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Of: TT
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Photo: Dmitri Lovetsky / AP / TT
A woman casts her vote in the local elections in Leningrad, on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg.
This weekend’s Russian regional and local elections are seen as a test of whether President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party retains its firm grip on power.
There are signs that the opposition forces may take steps forward and in Novosibirsk the party appears ready to lose its majority.
The elections, which span three days, are held in relief from the poisoning of top regime critic Alexei Navalny in Siberia on August 20.
Navalny was poisoned during a trip where he accuses several United Russia candidates of corruption and abuse of power on the set.
The opposition’s tactic has been to urge voters to “vote smart,” not by boycotting the elections, but by betting everything on the candidate who has the best chance of winning the United Russia candidate.
That strategy appears to have been successful at least in Novosibirsk. Early Monday local time, United Russia looked poised to lose its majority in the country’s third-largest city. Even in the student city of Tomsk, Putin’s party seems poised to lose its majority.
On the other hand, Kremlin-backed governors in more than a dozen regions in the eastern parts of the country, including Kamchatka, Tatarstan and the Jewish Autonomous Region, are heading for landslide victories.
Elections, which began on Friday and end on Sunday, are taking place in some parts of the country. They are expected to give an indication of how sustainable the opposition’s tactics are ahead of next year’s national elections for the State Duma.
In the regional elections, 18 governors will be elected. In addition, elections for local parliaments and municipalities are held in almost half of the country.
The Russian independent election observation group Golos has received a “series of reports” about election observers being denied access to documents and complaints, leading to fights in some places. There was also information that election officials exchanged ballots, according to Golos.
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