«Voto per Ryan Gosling». «Murderer, you will never win. Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the Ukrainian Armed Forces!». «We are waiting for you in The Hague». In a country where dissent is increasingly dangerous, some protest phrases appear directly on the ballot papers. An act of courage, considering that polling stations in Russia are manned by a military presence – with different levels of invasiveness – and in some cases the cabins don’t even have curtains.
On the other hand, Russian citizens who want to disagree without too many risks are not left with many options to do so. There were arrests of those who demonstrated after the death of the main Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, there were arrests of those who went to the polls at midday, responding to the opposition’s appeal launched by Yulia Navalnaya.
There are few possibilities left to disagree, peacefully and without risking repercussions. Some writing on the ballot paper. «Putin = war. World Peace», «Navalny», «When do you die and Ukrainian children stop being killed?». Sometimes, this isn’t even possible.
«I enter the voting booth, the policeman looks over my shoulder. I tell him something like “young man, the vote is secret”. He says “Well, vote” and doesn’t leave.”. It’s still: «In my polling station the voting booth is open, a policeman and a security guard are literally one meter away from the table where I vote». These are several anonymous testimonies collected by independent journalist Farida Rustamova. They come from different regions of Russia and are accompanied by the polling station code, so that it is identifiable by readers. Rustamova writes: «A trend in Moscow: voters in several polling stations wrote to us that the police or members of the commission looked over their shoulders during voting. Secrecy of the vote? No, we don’t think so.”
The “South against Putin”, the long queues and the repressive method of the regime between arrests and transparent ballot boxes: this is how the Russians voted Giuseppe Agliastro 17 March 2024
Another trend reported by the journalist is to search voters at polling stations, like at an airport. «Brateevo, midday, queue for sections 1724 and 1729. At the entrance there was an unprecedented “search” with searching of clothes, emptying of pockets and bags, they also looked in the boxes with headphones. Everything was very “regime”, inside and out».
Some people still manage to write on the cards. And in anonymity, there is no censorship that matters. «Putin, you piece of sh…! Glory to Ukraine». The vote, obviously, goes to Navalny.
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