the protest to be carried out.
Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct.
Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.
Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the TsIK because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.
“Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter, on March 15.
“No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”
Ukraine and many Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in regions it occupies parts of, calling the move illegal.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added his voice to the criticism on March 15, saying he “condemns the efforts of the Russian Federation to hold its presidential elections in areas of Ukraine occupied by the Russian Federation.”
His spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, added that the “attempted illegal annexation” of those regions has “no validity” under international law.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.
With reporting by Reuters and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Russians have begun a second day of voting in a presidential election that has seen sporadic protests as some, defying threats of stiff prison sentences, showed their anger over a process set up to hand Vladimir Putin another six years of rule.
By midday of March 16, Russian police had opened at least 15 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, independent media reported.
More than one-third of Russia’s 110 million eligible voters cast ballots in person and online on the first day of the country’s three-day presidential election, the Central Election Commission (TsIK) said after polls closed on March 15 in the country’s westernmost region of Kaliningrad.
Balloting started up again on March 16 in the Far East of Russia and will continue in all 11 time zones of the country, as well as the occupied Crimean Peninsula and four other Ukrainian regions that Moscow partially controls and baselessly claims are part of Russia.
Putin is poised to win and extend his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched, but has been ratcheted up since.
Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.
Some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule on March 15, vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids.
Among them was a 43-year-old member of the local election commission in the Lenin district of Izhevsk city, the Interior Ministry said on March 16.
The official was detained by police after she attempted to spill zelyonka into a touchscreen voting machine, the ministry said. Police didn’t release the woman’s name, but said she was a member of the Communist Party.
Similar incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd, while at least four voters burned their ballots in polling stations.
In Moscow, police arrested a woman who burned her ballot inside a voting booth in the city’s polling station N1527 on March 15, Russian news agencies reported, citing election officials in the Russian capital.
The news outlet Sota reported that that woman burned a ballot with “Bring back my husband” handwritten on it, and posted video purportedly showing the incident.
There also was one report of a firebombing at a polling station in Moscow, while In Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, a 21-year-old woman was detained after she threw a Molotov cocktail at an entrance of a local school that houses two polling stations.
“It’s the first time I’ve see something like this — or at least [such attacks] have not been so spectacular before,” Roman Udot, an election analyst and a board member of the independent election monitor Golos, told RFE/RL.
“The state launched a war against [the election process] and this is the very striking harvest it gets in return. People resent these elections as a result and have started using them for completely different purposes [than voting].”
Russia’s ruling United Russia party claimed on March 16 that it was facing a widespread denial-of-service attack — a form of cyberattack that snarls internet use — against its online presence. The party said it had suspended nonessential services to repel the attack.
Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers proposed amendments to the Criminal Code to toughen punishments for those who try to disrupt elections “by arson and other dangerous means.” Under the current law, such actions are punishable by five years in prison, and the lawmakers proposed to extend it to up to eight years in prison.
No Serious Challengers
Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule.
He called on voters to cast their ballot at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action “Noon Against Putin.” HIs wife and others have since continued to call for the protest to be carried out.
Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct.
Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.
Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the TsIK because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.
“Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter, on March 15.
“No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”
Ukraine and many Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in regions it occupies parts of, calling the move illegal.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added his voice to the criticism on March 15, saying he “condemns the efforts of the Russian Federation to hold its presidential elections in areas of Ukraine occupied by the Russian Federation.”
His spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, added that the “attempted illegal annexation” of those regions has “no validity” under international law.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.
With reporting by Reuters and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Russians have begun a second day of voting in a presidential election that has seen sporadic protests as some, defying threats of stiff prison sentences, showed their anger over a process set up to hand Vladimir Putin another six years of rule.
By midday of March 16, Russian police had opened at least 15 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, independent media reported.
More than one-third of Russia’s 110 million eligible voters cast ballots in person and online on the first day of the country’s three-day presidential election, the Central Election Commission (TsIK) said after polls closed on March 15 in the country’s westernmost region of Kaliningrad.
Balloting started up again on March 16 in the Far East of Russia and will continue in all 11 time zones of the country, as well as the occupied Crimean Peninsula and four other Ukrainian regions that Moscow partially controls and baselessly claims are part of Russia.
Putin is poised to win and extend his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched, but has been ratcheted up since.
Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.
Some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule on March 15, vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids.
Among them was a 43-year-old member of the local election commission in the Lenin district of Izhevsk city, the Interior Ministry said on March 16.
The official was detained by police after she attempted to spill zelyonka into a touchscreen voting machine, the ministry said. Police didn’t release the woman’s name, but said she was a member of the Communist Party.
Similar incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd, while at least four voters burned their ballots in polling stations.
In Moscow, police arrested a woman who burned her ballot inside a voting booth in the city’s polling station N1527 on March 15, Russian news agencies reported, citing election officials in the Russian capital.
The news outlet Sota reported that that woman burned a ballot with “Bring back my husband” handwritten on it, and posted video purportedly showing the incident.
There also was one report of a firebombing at a polling station in Moscow, while In Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, a 21-year-old woman was detained after she threw a Molotov cocktail at an entrance of a local school that houses two polling stations.
“It’s the first time I’ve see something like this — or at least [such attacks] have not been so spectacular before,” Roman Udot, an election analyst and a board member of the independent election monitor Golos, told RFE/RL.
“The state launched a war against [the election process] and this is the very striking harvest it gets in return. People resent these elections as a result and have started using them for completely different purposes [than voting].”
Russia’s ruling United Russia party claimed on March 16 that it was facing a widespread denial-of-service attack — a form of cyberattack that snarls internet use — against its online presence. The party said it had suspended nonessential services to repel the attack.
Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers proposed amendments to the Criminal Code to toughen punishments for those who try to disrupt elections “by arson and other dangerous means.” Under the current law, such actions are punishable by five years in prison, and the lawmakers proposed to extend it to up to eight years in prison.
No Serious Challengers
Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule.
He called on voters to cast their ballot at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action “Noon Against Putin.” HIs wife and others have since continued to call for the protest to be carried out.
Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct.
Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.
Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the TsIK because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.
“Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter, on March 15.
“No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”
Ukraine and many Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in regions it occupies parts of, calling the move illegal.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added his voice to the criticism on March 15, saying he “condemns the efforts of the Russian Federation to hold its presidential elections in areas of Ukraine occupied by the Russian Federation.”
His spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, added that the “attempted illegal annexation” of those regions has “no validity” under international law.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.
With reporting by Reuters and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
Russians have begun a second day of voting in a presidential election that has seen sporadic protests as some, defying threats of stiff prison sentences, showed their anger over a process set up to hand Vladimir Putin another six years of rule.
By midday of March 16, Russian police had opened at least 15 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, independent media reported.
More than one-third of Russia’s 110 million eligible voters cast ballots in person and online on the first day of the country’s three-day presidential election, the Central Election Commission (TsIK) said after polls closed on March 15 in the country’s westernmost region of Kaliningrad.
Balloting started up again on March 16 in the Far East of Russia and will continue in all 11 time zones of the country, as well as the occupied Crimean Peninsula and four other Ukrainian regions that Moscow partially controls and baselessly claims are part of Russia.
Putin is poised to win and extend his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched, but has been ratcheted up since.
Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.
Some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule on March 15, vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids.
Among them was a 43-year-old member of the local election commission in the Lenin district of Izhevsk city, the Interior Ministry said on March 16.
The official was detained by police after she attempted to spill zelyonka into a touchscreen voting machine, the ministry said. Police didn’t release the woman’s name, but said she was a member of the Communist Party.
Similar incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd, while at least four voters burned their ballots in polling stations.
In Moscow, police arrested a woman who burned her ballot inside a voting booth in the city’s polling station N1527 on March 15, Russian news agencies reported, citing election officials in the Russian capital.
The news outlet Sota reported that that woman burned a ballot with “Bring back my husband” handwritten on it, and posted video purportedly showing the incident.
There also was one report of a firebombing at a polling station in Moscow, while In Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, a 21-year-old woman was detained after she threw a Molotov cocktail at an entrance of a local school that houses two polling stations.
“It’s the first time I’ve see something like this — or at least [such attacks] have not been so spectacular before,” Roman Udot, an election analyst and a board member of the independent election monitor Golos, told RFE/RL.
“The state launched a war against [the election process] and this is the very striking harvest it gets in return. People resent these elections as a result and have started using them for completely different purposes [than voting].”
Russia’s ruling United Russia party claimed on March 16 that it was facing a widespread denial-of-service attack — a form of cyberattack that snarls internet use — against its online presence. The party said it had suspended nonessential services to repel the attack.
Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers proposed amendments to the Criminal Code to toughen punishments for those who try to disrupt elections “by arson and other dangerous means.” Under the current law, such actions are punishable by five years in prison, and the lawmakers proposed to extend it to up to eight years in prison.
No Serious Challengers
Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule.
He called on voters to cast their ballot at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action “Noon Against Putin.” HIs wife and others have since continued to call for the protest to be carried out.
Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct.
Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.
Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the TsIK because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.
“Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter, on March 15.
“No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”
Ukraine and many Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in regions it occupies parts of, calling the move illegal.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added his voice to the criticism on March 15, saying he “condemns the efforts of the Russian Federation to hold its presidential elections in areas of Ukraine occupied by the Russian Federation.”
His spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, added that the “attempted illegal annexation” of those regions has “no validity” under international law.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.
With reporting by Reuters and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
Russians have begun a second day of voting in a presidential election that has seen sporadic protests as some, defying threats of stiff prison sentences, showed their anger over a process set up to hand Vladimir Putin another six years of rule.
By midday of March 16, Russian police had opened at least 15 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, independent media reported.
More than one-third of Russia’s 110 million eligible voters cast ballots in person and online on the first day of the country’s three-day presidential election, the Central Election Commission (TsIK) said after polls closed on March 15 in the country’s westernmost region of Kaliningrad.
Balloting started up again on March 16 in the Far East of Russia and will continue in all 11 time zones of the country, as well as the occupied Crimean Peninsula and four other Ukrainian regions that Moscow partially controls and baselessly claims are part of Russia.
Putin is poised to win and extend his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched, but has been ratcheted up since.
Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.
Some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule on March 15, vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids.
Among them was a 43-year-old member of the local election commission in the Lenin district of Izhevsk city, the Interior Ministry said on March 16.
The official was detained by police after she attempted to spill zelyonka into a touchscreen voting machine, the ministry said. Police didn’t release the woman’s name, but said she was a member of the Communist Party.
Similar incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd, while at least four voters burned their ballots in polling stations.
In Moscow, police arrested a woman who burned her ballot inside a voting booth in the city’s polling station N1527 on March 15, Russian news agencies reported, citing election officials in the Russian capital.
The news outlet Sota reported that that woman burned a ballot with “Bring back my husband” handwritten on it, and posted video purportedly showing the incident.
There also was one report of a firebombing at a polling station in Moscow, while In Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, a 21-year-old woman was detained after she threw a Molotov cocktail at an entrance of a local school that houses two polling stations.
“It’s the first time I’ve see something like this — or at least [such attacks] have not been so spectacular before,” Roman Udot, an election analyst and a board member of the independent election monitor Golos, told RFE/RL.
“The state launched a war against [the election process] and this is the very striking harvest it gets in return. People resent these elections as a result and have started using them for completely different purposes [than voting].”
Russia’s ruling United Russia party claimed on March 16 that it was facing a widespread denial-of-service attack — a form of cyberattack that snarls internet use — against its online presence. The party said it had suspended nonessential services to repel the attack.
Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers proposed amendments to the Criminal Code to toughen punishments for those who try to disrupt elections “by arson and other dangerous means.” Under the current law, such actions are punishable by five years in prison, and the lawmakers proposed to extend it to up to eight years in prison.
No Serious Challengers
Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule.
He called on voters to cast their ballot at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action “Noon Against Putin.” HIs wife and others have since continued to call for the protest to be carried out.
Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct.
Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.
Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the TsIK because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.
“Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter, on March 15.
“No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”
Ukraine and many Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in regions it occupies parts of, calling the move illegal.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added his voice to the criticism on March 15, saying he “condemns the efforts of the Russian Federation to hold its presidential elections in areas of Ukraine occupied by the Russian Federation.”
His spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, added that the “attempted illegal annexation” of those regions has “no validity” under international law.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.
With reporting by Reuters and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
Russians have begun a second day of voting in a presidential election that has seen sporadic protests as some, defying threats of stiff prison sentences, showed their anger over a process set up to hand Vladimir Putin another six years of rule.
By midday of March 16, Russian police had opened at least 15 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, independent media reported.
More than one-third of Russia’s 110 million eligible voters cast ballots in person and online on the first day of the country’s three-day presidential election, the Central Election Commission (TsIK) said after polls closed on March 15 in the country’s westernmost region of Kaliningrad.
Balloting started up again on March 16 in the Far East of Russia and will continue in all 11 time zones of the country, as well as the occupied Crimean Peninsula and four other Ukrainian regions that Moscow partially controls and baselessly claims are part of Russia.
Putin is poised to win and extend his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched, but has been ratcheted up since.
Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.
Some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule on March 15, vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids.
Among them was a 43-year-old member of the local election commission in the Lenin district of Izhevsk city, the Interior Ministry said on March 16.
The official was detained by police after she attempted to spill zelyonka into a touchscreen voting machine, the ministry said. Police didn’t release the woman’s name, but said she was a member of the Communist Party.
Similar incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd, while at least four voters burned their ballots in polling stations.
In Moscow, police arrested a woman who burned her ballot inside a voting booth in the city’s polling station N1527 on March 15, Russian news agencies reported, citing election officials in the Russian capital.
The news outlet Sota reported that that woman burned a ballot with “Bring back my husband” handwritten on it, and posted video purportedly showing the incident.
There also was one report of a firebombing at a polling station in Moscow, while In Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, a 21-year-old woman was detained after she threw a Molotov cocktail at an entrance of a local school that houses two polling stations.
“It’s the first time I’ve see something like this — or at least [such attacks] have not been so spectacular before,” Roman Udot, an election analyst and a board member of the independent election monitor Golos, told RFE/RL.
“The state launched a war against [the election process] and this is the very striking harvest it gets in return. People resent these elections as a result and have started using them for completely different purposes [than voting].”
Russia’s ruling United Russia party claimed on March 16 that it was facing a widespread denial-of-service attack — a form of cyberattack that snarls internet use — against its online presence. The party said it had suspended nonessential services to repel the attack.
Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers proposed amendments to the Criminal Code to toughen punishments for those who try to disrupt elections “by arson and other dangerous means.” Under the current law, such actions are punishable by five years in prison, and the lawmakers proposed to extend it to up to eight years in prison.
No Serious Challengers
Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule.
He called on voters to cast their ballot at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action “Noon Against Putin.” HIs wife and others have since continued to call for the protest to be carried out.
Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct.
Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.
Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the TsIK because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.
“Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter, on March 15.
“No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”
Ukraine and many Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in regions it occupies parts of, calling the move illegal.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added his voice to the criticism on March 15, saying he “condemns the efforts of the Russian Federation to hold its presidential elections in areas of Ukraine occupied by the Russian Federation.”
His spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, added that the “attempted illegal annexation” of those regions has “no validity” under international law.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.
With reporting by Reuters and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
Russians have begun a second day of voting in a presidential election that has seen sporadic protests as some, defying threats of stiff prison sentences, showed their anger over a process set up to hand Vladimir Putin another six years of rule.
By midday of March 16, Russian police had opened at least 15 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, independent media reported.
More than one-third of Russia’s 110 million eligible voters cast ballots in person and online on the first day of the country’s three-day presidential election, the Central Election Commission (TsIK) said after polls closed on March 15 in the country’s westernmost region of Kaliningrad.
Balloting started up again on March 16 in the Far East of Russia and will continue in all 11 time zones of the country, as well as the occupied Crimean Peninsula and four other Ukrainian regions that Moscow partially controls and baselessly claims are part of Russia.
Putin is poised to win and extend his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was launched, but has been ratcheted up since.
Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.
Some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule on March 15, vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids.
Among them was a 43-year-old member of the local election commission in the Lenin district of Izhevsk city, the Interior Ministry said on March 16.
The official was detained by police after she attempted to spill zelyonka into a touchscreen voting machine, the ministry said. Police didn’t release the woman’s name, but said she was a member of the Communist Party.
Similar incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd, while at least four voters burned their ballots in polling stations.
In Moscow, police arrested a woman who burned her ballot inside a voting booth in the city’s polling station N1527 on March 15, Russian news agencies reported, citing election officials in the Russian capital.
The news outlet Sota reported that that woman burned a ballot with “Bring back my husband” handwritten on it, and posted video purportedly showing the incident.
There also was one report of a firebombing at a polling station in Moscow, while In Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, a 21-year-old woman was detained after she threw a Molotov cocktail at an entrance of a local school that houses two polling stations.
“It’s the first time I’ve see something like this — or at least [such attacks] have not been so spectacular before,” Roman Udot, an election analyst and a board member of the independent election monitor Golos, told RFE/RL.
“The state launched a war against [the election process] and this is the very striking harvest it gets in return. People resent these elections as a result and have started using them for completely different purposes [than voting].”
Russia’s ruling United Russia party claimed on March 16 that it was facing a widespread denial-of-service attack — a form of cyberattack that snarls internet use — against its online presence. The party said it had suspended nonessential services to repel the attack.
Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers proposed amendments to the Criminal Code to toughen punishments for those who try to disrupt elections “by arson and other dangerous means.” Under the current law, such actions are punishable by five years in prison, and the lawmakers proposed to extend it to up to eight years in prison.
No Serious Challengers
Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule.
He called on voters to cast their ballot at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action “Noon Against Putin.” HIs wife and others have since continued to call for the protest to be carried out.
Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct.
Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.
Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the TsIK because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.
“Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter, on March 15.
“No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”
Ukraine and many Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in regions it occupies parts of, calling the move illegal.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres added his voice to the criticism on March 15, saying he “condemns the efforts of the Russian Federation to hold its presidential elections in areas of Ukraine occupied by the Russian Federation.”
His spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, added that the “attempted illegal annexation” of those regions has “no validity” under international law.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.
With reporting by Reuters and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
Russians began voting on the first day of a three-day presidential election that President Vladimir Putin is all but certain to win, extending his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The vote, which is not expected to be free and fair, is also the first major election to take place in Russia since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022.
Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma Deputy Speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.
Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the Russian Central Election Commission (TsIK) because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.
“Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter. “No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”
The first polling station opened in Russia’s Far East. As the day progresses, voters will cast their ballots at nearly 100,000 polling stations across the country’s 11 time zones, as well as in regions of Ukraine that Moscow illegally annexed.
By around 10 a.m. Moscow time, TsIK said 2.89 percent of the 110 million eligible voters had already cast their ballots. That figure includes those who cast early ballots, TsIK Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova said.
Some people trying to vote online reported problems, but officials said those being told they were in an electronic queue “just need to wait a little or return to voting later.”
There were reports that public sector employees were being urged to vote early on March 15, a directive Stanislav Andreychuk, the co-chairman of the Golos voters’ rights movement, said was aimed at having workers vote “under the watchful eyes of their bosses.”
Ukraine and Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in those Ukrainian regions, calling it illegal.
Results are expected to be announced on March 18.
The outcome, with Putin’s foes in jail, exile, or dead, is not in doubt. In a survey conducted by VTsIOM in early March, 75 percent of the citizens intending to vote said they would cast their ballot for Putin, a former KGB foreign intelligence officer.
The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine was launched, but it has been ratcheted up since. Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.
Most say they have no expectation that the election will be free and fair, with the possibility for independent monitoring very limited. Nadezhdin said he would recruit observers, but it was unclear whether he would be successful given that only registered candidates or state-backed advisory bodies can assign observers to polling stations.
“Who in the world thinks that it will be a real election?” Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, said in an interview with Current Time, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL, ahead of the vote.
McFaul, speaking in Russian, added that he’s convinced that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and other democracies in the world will say that the election did not offer a fair choice, but doubted they will decline to recognize Putin as Russia’s legitimate president.
“I believe that is the right action to take, but I expect that President Biden is not going to say that [Putin] is not a Russian president. And all the other leaders won’t do that either because they want to leave some kind of contact with Putin,” he said.
Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule. He called on voters to cast their ballots at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action Noon Against Putin.
Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct. The strategy was endorsed by Navalny not long before his death and his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has promoted it.“We need to use election day to show that we exist and there are many of us, we are actual, living, real people and we are against Putin…. What to do next is up to you. You can vote for any candidate except Putin. You could ruin your ballot,” Navalnaya said.
How well this strategy will work remains unclear. Moscow’s top law enforcement office warned voters in the Russian capital on March 14 against heeding calls to take part in the action, saying participants face legal punishment.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Todd Prince, Current Time, and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
Russians began voting on the first day of a three-day presidential election that President Vladimir Putin is all but certain to win, extending his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The vote, which is not expected to be free and fair, is also the first major election to take place in Russia since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022.
Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma Deputy Speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.
Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the Russian Central Election Commission (TsIK) because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.
“Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter. “No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”
The first polling station opened in Russia’s Far East. As the day progresses, voters will cast their ballots at nearly 100,000 polling stations across the country’s 11 time zones, as well as in regions of Ukraine that Moscow illegally annexed.
By around 10 a.m. Moscow time, TsIK said 2.89 percent of the 110 million eligible voters had already cast their ballots. That figure includes those who cast early ballots, TsIK Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova said.
Some people trying to vote online reported problems, but officials said those being told they were in an electronic queue “just need to wait a little or return to voting later.”
There were reports that public sector employees were being urged to vote early on March 15, a directive Stanislav Andreychuk, the co-chairman of the Golos voters’ rights movement, said was aimed at having workers vote “under the watchful eyes of their bosses.”
Ukraine and Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in those Ukrainian regions, calling it illegal.
Results are expected to be announced on March 18.
The outcome, with Putin’s foes in jail, exile, or dead, is not in doubt. In a survey conducted by VTsIOM in early March, 75 percent of the citizens intending to vote said they would cast their ballot for Putin, a former KGB foreign intelligence officer.
The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine was launched, but it has been ratcheted up since. Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.
Most say they have no expectation that the election will be free and fair, with the possibility for independent monitoring very limited. Nadezhdin said he would recruit observers, but it was unclear whether he would be successful given that only registered candidates or state-backed advisory bodies can assign observers to polling stations.
“Who in the world thinks that it will be a real election?” Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, said in an interview with Current Time, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL, ahead of the vote.
McFaul, speaking in Russian, added that he’s convinced that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and other democracies in the world will say that the election did not offer a fair choice, but doubted they will decline to recognize Putin as Russia’s legitimate president.
“I believe that is the right action to take, but I expect that President Biden is not going to say that [Putin] is not a Russian president. And all the other leaders won’t do that either because they want to leave some kind of contact with Putin,” he said.
Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule. He called on voters to cast their ballots at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action Noon Against Putin.
Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct. The strategy was endorsed by Navalny not long before his death and his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has promoted it.“We need to use election day to show that we exist and there are many of us, we are actual, living, real people and we are against Putin…. What to do next is up to you. You can vote for any candidate except Putin. You could ruin your ballot,” Navalnaya said.
How well this strategy will work remains unclear. Moscow’s top law enforcement office warned voters in the Russian capital on March 14 against heeding calls to take part in the action, saying participants face legal punishment.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Todd Prince, Current Time, and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
Russians began voting on the first day of a three-day presidential election that President Vladimir Putin is all but certain to win, extending his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The vote, which is not expected to be free and fair, is also the first major election to take place in Russia since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022.
Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma Deputy Speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.
Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the Russian Central Election Commission (TsIK) because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.
“Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter. “No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”
The first polling station opened in Russia’s Far East. As the day progresses, voters will cast their ballots at nearly 100,000 polling stations across the country’s 11 time zones, as well as in regions of Ukraine that Moscow illegally annexed.
By around 10 a.m. Moscow time, TsIK said 2.89 percent of the 110 million eligible voters had already cast their ballots. That figure includes those who cast early ballots, TsIK Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova said.
Some people trying to vote online reported problems, but officials said those being told they were in an electronic queue “just need to wait a little or return to voting later.”
There were reports that public sector employees were being urged to vote early on March 15, a directive Stanislav Andreychuk, the co-chairman of the Golos voters’ rights movement, said was aimed at having workers vote “under the watchful eyes of their bosses.”
Ukraine and Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in those Ukrainian regions, calling it illegal.
Results are expected to be announced on March 18.
The outcome, with Putin’s foes in jail, exile, or dead, is not in doubt. In a survey conducted by VTsIOM in early March, 75 percent of the citizens intending to vote said they would cast their ballot for Putin, a former KGB foreign intelligence officer.
The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine was launched, but it has been ratcheted up since. Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.
Most say they have no expectation that the election will be free and fair, with the possibility for independent monitoring very limited. Nadezhdin said he would recruit observers, but it was unclear whether he would be successful given that only registered candidates or state-backed advisory bodies can assign observers to polling stations.
“Who in the world thinks that it will be a real election?” Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, said in an interview with Current Time, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL, ahead of the vote.
McFaul, speaking in Russian, added that he’s convinced that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and other democracies in the world will say that the election did not offer a fair choice, but doubted they will decline to recognize Putin as Russia’s legitimate president.
“I believe that is the right action to take, but I expect that President Biden is not going to say that [Putin] is not a Russian president. And all the other leaders won’t do that either because they want to leave some kind of contact with Putin,” he said.
Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule. He called on voters to cast their ballots at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action Noon Against Putin.
Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct. The strategy was endorsed by Navalny not long before his death and his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has promoted it.“We need to use election day to show that we exist and there are many of us, we are actual, living, real people and we are against Putin…. What to do next is up to you. You can vote for any candidate except Putin. You could ruin your ballot,” Navalnaya said.
How well this strategy will work remains unclear. Moscow’s top law enforcement office warned voters in the Russian capital on March 14 against heeding calls to take part in the action, saying participants face legal punishment.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Todd Prince, Current Time, and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Russians began voting on the first day of a three-day presidential election that President Vladimir Putin is all but certain to win, extending his rule by six more years after any serious opponents were barred from running against him amid a brutal crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The vote, which is not expected to be free and fair, is also the first major election to take place in Russia since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022.
Putin, 71, who has been president or prime minister for nearly 25 years, is running against three low-profile politicians — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma Deputy Speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party — whose policy positions are hardly distinguishable from Putin’s.
Boris Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old anti-war politician, was rejected last month by the Russian Central Election Commission (TsIK) because of what it called invalid support signatures on his application to be registered as a candidate. He appealed, but the TsIk’s decision was upheld by Russia’s Supreme Court.
“Would like to congratulate Vladimir Putin on his landslide victory in the elections starting today,” European Council President Charles Michel wrote in a sarcastic post on X, formerly Twitter. “No opposition. No freedom. No choice.”
The first polling station opened in Russia’s Far East. As the day progresses, voters will cast their ballots at nearly 100,000 polling stations across the country’s 11 time zones, as well as in regions of Ukraine that Moscow illegally annexed.
By around 10 a.m. Moscow time, TsIK said 2.89 percent of the 110 million eligible voters had already cast their ballots. That figure includes those who cast early ballots, TsIK Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova said.
Some people trying to vote online reported problems, but officials said those being told they were in an electronic queue “just need to wait a little or return to voting later.”
There were reports that public sector employees were being urged to vote early on March 15, a directive Stanislav Andreychuk, the co-chairman of the Golos voters’ rights movement, said was aimed at having workers vote “under the watchful eyes of their bosses.”
Ukraine and Western governments have condemned Russia for holding the vote in those Ukrainian regions, calling it illegal.
Results are expected to be announced on March 18.
The outcome, with Putin’s foes in jail, exile, or dead, is not in doubt. In a survey conducted by VTsIOM in early March, 75 percent of the citizens intending to vote said they would cast their ballot for Putin, a former KGB foreign intelligence officer.
The ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and human rights groups began before the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine was launched, but it has been ratcheted up since. Almost exactly one month before the polls opened, Putin’s most vocal critic, opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, died in an isolated Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances as he served sentences seen as politically motivated.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the war in Ukraine and his handling of it.
Most say they have no expectation that the election will be free and fair, with the possibility for independent monitoring very limited. Nadezhdin said he would recruit observers, but it was unclear whether he would be successful given that only registered candidates or state-backed advisory bodies can assign observers to polling stations.
“Who in the world thinks that it will be a real election?” Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, said in an interview with Current Time, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL, ahead of the vote.
McFaul, speaking in Russian, added that he’s convinced that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and other democracies in the world will say that the election did not offer a fair choice, but doubted they will decline to recognize Putin as Russia’s legitimate president.
“I believe that is the right action to take, but I expect that President Biden is not going to say that [Putin] is not a Russian president. And all the other leaders won’t do that either because they want to leave some kind of contact with Putin,” he said.
Before his death, Navalny had hoped to use the vote to demonstrate the public’s discontent with both the war and Putin’s iron-fisted rule. He called on voters to cast their ballots at 12 p.m. on March 17, naming the action Noon Against Putin.
Viral images of long lines forming at this time would indicate the size of the opposition and undermine the landslide result the Kremlin is expected to concoct. The strategy was endorsed by Navalny not long before his death and his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has promoted it.“We need to use election day to show that we exist and there are many of us, we are actual, living, real people and we are against Putin…. What to do next is up to you. You can vote for any candidate except Putin. You could ruin your ballot,” Navalnaya said.
How well this strategy will work remains unclear. Moscow’s top law enforcement office warned voters in the Russian capital on March 14 against heeding calls to take part in the action, saying participants face legal punishment.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Todd Prince, Current Time, and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.