“This will be the least transparent election in the history of the Russian Federation,” laments the president of an NGO

To ensure the re-election of Vladimir Putin, the Russian regime has modified the constitution and the laws which govern the presidential election, the voting operations of which begin on Friday.

The Russian presidential election, which begins Friday March 15, will allow Vladimir Putin to return for a new six-year term. Official polls predict a score of nearly 80% which will be obtained in part by resorting to fraud, estimates Stanislav Andreïtchouk. The co-president of the NGO Golos, classified as a “foreign agent” in Russia, had to flee his country.

His organization, which has observed elections in Russia since the end of the USSR, will not be authorized this year to send independent observers to polling stations. But there are signs that Russian power could massively falsify the results of the vote to ensure a triumphant re-election for the master of the Kremlin.

Franceinfo: Is electoral fraud systematic in Russia?

Stanislav Andreichuk: Fraud is very important, traditionally in Russia. These are violations both on election day and during the election campaign. Before the election, it is first of all about the inequality of rights between the candidates. If you want to become a candidate, you can be refused your registration at any time on the basis of completely invented arguments. On voting day, people may simply be forced to go to polling stations, and sometimes forced to vote for a candidate under threat of dismissal or loss of bonuses. There are many, many ways to put pressure on people. If you look at, for example, the last federal election of 2021, according to various estimates, 15 to 18 million votes were falsified. That’s about a third or maybe even half of what the winning party got in this election. Regardless, this is an absolutely gigantic number.

This year, the government further restricted the possibilities for citizen control over the vote.

It will be more difficult to monitor. Over the last six years the possibilities for observation have been considerably reduced at the legislative level. Today, the only way to go to a polling station is to become an observer for one of the candidates. There are only four candidates. This is the smallest number in the history of Russian elections. And they don’t really want to send observers to the polling stations. This seems a bit like a conspiracy by the candidates to prevent people from monitoring the election. There is also electronic voting. It will apply in certain regions which represent 40% of Russian voters. It is impossible to control online voting because no one has seen the code of the system. You must therefore believe or not believe the figures displayed on the screens. And practice shows that it is better not to believe them.

Electronic voting was criticized during the last legislative elections. The opposition believed that he had allowed massive fraud in certain cities.

This is clearly a strategy and it is being implemented very actively. People are actually forced to vote electronically. Various institutions, public enterprises and even some commercial companies depend on the state. In these structures there is a plan which provides for the number of people to register for online voting. Management forces people to do it. Online voting is being introduced mainly in regions where the opposition is strongest. You will not see online voting in Chechnya, Tatarstan or any other region where the results are completely falsified and it is impossible to add anything. In Chechnya, the participation rate is 99% and the 99% always vote for power. Electronic voting is deployed in large cities, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg and Irkutsk. These regions are all very problematic for the authorities.

We will also vote in the Ukrainian territories annexed by Russia.

These are truly special territories. The voting procedure there is somewhat different and is even more opaque than in the rest of the country. Electoral commissions can be set up without taking into account the opinions of the parties. Of course, no one sends observers there. It’s not sure. Voting has already started there, it’s happening very early. Without real control. It is possible to vote there, for example, not only with a Russian passport, but since locals may not have this document, so they allowed them to vote with Ukrainian passports or with passports of the Republics of Luhansk and Unrecognized Donetsk. This directly contradicts Russian legislation. These are strange territories where even Russian laws don’t really apply. No one has the slightest idea how voting is done in these areas.

So the government did everything to make this election as opaque as possible?

Yes, and we feel it through the pressure exerted on voters and observers. On August 17, exactly seven months before the presidential election, my colleague Grigory Melkonyants was arrested. He is the co-president of the Golos movement. The charges against him are linked to election observation. Thus, the country’s main observer will observe the voting progress from his pre-trial detention center. Furthermore, we find that even official information is hidden from voters. This is absurd. For example, we will have video cameras in more polling stations, but you will not be able to watch the footage. The central electoral commission will publish the official results of the vote on its website. But if you want to copy this data from the site and paste it, for example, into a table to process it, that doesn’t work. This data is encrypted. Indeed, this is the least transparent election in the history of the Russian Federation.