Russia's Presidential Elections: Voter Turnout Exceeds 50%
The third and final day of the presidential elections in Russia unfolds on Sunday, with participation exceeding 50% of the eligible voters, totaling 112 million.
This information stems from reports by EFE, as cited by Agerpres.
Within this vast nation, spanning 11 time zones, polling stations commenced operations on Saturday at 20:00 GMT in the Kamchatka Peninsula. They are scheduled to conclude on Sunday at 18:00 GMT in the Baltic exclave Kaliningrad, following which the initial preliminary official results will become available.
According to the Central Election Commission (CEC), over 50% of the electorate exercised their voting rights on both Friday and Saturday. Additionally, 2.6 million individuals cast their votes in advance, a significant portion of whom are soldiers and residents from various Ukrainian regions illegally annexed by Russia.
The initial 24 hours of voting witnessed approximately 20 incidents, including the hurling of Molotov cocktails towards polling stations and defacing of ballot boxes with ink and paint. Consequently, several hundred ballots were invalidated.
Despite sociologists expressing surprise at the high turnout, the opposition suspects that authorities resorted to administrative coercion to ensure public sector employees voted for the Kremlin's candidate, incumbent President Vladimir Putin.
His three relatively minor competitors include the representative of the New People's Party, Vladislav Davankov, and the communist Nikolai Haritonov, both credited with approximately 6% of the vote intentions, along with the ultranationalist Leonid Slutsky, who garners support of roughly 5%.
Approximately 4.5 million voters have the opportunity to cast their votes in areas occupied by the Russian army in four Ukrainian regions illegally annexed by Moscow, namely Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya.
Ukraine has condemned the elections in these occupied regions, which constitute one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, as a "farce." This stance has also been denounced by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Translation by Iurie Tataru
