Jailed Russian opposition leader pushes election day protest

Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is urging Russians to protest President Vladimir Putin on election day next month by turning out to the polls at the same time. 

The Kremlin critic, who is being held at an Arctic penal colony, said via Telegram that people arriving en masse at the election ballots at noon on March 17 and forming long lines to cast their vote against Putin would be “a powerful demonstration of the country’s mood.” 

Ivan Zhdanov, a Navalny ally, initially downplayed the protest idea as “weak,” but had a change of heart after doing the math.

“There are 2,058 polling stations in Moscow, even if half a million people will show up at the same time, it will be 250 like-minded people at each polling station, which is already a lot of people at each polling station,” Zhdanov said on X.

Street protests are rare in Russia due to the Kremlin’s oppressive laws and risk of arrest, particularly in the wake of the war with Ukraine beginning Feb. 2022.

Navalny, however, said there would be little, if any, repercussions with his election day protest plan because voting is legal and even encouraged.  

“At 12 noon there is already a high turnout, there are a lot of people, and it’s simply impossible to single out those voting ‘against,’” the 47-year-old Putin foe said.

Putin is practically guaranteed to win his fifth term in office thanks to his iron grip over Russia’s political system, with most of his political opponents jailed or in exile and independent media banned in Russia. 

Experts said that independent monitoring for voting would be difficult during the election due to the fact that voting will be spread out across three days. Online voting also will be available in many regions, which Navalny said will enable the Kremlin to rig the results. 

Navalny is currently serving sentences totaling more than 30 years in prison after he was found guilty of charges including extremism, which he and his supporters say were politically motivated. 

With Post wires