Voting for membership in the Russian Federation has started in four oblast of Ukraine:
Russian proxy officials in four regions — Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, and Kherson and Zaporizka in the south — earlier this week announced plans to hold referendums over four days beginning on Friday. Russia controls nearly all of two of the four regions, Luhansk and Kherson, but only a fraction of the other two, Zaporizka and Donetsk. Ukrainian officials have dismissed the voting as grotesque theater — staging polls in cities laid to waste by Russian forces and abandoned by most residents.
President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Ukraine’s allies for their steadfast support and said “the farce” of “sham referenda” would do nothing to change his nation’s fight to drive Russia from Ukraine.
The Ukrainian regime has resorted to pure terrorism to prevent the votes from happening:
Ukrainian partisans, sometimes working with special operations forces, have blown up warehouses holding ballots and buildings where Russian proxy officials preparing for the vote held meetings. Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that they are engaged in a campaign to assassinate key Russian administration officials; more than a dozen have been blown up, shot and poisoned, according to Ukrainian and Russian officials. Such behavior by the Zelenski regime against its still Ukrainian compatriots will only encourage the people in the four oblast to vote for an alignment with Russia.
The propaganda in the 'west' will declare that the vote is irregular and that the results, likely to be pro-Russian, will be fake.
But a view on historic election outcomes since Ukrainian independence in 1991 show clear geographic preferences in east and south Ukraine for pro-Russian policies:
The graphic above is from research published by the Eurasian Research Institute of the International Hoca Ahmet Yesevi Turkish-Kazakh University. Its author writes:
As we can see, the have always been a clear-cut geographical split in the way the regions of Ukraine vote for particular candidates. The East and West division or also referred as Southeast and Northwest division was always present throughout the electoral history of the independent Ukraine. It is conventionally believed that the eastern part of Ukraine is more influenced by Russia politically, economically and culturally. Therefore, the presidential candidates proposing more pro-Russian agenda usually gain much more political support in eastern regions than in other parts of Ukraine. On the other hand, the western part of the country has traditionally been more pro-European with strong reference to traditional core Ukrainian ethnic traditions and values. Consequently, presidential candidates with pro-European political agenda and traditional Ukrainian appeal usually had strong support in western regions of the country. It is interesting to note that preferences of the electorate were not related to the geographical origin or background of the presidential candidates and any candidate could easily become popular in the east as well as in the west. Moreover, the same candidate could be both pro-eastern and pro-western in different periods of time as did Leonid Kuchma in 1994 and 1999, who is the only Ukrainian president to serve two consecutive terms from 1994 to 2005.
The division is consistent with ethnic and linguistic differences between those parts of Ukraine.
In 2014, after the violent fascist coup in Kiev, one of the first laws implemented by the new government removed the Russian language from official use. Instead of overcoming the differences between its people it only sealed the predominant split in Ukraine.
The election promise of the current Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelenski to make peace with the Russia aligned rebellious Donbas region by adhering to the Minsk 2 agreements was rewarded with a large share of southeastern votes for his presidency. However, after having been threatened with death by fascists, Zelenski has made a 180 degree turn and has since posed as Ukrainian nationalist. In consequence he has lost all support in southeastern Ukraine.
The southeastern parts of today's Ukraine have for centuries been part of the central Russian empire. They were only attached to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine under Lenin's rule in 1922 and, in the case of Crimea, in 1954 under Nikita Khrushchev who himself had grown up in the Donbas region.
A likely high turnout and majority vote for membership in the Russian Federation will only correct the historic misalignment created by those illogical transfers.
Agatha Christie’s whodunit entitled And Then There Were None – the concluding words of the children’s counting rhyme — is reputed to be the world’s best-selling mystery story.
There’s no mystery now about the war of Europe and North America against Russia; it is the continuation of Germany’s war of 1939-45 and the war aims of the General Staff in Washington since 1943. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (left) and President Vladimir Putin (right) both said it plainly enough this week.
There is also no mystery in the decision-making in Moscow of the President and the Defense Minister, the General Staff, and the others; it is the continuation of the Stavka of 1941-45.
Just because there is no mystery about this, it doesn’t follow that it should be reported publicly, debated in the State Duma, speculated and advertised by bloggers, podcasters, and twitterers. In war what should not be said cannot be said. When the war ends, then there will be none.
Counting down is what must be done in the meantime to distinguish between the phony war and the world war, between the propaganda and the truth of the matter.
Watch and listen to Shoigu’s interview, sub-titled in English and broadcast on national television on Wednesday.
Putin was replying to earlier nuclear weapons threats by British Prime Minister Elizabeth Truss in February and August of this year; and to German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock last December and again in May of this year.
Here are translations into English from published assessments this week by Yevgeny Krutikov, a former GRU officer and strategy analyst in Vzglyad; and Yury Podolyaka, a Sevastopol military analyst in Tsargrad. Their texts are reproduced here without editing or comment. Captioned illustrations and references have been added.
By Evgeny Krutikov
“What tasks will be assigned to those hundreds of thousands of new servicemen who will be mobilized to conduct a special military operation in Ukraine? There are several of these tasks; some of them are of fundamental importance. The force replenishment should change the very nature of the ongoing military operations in Ukraine.
In connection with the partial mobilization, first of all, one can find statements that its main task is to establish reliable control over the territories already liberated in Ukraine by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Roughly speaking, this is a front-line echelon.
This implies a transition to defensive actions in the Nikolaev-Krivoy Rog and Zaporozhye directions and in the general Kharkov vector. To be sure, that is somewhat at odds with the plan of referendums in the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, since they imply the entry into the Russian Federation of the entire ‘designated’ territory of the regions in the geopolitical form in which they are drawn on the maps of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Earlier, the same story happened with the DPR [Donetsk People’s Republic] and the LPR [Lugansk People’s Republic], which were recognized as states exactly within the old borders.
But right now it is very necessary to saturate the front with personnel. According to rough calculations, speaking purely quantitatively, the Russian Armed Forces and the [DPR and LPR] allies are lagging behind the standards accepted in military science — that is, the number of soldiers per kilometre of the front — by about four times.
Moreover, there is even more lagging in a number of areas, since in those zones where offensive actions are being conducted, the concentration of troops and means should be greater. Operational reserves are being pulled back there, and so in turn other sections of the front, where there has been a long operational lull, are weakening. At the operational staff level, something like the Japanese game of Go is starting; in this strategy game, one of the forms of offence is to numerically crush the enemy’s line by transferring all the stones there and surrounding him.
Google’s artificial intelligence programme has been winning its Go games against the Korean and Chinese Go champions. During the Vietnam War the Pentagon employed Scott Boorman, a Harvard student, to write an analysis of Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army strategy in terms of the Go board. Boorman won a Harvard prize for that; the US Army lost the war.
The enemy has long switched to the principles of total war and does not take into account its losses and the number of mobilized. The Ukrainian side has an almost limitless (for this theatre) mobilization resource, since they have no restrictions on conscription. The mobilization in Ukraine is total — the VSU [Ukrainian Armed Forces] is already taking the elderly, the seriously ill, even the disabled. In such conditions, the enemy can form what he calls operational reserves and throw manpower at the front line in endless attempts at counter-offensives.
This was one of the worst tactics of the wars of the mid-twentieth century, but the enemy is now using it, which means that it is necessary to react to it. Consequently, a significant part of the mobilized Russians should simply fill the front line with themselves, thereby eliminating the potentially dangerous numerical advantage of the VSU.
In the southern sector of the front, the front line goes straight across the steppe. There are far fewer settled points where you can be positioned than in the industrial and densely populated Donbass, where any settlement easily turns into a fortress. And now it is very difficult to create a full-fledged line of cover in this direction quantitatively. We have to take our positions in every locality in the same way as we have in the Donbass.
On the other hand, it is in the Donbass that we have to face the multi-layered defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine; for cutting through that, the available [Russian] forces are also insufficient. The standards for the number of personnel required during the offensive and defensive operations were not invented at the top; they have been written in blood on the battlefield.
Earlier, some experts have talked about the possibility of forming an entire army corps in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation from scratch. However, it is not customary to deploy and disperse the forces of such a large military formation. Therefore, this corps could only be used in concentration in one place. In other words, the new army corps was supposed to prepare for a major offensive operation, and not on the Donetsk sector of the front. Now is not the time to guess where exactly this could happen. The concept has changed, and most likely, it makes no sense to form any new large military units from scratch from the newly mobilized ones.
On the other hand, it is already clear that before being sent to the front, all the mobilized troops will undergo retraining. Since it is assumed that these are already experienced and pre-trained people, this will not take much time. The preparatory time will be spent on combat coordination. That is, ready-made crews (tanks, infantry fighting vehicles), calculations (artillery, MLRS [multiple-launch rocket systems], air defense) and vanguard units [разведчиков, literally ‘scouts’] will be deployed to the zone of the Special Military Operation. And such elements can easily be integrated into the already operational units, and thus they can be ‘sprayed’ all over the front. Especially where reinforcement is required in connection with the tasks set.
Specifically, the tasks assigned to the grouping will determine where and by what forces such reinforcement will be carried out. A group of about half a million people with modern weapons cannot stand still. Almost certainly, we should expect offensive activity from the Russian Armed Forces — much more intensively than has been seen in the past few months.
Consequently, another part of the mobilized forces, after training in combat coordination, should strengthen those units which will be included primarily in offensive groups. Such an increase in their numbers will pass unnoticed by the enemy, since there will be no change of units on the front line. The units will simply have new battalion groups. Such increase in numbers is almost impossible to determine visually and even electronically.
It is difficult to foresee which directions will be reinforced by the new territorial line of cover, and which ones will be prepared for the attack operations. Of course, there are obvious points — the steppe sections of the front must be strengthened unambiguously, as well as the areas of the north of the LPR and the Ugledar direction in the DPR). At the same time, no one has canceled the opportunity to continue the southern offensive on Nikolaev and Odessa, or north to Krivoy Rog.
There is another nuance, however. Given the tactics of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, it is vital to ‘turn off’ all long-range artillery systems and MLRS supplied to the Ukraine by the West, as well as all Ukrainian tactical air defense. These weapons are hitting civilian targets. This entire orchestra should be silenced. And for such counter-battery warfare, experienced gunners, drone operators, and special forces [разведчики] are required.
And, finally, another group of mobilized reservists may represent a possible logistical component. We are not talking about pure logistical [transport, supply] elements, but about new units which can carry out garrison service in the liberated territories. They should combine both police and security functions, and represent the same operational reserve of light infantry, which is usually missing just when it is needed.
This layering is, of course, provisional, since mobilization teams are to be formed for specific and designated targets. The objective is to saturate the front not just with a cover for territory but also to turn the grouping involved in its own kind of shock force – this is fundamental to the plan in which the share of the ‘specialists’ will increase significantly, if not exceed the number of ‘simple’ infantry. And this will change the very nature of the military operations.
First of all, the Russian Armed Forces will no longer be diverted by provisionally ‘weak’ – that is, less than quantitatively secured sections of the front. In addition, it will be possible to forget about the constant plugging of holes by transferring forces from one location to another. An operational reserve is about to materialize.
The planning of offensive operations will become regular, and several offensives can be carried out simultaneously on different sections of the front. And, finally, with the help of fresh reinforcements, the consequences of the use of western weapons, which in the last month began to prevail in the composition of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, can be stopped.”
Mobilization in Russia is the first step, then the great purge September 22, 2022 By Yury Podolyaka
“Yury Podolyaka gave his forecast of the special operation in the light of the beginning of mobilization in Russia. He is certain that big changes are waiting for us, and they are connected, among other things, with a large internal purge of the political elite.
Everyone has been waiting for Vladimir Putin’s address for a long time. Many have held their breath. And so we heard the words of the President, who supported the decision of the citizens of the republics of Donbass and the liberated territories of Ukraine to return to Russia. And this means that Ukrainian aggression is now directed, not only against the republics of Donbass, but against Russia and Russians. And the Russian Army must go into battle.
This is the reason for the partial mobilization announced in the country. Under the banners, they will gather not inexperienced boys, but those who have already served and have military specializations. There is another feature — many of the restrictions imposed by the Special Military Operation will likely be lifted. And we will finally see how real blows will be delivered to the notorious ‘decision centers’ [Kiev, Lvov].
Question (Yury Pronko): How will the situation develop now, in your opinion?
Yury Podolyaka: As expected, partial mobilization was announced in Russia – there is no point in a general mobilization — such an army needs to be maintained, and now Russia is not physically capable of arming everyone. Thus, partial mobilization is somewhat different. New military units will be created. Here we can recall the recent decree of Vladimir Putin on increasing the size of the Russian Armed Forces from January 1, 2023.
Question: How would this happen?
YP: In accordance with the plans for the deployment of troops and replenishment of personnel, several hundred thousand conscripts will be called up for certain military registration specialties. Unit elements must be formed, not from just anyone, as they do in Kiev, but from specific technical experts who are part of the regular structure of a particular unit. Naturally, it is impossible to quickly recruit the required number of these people from volunteers. Therefore, a decision was made in favour of partial military mobilization and, accordingly, of the mobilization of industry.
Question: Do you concede that not only in the territory of the border regions of Russia – that’s to say, the Kursk, Belgorod, Voronezh, Rostov regions, and Crimea — but martial law may be declared throughout the country?
YP: Very had to believe, but I cannot rule out this possibility. This is because, in my opinion, the question of creating the State Defense Committee is already overdue and even overready. We now live under the laws of peacetime. Accordingly, we can influence certain structures, including state power and elected power, only through the laws of peacetime. Holding referendums raises the stakes and already implies a war to the bitter end, because neither Kiev nor the West will agree to the outcomes of the referendums. Therefore, everything will depend on the military, there will be no negotiations. The essence of the special operation must change – this is inevitable.
Question: Does this mean that the Special Military Operation itself will change in its essence?
YP: I really hope for it. I think it’s inevitable. Because it makes no sense to announce even partial mobilization within the framework of the Special Military Operation [SMO] – and this cannot solve the problem of a referendum. It is clear that the status of the SMO should be changed; this has been under discussion for a long time. If, nevertheless, martial law is declared on the territory of Russia, then we can expect the termination of the transit of natural gas through the territory of Ukraine and many other negative economic consequences. Right now I believe that strikes against the critical infrastructure of Ukraine should simply be unavoidable. And this will quickly put Kiev in an uncomfortable position. Military operations must now proceed differently.
Question: But do I understand correctly that there will be an escalation?
YP: Of course, this is the next stage of escalation, and at the highest level. The next stage is the direct and open declaration of war. Although the war has in fact already been under way. You can call this a special military operation as much as you like, but the essence of it will now change.
Question: Let me come at this from another direction. Even before the news about the decisions of the State Duma on amendments to the Criminal Code began to appear, even before the statements from the LPR, DPR, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions became known, President Erdogan made a statement in an interview with the host of the American TV channel PBS News Hour, Judy Woodruff. The Turkish leader said that President Putin allegedly wants to end the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible. At the same time, Erdogan refers to a meeting with Putin in Samarkand. Is this just political rhetoric?
YP: Recep Tayyip Erdogan cannot speak on behalf of Vladimir Putin. He expresses his personal private point of view.
Question: That is the impression he had after the meeting?
YP: For God’s sake, let him do whatever he wants. Erdogan can only be responsible for Turkey and for his government.
Question: How do you think the situation will develop? You have already said that this is an escalation, that these are quite tough measures. I have a certain suspicion that Russian society for the most part is not ready for such a development of the situation. How to convey to people that this is important? That this is necessary — partial mobilization and the introduction of martial law?
YP: We woke up on February 24 in a completely different country. It’s just that people still try not to notice it. But this is to be expected, really. After all, both at the beginning of the First World War and at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, people also did not fully understand the essence of the events that took place at the beginning. And even the leadership of the Soviet Union finally designated the Great Patriotic War as the Great Patriotic War only on August 10–11, 1941, and not on June 22 at all. It’s the same with us now. The war is already underway, and we have had another country since February 24. In gradual steps our society should mature to understanding. And yet we are not going anywhere else. The country will be different. The world will be different. And we, accordingly, must win our place under the sun in the new world for our country. There are no other options. If we do not do this, then we will be in the dustbin of history.
Question: What will this mean from the practical point of view of our compatriots, ordinary Russians?
YP: In fact, for the ordinary person, nothing fundamentally will change, not yet. But the rules of the game in the country will change. That is, many things that could still be done – to criticize the special military operation, to criticize the army, to express, as some say, ‘their personal opinion’ about these events which harm Russian society — all this will gradually be curtailed. It is clear that you cannot conduct military operations when a powerful fifth column is fighting against you in the rear. This, first of all, the ordinary Russian will have to understand.
There is one more problem. Many officials are waiting for everything to come back to where it was in the expectation that the Russian army will lose in Ukraine. I feel and see it when I communicate with people. And I really hope that after Vladimir Putin’s address, all this will stay in the past. Each official will be subject to completely different requirements. They will either have to support what is happening, or they will be removed from their places.
Question: So you are convinced that the behaviour and thinking of the so-called elite will change?
YP: Not right away. But things will change very quickly. However, the mobilization will affect a very small number of people. It will be no more than a few hundred thousand people.
Question: I understand what the transition to the mobilization model of the economy means. However, I have very significant doubts, taking into account the structure of the domestic economy, taking into account those owners who control the assets. I am skeptical that this entire group will begin to change. What do you think the mobilization economy means?
YP: The mobilization economy can be different – full, partial, and so on. I do not think that the same emphasis will be placed on this now as it was in the Soviet Union in 1941. That is, everything for victory, and nothing else for anything. However, the production of weapons will be increased; we will see some changes in priorities. We urgently need to make ourselves independent now, including in the information space, in the computer business. And if earlier we tried persuading the asset owners to do this, now we must compel them by state order.
Question: Why didn’t we switch to domestic software?
YP: Because, frankly, it was inferior and more expensive. But now I am waiting for solutions that will make it easier for us to make the transition to an independent economy.
Question: Do we have enough strength, do we have the resources, in your opinion? If you understand that backing the Kiev regime is the entire West. And here we are, how many of us are there? There are just so many of us, and no more than that.
YP: In point of fact, it’s not the whole West. The West shows that Kiev is just a tool for manipulation. But the West is not going to fight for Kiev to the end. That’s already obvious. Yes, the West is helping Kiev. But, firstly, not everyone is helping, so the West is quite disunited. And not everything they do is as fine as some of our propagandists paint the picture.
Question: Where is the line after which we can say that we have won?
YP: The state of Ukraine should disappear from the map. That’s when it will be a victory. I think two-thirds of Ukraine should be ours. This is somewhere along a line to be drawn between Zaporozhye and Vinnitsa.
“The Medvedev Map” was posted by former Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, currently deputy head of the Security council, on July 30, 2022.
Question: When can this happen?
YP: I believe that hostilities will last the whole of 2023. Before then this war will not end. ”
Tass: Observers from Africa, Europe, South America on hand at Zaporozhye referendum — official
According to Galina Katyushchenko, "observers are carefully keeping an eye on strict compliance with the voting procedure on the ground, asking questions to members of the commissions, reading documents, quizzing local observers about details and talking to referendum participants" MELITOPOL, September 23. /TASS/. Observers from Africa, Europe and South America are present at the referendum in the Zaporozhye Region, Galina Katyushchenko, chairwoman of the region’s election commission, told reporters on Friday.
"The referendum in the Zaporozhye Region is generating a strong interest among the media and observers. To date, 823 observers from a variety of public organizations from the Zaporozhye Region have been registered. In addition, delegations of international observers, which include representatives from a wide range of European, African and South American countries, are already working within the region," she noted.
According to the official, "observers are carefully keeping an eye on strict compliance with the voting procedure on the ground, asking questions to members of the commissions, reading documents, quizzing local observers about details and talking to referendum participants."
"International observers’ accreditation applications are still coming in. All electoral procedures are open and public, but at the same time protecting personal data along with the security of voters and members of election commissions must be ensured," Katyushchenko pointed out.
In addition, she said that 55 journalists from 18 media outlets were accredited for the referendum.
The vote on joining Russia is taking place in the Zaporozhye Region on September 23-27. The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics as well as the liberated Kherson Region are holding similar referendums. For security reasons, voters will cast their ballots next to their homes and in door-to-door voting during the first four days of the referendum in the four regions. Voting is also organized in Russia.
Donbass Insider: More than150,000 Donbass voted electronically in Russian election
More than 150,000 Russian citizens living in Donbass remote voted electronically in the Russian parliamentary elections held from 17 to 19 September 2021, which saw numerous attempts at interference and provocations of all kinds.
Donbass residents cast massive electronic votes in Russian parliamentary elections While some find many flaws in electronic voting (such as the possibility of increased fraud), it must be acknowledged that without this possibility, the Donbass residents who have Russian citizenship would have had a much harder time participating in the 2021 Russian parliamentary elections.
Indeed, according to figures provided by the Chairman of the Human Rights Council’s Commission for International Cooperation in the Field of Human Rights, Kirill Vyshinsky, by the afternoon of 19 September more than 150,000 Donbass residents had already remote voted electronically in the Russian parliamentary elections of the weekend.
“It is clear that some of the figures can only be described as approximate due to the fact that some of the people living in the DPR and LPR who received Russian passports were already registered on Russian territory beforehand and took part in the elections, being able to vote not only for the federal party lists, but also for local candidates. But according to the information provided by the CEC […], by 3:45 p.m., more than 150,000 people had remote voted. I repeat, this figure is very approximate, it shows how the Donbass remote voted,” noted Kirill Vyshinsky.
Knowing that in the DPR alone about 250,000 people were eligible to vote in these Russian parliamentary elections, it was clear that it was impossible to get everyone to vote in the Rostov region in three days, even with the more than 800 buses provided free of charge by the Republic to travel to Russia. From the first day, several thousand DPR residents travelled to Russia to vote in person.
In order to allow as many people as possible to remote vote electronically, the DPR also provided information centres in all towns and districts with several computers, so that those who did not have one at home could still vote without having to travel to Russia.
Unsurprisingly, this massive participation of the Donbass inhabitants in the Russian legislative elections provoked a stupid reaction and an even more stupid statement from the Ukrainian side. Alexey Arestovich, adviser to the Ukrainian President’s Chief of Staff, Vladimir Zelensky, and member of the Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group, said that Ukraine would punish those who participated in the elections once the region was back under Kiev’s control.
Thus, according to Arestovich, the responsibility for the vote of residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions “will depend on their involvement in the process”.
“There are people who are obliged to do so in order not to be fired. State officials (…), there are people who volunteered and went,” he said.
He noted that those who voted voluntarily in the Russian parliamentary elections should consider fleeing Donbass, as they would be prosecuted in Ukraine for aiding the enemy.
“We will separate the wheat from the chaff. We will treat each case separately. I am fully convinced that ordinary people will not suffer,” he added.
This statement is stupid in many ways. First of all, nobody forced the Donbass people to vote in these Russian parliamentary elections. To imagine that more than 150,000 people could have been forced to vote when they did so remote electronically is comical. This rhetoric is just as stupid as the rhetoric trying to make people in the DPR and LPR believe that they are obliged to apply for Russian citizenship.
I recall that in December 2018, four months before Vladimir Putin signed the decree allowing the Donbass inhabitants to obtain Russian citizenship in a simplified way, a poll conducted in the DPR showed that 89.1% of the Republic’s inhabitants wanted to obtain Russian citizenship, that is almost 9 out of 10 inhabitants! Only 3.5% of people did not want to obtain Russian citizenship and 7.4% found it difficult to answer.
Russian parliamentary elections marked by provocations and attempted interference On the first day of the Russian parliamentary elections, DDoS attacks against the online voting site were reported from the US, Germany and Ukraine. Other attacks targeted the IT infrastructure of the Central Electoral Commission, including the website showing the results, slowing down the display of the results (which the Western media underlined as a suspicious point without taking into account the impact of the cyberattacks).
In total, more than 950 cyberattacks were recorded and blocked by Russian computer security specialists, allowing the vote to proceed smoothly.
In addition to the attempts to disrupt the vote through cyberattacks, there were also attempts to artificially inflate the number of recorded violations. For example, out of 5,125 messages about possible violations found by the United Russia Young Guard, only 94 could be confirmed. Clearly, more than 5,000 were forgeries, mainly in Moscow, Krasnodar Kray and the Sverdlovsk region.
The head of the working group on public observation of remote electronic voting of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, Alexander Malkevich, reported that in three days of the elections another 14,000 false reports of violations were detected.
The Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation confirmed 12 cases of ballot box stuffing in Adygea, Kalmykia, North Ossetia, Bryansk, Ivanovsakaya, Kemerovo, Moscow and Saratov. In each case the ballot papers of the polling station concerned were invalidated, and the police were sent in. In Adygea, Bryansk and Kemerovo regions, the chairpersons of the local electoral commissions were simply fired.
The situation in St. Petersburg, where “clones” of a Yabloko candidate (with the same name and surname, and a very similar physique) appeared, and where violations took place, was harshly commented on by the chairwoman of the Russian Central Electoral Commission, Ella Pamfilova, who did not hesitate to speak of a fifth column within the local commission, and called for the situation to be brought back under control.
While there were of course some violations, a number were fabricated by the non-systemic opposition, including Navalny’s collaborators.
For example, the police broke into a flat that had been converted into a “polling station”, with a ballot box bearing the Russian coat of arms, copies of ballot papers everywhere, and enough material to film a video showing “violations”. In the phones of the people who were there, they found the phone number of the person who organised this fake factory: Navalny’s assistant, Ilya Pakhomov!
In addition to the police video, the anonymised minutes of the interrogation of one of the people arrested were leaked.
Another type of fake: an observer from the Yabloko party in Moscow claimed that he had been beaten, with a photo of his face. Problem: he was filmed “painting” his face with fake blood.
An observer from the same party as Anastasia Tokareva, who attended the famous conference to teach future “observers” how to be ejected from polling stations in order to artificially inflate the number of violations recorded during the Russian legislative elections.
Moreover, another video was leaked showing how the Golos (foreign agent in Russia) movement trained “observers” in Moscow. Again the presenter tells them that there will be fewer violations this year and that they will have to make provocations!
We declare that our elections are illegitimate. A lot of work is being done this year, so our predictions are that there will not be a large number of violations recorded. Our job is to work harder, to create as much informational noise as possible,” says the presenter.
“Take pictures of the polling stations, make videos. Our lawyers will look at absolutely every case and help you find a solution. The main thing is not to be afraid, the election commissioners are more afraid of you. You can see the most basic cases in the manuals that are given to you”, the young man continues.
As in the first video, at the end of the “training” these “observers” are given a “manual” of the perfect little provocateur, to create non-existent violations from scratch, and the logo of the ODIHR (the OSCE office in charge of observing the elections) appears visibly on the presentation projected on the screen!
But maybe they will still tell us that they had nothing to do with it. The Russian Federation’s investigative committee really needs to look into these videos and determine the role of the ODIHR in these observer “trainings”. Because if they are involved it means that the OSCE is interfering in the Russian elections!
Unsurprisingly, the Yabloko party, which is involved in these provocations, does not recognise the results of the Russian legislative elections (it must be said that with its score of 1.34%, which does not allow it to have deputies in the Duma, the result is very far from satisfactory in view of the “efforts” they have made to spoil the elections).
Comically enough, while Yabloko is lumping together United Russia and the Communist Party, Ms Pamfilova is going to appeal to the leader of this party, Gennady Zyuganov, about the deplorable behaviour of several of its members in the polling stations.
In any case, the United Russia party with 49.82% of the list vote and 198 constituencies won in the single-member vote is expected to win at least 315 of the 450 seats in the Duma, a clear majority (70% of deputies).
on September 23, 2022, 4:16 pm
