Putin vows revenge for Ukrainian attacks as Russians vote
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine on Friday of trying to disrupt a presidential election that is virtually certain to hand him six more years in the Kremlin, and said Moscow would punish Kyiv for its latest attacks.
The first of three days of voting was marked by disruptions including dye being poured into ballot boxes, a Molotov cocktail thrown at a polling station in Putin’s home town, and reported cyber attacks.
Millions of Russians cast their ballots across the country’s 11 time zones, with officials putting turnout on day one at more than 35 percent.
The Ukraine war cast a shadow over voting, with what Putin said was repeated shelling of Russia’s western regions and an attempt by 2,500 Ukrainian proxies to cross into two Russian regions with tanks.
“These enemy strikes will not remain unpunished,” a visibly angry
Putin said at a meeting of Russia’s Security Council.
Ukrainian officials said the attacks were carried out by Russian armed groups based in Ukraine who are opposed to the Kremlin.
A Russian ballistic missile attack hit a residential area in Ukraine’s Black Sea port city of Odesa, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 70, in Moscow’s deadliest attack in weeks, Ukrainian officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia would receive a “fair response” for what he said was a “vile” strike.
Amid the Ukraine war, the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II, Putin, 71, dominates Russia’s political landscape and none of the other three candidates on the ballot paper presents any credible challenge.
More than 114 million Russians are eligible to vote, including in what
Moscow calls its “new territories” – four regions of Ukraine that its forces only partly control, but which it has claimed as part of Russia. Ukraine says the staging of elections there is illegal and void.
Video released by the Kremlin showed Putin casting his own vote online and waving briefly to the camera. Russians in about a third of the country are able to vote electronically for the first time in a presidential election.
“These are the most closed, most secret elections in Russian history,”
Stanislav Andreichuk, co-chairman of the Golos vote-monitoring group that the state has branded a “foreign agent,” told Reuters.
Dye was poured into ballot boxes in Moscow, Russian-annexed Crimea, and the Caucasus region of Karachayevo-Cherkessia, according to Russian media, in apparent antiKremlin protests.
CCTV footage of one dye-pouring incident showed a young woman depositing her voting slip before calmly pouring a green liquid into the ballot box.