Independent surveys show that most Russians approve of Putin as president, which might have kept people home as they may have assumed the results were already decided. Turnout this year was reportedly about 67 percent. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised questions about the legitimacy of the Russian race, which Putin took personally and has never forgiven.
US intelligence agencies believe that may be why he tried to ensure she lost in On March 4, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent, and his daughter, Yulia, were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury, England.
It turned out they had been poisoned with a highly toxic nerve agent. In January , the US intelligence community assessed that Russia meddled in the presidential election, helping Trump win the White House.
Instead, the administration released a list of Russian leaders and billionaires with purported ties to Putin in order to show that the administration was watching them. Senior administration officials told reporters that the sanctions were meant to punish Russia for interfering in the election and for masterminding a global cyberattack, known as NotPetya , that hit large corporations and hospitals in the US and Europe last summer.
The new measures target five Russian organizations and 19 Russian individuals. The big organizational targets include two Russian intelligence agencies, known by their acronyms FSB and GRU, and prominent individuals like Prigozhin. That means people connected to the intelligence agencies, and Prigozhin himself, cannot travel to America or do business with American companies , and will soon see their US assets frozen.
Local election officials registered candidates with the same name as popular opposition figures in the same districts to deceive voters and draw off support. Repression also played an important role in limiting communication among opposition voters.
Russians who donated, participated in protests, and even just distributed information about Smart Voting, have been subjected to stiff penalties. The Kremlin and local officials even developed its own version of Smart Voting to confuse disengaged voters. A subsequent law barred those labeled extremists from competing in elections. Some young potential opposition candidates were conscripted into the military or hospitalized.
Others faced drug charges. The Russian electoral watchdog Golos reported that new laws made over 9 million Russians ineligible to compete in the elections. That includes many members of other political parties who attended the rallies to support Navalny in February Under the same law, convicted protesters can lose their right to vote.
The tactics operated beyond Navalny supporters. But he remains popular with many Russians who credit him with standing up to the West and restoring national pride.
Supporters of Mr Navalny have called for protests and condemned the result as illegitimate. For Russia's party of power, it's job done. United Russia is confident that it has retained its parliamentary majority, albeit with a slightly smaller share of the vote than last time round. Judging by last night's celebrations at party headquarters, the party faithful are more than pleased with the result. United Russia insists it won this race fair and square. But even before the first ballots were cast in the marathon vote, this election looked anything but fair.
The Kremlin's most vocal critics had been barred from running - among them, supporters of Mr Navalny. Then there was the voting process itself. Over three days of polling there were allegations of widespread electoral fraud, including ballot box stuffing and threats against election observers.
Video widely shared online showed people stuffing papers into ballot boxes. Mr Navalny and his allies had called on Russians to vote tactically, in many cases for Communist Party candidates they believed could defeat incumbents from United Russia. His supporters organised a tactical voting drive to push support towards the strongest opposition candidates, including Communists who rarely find common cause with liberal Moscow voters. The capitulation was a watershed concession by Big Tech, which has resisted pressure from the Kremlin to censor opposition content and hold its user data in Russia.
Telegram, a popular messaging service, also blocked bots that could tell voters who was backed by the Smart Voting initiative. This article is more than 1 month old. Members of the United Russia party greet supporters.
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