The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Election results show less support for Putin
His party, United Russia, gets 10 fewer points than in 2016.
Early results in Russia’s parliamentary elections showed a rise in opposition to President Vladimir Putin’s governing party, though it was nevertheless expected to cruise easily to victory.
In partial results broadcast by state television after three days of voting ended Sunday, the party, United Russia, carried 44% of the vote, 10 percentage points less than in the previous election in 2016. In second place, the Communist Party received 22%, compared with 13% in 2016.
Russian elections are not free and fair, and parliament’s role in recent years has mainly been to rubber-stamp the Kremlin’s initiatives while providing a veneer of democratic legitimacy to Putin’s rule. Over the weekend, videos of ballot-stuffing and other apparent instances of fraud circulated widely on social media. But allies of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny had hoped to use the elections to deliver a rebuke to Putin by consolidating the opposition vote.
The weekend’s elections came amid a harsh crackdown on dissent by the Kremlin and murmurings of popular discontent. Apparently fearing a rebuke at the ballot box, authorities barred just about all well-known opposition figures from running for parliament, while forcing many dissidents into exile and declaring popular independent media outlets to be “foreign agents.”
The multiday nature of the elections — measures officially put in place to reduce the spread of the coronavirus — increased the likelihood of fraud by making the process harder to monitor, election observers and Kremlin critics said. And given the system by which the 450 seats in the lower house of parliament, the Duma, are apportioned, United Russia could still maintain its two-thirds majority in the chamber despite getting less than half of the votes.
The opposition’s uphill battle was complicated by decisions by Google and Apple to comply with Russian government demands to block access to Navalny-related content that was supposed to coordinate the protest vote. After the two tech giants on Friday removed from their stores a smartphone app connected to Navalny’s movement, Google over the weekend went further, apparently complying with a government request to block Youtube videos and Google Docs files that Navalny’s allies were using to coordinate voting across the country’s 225 electoral districts.
Google did not respond Sunday to a request for comment. Navalny’s allies, who are organizing the protest vote campaign from abroad, said they were notified by Google that their content could be blocked because of a government request.
“This content is not available on this country domain due to a legal complaint from the government,” a Youtube message says when users in Russia try to open one of the blocked videos.
Google’s compliance with Russia’s demands in recent days has represented a remarkable concession for a company that prides itself on enabling the open exchange of information. In Russia, Google’s products — in particular, Youtube — have helped provide avenues for free expression even as the Kremlin has rolled back democratic freedoms.
Specific threats of prosecution against some of Google’s more than 100 employees inside Russia forced the company to take down the Navalny smartphone app, a person familiar with Google’s decision told The New York Times on Friday. Russian courts in recent months have outlawed Navalny’s movement as extremist and declared his “smart voting” campaign to be illegal.