MOSCOW, March  15, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Russia arrested at least 13 people
Friday for vandalising polling stations on the first day of its presidential
elections, officials said.

               President Vladimir Putin is all but certain to secure another six years in
power after the three-day vote, which he has cast as a show of unity for his
offensive in Ukraine.

               Authorities did not say if the protests were directed against Putin, and
state-media reports said voting would continue as normal despite the incidents.
               In Moscow, video showed a polling station filled with smoke after a woman
set a voting booth alight. She was later detained by police, state media
reported.

               Another video in the capital showed a woman pouring dye into a ballot box.
She was detained and charged with "obstructing the exercise of electoral
rights", investigators said.

               Seven others were detained for pouring liquid onto ballots, including in
the Russian regions of Volgograd, Voronezh, Karachay-Cherkessia and Rostov.

               A 31-year-old woman was detained for pouring dye into a ballot box in
annexed Crimea, while in occupied south Ukraine, proxy officials said
explosives were detonated at a polling station.

               Two women in Siberia and Saint Petersburg were detained for throwing
Molotov cocktails at polling stations. In the Chelyabinsk region, a man was
arrested for lighting a firecracker during voting.

               Russia's election chief Ella Pamfilova said the incidents bore the
hallmarks of "terrorism" and said "scumbags from abroad" were to blame.

               "This is not ordinary, simple hooliganism," she was quoted as saying by the
RIA news agency.