what to remember from Saturday March 16

Russian regions bordering Ukraine suffered new strikes on Saturday in the middle of the presidential election, attacks which left at least two dead in Belgorod.

The town of Belgorod, near Ukraine, was the target of strikes and two people were killed, Russian authorities said on Saturday March 16. Due to these attacks, shopping centers in Belgorod will remain closed for two days, as will schools in the city and several districts. Vladimir Putin assured Friday that Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory would not remain “unpunished”. Franceinfo takes stock of the highlights of the day.

Two people died in Belgorod, according to Russian authorities

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, Vyacheslav Gladkov, said on Saturday, adding that eight rockets had been shot down. According to him, the man died when his truck was hit and the woman was killed in a parking lot. The latter’s son was seriously injured and doctors “fighting for his life”. Two other people were injured. A video, posted on social networks, shows a strong explosion at a parking lot, with one of the parked cars being thrown by the force of the blast.

Due to these attacks, shopping centers in Belgorod will remain closed for two days, as will schools in the city and several districts. The governor announced in the afternoon that another fifteen rockets had been shot down by air defense as they approached the city.

Pro-Ukrainian Russians increase attacks

Vladimir Putin assured Friday that Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory would not remain “unpunished”. Ukraine has been promising for months to take the conflict across the border, in response to the offensive and bombings it has suffered for more than two years. In recent weeks, air raids have intensified and fighters, presenting themselves as Russians opposed to Vladimir Putin, say they are carrying out armed incursions.

The Russian army said on Saturday that it had repelled infiltration attempts by groups coming from Ukraine. “Attacks and attempts to infiltrate the territory of the Russian Federation by Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups were repelled” in the Belgorod region, also targeted by air attacks, the Defense Ministry wrote in a press release.

The Russian electoral process was again marred by degradations

While the Russian presidential election began on Friday and will end on Sunday, opponents of Vladimir Putin defaced certain polling stations. As of Friday, around fifteen people were arrested in several regions for pouring coloring into ballot boxes, throwing a Molotov cocktail at a polling station or setting fire to a voting booth. Some of them face up to five years in prison for obstructing the electoral process, according to the authorities.

A woman was arrested on Saturday for pouring a green liquid into a ballot box in Kaliningrad, authorities in this Russian territory landlocked in the European Union said. Another was arrested while she “tried to introduce green paint at a polling station in Yekaterinburg, in the Urals, according to the Tass news agency. The substance poured into urns resembles “zelionka”, a surgical antiseptic which has been used during attacks against Russian opponents, including Alexeï Navalny, in recent years.

The precise motives for these acts are not known. The head of the electoral commission, Ella Pamfilova, claimed that their authors were acting for money promised by “bastards, from abroad”. These incidents have in any case caused a strengthening of security measures in polling stations in Crimea, the authorities of this annexed peninsula told the Ria Novosti news agency.