Moscow, Sept 19 (AFP/APP):Russian President Vladimir Putin’s party was set Sunday to retain a majority in parliament on the last day of three-day elections in which most Kremlin critics were barred from the ballot.
The vote comes in the wake of an unprecedented crackdown on the opposition this year, with Russian authorities jailing Putin’s best-known domestic foe Alexei Navalny and banning his organisations as “extremist”.
In the lead-up to this weekend’s vote, all of his top allies were arrested or had fled the country, with anyone associated with his groups kept from running in the parliamentary and local polls scheduled to close at 8:00 pm Sunday.
“These essentially aren’t elections. People in effect have no choice,” 43-year-old businessman Vladimir Zakharov told AFP in Russia’s second city Saint Petersburg.
The elections were also marred by claims of censorship and rampant ballot stuffing.
As voting kicked off Friday, Apple and Google caused an uproar among Russia’s opposition after they removed Navalny’s “Smart Voting” app, which showed supporters which candidate they should back to unseat Kremlin-aligned politicians.
Sources familiar with Google and Apple’s decision told AFP the move was taken under pressure from Russian authorities, including threats to arrest the tech giants’ local staff.
By late Friday, the popular Telegram messenger had also removed Navalny’s “Smart Voting” bot, and on Saturday his team said Google was pressuring them to delete Google Docs with recommended candidates after a request from Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor.
His team called the documents the last “remaining” tools supporting their election tactic and asked voters to take a screenshot of them in case they were removed.
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