“I am convinced: you realise what a difficult period our country is going through… It is vital to underscore our cohesion and resolve and move forward together. Every vote you cast is valued and meaningful,” Putin said in a video address first shown in the Russian far east and reported by national news agencies. “I therefore ask you in the coming three days to exercise your right to vote.” Putin (71), who has been in power as president or PM since 2000, faces three challengers in three days of voting beginning on Friday. None of the challengers has criticised him.
In his video remarks, Putin said all voters wanted to see a strong, prosperous and free Russia “in order to raise living standards and the quality of life. And that is how it will be”. The very act of voting, Putin said, was a “demonstration of patriotic feeling”. And this, he said, was particularly felt in areas of eastern and southern Ukraine now held by Russian forces – some since the launch of the Feb 2022 invasion, others taken over by Russian-backed separatists in 2014.
Putin said the patriotic choices were clear to residents of areas in Donbas in eastern Ukraine and Novorossiya – a tsarist term for parts of southern Ukraine – who had voted for annexation by Russia in 2022 referendums denounced by Western countries as illegal. “(They) voted in a referendum in the most difficult of conditions for unification with Russia and will again in the coming days make their choice,” Putin said. “Those participating in the special operation will also vote. They are an examples to all Russians.”
Ahead of the vote, Kyiv has ramped up its aerial bombardment of Russian regions just across their shared border. At least two people were killed and several more wounded in a wave of attacks on the Russian region of Belgorod Thursday. And the Russian national guard said it was fighting off attacks from pro-Ukrainian militias in Kursk, the latest in a string of border clashes.
Kyiv says staging polls on Ukrainian territory is illegal.
Early voting is underway in occupied territories of Ukraine, and the vote will also take place in Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014 – a move that most of the global community has refused to recognise. In occupied city of Mariupol, officials opened pop-up polling stations at small tables in the street and on the hoods of cars. Banners were unfurled sporting a red, white and blue “V” logo – an army symbol used as a sign of support for the military offensive.