Moscow claims Putin’s party wins votes in annexed Ukraine regions
AFP :
Russia claimed Sunday that the United Russia party, which staunchly backs President Vladimir Putin, had won local ballots in four Ukrainian regions occupied by Russia.
The Kremlin claimed to have annexed the eastern and southern territories last year despite not having full military control over them.
The elections have been dismissed by Ukraine and its allies as a sham.
Data published by Moscow and proxy officials showed voters in the war-battered territories, where Ukraine is clawing back ground, had backed United Russia with more than 70 percent of the ballot in each territory, state-run news agencies reported.
The polls also being held across Russia came ahead of presidential elections next year expected to prolong Putin’s rule until at least 2030.
His opponents are in exile or jail and Moscow has criminalised criticism of its conflict in Ukraine and detained thousands for speaking out.
Authorities set up mobile polling booths days ahead of the vote in the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia, where Moscow said a polling station was attacked by a Ukrainian drone.
In Donetsk, which has been partially controlled by separatists since 2014, Kremlin-installed authorities said Ukrainian shelling had injured election officials.
Voting was also taking place in Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014.
Ukrainian security services said they had compiled a list of “collaborators” helping to organise the voting and vowed retribution.
In Rostov-on-Don, a southwest city close to Ukraine’s border attacked by drones this week, two voters told AFP the conflict was their main worry.
“We just want to live in peace with our children,” said 40-year-old Nina Antonova.
“Everyone is worried about this one problem-the war.
We don’t have any other concerns,” said 84-year-old Anatoli, a pensioner who declined to give his last name.
In Moscow, which was also hosting a mayoral vote, there were few campaign posters.
Incumbant Sergei Sobyanin-a Siberian-born Kremlin loyalist in post since 2010 — won a “convincing” reelection, a senior election official said.
In his 13 years at the helm of Europe’s largest city, Sobyanin has presided over numerous mega-projects that have transformed Moscow’s skyline.
In 2013, he was almost defeated by anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny.
Navalny, who dismissed the vote from behind bars, was jailed in 2020 on old fraud charges his allies say were a pretext to end his political work.
Sobyanin beat out the grandson of a veteran Communist politician and a little-known candidate from a new party dubbed “New People”.