Arrested Russian opposition leader, Alexey Navalny, others who have been recently convicted 19 years in prison For “extremism”, the Kremlin has called for voting against United Russia in the municipal elections to be held today, September 10.
“I believe that in the current situation we need to step back and return to the strategy of voting for any candidate who is not from United Russia. Go to the elections to do the greatest possible harm to the ruling party and its candidates, “, Navalni assured on his blog.
Navalni, who managed to get one third of the votes in the 2013 Moscow mayoral election, the importance of advocating participation in the electoral process On the grounds that “sooner or later there will be relatively free elections in Russia”.
“We must support the people’s desire to nominate. Good candidates are not few in the regions. There are also excellent ones. (…) In any case, they need our vote and support. So what? They don’t need to whine about it’s useless,” he said.
He also considered it crucial to preserve what was left of the election monitoring infrastructure, arguing that the authorities would again try to “steal votes.”
On September 10, elections will be held in 22 Russian regions and four annexed Ukrainian regions. In the framework of the current war in Ukraine -Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia – by Russia, but the Russian army does not completely control them.
Of course, he ruled out the use of “smart voting”, an attempt to oust the Kremlin party from institutions, consisting of voting on a public list of opposition candidates.
Navalni thinks this is now impossible, as authorities will “temporarily” exclude and “church” candidates for supporting the opposition.
On the eve of the local elections, the Russian Justice on Friday ordered the arrest of Golos, the head of the main independent election observation group in this country.
According to the opposition, this measure is not designed for municipal elections, but for the 2024 presidential election, in which Russian leader Vladimir Putin will likely run for reelection. A year ago, Golos denounced hundreds of violations in the Kremlin party-dominated municipal elections.
After the controversial Constitutional reform in 2020, putin Until 2036, he will be able to stay in the Kremlin for two more terms of six years each.