2024-03-16 11:17:15
Ella Pamfilova, chairwoman of Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC), said people who vandalized ballot boxes to try to disrupt voting in the three-day presidential election would be jailed for up to five years, following a spate of similar attacks in Russia, reported Reuters and TASS.
The incidents came on the first day of a three-day election that will almost certainly leave Vladimir Putin in power for another six years as Russian president. Election Commission officials said the incidents will not affect the outcome of the election.
Pamfilova spoke after investigators announced they had opened a criminal investigation into a woman who poured green paint into a ballot box in an attempt to destroy the ballots cast.
State news agency TASS reported that there were attempts to undermine the vote in Moscow, in the mountainous Caucasus region of Karachay-Cherkessia and in the Russian-controlled Crimean peninsula, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014. The deputy chairman of Russia’s CEC Nikolai Bulaev specified that there were five incidents, reported TASS, quoted by BTA.
Pamfilova said that similar crimes will be punishable by up to five years in prison under Art. 141 of the country’s criminal code for obstructing the exercise of electoral rights or the work of electoral commissions.
“Especially for all the scoundrels ready to destroy the votes of the people who came and voted because of these silver coins,” she said, referring to state media reports that many of the alleged perpetrators said they were paid by Ukraine to cause trouble.
Pamfilova said the police had detained all those who tried to destroy ballots and they would be prosecuted by the law.
“Anyone else who dares will be detained,” she added.
“These are the methods used by our traitors who fled the country, which are used both in the tail and in the mane by those who are fighting against Russia,” said the chairman of the CEC, quoted by TASS. She noted that the elections are going smoothly, “voter turnout is good, people are coming”, and the opponents of the Russian Federation do not want to allow the ballot boxes to be opened, as the result will not suit them.
Investigators in Moscow said they had opened two criminal investigations, including one against a woman who was shown on security cameras dropping her ballot into the transparent urn before calmly pouring a green liquid into it.
The video also shows that the woman was immediately detained by a police officer.
The woman, whose identity has not been released, was later charged with “obstructing the exercise of electoral rights or the work of electoral commissions,” the investigative commission’s press office said.
In a separate case, the Fontanka news agency reported that a 21-year-old woman was arrested after throwing a Molotov cocktail at a polling station in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city and Putin’s birthplace.
Local media also reported attempts to set fire to voting booths in Moscow and the Tyumen region of Siberia.