Lengthy strains of voters shaped exterior polling stations in main Russian cities in the course of the presidential election on Sunday, in what opposition figures portrayed as a placing protest towards a rubber-stamp course of that’s sure to maintain Vladimir V. Putin in energy.
Earlier than he died final month, the Russian opposition chief Aleksei A. Navalny had known as on supporters to go to polling stations at noon on Sunday, the final day of the three-day vote, to precise dissatisfaction with Mr. Putin, who is about to win his fifth presidential time period in a vote that lacks actual competitors.
Mr. Navalny’s workforce, which is constant his work, and different opposition actions reiterated requires the protest within the weeks main as much as the vote. Merely showing on the polling station, for an initiative often called Midday In opposition to Putin, they mentioned, was the one protected technique to categorical discontent in a rustic that has drastically escalated repression since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years in the past.
The opposition leaders mentioned displaying solidarity with like-minded residents by mere presence was extra essential than what the voters selected to do with their ballots, as a result of the election lacked actual selection.
“That is our protest — we don’t have some other choices,” mentioned Lena, 61, who got here to a polling station in central Moscow earlier than midday with the intention of spoiling her poll. “All of us respectable individuals are hostages right here.” Like different voters interviewed, she declined to offer her final identify, for worry of reprisal.
Alissa, 25, mentioned she got here as a result of she is towards the struggle. “It’s so essential to see individuals who suppose such as you, who don’t agree with what is occurring,” she mentioned.
Initially proposed by an exiled former regional Russian lawmaker, Midday In opposition to Putin grew to become a rallying name for Russia’s embattled opposition after the demise of Mr. Navalny in an Arctic jail final month. His widow and political inheritor, Yulia Navalnaya, has introduced the initiative as a technique to honor his legacy and protest his demise, which she blamed on the federal government.
“You noticed one another. The world has seen you,” Leonid Volkov, one in every of Mr. Navalny’s chief aides, wrote in a notice on social media thanking supporters who got here out at noon. “Russia just isn’t Putin. Russia is you.”
Mr. Volkov hosted a dwell broadcast of the vote on Mr. Navalny’s YouTube channel earlier on Sunday and wore a sling on his arm. He was taken to the hospital final week after being overwhelmed with a hammer exterior his house in Lithuania, a reminder of the risks confronted by the opposition, even in exile.
The character of the noon initiative makes it nearly unattainable to estimate simply how lots of the individuals who got here to the polls at the moment got here with the intent of registering a protest. However round 11:30 a.m. Moscow time, the road exterior the polling station on Brodnikov Lane, simply south of town’s famed Tretyakov Gallery, was comparatively empty. Immediately, at midday, an extended line shaped.
Extra broadly, the muted, purely symbolic type of civil disobedience envisioned by the initiative underscores simply how little the Russian opposition can do to affect occasions within the nation amid the pervasive repression.
The federal government has vowed to punish makes an attempt to disrupt the vote. And a Russian human rights and authorized help group, OVD-Data, mentioned greater than 60 folks had been detained throughout Russia by 3 p.m. in Moscow on Sunday for actions associated to elections.
Regardless of the dangers, all 5 voters consulted by The New York Occasions exterior one polling station in Moscow mentioned that they got here to precise their assist for Mr. Navalny. “In line with the Russian Structure, the supply of energy is the Russian folks,” mentioned one voter, Kristina, 22, because the midday bells of a close-by church sounded. “We’re speculated to be those with energy right here, however sadly in our nation the individual in energy is a assassin. He killed our Lyosha,” she mentioned, utilizing a nickname for Mr. Navalny, for whom she had as soon as labored as a volunteer.
Kristina later despatched {a photograph} of a poll she mentioned she had spoiled earlier than depositing it within the poll field. It had the phrases “Navalny, we’re with you,” written in capital letters throughout the candidate selections. Shortly after that, she was briefly detained by the authorities, who she mentioned had requested her why she “spent so lengthy” standing close to the polling station.
Lengthy strains had been additionally seen at Russian embassies in international locations with massive Russian diasporas. Midday In opposition to Putin has been anticipated to be significantly large-scale overseas, as a result of dissident voters confronted decrease dangers exterior Russia.
Ms. Navalnaya was seen standing in an extended line exterior the Russian Embassy in Berlin on Sunday afternoon. And across the similar time, a number of hundred voters shaped a line exterior the embassy in Riga, Latvia, regardless of the doc checks carried out by native police. The federal government of Latvia has known as Russian elections a sham, and has tried to discourage its massive ethnic Russian inhabitants from taking part within the vote.
Valerie Hopkins, Tomas Dapkus and Anton Troianovski contributed reporting.
