The Russian regions bordering Ukraine suffered new strikes on Saturday, attacks which left at least two dead, in the middle of the presidential election, and which Vladimir Putin, promised a triumphant re-election, has sworn to avenge.
In Belgorod, a city very close to Ukraine and often targeted, “two people died, a man and a woman,” the governor of the region of the same name, Viatcheslav Gladkov, said on Telegram, adding that eight rockets had been shot down. .
He said the man died when his truck was hit, and the woman was killed at a parking lot. The latter’s son was seriously injured and doctors are “fighting for his life”. Two other people were injured.
A video, published on social networks, shows a strong explosion at a parking place, one of the parked cars being thrown by the force of the blast.
Due to these attacks, Vyacheslav Gladkov announced that shopping centers in Belgorod would remain closed for two days, as would schools in the city and several districts.
On Friday, Vladimir Putin vowed that Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory would not go “unpunished”.
kyiv has been promising for months to bring the conflict across the border, in response to the offensive and bombing of the country for more than two years.
In recent weeks, airstrikes have intensified and fighters, presenting themselves as anti-Putin Russians, say they are carrying out armed incursions.
The Russian army announced on Saturday that it had repelled infiltration attempts by groups from Ukraine in the Belgorod region.
“Our regions are suffering”
These attacks occur while the Kremlin wants, with the presidential election launched on Friday and which will end on Sunday, to display the image of a Russia united behind its leader.
Hundreds of kilometers from Belgorod, the Russians who voted on Saturday in Sergiev Posad, in the Moscow region, had these attacks in mind.
Inessa Rojkova, 87, hopes above all for the “end of the special operation”, a euphemism imposed to describe the offensive in Ukraine. “Can you imagine how many people died, and now our areas near the front are suffering,” she laments.
Elena Kirssanova, 68, believes that the strikes aim to “scare” Russia. “But it is not a nation that allows itself to be intimidated,” says this voter of Vladimir Putin.
The result of the election is beyond doubt, the opposition having been eradicated.
But the vote was marred by several damage to electoral offices on Friday.
Around ten people were arrested in several regions for pouring dye into ballot boxes, throwing a Molotov cocktail at a polling station or setting fire to a voting booth.
The precise motives for these actions are not known. The head of the electoral commission, Ella Pamfilova, claimed that their authors were acting for money promised by “bastards, from abroad”.
Attacks on refineries
Friday, in a Moscow polling station, Nadezhda, 23, told AFP that in those around her, “we are all used to the idea that everything is already decided for us, there is nothing we can do about it.”
She came to vote, she said, because otherwise she would have had “problems” with her employer.
At each election in Russia, public administrations and companies are accused by specialized NGOs, the opposition and the media of orchestrating the vote of their employees, under penalty of sanctions.
According to the independent Russian media The Bell, classified as a “foreign agent”, the Russian airline Aeroflot forced its staff to vote.
Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party has also said it is the target of “large-scale” computer attacks against its “electronic services”, which its experts reject.
Drone attacks were also reported in the Russian region of Samara, some 1,000 km from the Ukrainian border, targeting two refineries and causing a fire in one of them, according to the regional governor.
Russian oil sites, sometimes very far from the front, have become prime targets for attacks in recent weeks.
The Russian security services, for their part, have increased the arrests of people accused of preparing sabotage operations and attacks on Russian territory on behalf of Ukraine.
Again on Saturday, they announced the arrest of a man in the Sverdlovsk region, accused of wanting to commit an attack against a railway junction.