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On Sunday, elections were held across much of Russia, with 20 regions electing governors, eleven regional parliaments appointed, and 55 cities electing city councils. Despite the fact that elections are only held in some parts of the country, the scope is so great that, according to US CNN, there were a total of around 160,000 candidates for the myriad offices.
At 11 p.m. Sunday, representatives of Putin’s United Russia claimed that all of their own candidates had received enough votes to win the governorships and that the party would also win a majority in all local governing bodies, citing polls and results. preliminaries. .
But representatives of the opposition movement, led by the alleged politician poisoned by the novitiate Alexei Navalny, who is hospitalized in Berlin, claims that his “Vote Smart” strategy has worked and that opposition politicians have won seats in Siberia. The Kremlin leadership has been accused of being behind the alleged poisoning, but has denied any involvement.
The strategy, for which Navalny campaigned in the Siberian city of Tomsk when he suddenly fell ill, is that voters instead of boycotting the elections, something many do in protest, focus their votes on the candidate who has the best chance of winning. the ruling candidate. to spread the votes.
It remains to be seen to what extent this actually happened, while the independent electoral observation group Golos reports that there were irregularities at various polling stations on Sunday, the BBC writes.
According to the organization, observers have been prevented from reviewing documents and drafting complaints, and ballot papers have been replaced, the news channel writes.
According to the Russian news site Moscow Times, the official election results are expected to be released on Monday.
Read more: Anna-Lena Laurén: I should be ready for a rigged election in Russia, but not everything is as it used to be
