after the election, the extent of the fraud begins to come to light

According to independent Russian media, the number of stolen votes fluctuates between 22 million and 31 million, or almost half of the votes obtained by Vladimir Putin.

In Russia, five days after the presidential election and the “Stalinist” score of Vladimir Putin, re-elected with more than 87% of the votes, on Thursday March 21, we began to have an idea of ​​the extent of the fraud. It’s simple, the independent Russian media Meduza is talking about the most rigged election in the country’s history. The investigative site, which works from Latvia, estimates that of the 76 million ballots in favor of Vladimir Putin, at least 22 million are fake. Another media outlet, Novaya Gazeta Europe, speaks of 31 million falsified ballots. Almost half of the votes obtained by the president are completely bogus, according to these counts.

To reveal the extent of fraud, there is a very simple method, the Shpilkin method, named after the statistician who developed it around ten years ago. It is based on examining the participation rate, office by office. Basically, it shows that when participation explodes, it is always to the benefit of Vladimir Putin. franceinfo’s correspondent in Moscow, Sylvain Tronchet, explained at the start of the week that certain zealous civil servants had applied to the letter the participation objectives that had been set for them. So much so that dozens and dozens of polling stations found themselves displaying the same rate, identical to the nearest hundredth.

Few flagrant crimes… because few independent observers!

On site, even if there were few independent observers, some were sometimes able to see ballot box stuffing. This year only parties and a few institutions had the right to accredit observers, so there are almost no videos of flagrant crimes. In Krasnodar, for example, not far from Crimea, a polling station official was filmed leaving the voting booth with several ballots in hand. The person who was filming with his phone was immediately arrested and sentenced to 14 days in prison for “insulting state officials”. In the south of Moscow the journalist of the world, Benoît Vitkine, reports that where he had observers the score in favor of Vladimir Putin is around 60%. When there was none, it climbed to 99%.

It is likely that there was fraud after the count, with results that do not correspond at all to what was subsequently published, even in the capital where the authorities usually try to remain discreet. Many manipulations also served to weaken the score of the opposition candidates who were already at the bottom of the dais. In the end, these elections were the scene of a lot of crude manipulation without any concern for maintaining appearances. Vladimir Putin no longer even tries to pretend.