Democracy ... Kremlin-Version

"Authorities have sent a very clear message: we're jailing Alexei [Navalny]. We're banning your activity."

"The risks have skyrocketed."

"People here [Novosibirsk] were deeply traumatized by what happened [poisoning of Navalny]."

"I know for sure that I won't be able to run for any office as long as Putin is alive and in power."

Sergei Boiko, local councillor, Novosibirsk, Siberia

"People have become angrier with authorities."

"They're afraid [the repression] is going to get to them too."

"That fear is very strong."

Andrei Zhirnov, candidate, Communist Party

"People are scared of taking a public stand against the authorities: People get jailed left and right."

"You repost something online -- and you get time."

Denis Pervuninsky, 24, cook, Novosibirsk

 

"For us, this campaign is a megaphone."

"What Andrei was striving for is that as many people as possible understood that they shouldn’t vote for United Russia, that the elections are unfair."

"... Now we have a legitimate opportunity to talk to people about it all."

Tatyana Usmanova, Russia of the Future Party

 

"We still want to take a lot of seats away from the United Russia so that a lot of сandidates not approved (by the authorities) become State Duma deputies and members of regional legislatures."

Leonid Volkov, top ally of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny

 

"Putin loves to maintain uncertainty and make decisions at the last minute."

"No one will know until the last minute what he will do in 2024. Will he run himself once again or put forward a successor? … Will it be another constitutional reform, or will a new cabinet need to be approved, or election laws need to be changed?"

"… All roads must be open to Putin, he must feel that his options are not limited by anything. For that, the parliament must be absolutely obedient."

Abbas Gallyamov, political analyst, former Kremlin speechwriter

 

"They took my aunt, found some alleged 6-year-old debt she owed for a rented basement, added me to the case, arrested the two of us for two days, and made it clear that if I don’t drop out of the election and don’t leave the country, they will imprison me and my aunt."

Dmitry Gudkov, prominent Kremlin critic, former lawmaker 

The September 2021 Russian general election is in session. In Russia's 'managed' democracy there will be no voter tenterhooks, wondering who will win the election. The election is geared unerringly toward a United Russia Party sweep of the polls; as inevitable as day follows night. An engineered election, where, as in the Islamic Republic of Iran, all candidates are pre-vetted, as are their parties, and if they fail to meet the standards of the ruling party's leader -- in this case Russia's Vladimir Putin -- why laws can be enacted to exclude them from legitimacy under pretext of foreign interference and their candidates nullified.

 

Even in Siberia, where in the city of 1.5 million, Novosibirsk once a relaxed area of relative democratic freedom, things have changed under a hitherto-unprecedented crackdown by the Kremlin determining who may stand for office under which political banner. In 2020's election the city saw a turnout in favour of Sergei Navalny -- a stubbornly courageous critic of Vladimir Putin and his United Russia Party -- voting in candidates for his Russia of the Future Party. Most displeasing to President Putin, running askance of his future plans as president-for-life.

Since the shocking attempt to kill opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his subsequent imprisonment on trumped-up criminal charges, a steady stream of arrests of other activists and the enactment of sanctions against independent media has been the order of the day. The ruling United Russia Party has no intention of awarding any further open opportunities for its opponents to challenge their dominance in this weekend's parliamentary polls.

Those few activists who campaign irrespective of the political danger, have received anonymous death threats. Daria Artamonova, 19, and a student, has been knocking on doors for the past two months, handing out leaflets and speaking to residents. Several weeks ago her parents were surprised when a funeral wreath was delivered to their home. "There was a ribbon with the names of my parents on it: "We're mourning Daria with you".

"I'm young", explained Daria, "and this is my main asset: I'm not scared of saying something wrong, and I don't have much to lose." Given the example of the man whose message she has heeded and for which man and message and the future of Russia she has gone out of her way to uphold, she does stand to lose much; her life and her future. If a popular public political figure like Navalny can be poisoned in a transparent plot to remove him as a major irritant, an obscure young student can expect no less.

Sergei Boiko who in Novosikirsk's mayoral race was runner-up and is now a municipal councillor, as an ally of Navalny, is no longer in contention. He is now banned from running, thanks to a new law, just like anyone else who has worked to support Navalny. Several dozen allies of Navalny and opposition figures have fled Russia, fearful of arrest after having been the targets of police raids and potential criminal charges. Likewise some of the most prominent independent media in Russia struggle to survive, having been branded "foreign agents".

 

Alexei Nikolsky/Russian Presidential Press and Information Office/TASS

 Not only is Boiko banned from standing in the current election but in any vote for the next five years, once the network representing Navalny's party was officially declared "extremist". The three-day vote, ending Sunday, has seen United Russia, the Kremln-backed party dominating the State Duma, polling at less than 30 percent. The party is blamed by Russians for declining living standards and a stagnant economy. With a lack of genuine opposition candidates, United Russia will still win the election backgrounded by apathy and fear.

There was no point in voting, shrugged 22-year-old waitress Margarita Monchenko. Her grandmother is an election official in their village, regularly falsifying turnout figures and, she believes, the United Russia vote share. "My single vote is not going to change anything. United Russia always wins", she shrugs. A candidate for the Communist Party, one of few tolerated by the Kremlin, Andrei Zhirnov, 47, notes a change in the voting public's mood since the 2016 Duma election: fear and trepidation for the future, their future.

A project of Navalny's called "Smart Voting" encourages supporters to support any candidate with the best chance of defeating United Russia in their voting district. Apple and Google on Friday removed the Smart Voting app from their online stores in Russia -- surrendering to pressure from the Kremlin.  Voter coercion reports began emerging on Friday as polling stations opened and media and election observers reported polling places with an abnormally high morning turnout; an indirect confirmation of reports the Kremlin got state-paid employees to vote early.

Navalny supporters have been permitted only to stand for suburban town council elections in Novosibirsk. Twelve out of 17 prospective candidates even then were barred, resulting from charges of alleged "extremism". 

 

An employee casts a ballot during early voting at the Mutnovskaya geothermal power plant in the Elizovsky district, 60 km (38 miles) south of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the capital of Kamchatka Peninsula region, Russian Far East, Thursday, Sept. 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Alexander Petrov)