Category: Russia

  • New York, March 22, 2024—Russian authorities must reconsider their decision to not renew the visa of Spanish journalist Xavier Colás and allow him to work freely in the country, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday.

    On Wednesday, Spanish daily newspaper El Mundo reported that Russian authorities refused to renew Colás’ visa, the outlet’s longtime correspondent in Moscow, and gave him 24 hours to leave Russia after working in the country for 12 years. 

    “The hasty and unceremonious treatment Spanish journalist Xavier Colás received when being expelled from Russia demonstrates how keen the Russian authorities are to silence independent reporting,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Russian authorities should renew Colás’ visa and let him return and work in the country unless they are afraid of journalists.”

    According to the outlet, late on Tuesday, March 19, a Russian official told Colás when he went to collect his visa that he would “have problems” if he did not leave before his visa expired. The journalist left Russia the next day, according to media reports

    “It’s hard to suddenly put 12 years of your life in three suitcases overnight and close the door knowing that that apartment will also be forbidden territory for you the next day,” Colás told El Mundo.

    In a Twitter post, Colás wrote that the refusal to renew his visa happened “at the last minute.” 

    He added, “I don’t regret anything. I have simply done my job: I have told what is happening, I have talked to the people who are suffering because of it, and I have explained who is responsible for what is happening.”

    Colás, who recently reported on presidential elections in Russia, has also been covering the war in Ukraine. In February, he published Putinistan, a book critical of Putin’s regime.  

    “The refusal to renew a journalist’s visa is one of the usual tools used by certain regimes to harm freedom of expression and prevent international coverage with autocracies such as Vladimir Putin’s, obsessed with controlling information,” El Mundo said, adding that Colás had remained in Moscow “to date” and “despite the regime’s hostility toward independent journalism.”

    Russia tightened visa and accreditation rules for foreign correspondents after its February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with renewals required every three months, rather than once a year as previously required, according to mediareports

    Russia has a history of expelling foreign reporters, including The Guardian’s Luke Harding in 2011 and the BBC’s Sarah Rainsford and Tom Vennink of the Dutch daily de Volkskrant in 2021. Since the start of Ukraine’s full-scale invasion, Russian authorities have failed to renew the visas and accreditations of Finnish journalists Arja Paananen and Anna-Lena Laurén, and of Dutch journalist Eva Hartog.

    In March 2023, The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich was arrested on espionage charges, the first American journalist to face such accusations by Russia since the end of the Cold War. Russia has also detained Alsu Kurmasheva, a U.S-Russian dual citizen and an editor with the Tatar-Bashkir service of U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) since October 2023 on charges of failing to register as a foreign agent and of spreading “fake” information about the Russian army.

    CPJ emailed the Russian Foreign Ministry for comment but did not receive any reply.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Putin officially declared Russia’s president-elect

    Vladimir Putin has won a landslide victory in the presidential election, Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) has officially announced. The inauguration of the president-elect is scheduled for May 7.

    The CEC head, Ella Pamfilova, revealed on Thursday that more than 76.2 million Russian voters cast ballots for Putin, giving him 87.28% of the vote.

    Meanwhile, Putin’s opponents in the race, Communist Party candidate Nikolay Kharitonov, Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and Leonid Slutsky of the Liberal Democrats, received 4.31%, 3.85%, and 3.2%, respectively, Pamfilova added.

    Russia has a total of 112 million eligible voters out of a total population of 146.2 million people, according to official data. The last figure, however, does not take into account the four former Ukrainian territories that joined Russia in the fall of 2022.

    The presidential election in Russia, held between March 15 and 17, was marked by record-high voter turnout, surpassing 77%.

    A KGB agent during the Soviet era, Putin was first elected president in 2000, remaining in office for two four-year terms until 2008. Between 2008 and 2012, he served as prime minister under President Dmitry Medvedev.

    During Medvedev’s tenure, the Russian constitution was amended to extend the presidential term from four to six years. Putin returned to the presidency in 2012 and was reelected in 2018. A constitutional reform in 2020 established a two-term limit but “nullified” Putin’s previous terms, enabling him to run once more for the highest office.

    The inauguration of the president-elect is scheduled for early May, to coincide with the resignation of the Russian government. The constitutional deadline for forming a new government is one month.

    On Thursday, Putin thanked all those who went to the polling stations regardless of what candidate they voted for, adding that the election showed that Russia is “one big and tightly-knit family.”

    He also noted that the results “demand even more commitment and efficiency” from him and his team, promising to do his best to meet public expectations.

    The post Putin Officially Declared Russia’s President-elect first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • …What we see at work is not an expression of the sentiments of the American people; rather it reflects the will of a powerful minority which uses its economic power to control the organs of political life.

    — Albert Einstein, Einstein on Peace, p. 343.

    We entered the massive marketplace labeled “our democracy” as always long before any election and at this date hundreds of millions have already been spent both officially and off the books to insure that ruling power maintains control over American capitalism no matter who or what may be elected sheriff, mayor, animal control officer or president of the United States. Given that, the spending and consciousness brutality have already exceeded past experience and, as befitting a system verging on complete collapse and involving much more of humanity than American voters, the time for global as well as national focus on the status of an American empire making more people rich than ever before while making multitudes far more poor and continuing mass murders in other subject nations is not only at hand but at all parts of the international political economic organism.

    As the fading rulers of western capitalism act more like a crazed rat on a sinking ship but instead of leaping into the deeps it promotes the entire world into more warfare, mass murder, incredible profits for those who feed on bloodshed and a mental condition that might make homicidal maniacs seem critically thinking human beings, the natural and especially political environmental reality approaches the worst fantasy of religious fanatics: eternal damnation in the fires of hell. This joyful futuristic vision was born of a brilliant past that might make the present seem docile since none of the modern weapons existed in biblical times when spears, lances and demented religious leaders operated as ruling wealth as opposed to the lethally armed with weapons of mass murder political and media servants of rulers do today.

    The continuing since 1917 American imperial attacks on Russia have reached a point in the current war using Ukrainians to kill Russians while they die by the thousands with no hope of winning and American and foreign munitions makers make billions. Various of the NATO lapdog leaders sound even more crazed than Americans and urge broadening of the war to stop the eternal threat of Russia which exists in their fevered minds, said fever having been planted by America since the end of the second world war.

    Meanwhile, the center of global anti-Semitism, Israel, has exploded as never before with such bloody horror that many of the innocent and previously comatose have awakened and expressed anger and hostility about a situation that has prevailed since 1948 when Palestine was engulfed and devoured by the new nation said to have been a haven for those suffering horror during the second world war. This would be like Japan getting even for the American atrocities at Hiroshima and Nagasaki by invading Mexico, throwing the natives out when possible and making all others second class citizens once they took over, changed the language and culture to Japanese and proceeded to treat Mexicans worse than Americans ever had.

    In only one of thousands of contradictions of logic, language and morality, the European Jews who stole the land continue calling themselves Semites and screaming anti-Semitism whenever real Semites commit an act of aggression in retaliation and millions in the western world have their brains sunk deeper into an ocean of mental sewage. Like everything else in a radically changing world in which previous western dominance is nearing an end and hopefully global freedom is nearer than ever, the radical changes underway that can spell revolution for the human future can be made to seem more dismal than ever under the consciousness control of purveyors of the imperial lies now fantastically more powerful than any past relatively tin-pot dictatorial regime of later made to seem glorious royals and other past murderers.

    While it seems that the horrible choice offered voters by capital’s two parties back in 2020 will be the same in 2024 the only difference is that the divisions among Americans have grown even worse than before. But as the frustration and anger at both parties increase alternate choices, usually written off as foreign plots or national disorders, may finally have space to speak to radical change favoring democracy in substance rather than the bogus brain disease foisted on innocent people who are told it is freedom and democracy. Of course, and rape is simply an economic form of dating and hundreds of thousands of Americans living in the street are merely getting close to nature.

    While political madness depicts Putin as a menace to humanity for reacting to an American owned and operated insurrection in Ukraine and fill voters heads with alleged crimes committed by Trump which are the everyday reality of political pimps and hustlers who own and operate “our” democracy, especially Congress and the white house, Palestinians will continue to be murdered by Israelis financed by American taxpayers proving that our peace loving democracy is just what the world needs to bring on a nuclear destruction of humanity which is in the planning stages of our Mass Murder Inc. at the pentagon. This will come to pass if Americans do not rise up and create real democracy before it is too late. Among other things that will mean voting against the supposed lesser evil of the two party combo of economic cancer and political polio to bring about the end of capitalism and the beginning of a future for the human race that does not involve growing poverty for hundreds of millions while a relative handful become billionaires.

    The opening quote is from someone long admired for something called the theory of relativity, a term not even vaguely understood by billions of humans, but far more relevant, easily understandable and important is the fact that he was an anti-capitalist, a socialist and an anti-war pacifist, easily understandable by those same billions and hardly known by most. That and many other hidden facts about people, nations and political economics should become clearer while we adjust and work to transform a dreadful social reality into a hopeful future by ending warfare capitalism and bringing about a democratic world such as our pre-historic beginnings in social and communistic cooperation. And after we clear up some reality about Einstein, we’d all do well by checking out Marx in his own words and not those of his simplistic and far too often murderous detractors. He can help us learn more about what we need to understand about why our reality is crumbling and what we need to do to rebuild it.

    The post Private Profits vs. Social Prophets first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.


  • 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.

  • Russian authorities have initiated the country’s first-ever criminal case into “LGBT extremism,” according to Yekaterina Mizulina, head of the Kremlin-aligned Safe Internet League. Mizulina asserted that criminal charges were filed “in connection with the activities of the LGBT club Pose.” Russian media reported that visitors of the club informed law enforcement that the establishment was…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.


  • 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.

  • You’ve read, heard and seen countless stories about supposed Chinese interference in Canada, but how many times has the dominant media mentioned Canadian subversion in other countries?

    Don’t believe that Canada does that? Here are a few examples of Canada contributing to leading international stories:

    • There is a direct line between the downward spiral in Haiti’s security situation and Canadian interference. In 2004 the US, France and Canada invaded to overthrow Haiti’s elected government. René Préval’s election two years later partly reversed the coup, but the US and Canada reasserted their control after the 2010 earthquake by intervening to make Michel Martelly president. That set-in motion more than a decade of rule by the criminal PHTK party. After president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in mid 2021 the US- and Canada-led Core Group selected Ariel Henry to lead against the wishes of civil society. In a sign of Haiti’s political descent, 7,000 officials were in elected positions in 2004 while today there are none.
    • Last Friday former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOH) was convicted of drug charges by a jury in New York. Pursued by the Southern District of New York against the wishes of US diplomats, the case documented JOH’s role in a murderous criminal enterprise that began under his predecessor. JOH became president after Ottawa tacitly supported the military’s removal of the social democratic president Manuel Zelaya. Before his 2009 ouster Canadian officials criticized Zelaya and afterwards condemned his attempts to return to the country. Failing to suspend its military training program with Honduras, Canada was also the only major donor to Honduras—the largest recipient of Canadian assistance in Central America—that failed to announce it would sever aid to the military government. Six months later Ottawa endorsed an electoral farce and JOH’s subsequent election marred by substantial human rights violations. JOH then defied the Honduran constitution to run for a second term, which Canada backed.
    • There’s also a direct line between the 2014 Canadian-backed coup in Ukraine and Russia’s devastating invasion. As Owen Schalk and I detail in Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy, Ottawa played a significant role in destabilizing Victor Yanukovich and pushing the elected president out. Yanukovich’s ouster propelled Moscow’s seizure of Crimea and a civil war in the east, which Russia massively expanded two years ago.
    • In an episode symbolic of Canadian influence and interference, Peru’s Prime Minister Alberto Otárola Peñaranda cut short his trip to the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada conference in Toronto last week to resign. Implicated in a love affair/corruption scandal, Peñaranda became prime minister after the December 2022 ouster of elected leftist president Pedro Castillo. Ottawa supported the ‘usurper’ government that suspended civil liberties and deployed troops to the streets. Global Affairs and Canada’s ambassador to Peru Louis Marcotte worked hard to shore up support for the replacement government through a series of diplomatic meetings and statements.
    • Canada’s intervention to undermine Palestinian democracy has also enabled Israel’s mass slaughter and starvation campaign in Gaza. After Hamas won legislative elections in 2006, Canada was the first country to impose sanctions against the Palestinians. Ottawa’s aid cut-off and refusal to recognize a Palestinian unity government was designed to sow division within Palestinian society. It helped spur fighting between Hamas and Fatah. When Hamas took control of Gaza, Israel used that to justify its siege of the 360 square kilometre coastal strip and series of deadly campaigns that left 6,000 Palestinians dead before October 7.

    While the media reported the above-mentioned stories, they refuse to discuss Ottawa’s negative role. Instead of holding our governments to account and describing Canadian subversion the media sphere focuses on foreign interference by our designated ‘enemies’ that’s had little demonstratable negative impact. In war and politics this is called distraction.

    Starting Thursday in Ottawa I’ll be speaking on Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy in Ottawa, Waterloo, Hamilton and Toronto.The information is here.

    The post Please Ignore Our Subversion There first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • New York, March 19, 2024—Russian authorities must drop all charges against journalist Sergey Kustov, release him, and stop prosecuting the press to stifle their work, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.

    On Monday, a court sentenced Kustov, chief editor of local broadcaster Bars, to 10 days imprisonment on charges of disobeying a police officer, according to his outlet, multiple media reports, and a court statement.

    Police detained Kustov, who was reporting on the crash of a Russian military aircraft in Ivanovo, a region northeast of the capital, Moscow, on March 12, for four hours before releasing him; his phone was also briefly confiscated.

    “The arrest of journalist Sergey Kustov, who was covering a plane crash, is yet another attempt by Russian authorities to stifle any independent reporting,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Russian authorities should immediately release Kustov, drop all charges against him, and let members of the press work freely and without fear of being detained.”

    According to the court statement, Kustov “showed disobedience to military police officers, namely, he did not comply with repeated lawful demands of military police officers to leave the area of the IL-76 [Russian military aircraft] crash site.”

    Kustov denied that the military police made any demands, saying that “if they had, he would certainly have complied with them,” his outlet reported. CPJ’s messages to the outlet for comment did not receive a reply.

    Russia’s Defense Ministry said on March 12 that one of the aircraft’s engines caught fire, resulting in the death of all 15 people aboard, according to Russian state news agency TASS.

    Separately, on Sunday, March 17, police in Saint-Petersburg detained Fyodor Danilov, a correspondent with local news outlet Fontanka, while he was covering the election at a polling station, according to his outlet.

    Danilov, who was accredited to cover the elections, arrived at the polling station around 11:30 a.m. and was arrested after 5 to 10 minutes for allegedly waving his arms and using obscene language, which he denied. Danilov was released after two hours without charge, he told CPJ, adding on March 18 that he was “continuing” his work.

    At noon on that day, thousands of people, led by the Russian opposition, turned up at polling stations in Russia and abroad to peacefully protest the re-election of Vladimir Putin.

    CPJ did not receive a response to emails sent to the Saint Petersburg police and Ivanov district court requesting comment on the journalists’ detentions.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • PRISTINA — Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti says he will not suspend a move by the central bank to ban the circulation of the Serbian dinar in parts of the country with Serbian majorities but will accept the forming of an Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities once Belgrade agrees to sign a basic agreement on bilateral relations.

    The basic agreement for the normalization of relations with Serbia was reached in February 2023, and includes the formation of the association, which is expected to more adequately represent predominantly ethnic Serb areas in Kosovo.

    Kosovo is not a member of the European Union or its common currency area, the eurozone, but it unilaterally adopted the euro in 2002 to help bring monetary stability and to simplify and reduce transaction costs inside and outside the country.

    Serbia, which has never acknowledged its former province’s 2008 declaration of independence, still pays many ethnic Serbs at institutions in Serb-dominated parts of Kosovo in dinars. Many also hold their pensions and get child allowances in dinars.

    “Regarding the Serbian-dinar-versus-euro issue, it is Kosovo’s central bank that decides and they have already decided on December 27 last year,” Kurti told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service in an interview on March 19, arguing that the ban, which came into force on February 1, was meant to fight financial crime and terrorism.

    “We have, thanks to them, a new regulation that is going to enhance the integrity of the financial system to fight illicit activities financing terrorism,” Kurti said in Pristina on the same day top Serbian and Kosovar negotiators were holding bilateral meeting in Brussels with EU special envoy Miroslav Lajcak.

    The Serbian dinar ban was reported to be high on the agenda, although no joint trilateral meeting has been confirmed so far.

    The ban ratcheted up already high tensions between Serbia and Kosovo and threatened to scupper efforts by Washington and Brussels to get the dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade back on track.

    “The dinar is not banned in Kosovo, but the euro is the only means of payment,” Kurti told RFE/RL, echoing the central bank’s line that the ban doesn’t stop anyone from accepting money from any country, it just means the money is converted into euros.

    Still, the conversion adds a layer of cost and complication to the daily lives of ethnic Serbs still tied to the dinar.

    “We cannot allow bagfuls of dinars in cash to enter our country. (It can happen) only through official financial channels with full transparency, who sends money to whom and for what purpose,” Kurti said, adding that any disparities on the ground would have time to be smoothed out over the three-month transition period.

    “Serbia can send dinars, we will exchange them into euros and Serbs in Kosovo can benefit from that financial aid,” Kurti added.

    However, the U.S. envoy to the Western Balkans last week warned that the ban had caused problems for some citizens in the region and challenges for the U.S.-Kosovo relationship.

    Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar told RFE/RL on March 14 that Kosovo’s controversial decision on the dinar was “an issue that we need to address immediately.”

    Escobar said that the issue had presented challenges in the bilateral relationship, although Washington remains Kosovo’s most reliable ally.

    The U.S. envoy also said that his proposals for resolving the issue had been rejected by Kurti during their meeting.

    “It’s not me as prime minister to decide about this thing,” Kurti told RFE/RL when asked about why he refused Escobar’s solutions.

    “We’re a democracy where powers and duties are separated. Therefore, I can only help the central bank to affect a smooth transition,” Kurti said, declining to elaborate on Escobar’s proposals.

    “Let those who made the proposals speak,” he added, reiterating that he cannot cancel the decision of an independent institution.

    “No suspension will come out of talking to me, because the bank is an independent institution,” he said, adding that its governor reports only to parliament, not the government.

    Asked whether he would at least advise the bank to extend the transition period, Kurti replied: “I cannot also advise the central bank of Kosovo. The governor has his own advisers.”

    Referring to the basic agreement, Kurti said it was Belgrade that was hampering its implementation.

    “I want the normalization of relations and I think that the signing of the basic agreement and its implementation annex can certainly cancel previous violations on one hand and, on the other hand can bring legal certainty for the future.

    “The problem is that eight out of 11 articles of the basic agreement have been violated by Belgrade,” Kurti said, mentioning a letter sent by Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic to the European Union, in which, according to him, her government said they were withdrawing their pledge to the deal “because they will never recognize independence of Kosovo, never accept Kosovo’s membership in the United Nations, and likewise they are not going to respect the territorial integrity of our country.”

    Referring to the forming of the Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities, which is mentioned in Article 7 of the basic agreement, Kurti reiterated his government’s statement from October 27, which blamed Serbia for refusing to sign the document endorsed by the leaders of France, Italy, and Germany.

    “What more can I do? We are leaders who are supposed to turn the text that we have agreed upon into signed agreements. Obviously, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic initially said yes to the agreement without intending to sign it and then regretted saying yes, as Mrs. Brnabic’s letter explained,” Kurti said.

    “I believe that whoever mentions an association of Serbian-majority municipalities outside the basic agreement or before it serving Serbia’s quest to turn Kosovo into Bosnia,” he said, adding that such an association has to be established withing the framework of the Kosovar Constitution.

    “In Brussels I said one cannot serve coffee without a cup. If you ask for coffee without a cup, I will show you an empty cup. The cup is the Republic of Kosovo. What is the legal framework of the association? Is it the constitution of the Republic of Kosova or that of Serbia? If I’m there, it’s the constitution of the Republic of Kosovo. No coffee without a cup.

    “This is crucial to understand. Belgrade wants to put the cart before the horses. It’s not possible. There will be no movement as we have seen since February and March last year,” he said, adding that he was ready to go to Brussels again together with Vucic.

    Referring to the frustration voiced by the United States and the European Union because of the lack of progress toward the Serbian dinar and the municipalities association, Kurti said that while they are indispensable partners, sometimes differences may arise.

    “I consider United States an indispensable ally, friend, and partner. But this does not mean that we have an identical stance toward official Belgrade. As the prime minister of Kosovo, I cannot regard Belgrade through the eyes of the State Department…they do not see Belgrade as I see them. We do not have an identical stance. We have a different experience and history,” Kurti said.


    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.

  • PRISTINA — Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti says he will not suspend a move by the central bank to ban the circulation of the Serbian dinar in parts of the country with Serbian majorities but will accept the forming of an Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities once Belgrade agrees to sign a basic agreement on bilateral relations.

    The basic agreement for the normalization of relations with Serbia was reached in February 2023, and includes the formation of the association, which is expected to more adequately represent predominantly ethnic Serb areas in Kosovo.

    Kosovo is not a member of the European Union or its common currency area, the eurozone, but it unilaterally adopted the euro in 2002 to help bring monetary stability and to simplify and reduce transaction costs inside and outside the country.

    Serbia, which has never acknowledged its former province’s 2008 declaration of independence, still pays many ethnic Serbs at institutions in Serb-dominated parts of Kosovo in dinars. Many also hold their pensions and get child allowances in dinars.

    “Regarding the Serbian-dinar-versus-euro issue, it is Kosovo’s central bank that decides and they have already decided on December 27 last year,” Kurti told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service in an interview on March 19, arguing that the ban, which came into force on February 1, was meant to fight financial crime and terrorism.

    “We have, thanks to them, a new regulation that is going to enhance the integrity of the financial system to fight illicit activities financing terrorism,” Kurti said in Pristina on the same day top Serbian and Kosovar negotiators were holding bilateral meeting in Brussels with EU special envoy Miroslav Lajcak.

    The Serbian dinar ban was reported to be high on the agenda, although no joint trilateral meeting has been confirmed so far.

    The ban ratcheted up already high tensions between Serbia and Kosovo and threatened to scupper efforts by Washington and Brussels to get the dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade back on track.

    “The dinar is not banned in Kosovo, but the euro is the only means of payment,” Kurti told RFE/RL, echoing the central bank’s line that the ban doesn’t stop anyone from accepting money from any country, it just means the money is converted into euros.

    Still, the conversion adds a layer of cost and complication to the daily lives of ethnic Serbs still tied to the dinar.

    “We cannot allow bagfuls of dinars in cash to enter our country. (It can happen) only through official financial channels with full transparency, who sends money to whom and for what purpose,” Kurti said, adding that any disparities on the ground would have time to be smoothed out over the three-month transition period.

    “Serbia can send dinars, we will exchange them into euros and Serbs in Kosovo can benefit from that financial aid,” Kurti added.

    However, the U.S. envoy to the Western Balkans last week warned that the ban had caused problems for some citizens in the region and challenges for the U.S.-Kosovo relationship.

    Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar told RFE/RL on March 14 that Kosovo’s controversial decision on the dinar was “an issue that we need to address immediately.”

    Escobar said that the issue had presented challenges in the bilateral relationship, although Washington remains Kosovo’s most reliable ally.

    The U.S. envoy also said that his proposals for resolving the issue had been rejected by Kurti during their meeting.

    “It’s not me as prime minister to decide about this thing,” Kurti told RFE/RL when asked about why he refused Escobar’s solutions.

    “We’re a democracy where powers and duties are separated. Therefore, I can only help the central bank to affect a smooth transition,” Kurti said, declining to elaborate on Escobar’s proposals.

    “Let those who made the proposals speak,” he added, reiterating that he cannot cancel the decision of an independent institution.

    “No suspension will come out of talking to me, because the bank is an independent institution,” he said, adding that its governor reports only to parliament, not the government.

    Asked whether he would at least advise the bank to extend the transition period, Kurti replied: “I cannot also advise the central bank of Kosovo. The governor has his own advisers.”

    Referring to the basic agreement, Kurti said it was Belgrade that was hampering its implementation.

    “I want the normalization of relations and I think that the signing of the basic agreement and its implementation annex can certainly cancel previous violations on one hand and, on the other hand can bring legal certainty for the future.

    “The problem is that eight out of 11 articles of the basic agreement have been violated by Belgrade,” Kurti said, mentioning a letter sent by Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic to the European Union, in which, according to him, her government said they were withdrawing their pledge to the deal “because they will never recognize independence of Kosovo, never accept Kosovo’s membership in the United Nations, and likewise they are not going to respect the territorial integrity of our country.”

    Referring to the forming of the Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities, which is mentioned in Article 7 of the basic agreement, Kurti reiterated his government’s statement from October 27, which blamed Serbia for refusing to sign the document endorsed by the leaders of France, Italy, and Germany.

    “What more can I do? We are leaders who are supposed to turn the text that we have agreed upon into signed agreements. Obviously, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic initially said yes to the agreement without intending to sign it and then regretted saying yes, as Mrs. Brnabic’s letter explained,” Kurti said.

    “I believe that whoever mentions an association of Serbian-majority municipalities outside the basic agreement or before it serving Serbia’s quest to turn Kosovo into Bosnia,” he said, adding that such an association has to be established withing the framework of the Kosovar Constitution.

    “In Brussels I said one cannot serve coffee without a cup. If you ask for coffee without a cup, I will show you an empty cup. The cup is the Republic of Kosovo. What is the legal framework of the association? Is it the constitution of the Republic of Kosova or that of Serbia? If I’m there, it’s the constitution of the Republic of Kosovo. No coffee without a cup.

    “This is crucial to understand. Belgrade wants to put the cart before the horses. It’s not possible. There will be no movement as we have seen since February and March last year,” he said, adding that he was ready to go to Brussels again together with Vucic.

    Referring to the frustration voiced by the United States and the European Union because of the lack of progress toward the Serbian dinar and the municipalities association, Kurti said that while they are indispensable partners, sometimes differences may arise.

    “I consider United States an indispensable ally, friend, and partner. But this does not mean that we have an identical stance toward official Belgrade. As the prime minister of Kosovo, I cannot regard Belgrade through the eyes of the State Department…they do not see Belgrade as I see them. We do not have an identical stance. We have a different experience and history,” Kurti said.


    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.

  • PRISTINA — Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti says he will not suspend a move by the central bank to ban the circulation of the Serbian dinar in parts of the country with Serbian majorities but will accept the forming of an Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities once Belgrade agrees to sign a basic agreement on bilateral relations.

    The basic agreement for the normalization of relations with Serbia was reached in February 2023, and includes the formation of the association, which is expected to more adequately represent predominantly ethnic Serb areas in Kosovo.

    Kosovo is not a member of the European Union or its common currency area, the eurozone, but it unilaterally adopted the euro in 2002 to help bring monetary stability and to simplify and reduce transaction costs inside and outside the country.

    Serbia, which has never acknowledged its former province’s 2008 declaration of independence, still pays many ethnic Serbs at institutions in Serb-dominated parts of Kosovo in dinars. Many also hold their pensions and get child allowances in dinars.

    “Regarding the Serbian-dinar-versus-euro issue, it is Kosovo’s central bank that decides and they have already decided on December 27 last year,” Kurti told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service in an interview on March 19, arguing that the ban, which came into force on February 1, was meant to fight financial crime and terrorism.

    “We have, thanks to them, a new regulation that is going to enhance the integrity of the financial system to fight illicit activities financing terrorism,” Kurti said in Pristina on the same day top Serbian and Kosovar negotiators were holding bilateral meeting in Brussels with EU special envoy Miroslav Lajcak.

    The Serbian dinar ban was reported to be high on the agenda, although no joint trilateral meeting has been confirmed so far.

    The ban ratcheted up already high tensions between Serbia and Kosovo and threatened to scupper efforts by Washington and Brussels to get the dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade back on track.

    “The dinar is not banned in Kosovo, but the euro is the only means of payment,” Kurti told RFE/RL, echoing the central bank’s line that the ban doesn’t stop anyone from accepting money from any country, it just means the money is converted into euros.

    Still, the conversion adds a layer of cost and complication to the daily lives of ethnic Serbs still tied to the dinar.

    “We cannot allow bagfuls of dinars in cash to enter our country. (It can happen) only through official financial channels with full transparency, who sends money to whom and for what purpose,” Kurti said, adding that any disparities on the ground would have time to be smoothed out over the three-month transition period.

    “Serbia can send dinars, we will exchange them into euros and Serbs in Kosovo can benefit from that financial aid,” Kurti added.

    However, the U.S. envoy to the Western Balkans last week warned that the ban had caused problems for some citizens in the region and challenges for the U.S.-Kosovo relationship.

    Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar told RFE/RL on March 14 that Kosovo’s controversial decision on the dinar was “an issue that we need to address immediately.”

    Escobar said that the issue had presented challenges in the bilateral relationship, although Washington remains Kosovo’s most reliable ally.

    The U.S. envoy also said that his proposals for resolving the issue had been rejected by Kurti during their meeting.

    “It’s not me as prime minister to decide about this thing,” Kurti told RFE/RL when asked about why he refused Escobar’s solutions.

    “We’re a democracy where powers and duties are separated. Therefore, I can only help the central bank to affect a smooth transition,” Kurti said, declining to elaborate on Escobar’s proposals.

    “Let those who made the proposals speak,” he added, reiterating that he cannot cancel the decision of an independent institution.

    “No suspension will come out of talking to me, because the bank is an independent institution,” he said, adding that its governor reports only to parliament, not the government.

    Asked whether he would at least advise the bank to extend the transition period, Kurti replied: “I cannot also advise the central bank of Kosovo. The governor has his own advisers.”

    Referring to the basic agreement, Kurti said it was Belgrade that was hampering its implementation.

    “I want the normalization of relations and I think that the signing of the basic agreement and its implementation annex can certainly cancel previous violations on one hand and, on the other hand can bring legal certainty for the future.

    “The problem is that eight out of 11 articles of the basic agreement have been violated by Belgrade,” Kurti said, mentioning a letter sent by Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic to the European Union, in which, according to him, her government said they were withdrawing their pledge to the deal “because they will never recognize independence of Kosovo, never accept Kosovo’s membership in the United Nations, and likewise they are not going to respect the territorial integrity of our country.”

    Referring to the forming of the Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities, which is mentioned in Article 7 of the basic agreement, Kurti reiterated his government’s statement from October 27, which blamed Serbia for refusing to sign the document endorsed by the leaders of France, Italy, and Germany.

    “What more can I do? We are leaders who are supposed to turn the text that we have agreed upon into signed agreements. Obviously, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic initially said yes to the agreement without intending to sign it and then regretted saying yes, as Mrs. Brnabic’s letter explained,” Kurti said.

    “I believe that whoever mentions an association of Serbian-majority municipalities outside the basic agreement or before it serving Serbia’s quest to turn Kosovo into Bosnia,” he said, adding that such an association has to be established withing the framework of the Kosovar Constitution.

    “In Brussels I said one cannot serve coffee without a cup. If you ask for coffee without a cup, I will show you an empty cup. The cup is the Republic of Kosovo. What is the legal framework of the association? Is it the constitution of the Republic of Kosova or that of Serbia? If I’m there, it’s the constitution of the Republic of Kosovo. No coffee without a cup.

    “This is crucial to understand. Belgrade wants to put the cart before the horses. It’s not possible. There will be no movement as we have seen since February and March last year,” he said, adding that he was ready to go to Brussels again together with Vucic.

    Referring to the frustration voiced by the United States and the European Union because of the lack of progress toward the Serbian dinar and the municipalities association, Kurti said that while they are indispensable partners, sometimes differences may arise.

    “I consider United States an indispensable ally, friend, and partner. But this does not mean that we have an identical stance toward official Belgrade. As the prime minister of Kosovo, I cannot regard Belgrade through the eyes of the State Department…they do not see Belgrade as I see them. We do not have an identical stance. We have a different experience and history,” Kurti said.


    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.

  • PRISTINA — Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti says he will not suspend a move by the central bank to ban the circulation of the Serbian dinar in parts of the country with Serbian majorities but will accept the forming of an Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities once Belgrade agrees to sign a basic agreement on bilateral relations.

    The basic agreement for the normalization of relations with Serbia was reached in February 2023, and includes the formation of the association, which is expected to more adequately represent predominantly ethnic Serb areas in Kosovo.

    Kosovo is not a member of the European Union or its common currency area, the eurozone, but it unilaterally adopted the euro in 2002 to help bring monetary stability and to simplify and reduce transaction costs inside and outside the country.

    Serbia, which has never acknowledged its former province’s 2008 declaration of independence, still pays many ethnic Serbs at institutions in Serb-dominated parts of Kosovo in dinars. Many also hold their pensions and get child allowances in dinars.

    “Regarding the Serbian-dinar-versus-euro issue, it is Kosovo’s central bank that decides and they have already decided on December 27 last year,” Kurti told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service in an interview on March 19, arguing that the ban, which came into force on February 1, was meant to fight financial crime and terrorism.

    “We have, thanks to them, a new regulation that is going to enhance the integrity of the financial system to fight illicit activities financing terrorism,” Kurti said in Pristina on the same day top Serbian and Kosovar negotiators were holding bilateral meeting in Brussels with EU special envoy Miroslav Lajcak.

    The Serbian dinar ban was reported to be high on the agenda, although no joint trilateral meeting has been confirmed so far.

    The ban ratcheted up already high tensions between Serbia and Kosovo and threatened to scupper efforts by Washington and Brussels to get the dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade back on track.

    “The dinar is not banned in Kosovo, but the euro is the only means of payment,” Kurti told RFE/RL, echoing the central bank’s line that the ban doesn’t stop anyone from accepting money from any country, it just means the money is converted into euros.

    Still, the conversion adds a layer of cost and complication to the daily lives of ethnic Serbs still tied to the dinar.

    “We cannot allow bagfuls of dinars in cash to enter our country. (It can happen) only through official financial channels with full transparency, who sends money to whom and for what purpose,” Kurti said, adding that any disparities on the ground would have time to be smoothed out over the three-month transition period.

    “Serbia can send dinars, we will exchange them into euros and Serbs in Kosovo can benefit from that financial aid,” Kurti added.

    However, the U.S. envoy to the Western Balkans last week warned that the ban had caused problems for some citizens in the region and challenges for the U.S.-Kosovo relationship.

    Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar told RFE/RL on March 14 that Kosovo’s controversial decision on the dinar was “an issue that we need to address immediately.”

    Escobar said that the issue had presented challenges in the bilateral relationship, although Washington remains Kosovo’s most reliable ally.

    The U.S. envoy also said that his proposals for resolving the issue had been rejected by Kurti during their meeting.

    “It’s not me as prime minister to decide about this thing,” Kurti told RFE/RL when asked about why he refused Escobar’s solutions.

    “We’re a democracy where powers and duties are separated. Therefore, I can only help the central bank to affect a smooth transition,” Kurti said, declining to elaborate on Escobar’s proposals.

    “Let those who made the proposals speak,” he added, reiterating that he cannot cancel the decision of an independent institution.

    “No suspension will come out of talking to me, because the bank is an independent institution,” he said, adding that its governor reports only to parliament, not the government.

    Asked whether he would at least advise the bank to extend the transition period, Kurti replied: “I cannot also advise the central bank of Kosovo. The governor has his own advisers.”

    Referring to the basic agreement, Kurti said it was Belgrade that was hampering its implementation.

    “I want the normalization of relations and I think that the signing of the basic agreement and its implementation annex can certainly cancel previous violations on one hand and, on the other hand can bring legal certainty for the future.

    “The problem is that eight out of 11 articles of the basic agreement have been violated by Belgrade,” Kurti said, mentioning a letter sent by Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic to the European Union, in which, according to him, her government said they were withdrawing their pledge to the deal “because they will never recognize independence of Kosovo, never accept Kosovo’s membership in the United Nations, and likewise they are not going to respect the territorial integrity of our country.”

    Referring to the forming of the Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities, which is mentioned in Article 7 of the basic agreement, Kurti reiterated his government’s statement from October 27, which blamed Serbia for refusing to sign the document endorsed by the leaders of France, Italy, and Germany.

    “What more can I do? We are leaders who are supposed to turn the text that we have agreed upon into signed agreements. Obviously, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic initially said yes to the agreement without intending to sign it and then regretted saying yes, as Mrs. Brnabic’s letter explained,” Kurti said.

    “I believe that whoever mentions an association of Serbian-majority municipalities outside the basic agreement or before it serving Serbia’s quest to turn Kosovo into Bosnia,” he said, adding that such an association has to be established withing the framework of the Kosovar Constitution.

    “In Brussels I said one cannot serve coffee without a cup. If you ask for coffee without a cup, I will show you an empty cup. The cup is the Republic of Kosovo. What is the legal framework of the association? Is it the constitution of the Republic of Kosova or that of Serbia? If I’m there, it’s the constitution of the Republic of Kosovo. No coffee without a cup.

    “This is crucial to understand. Belgrade wants to put the cart before the horses. It’s not possible. There will be no movement as we have seen since February and March last year,” he said, adding that he was ready to go to Brussels again together with Vucic.

    Referring to the frustration voiced by the United States and the European Union because of the lack of progress toward the Serbian dinar and the municipalities association, Kurti said that while they are indispensable partners, sometimes differences may arise.

    “I consider United States an indispensable ally, friend, and partner. But this does not mean that we have an identical stance toward official Belgrade. As the prime minister of Kosovo, I cannot regard Belgrade through the eyes of the State Department…they do not see Belgrade as I see them. We do not have an identical stance. We have a different experience and history,” Kurti said.


    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.

  • President Biden used the bully pulpit of the annual State of the Union Address to describe a world that significantly differed from the picture presented just a month earlier in the Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community.

    Information fed to the general public is deliberately spun to sell the imperial project. In contrast, intelligence assessments for elite policy makers are designed to sustain the endeavor. That the president’s pronouncements diverge from the conclusions reached by his own intelligence community highlights the chasm between what is foisted on the public compared to what is understood within the bowels of the state.

    Unlike Biden’s bullish and bellicose pronouncements about “our leadership in the world,” the Assessment’s view was less triumphal. It states: “The United States faces an increasingly fragile global order.”

    The fraying US-imposed “rules based order” and its discredited neoliberal economic system are more and more being challenged by “states engaging in competitive behavior,” according to the Assessment. The report adds, fallout from the Gaza crisis, in particular, serves to “undermine” the US.

    Both pronouncements, however, have similar biases. Biden’s address to the nation was overtly political, accusing Trump of “bowing down” to Putin. But the supposedly neutral and objective “collective insights of the Intelligence Community” were likewise predisposed in favor of Democratic Party memes. Both blame Russian electoral interference for Trump’s ascension to the Oval Office in 2016. As proof, the so-called intelligence community again offered nothing more than its own assessment, lacking better evidence.

    “Ambitious” China

    Biden bragged in this address: “For years, all I’ve heard from my Republican friends…is China’s on the rise and America is falling behind. They’ve got it backward!” Contrary to his bravado about “we’re in a stronger position to win the competition for the 21st Century against China,” the World Bank predicts 4.5% GDP growth in China compared to 1.6% for the US in 2024.

    China has surpassed the US as the largest world economy by purchasing power parity. The Assessment forecasts slowed – but still greater than for the US – economic growth in what it labels as an “ambitious” China.

    The Assessment reports that China “now rivals” the US in DNA-sequencing and is the “world leader” in voice and image recognition and video analytics. Biden’s claim that, “I’ve made sure that the most advanced American technologies can’t be used in China,” is contradicted by the Assessment’s finding that China is “making progress” in producing advanced chips on its own.

    The Assessment notes: “China views Washington’s competitive measures against Beijing as part of a broader US…effort to contain its rise.” In this context, the Chinese perceive an increased likelihood of a US first-strike nuclear attack, according to the Assessment. Nevertheless, China has shown growing “confidence” in its nuclear deterrent capabilities against US aggression, also according to the Assessment.

    China is disadvantaged militarily, according to the Assessment, because it “lacks recent warfighting experience,” something the US has in excess. US intelligence estimates that China will only “fully modernize” its national defense by 2035 and will not become a “world-class military” until 2049.

    The Assessment anticipates increased Chinese push-back over Taiwan. Although Biden claimed that the US is “standing up for peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” the US has done the opposite by continuing to destabilize and militarize the region. To wit, Biden said in his address, “I’ve revitalized our partnerships and alliances in the Pacific.”

    “Confrontational” Russia

    The Assessment labels Russia “confrontational,” projecting Washington’s own posture. In a fit of made-for-popular-consumption Russophobia, Biden warned in his address: “Putin of Russia is on the march…If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not!”

    While the Assessment warns of many threats, Russian expansionism – as Biden fear mongered  – is not one of them. In fact, the Assessment notes that Russia stepped down from intervening in neighboring Azerbaijan regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh territory. The Assessment assures us: “Russia almost certainly does not want a direct military conflict with US and NATO forces.”

    The Assessment notes that Russia “maintains the largest and most diverse nuclear weapons stockpile.” But it adds that Russia sees its stockpile as “necessary for maintaining deterrence” (presumably from a US first strike). The Assessment, while describing Russia as a “capable and resilient adversary,” takes the contrary view to Biden’s, seeing Russia’s posture as mainly “defensive.”

    As the US proxy war against Russia drags on, Biden continues to campaign for expanding the US funding for Ukraine with no hint of a peace. For its part, the Assessment does not contest what it describes as Putin’s belief that Russia is winning the war in Ukraine.

    Rather, the Assessment sees no victory in sight for the US: “This deadlock plays to Russia’s strategic military advantages and is increasingly shifting the momentum in Moscow’s favor.” Not surprisingly, this huge admission of the futility of the US war effort in Ukraine coming from its own intelligence institutions has not been prominently reported by the follow-the-flag corporate press.

    The Assessment describes how Russia is strengthening and leveraging ties with China, Iran, and North Korea. Russia is mitigating the impacts of US-led sanctions, while “rebuild[ing] its credibility as a great power.” Russia’s deepening ties with China in particular have afforded it significant “protection from future sanctions.”

    Despite US-led coercive economic measures, the Assessment projects “modest” Russian GDP growth. Moscow has “successfully diverted” its oil exports and largely evaded the US/G7 price caps, retaining “significant energy leverage” as the second-largest supplier of liquefied natural gas to Europe. In short, Russia is “offsetting its decline in relations with the West” with a pivot to the Global South.

    Other global flashpoints

    Biden’s policy of “containing the threat posed by Iran” is elaborated in the Assessment. US-led sanctions are credited with putting “brakes on” Iran’s economy. In response, the Assessment reports, Tehran has “expanded its diplomatic influence” by improving ties with Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.

    The Assessment correctly notes that Iran uses its nuclear program “to build negotiating leverage and respond to perceived international pressure,” pointing out that Iran would “restore JCPOA limits if the United States fulfilled its JCPOA commitments [emphasis added].”

    On the one hand, the Assessment preposterously accuses Iran of seeking to “block a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.” On the other, Iran is absolved of orchestrating or having any foreknowledge of the Hamas attack on Israel. This is a notable admission.

    The Gaza conflict, according to the Assessment, poses the “risk of escalation” into regional interstate war. Uncle Sam’s “key Arab partners,” the Assessment laments, face hostile domestic sentiment because their citizens (correctly) see the US and Israel as responsible for “the death and destruction.” Although the US is recognized as the “power broker” that could “end the conflict,” the Assessment (also correctly) implies that the US has not played that role.

    The Assessment foresees Israel needing to confront “armed resistance from Hamas for years to come.” While acknowledging that Hamas enjoys “broad support,” the Assessment questions Israeli President Netanyahu’s “viability” and “ability of rule.”

    Similar to the case of Iran, the Assessment explains, North Korea’s nuclear program is pursued as a “guarantor of regime security” and to “deter outside intervention.” North Korea’s missile launches, the Assessment admits, are responses to counter hostile US-South Korea military exercises. North Korea’s development of nuclear capabilities, the Assessment further acknowledges, are defensive to “enhance second-strike capabilities” in the contingency of a first strike by the US and its allies.

    In regard to immigration, Biden touts his “comprehensive plan to fix” our system. Given the current dysfunction on the US border, claiming credit there sounds more like a Republican talking point than one favoring the incumbent. Largely ignored in Biden’s address, the Assessment is concerned with global warming and its potentially destabilizing effect on the US-imposed global order by generating climate refugees.

    “Poor socioeconomic conditions and insecurity” further drive cross-border migration, warns the Assessment. While admitting that “lack of economic opportunities” are among the factors that drive Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan emigration, the Assessment incredulously rejects blaming US sanctions for driving people away from their homelands.

    Conclusion

    Unlike the upbeat “greatest comeback story never told” of the State of the Union address, the Assessment cautions:

    “Strains in US alliances and challenges to international norms have made it more difficult…to tackle global issues…. The world that emerges from this tumultuous period will be shaped by whoever… [is] most effective at advancing economic growth and providing benefits for more people, and by the powers…that are most able and willing to act on solutions to transnational issues and regional crises.”

    Meanwhile, the Assessment reports that Putin’s “Russia has increased social spending…and increased corporate taxes.” Also reported, Xi’s China is prioritizing “a more equitable distribution of wealth – replacing the focus on maximizing GDP growth.” Back home, Biden promised in his address “to end cancer as we know it” and prophesized that he will “save the planet from the climate crisis.” (For starters, I would settle for just stopping the genocide in Palestine and a negotiated peace in Ukraine.)

    The post Biden’s State of the Union Address Exposed by US Intelligence Threat Assessment first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Vladimir Putin has claimed a fifth presidential term with a landslide victory in a tightly controlled election that has been condemned by the West as neither free nor fair as the Russian leader seeks to prove overwhelming popular support for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and increasingly repressive policies.

    With 99.75 percent of ballots counted, Putin won another six-year term with a post-Soviet record of 87.29 percent of the vote, the Central Elections Committee (TsIK) said on March 18, adding that turnout was also at a “record” level, with 77.44 percent of eligible voters casting ballots.

    The 71-year old Putin — who has ruled as either president or prime minister since 2000 — is now set to surpass Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s nearly 30-year reign to become the longest-serving Russian leader in more than two centuries.

    “This election has been based on repression and intimidation,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists in Brussels on March 18 as the bloc’s foreign ministers gathered to discuss the election, among other issues.

    The March 15-17 vote is the first for Putin since he launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that has killed tens of thousands of Russians and led to a clear break in relations with the West. In holding what has widely been viewed as faux elections, Putin wants to show that he has the nation’s full support, experts said.

    The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located. Moscow illegally annexed the regions since launching the invasion, though it remains unclear how much of the territory it controls.

    The Kremlin’s goal “is to get as many people as possible to sign off on Russia’s war against Ukraine. The idea is to get millions of Russian citizens to retroactively approve the decision Putin single-handedly made two years ago,” Maksim Trudolyubov, a senior fellow at the Kennan Institute, wrote in a note ahead of the vote.

    In remarks shortly after he was declared the winner, Putin said the election showed that the nation was “one team.”

    But Western leaders condemned the vote, with the White House National Security Council spokesperson saying they “are obviously not free nor fair given how Mr. Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him.”

    British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said “this is not what free and fair elections look like,” adding in his message on X, formerly Twitter, that illegal elections have also been held on occupied Ukrainian territory.

    The French Foreign Ministry said Putin’s reelection came amid a wave of repression against civil society. It also praised in a statement the courage of “the many Russian citizens who peacefully protested against this attack on their fundamental political rights.”

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Putin has become “sick with power” and he is just “simulating” elections.

    “This imitation of ‘elections’ has no legitimacy and cannot have any. This person must end up in the dock in The Hague [at the International UN Tribunal for War Crimes],” Zelenskiy said on X.

    Putin’s allies were quick to heap praise on the Russian leader for his election success.

    China, one of Russia’s most importants allies, congratulated Putin, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian saying President Xi Jinping and the Russian leader “will continue to maintain close exchanges, lead the two countries to continue to uphold long-standing good-neighborly friendship, deepen comprehensive strategic coordination.”

    Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called Putin’s victory “decisive,” the state news agency IRNA reported.

    WATCH: Leading psychiatrists discuss how excessive power can impact brain functioning and what the impulse for total control reveals about the mind and personality traits of authority figures.

    Putin was opposed by three relatively unknown, Kremlin-friendly politicians whose campaign was barely noticeable. The main intrigue was whether Russians would heed opposition calls to gather at polling stations at noon on March 17 to silently protest against Putin’s rule.

    Russian media had reported in the months leading up to the election that the Kremlin was determined to engineer a victory for Putin that would surpass the 2018 results, when he won 77.5 percent of the vote with a turnout of 67.5 percent.

    The Kremlin banned anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin from the ballot after tens of thousands of voters lined up in the cold to support his candidacy. Nadezhdin threatened to undermine the narrative of overwhelming support for Putin and his war, experts said.

    Independent election observers were barred from working at this year’s presidential election for the first time in post-Soviet history, experts said. Russian elections have been notorious for ballot stuffing and other irregularities.

    The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located.

    The United States called the elections neither fair nor free.

    ‘Noon Against Putin’

    With options to express resistance severely limited by the lack of competition and repressive laws, opposition leaders called on voters opposed to Putin to gather near polls at noon to show the Kremlin and the country that they were still a force.

    Russia’s opposition movement suffered a serious blow last month when Aleksei Navalny, Putin’s fiercest and most popular critic, died in unclear circumstances in a maximum-security prison in the Arctic where he was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism widely seen as politically motivated.

    Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones at the designated time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest, including in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.

    “We’re not really expecting anything, but I’d somehow like to make a record of this election for myself, tick the box for myself, so, when talking about it later, I could say that I didn’t just sit at home, but came and tried to do something,” said one Russian who came to vote at noon.

    “The action has achieved its goals,” Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, said in a YouTube video. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”

    The Moscow prosecutor’s office had earlier warned of criminal prosecution against 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 were “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.”

    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.

    Russians living abroad also took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, with hundreds of people lining up at 12 p.m. outside the Russian embassies in Sidney, Tokyo, Phuket, Dubai, Istanbul, Berlin, Paris, and Yerevan among other capitals.

    “It’s not an election. It’s just a fake. And so we’re here to show that not Russians elect the current leader of Russia, that we [are] against him very severely, and that lots of people had to flee their country to be free,” said Anna, a Russian citizen living in Berlin and who gathered outside the embassy in the German capital.

    Putin was challenged by 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, none of whom opposed the war.

    The Russian leader had the full resources of the state behind him, including the media, police, state-owned companies, and election officials.


    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.

  • Vladimir Putin has claimed a fifth presidential term with a landslide victory in a tightly controlled election that has been condemned by the West as neither free nor fair as the Russian leader seeks to prove overwhelming popular support for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and increasingly repressive policies.

    With 99.75 percent of ballots counted, Putin won another six-year term with a post-Soviet record of 87.29 percent of the vote, the Central Elections Committee (TsIK) said on March 18, adding that turnout was also at a “record” level, with 77.44 percent of eligible voters casting ballots.

    The 71-year old Putin — who has ruled as either president or prime minister since 2000 — is now set to surpass Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s nearly 30-year reign to become the longest-serving Russian leader in more than two centuries.

    “This election has been based on repression and intimidation,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists in Brussels on March 18 as the bloc’s foreign ministers gathered to discuss the election, among other issues.

    The March 15-17 vote is the first for Putin since he launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that has killed tens of thousands of Russians and led to a clear break in relations with the West. In holding what has widely been viewed as faux elections, Putin wants to show that he has the nation’s full support, experts said.

    The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located. Moscow illegally annexed the regions since launching the invasion, though it remains unclear how much of the territory it controls.

    The Kremlin’s goal “is to get as many people as possible to sign off on Russia’s war against Ukraine. The idea is to get millions of Russian citizens to retroactively approve the decision Putin single-handedly made two years ago,” Maksim Trudolyubov, a senior fellow at the Kennan Institute, wrote in a note ahead of the vote.

    In remarks shortly after he was declared the winner, Putin said the election showed that the nation was “one team.”

    But Western leaders condemned the vote, with the White House National Security Council spokesperson saying they “are obviously not free nor fair given how Mr. Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him.”

    British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said “this is not what free and fair elections look like,” adding in his message on X, formerly Twitter, that illegal elections have also been held on occupied Ukrainian territory.

    The French Foreign Ministry said Putin’s reelection came amid a wave of repression against civil society. It also praised in a statement the courage of “the many Russian citizens who peacefully protested against this attack on their fundamental political rights.”

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Putin has become “sick with power” and he is just “simulating” elections.

    “This imitation of ‘elections’ has no legitimacy and cannot have any. This person must end up in the dock in The Hague [at the International UN Tribunal for War Crimes],” Zelenskiy said on X.

    Putin’s allies were quick to heap praise on the Russian leader for his election success.

    China, one of Russia’s most importants allies, congratulated Putin, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian saying President Xi Jinping and the Russian leader “will continue to maintain close exchanges, lead the two countries to continue to uphold long-standing good-neighborly friendship, deepen comprehensive strategic coordination.”

    Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called Putin’s victory “decisive,” the state news agency IRNA reported.

    WATCH: Leading psychiatrists discuss how excessive power can impact brain functioning and what the impulse for total control reveals about the mind and personality traits of authority figures.

    Putin was opposed by three relatively unknown, Kremlin-friendly politicians whose campaign was barely noticeable. The main intrigue was whether Russians would heed opposition calls to gather at polling stations at noon on March 17 to silently protest against Putin’s rule.

    Russian media had reported in the months leading up to the election that the Kremlin was determined to engineer a victory for Putin that would surpass the 2018 results, when he won 77.5 percent of the vote with a turnout of 67.5 percent.

    The Kremlin banned anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin from the ballot after tens of thousands of voters lined up in the cold to support his candidacy. Nadezhdin threatened to undermine the narrative of overwhelming support for Putin and his war, experts said.

    Independent election observers were barred from working at this year’s presidential election for the first time in post-Soviet history, experts said. Russian elections have been notorious for ballot stuffing and other irregularities.

    The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located.

    The United States called the elections neither fair nor free.

    ‘Noon Against Putin’

    With options to express resistance severely limited by the lack of competition and repressive laws, opposition leaders called on voters opposed to Putin to gather near polls at noon to show the Kremlin and the country that they were still a force.

    Russia’s opposition movement suffered a serious blow last month when Aleksei Navalny, Putin’s fiercest and most popular critic, died in unclear circumstances in a maximum-security prison in the Arctic where he was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism widely seen as politically motivated.

    Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones at the designated time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest, including in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.

    “We’re not really expecting anything, but I’d somehow like to make a record of this election for myself, tick the box for myself, so, when talking about it later, I could say that I didn’t just sit at home, but came and tried to do something,” said one Russian who came to vote at noon.

    “The action has achieved its goals,” Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, said in a YouTube video. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”

    The Moscow prosecutor’s office had earlier warned of criminal prosecution against 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 were “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.”

    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.

    Russians living abroad also took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, with hundreds of people lining up at 12 p.m. outside the Russian embassies in Sidney, Tokyo, Phuket, Dubai, Istanbul, Berlin, Paris, and Yerevan among other capitals.

    “It’s not an election. It’s just a fake. And so we’re here to show that not Russians elect the current leader of Russia, that we [are] against him very severely, and that lots of people had to flee their country to be free,” said Anna, a Russian citizen living in Berlin and who gathered outside the embassy in the German capital.

    Putin was challenged by 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, none of whom opposed the war.

    The Russian leader had the full resources of the state behind him, including the media, police, state-owned companies, and election officials.


    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.

  • Vladimir Putin has claimed a fifth presidential term with a landslide victory in a tightly controlled election that has been condemned by the West as neither free nor fair as the Russian leader seeks to prove overwhelming popular support for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and increasingly repressive policies.

    With 99.75 percent of ballots counted, Putin won another six-year term with a post-Soviet record of 87.29 percent of the vote, the Central Elections Committee (TsIK) said on March 18, adding that turnout was also at a “record” level, with 77.44 percent of eligible voters casting ballots.

    The 71-year old Putin — who has ruled as either president or prime minister since 2000 — is now set to surpass Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s nearly 30-year reign to become the longest-serving Russian leader in more than two centuries.

    “This election has been based on repression and intimidation,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists in Brussels on March 18 as the bloc’s foreign ministers gathered to discuss the election, among other issues.

    The March 15-17 vote is the first for Putin since he launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that has killed tens of thousands of Russians and led to a clear break in relations with the West. In holding what has widely been viewed as faux elections, Putin wants to show that he has the nation’s full support, experts said.

    The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located. Moscow illegally annexed the regions since launching the invasion, though it remains unclear how much of the territory it controls.

    The Kremlin’s goal “is to get as many people as possible to sign off on Russia’s war against Ukraine. The idea is to get millions of Russian citizens to retroactively approve the decision Putin single-handedly made two years ago,” Maksim Trudolyubov, a senior fellow at the Kennan Institute, wrote in a note ahead of the vote.

    In remarks shortly after he was declared the winner, Putin said the election showed that the nation was “one team.”

    But Western leaders condemned the vote, with the White House National Security Council spokesperson saying they “are obviously not free nor fair given how Mr. Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him.”

    British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said “this is not what free and fair elections look like,” adding in his message on X, formerly Twitter, that illegal elections have also been held on occupied Ukrainian territory.

    The French Foreign Ministry said Putin’s reelection came amid a wave of repression against civil society. It also praised in a statement the courage of “the many Russian citizens who peacefully protested against this attack on their fundamental political rights.”

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Putin has become “sick with power” and he is just “simulating” elections.

    “This imitation of ‘elections’ has no legitimacy and cannot have any. This person must end up in the dock in The Hague [at the International UN Tribunal for War Crimes],” Zelenskiy said on X.

    Putin’s allies were quick to heap praise on the Russian leader for his election success.

    China, one of Russia’s most importants allies, congratulated Putin, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian saying President Xi Jinping and the Russian leader “will continue to maintain close exchanges, lead the two countries to continue to uphold long-standing good-neighborly friendship, deepen comprehensive strategic coordination.”

    Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called Putin’s victory “decisive,” the state news agency IRNA reported.

    WATCH: Leading psychiatrists discuss how excessive power can impact brain functioning and what the impulse for total control reveals about the mind and personality traits of authority figures.

    Putin was opposed by three relatively unknown, Kremlin-friendly politicians whose campaign was barely noticeable. The main intrigue was whether Russians would heed opposition calls to gather at polling stations at noon on March 17 to silently protest against Putin’s rule.

    Russian media had reported in the months leading up to the election that the Kremlin was determined to engineer a victory for Putin that would surpass the 2018 results, when he won 77.5 percent of the vote with a turnout of 67.5 percent.

    The Kremlin banned anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin from the ballot after tens of thousands of voters lined up in the cold to support his candidacy. Nadezhdin threatened to undermine the narrative of overwhelming support for Putin and his war, experts said.

    Independent election observers were barred from working at this year’s presidential election for the first time in post-Soviet history, experts said. Russian elections have been notorious for ballot stuffing and other irregularities.

    The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located.

    The United States called the elections neither fair nor free.

    ‘Noon Against Putin’

    With options to express resistance severely limited by the lack of competition and repressive laws, opposition leaders called on voters opposed to Putin to gather near polls at noon to show the Kremlin and the country that they were still a force.

    Russia’s opposition movement suffered a serious blow last month when Aleksei Navalny, Putin’s fiercest and most popular critic, died in unclear circumstances in a maximum-security prison in the Arctic where he was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism widely seen as politically motivated.

    Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones at the designated time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest, including in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.

    “We’re not really expecting anything, but I’d somehow like to make a record of this election for myself, tick the box for myself, so, when talking about it later, I could say that I didn’t just sit at home, but came and tried to do something,” said one Russian who came to vote at noon.

    “The action has achieved its goals,” Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, said in a YouTube video. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”

    The Moscow prosecutor’s office had earlier warned of criminal prosecution against 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 were “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.”

    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.

    Russians living abroad also took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, with hundreds of people lining up at 12 p.m. outside the Russian embassies in Sidney, Tokyo, Phuket, Dubai, Istanbul, Berlin, Paris, and Yerevan among other capitals.

    “It’s not an election. It’s just a fake. And so we’re here to show that not Russians elect the current leader of Russia, that we [are] against him very severely, and that lots of people had to flee their country to be free,” said Anna, a Russian citizen living in Berlin and who gathered outside the embassy in the German capital.

    Putin was challenged by 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, none of whom opposed the war.

    The Russian leader had the full resources of the state behind him, including the media, police, state-owned companies, and election officials.


    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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Voters in some cities answer Yulia Navalnaya’s call to turn up at midday to signal dissent against president

    Long queues formed at several polling stations in Moscow and other Russian cities as people took up a call from Alexei Navalny’s widow to head to the polls at noon on Sunday in a symbolic show of dissent against Vladimir Putin’s all but certain re-election as president.

    In the run-up to the three-day presidential elections, Yulia Navalnaya urged her supporters to protest against Putin by appearing en masse at midday on Sunday in a legal show of strength against the longtime Russian leader.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Why is the United States so hostile, bellicose, and determined to engage Russia in a war? Searching for clues to answer the question necessarily leads to decode how U.S. ruling circles debate and adopt anti-Russian policies. Could clinical psychology—e.g., irrational, mortal fear of the Russian power—be a factor? No. Although it could be used in petty competitive settings, psychology is subjective and has no place in international politics. Further, one can play psychology but cannot avoid being trapped in it. Further, Politics, be domestic or international, is an open arena for rational processes and decision-making. Could it be then that tangible imperialistic motives are what we are looking for? Yes. Based on documented history, America’s anti-Russian hostility is designed and manufactured for the purpose of empire and domination.

    Two traits define this hostility. (a) How the United States views itself in crafted ideological terms aggrandizing itself and role in the world, and (b) how it views Russia through the same lens. Simply, American ideologues and policy makers have been consistent in viewing Russia as a formidable, untenable, and non-negotiable foe presenting a structural incompatibility with their global domination project. Aside from hyper-militarized capitalism, and entities interconnected by interests and mutual promotion such as the military industry, all satellite and service industries, political class, interventionists, ideologues of empire, other important factors are primary instruments in defining and amplifying that view. A few examples include:

    • Historically developed and encouraged ideology based on military strength and sheer domination as a path to empire is a factor. Karl Rove (a supremacist political theoretician typifying the fascist American system, and a senior advisor to George W. Bush) synthesized the basics of that ideology as follows:

    We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do. [sic]

    • With the exception of a different political system and a new national identity, post-independence American ruling classes and population remained essentially British. The new Americans inherited language, culture, attitudes, mentality, criminal bent, ideology, and morbid lust for bloody colonialist expansions. In short, royal Britain was the inspiring and guiding matrix for the American republic, its worldview, and its philosophy of power. The point: the utter ugliness and cynical criminality of the British model of colonialism, imperialism, racism, and ideology of domination had become American. (Was it not a British novelist (Rudyard Kipling) who inspired and suggested to the United States to build a “recycled British empire” with his “The White Man’s Burden”?)
      • The Zionization of the United States is a subject by itself, and goes beyond the scope of this work. Suffice to say, from Harry Truman onward, the rise to power of American Jewish Zionists (and their American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and myriad other organizations) have added new dimensions to the U.S. imperialist system. They pushed it to the path of no return—so far—on all matters of foreign policy and wars. The formula behind this push is intuitive. The more the United States aggressively and militarily engages the world, the more Israel becomes the direct beneficiary and controller of the imperialist state via American Zionists.
    • Limited cultural literacy: simply stated (but without generalizing), in the United States, ruling classes and society, are clueless—by choice, by careers, and by indoctrination—about how the world works. Said differently, encouraged, cultivated, and socially accepted ignorance is what defines the United States despite positive results in many areas.

    Molly Boigon (producer and reporter for Learning Curve) gave a tiny glimpse on the degradation of the American culture with her taking on the widely spread practice of hoaxes and the messages they convey. To make sure, hoaxes are manifestations of mass culture—especially when coupled to political schemes. She opens her article, “The Great Bamboozle: How America Has Become the Land of the Hoax “with these words,

    “From Pizza gate to Rachel Dolezal, “A Million Little Pieces” to “Love And Consequences,” fake Indians to fake Holocaust survivors, the United States has a past rife with hoaxes, and likely, a history peppered with them, too.”

    On academic level, philosopher Alan Bloom gave an impressive appraisal of the abysmal status of the American political culture with his book, The Closing of the American Mind (1988). And before I forget, I must add William J. Lederer’s remarkable work, A Nation of Sheep published in 1961

    Statement: the American system thrives on all possible means to advance its world agenda. Remark: considering its devious and corecitive mechanisms of control, domestically and internationally, it is quite easy to understand the basic condition pitting the United States against Russia. By taming and indoctrinating the American crowds on how to view Russia, China, Arab states, Korea, Iran, Israel, South Africa, etc., U.S. ruling circles have succeeded at creating fertile but dangerous grounds for a global U.S. imperialist agenda with little, if not existent, domestic opposition.

    To see how all this plays in the U.S. political processes, consider the following event. In a Senate hearing held on January 24, 2000 to discuss so-called “Russian Threats to United States Security in the Post-Cold War Era”, a passage from the transcript solemnly declares:

    “Russia continues to be our top security concern, even without the adversarial relationship of the cold war. Russia still possesses 20,000-plus nuclear weapons. Wide-spread corruption and the absence of honest and accountable internal governmental administrative functions threatens Russia’s slow and erratic evolution toward democracy.” [sic]

    Paragraph Analysis

    • The Sentence, “Russia continues to be our top security concern, etc.”: the statement confirms my repeated assertions that the U.S. enmity toward Russia has nothing to do with Communism, but all to do with Russia’s status—old and new—as a great power standing in the way of its imperialist expansions, unilateralism, and hegemonic agendas.
    • The Sentence, “Russia still possesses 20,000-plus nuclear weapons,”
    • First, did the Senators and Reps expect Russia to disarm just because it changed from Communism to capitalism? In other words, did the legislators of that time expect Russia to disarm unilaterally while they continue keeping their offensive capabilities intact?
    • Second, as per Wikipedia, in 2000, the United States had 8,360 nuclear weapons, and Russia had 21,500. The number of weapons is irrelevant in relation to the issue whether the country with the most is a threat to another with a lesser number. On this subject, if Russia was a threat to the U.S., so was the opposite, i.e., the United States was equally a threat to Russia. Besides, countless factors including size, multiple heads, load, trajectory, time of travel, etc. determine the equivalency of destructiveness thus rendering the count of weapon of no use.
    • Third, while the gathering was focused on the number of Russian warheads to make impression, someone has “forgotten” that the USSR was defending a huge lands mass in Europe and Asia while confronting American, British, and French nukes near home, and, at the same, deterring potential American surprise attack from continental USA and its nuclear submarines around the oceans.
    • Fourth, by mentioning only Russian weapons without disclosing the U.S. number of weapons or other capabilities, the 106th Congress was playing a trite game in highlighting a hypothetical Russian threat while obscuring the American side of the equation.
    • The Sentence, “Wide-spread corruption and the absence of honest and accountable internal governmental administrative functions threatens Russia’s slow and erratic evolution toward democracy”. [Sic]

    Here we go. Whenever the United States wants to inveigh against a foreign state, it resorts to the inferior gizmo of psychological projection. Russia is everything bad, but the United States is everything good—as if U.S. rulers and society are honest, accountable, inerratic, and unbending practitioners of democratic rules.

    To close, the hearing is a testimony that U.S. hostility toward Russia is structural and ideological, fixed and repetitive to tedium. Keeping that in mind, it does not take much convincing to state that Russia is being targeted not because of its Russian-ness. The cause is different and dialectical: Russia is standing in the way of U.S. military-hegemonic onslaught on all nations out of its control. Otherwise, why is all this fanfare and opposition to Russia’s role and place in the international system?

    What I just cited is a minuscule story in the annals of U.S. history concerning Russia. However, since 2000 through present, things have not changed in the United States, but gradually changed in the rest of the world. In 2001, George W. Bush, a fascist hyper-imperialist, ushered his freaky world vision with these words: “You Are either with Us, Or with the Terrorists”. In 2024, Blinken, Nuland, and Biden keep shouting, insulting, and blistering but no one listens. What happened? And, how Ukraine became the watershed for the crumbling of U.S. hyper-imperialism?

    To recap, starting with Barack Obama, U.S. mechanisms to subjugate Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Arab nations, and any other nation resisting surrender to the U.S. diktat have finally reached their operational limits and started jamming. Signs of irreparable structural failure in the U.S. grip of the world were everywhere. Examples include Trump’s failure to disarm North Korea, Biden and Trump’s failure to vanquish Iran, their failure to make China and Russia “cry uncle” with sanctions and threats, their failure to save the dollar from unstoppable decline in world trade, and the failure of their Zionist wars in the Middle East—directly or via Israel.

    In historical perspective, what were the signs that Russia was unstoppably breaking free from the chains that tied it to the U.S. imperialist wheel since the fall of the Soviet Union? How did Ukraine become the unintended theater for changes that no one has ever anticipated? Although Russia had almost surrendered to the United States during the Yeltsin years and the early Putin years (the proposal that Russia joins NATO), the powerful sign that it was so protective of its sovereignty can be attested to by one salient fact. It refused to dismantle its entire nuclear arsenal and national defensive structures—as demanded by the United States immediately after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

    After the fall of the USSR (1991), U.S. planners focused on disarming Russia. The first target was the dismantlement of its nuclear capabilities. When that failed, the focus shifted to transform it into a vassal. The method was all too familiar American scheming: use pro-American Russians—with Americans in advisory roles—to model Russia’ new character according to America’s plans. The gamut was long; it included the composition of new political elites, capitalistic mode of production, finance, pro-U.S. foreign policy, and control of Russia’ military assets. But when this enterprise stalled under Vladimir Putin’s first presidency, and when Russia began recovering its independent international role, the U.S. reverted to its erstwhile confrontational strategy: opposing Russia as a state, nation, polity, and geography.

    In summary, U.S. conduct vs. Russia is not happenstance. It has roots, motives, and it moves according to preset objectives. Knowing the details of this conduct is the path to unravel the knots surrounding the ongoing events in Ukraine. In particular, U.S. hostile posture toward post-Soviet Russia did not come out of nowhere. It is a culmination of a long anti-Russian history. As I stated, while this posture is no longer about the struggle between capitalism and communism, the United States updated its purpose to include confrontational policies in the pursuit of chimerical global empire under its unilateral control.

    On one side, this new struggle is related intricately and ideologically to the imperialist making of the United States and its global projection. On the other, it is materially tied to how it wants to portray and treat Russia. To recap, after the dissolution of the USSR, Russia continued to be a nuclear superpower, it declined to be a U.S. vassal, and it recovered from the disastrous years of Boris Yeltsin. The rest is a known history. After carving its own independent path in the world, Russia is now facing, technically alone, formidable challenges including:

    • Fend off attacks from U.S.-directed Ukraine,
    • Prepare for a possible U.S. nuclear strike,
    • Nullify U.S. efforts to surround it with nuclear weapons,
    • Nullify U.S. military advantage through NATO,
    • Watching out for aggressive moves by Britain, France, Germany, and Poland,
    • Nullify the effects of economic sanctions and seizing of assets ,
    • Terminate U.S. unipolarism in world affairs.

    A question: what does it mean when an independent Russia (and China) stands in the way of U.S. quest for unopposed control of the planet? The answer is spontaneous: conflict will ensue. Thus far, it seems that neither Russia nor China is inclined to bargain for co-sharing in world domination under the wings of the American empire—they never sought such an aim in the first place. Besides, it would be a frivolous bribery. In addition, Russia and China–through words and deeds–respect the world and the inherent rights of all nations to be secure and prosper without U.S. sermons, warnings, or threats of war.

    Russia’s independence from U.S. blackmail has predictable consequences, though. By failing to subdue Russia, the United States went back to square one. That is, driven by dreams of universal control, by entrenched imperialist violence, and by the arrogance of military power, the United States reprised its strategic fixation to defeat Russia. Some armchair ideologues have even suggested that the United States has the capability of taking on both Russia and China at the same time. And another just stated the other day, “The United States must prepare for possible simultaneous wars with Russia and China by expanding its conventional forces.”

    Since the end of WWII, the U.S. has mobilized vast arrays of tools to zoom on and destabilize Russia. Anti-Russian films, TV shows, videogames, parodies with heavy Russian-accented English, books, news agencies, mass media, essays, policy statements, academia, congressional resolutions, national security strategies, presidential executive orders, military alliances, and even comic publications have all transformed Russia into a villain for all times.

    As a reminder, the core of the Soviet Union was Russia. But when the USSR collapsed, Russia didn’t. Its national purpose and statehood identity remained intact. Having failed to destabilize, contain, or make Russia collapse in over 105 years (since 1917) of strenuous attempts, the United States is at it again by using the Ukraine conflict as a springboard toward that end.

    To summarize, weakening, cancelling Russia’s presence in the world, planning to partition, or even destroying it in some way remains an irrepressible U.S. coveted desire. Key point: U.S. morbid hostility toward Russia did not come about the day after the intervention—it predates it by decades. Next, I shall address four pertinent examples.

    Example 1: in her article: “From 1945-49 the US and UK planned to bomb Russia into the Stone Age,” Ekaterina Blinova, a freelance Russian journalist, vigorously addressed the issue of U.S.-British hostility toward Russia. She writes:

    Interestingly enough, then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had ordered the British Armed Forces’ Joint Planning Staff to develop a strategy targeting the USSR months before the end of the Second World War. The first edition of the plan was prepared on May 22, 1945. In accordance with the plan, the invasion of Russia-held Europe by the Allied forces was scheduled on July 1, 1945. The plan, dubbed Operation Unthinkable, stated that its primary goal was “to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and the British Empire. Even though ‘the will’ of these two countries may be defined as no more than a square deal for Poland, that does not necessarily limit the military commitment. [Emphasis added]

    Example 2: U.S. Department of State (Office of the Historian) published a document entitled, United States Relations with Russia: The Cold War: 1945–1949. The relevant part of the document was a reference to a telegram sent by the anti-Soviet, anti-Russian, and anti-communist George Kennan. Here is an extract of how Kennan initiated what has become official U.S. hostility to Russia:

    On February 22, 1946, George F. Kennan, the chargé d’affaires at the Moscow Embassy, sent a long telegram to the Department of State detailing his concerns about Soviet expansionism. Kennan argued that the United States would never be able to cooperate successfully with the Soviets, because they saw the West as an enemy and would engage in a protracted battle to limit Western power and increase Soviet domination. Kennan argued that the United States should lead the West in “containing” the Soviets by exerting counterforce at various geographical and political points of conflict. Kennan published a public version of this argument in the July 1947 issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. Kennan’s articulations of the policy of containment had a major influence on American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union”.

    Comment

    • Kennan talks about Soviet expansionism. This is remarkable—sarcastically, of course. Was he aware of how the United States of the 13 colonies situated on the East coast of the Atlantic Ocean had expanded all the way to the Pacific and to Hawaii? Did anyone inform him how President James Polk annexed Texas and the way with which he took control of the Mexican Cession?
    • He said that the “United States would never cooperate with the Soviets, because they saw the West as enemy”. Fact: it was the other way around. The United States saw Russia, the USSR, and Communism as enemies after the triumph of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. That revolution was a great revolutionary experiment in social change and re-distribution of wealth—all of which are anathema to U.S. capitalists and imperialists. That the experiment had failed is another story.
    • The core of Kennan’s hostility toward Russia was inserted along these lines: Russia “Would engage in a protracted battle to limit Western power and increase Soviet domination.” Well! So, it is okay if the United States increases domination and limit the power of the Soviet Union. Essentially, Kennan wanted that the United States to be the sole power having the right to dominate.
    • As for the proposal to “contain” Russia, his exhortation has become eventually the daily Gospel in Washington until the end of so-called Cold War. However, “Containment” is now re-appearing regularly in U.S. and European media.

    The full text of telegram (861.00/2 – 2246) is a synthesis of how U.S. political psychopaths think of Russia. How they see history. How they see the world through the narrow pinhole of ideology and indoctrination. How they construct a self-serving alternative reality and thereafter manufacture responses to it. (The study of this telegram goes beyond the scope of this work)

    In example 3 and 4, next, I shall discuss the making, workings, and adoption of the U.S. anti-Russian ideology.

    Read Part 12, 3, 4, and 5.

    The post Imperialism and Anti-imperialism Collide in Ukraine (Part 6) first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • 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.

  • 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 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.