WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Putin vows to punish Ukraine for attacks as Russians vote

Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine on Friday of trying to disrupt a Russian presidential election that is virtually certain to hand him six more years in the Kremlin, and said Moscow would punish Kyiv for its latest attacks.

The first of three days of voting was marked by disruptions including dye being poured into ballot boxes, a Molotov cocktail thrown at a polling station in Putin's home town, and reported cyber attacks.

Millions of Russians cast their ballots across the country's 11 time zones, with officials putting turnout on day one at more than 35%.

The Ukraine war cast a shadow over voting, with what Putin said was repeated shelling of Russia's western regions and an attempt by 2,500 Ukrainian proxies to cross into two Russian regions with tanks.

"These enemy strikes will not remain unpunished," a visibly angry Putin said at a meeting of Russia's Security Council.

Ukrainian officials said the attacks were carried out by Russian armed groups based in Ukraine who are opposed to the Kremlin.

A Russian ballistic missile attack hit a residential area in Ukraine's Black Sea port city of Odesa, killing at least 20 people and wounding more than 70, in Moscow's deadliest attack in weeks, Ukrainian officials said. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia would receive a "fair response" for what he said was a "vile" strike.

Amid the Ukraine war, the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two, Putin, 71, dominates Russia's political landscape and none of the other three candidates on the ballot paper presents any credible challenge.

More than 114 million Russians are eligible to vote, including in what Moscow calls its "new territories" - four regions of Ukraine that its forces only partly control, but which it has claimed as part of Russia. Ukraine says the staging of elections there is illegal and void.

Video released by the Kremlin showed Putin casting his own vote online and waving briefly to the camera. Russians in about a third of the country are able to vote electronically for the first time in a presidential election - something critics say is impervious to scrutiny and open to abuse.

"These are the most closed, most secret elections in Russian history," Stanislav Andreichuk, co-chairman of the Golos vote-monitoring group that the state has branded a "foreign agent", told Reuters in a telephone interview.

DYE, CYBER ATTACKS

Dye was poured into ballot boxes in Moscow, Russian-annexed Crimea, and the Caucasus region of Karachayevo-Cherkessia, according to Russian media, in apparent anti-Kremlin protests.

CCTV footage of one dye-pouring incident showed a young woman depositing her voting slip before calmly pouring a green liquid into the ballot box. A policeman was seen detaining her immediately afterwards.

A Molotov cocktail was thrown at a polling station in St Petersburg, and a 21-year-old woman arrested, the Fontanka news site reported. Arson attempts were recorded at polling stations in Moscow and Siberia.

Russia's electoral commission chief, Ella Pamfilova, said perpetrators of such acts faced up to five years in prison, and suggested they had been paid for by those seeking to disrupt the vote.

"Listen carefully everyone," Pamfilova said, before setting out the article in the Criminal Code that addresses disrupting the work of electoral commissions.

The Kremlin says Putin, in power as president or prime minister since the last day of 1999, will win as he commands broad support for rescuing Russia from post-Soviet chaos and standing up to what it calls an arrogant, hostile West.

VETERAN RULER

Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of conflict in eastern Ukraine between Kyiv's forces on one side and pro-Russian Ukrainians and Russian proxies on the other.

If Putin completes a new six-year term, he will overtake Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to become Russia's longest-serving ruler since Empress Catherine the Great in the 18th century.

The West views Putin as an autocrat and a war criminal. U.S. President Joe Biden has called him a killer and a "crazy SOB".

But in Russia the war has helped Putin tighten his grip on power and boost his popularity with Russians, according to polls and interviews with senior Russian sources.

Russia's best known opposition politician, Alexei Navalny, died suddenly in an Arctic penal colony last month and other Kremlin critics are exiled or in jail.

The opposition says the vote is a sham and have called on people across Russia to protest by turning out to vote all at the same time on Sunday, at noon in each of the country's 11 time zones.

** Russia accuses Kyiv of election sabotage, Medvedev warns 'traitors'

Russia accused Ukraine on Saturday of using "terrorist activities" to try to disrupt its presidential election and former President Dmitry Medvedev decried as "traitors" the scattered protesters who have tried to set fire to voting booths and pour dye into ballot boxes.

The Ukraine war has cast a shadow over voting in the election, which is all but certain to hand President Vladimir Putin six more years in the Kremlin but has been marked by sporadic acts of protest.

On the second of three days of voting, the Russian foreign ministry said Kyiv had "intensified its terrorist activities" in connection with the election "to demonstrate its activity to its Western handlers and to beg for even more financial assistance and lethal weapons".

It said that in one such incident, a Ukrainian drone had dropped a shell on a voting station in a Russian-controlled part of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region.

The state-run TASS news agency quoted a local election official as reporting no damage nor injuries when the explosive device landed five or six metres (yards) from a building housing a polling station before it had opened in a village about 20 km (12 miles) east of the city of Enerhodar.

Reuters could not independently verify the incident.

There was no immediate comment from officials in Ukraine, which regards the election taking place in parts of its territory controlled by Russia as illegal and void.

Meanwhile the head of the electoral commission, Ella Pamfilova, said that in the first two days of voting there had been 20 incidents of people trying to destroy voting sheets by pouring various liquids into ballot boxes, as well as eight cases of attempted arson and a smoke bomb.

Commenting on the incidents, Medvedev said those responsible could face treason sentences of 20 years.

"This is direct assistance to those degenerates who are shelling our cities today," he posted on social media, referring to Ukrainian attacks.

On Sunday's final day of voting, supporters of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny have called on people to turn out en masse at noon in a rolling protest against Putin in each of the country's 11 time zones.

UKRAINIAN ATTACKS

Russian media quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying Putin had been receiving military reports in recent days of attempted attacks by saboteurs in the border regions of Belgorod and Kursk, including several incursion attempts overnight, all of which he was quoted as saying were thwarted.

A senior Ukrainian intelligence official said on Thursday that armed groups he described as Russians opposed to the Kremlin had turned the regions into "active combat zones".

On Saturday, Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine's military intelligence directorate, said the groups, the Freedom of Russia Legion, the Siberian Battalion and the Russian Volunteer Corps, were "becoming a force" with unified principles.

The groups were fighting "quite well" and were not going to stop any time soon, he said in a Ukrainian television interview, adding, "We will try to help them to the best of our ability."

In the Belgorod region where cross-border attacks from Ukraine have become part of daily life, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reported the deaths of a man and a woman in a missile attack, and later in the day, one injury, after he said Russian defences shot down 15 rockets approaching the regional capital.

Video obtained by Reuters showed fires ablaze and air raid sirens sounding on the empty streets of Belgorod city.

Dmitry Azarov, governor of the Samara region 850 km (530 miles) southeast of Moscow, said the Syzran refinery was on fire following a drone attack but an attack on a second refinery had been thwarted.

The fire was later brought under control, officials said, but the incidents highlighted Ukraine's ability to strike hundreds of miles (km) inside Russia to target its energy industry. Two other big refineries were set on fire this week.

In his nightly video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said it had become clear in recent weeks that Ukraine could use its weapons to exploit what he called vulnerabilities in the "Russian war machine."

Russia mounted its deadliest attack in weeks on Friday when its missiles hit a residential area in Ukraine's Black Sea port city of Odesa, killing at least 21 people and wounding more than 70.

PUTIN'S DOMINANCE

Putin's hold on power is not under threat in the election. Aged 71 and in office as president or prime minister since the last day of 1999, he dominates Russia's political landscape.

None of the other three candidates on the ballot paper - veteran Communist Nikolai Kharitonov, nationalist Leonid Slutsky or Vladislav Davankov, deputy chairman of the lower house of parliament - has mounted any credible challenge.

Overall turnout - an important indicator for Putin as he attempts to demonstrate the whole country is behind him - rose above 58% on the second day of voting.

The rate in Belgorod region was over 76%. Turnout was also high in Russian-controlled regions of Ukraine.

Russia's governing party, United Russia, said it was facing a widespread denial of service attack - a form of cyberattack aimed at paralysing web traffic - and had suspended non-essential services to repel it.

State news agency RIA quoted a senior telecoms official as blaming the cyberattacks on Ukraine and Western countries.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

NATO troops in Ukraine could trigger WWIII – Italy

Deploying troops of the US-led NATO bloc to battlefields in Ukraine might result in an all-out global conflict, effectively a Third World War, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has said. He has ruled out any possibility that his country’s forces will somehow end up deployed to support Kiev’s fight.

The minister made the remarks on Friday during an interview on the sidelines of the LetExpo show in Verona. Asked about the prospect of NATO troops ending up in such a deployment, Tajani spoke out against the idea.

“I think that NATO shouldn’t enter Ukraine. It would be a mistake. We need to help Ukraine defend itself, but entering the country to wage war against Russia means risking World War Three,” the diplomat stated.

Tajani ruled out any possibility of Italy’s own troops ending up in Ukraine. Asked about other NATO nations sending their troops to prop up Kiev in its fight against Moscow, particularly France, the minister said he hoped “it doesn’t happen.”

The statements from Tajani come after French President Emmanuel Macron again brought up the topic of sending Western soldiers to Ukraine, in a fresh interview with broadcasters TF2 and France 2.

Macron bluntly described Russia as France’s “adversary,” insisting, at the same time, that Paris has not been “waging war on Russia” but merely “supporting” Kiev in the conflict. Regarding the potential troop deployment, he refused to say anything concrete, insisting he wanted to maintain a “strategic ambiguity” and that he had his own “reasons not to be precise.”

The prospect of sending Western troops into Ukraine was first mulled by the French president in late February, when he said the idea could not be “excluded” entirely. The remarks prompted a wave of denials from fellow members of the US-led bloc, with its major participants repeatedly rejecting the idea. Minor states of the alliance, however, including new member Finland, backed Macron’s take on the issue.

Reuters/RT