Open in full screen mode Russian President Vladimir Putin (File photo) Agence France-Presse Vladimir Putin promised Friday that Russia would respond to Ukrainian air attacks, while saying that recent ground incursions by pro-Ukraine fighters were aimed at “disrupting » the course of the presidential election before triumphantly re-electing him. At the same time, at least thirteen people were arrested following damage to polling stations, acts for which the precise motives have not been made public. Vladimir Putin, who voted online on Friday, on the first day of the vote intended to re-elect him for 6 years, assured that the Ukrainian strikes against Russian territory, which have intensified in recent days, would not remain not go unpunished. Meanwhile, at least 20 people were killed and 70 injured in one of Russia's worst missile attacks on Odessa, a major port city in southern Ukraine that has already been targeted twice in recent years. days. Also Friday, the Russian army also said it had repelled multiple land incursions by fighters from x27;Ukraine, admitting having had to resort to artillery and aviation. Consult the complete file View the full file FollowFollow These attacks constitute an attempt to disrupt the presidential election, denounced Mr. Putin. The vote which runs from Friday to Sunday should see the mandate of the master of the Kremlin renewed for six more years, the opposition having been eradicated. A woman was arrested after setting fire to a voting booth in Moscow, according to Russian media, while another, aged 20, tried to throw a Molotov cocktail at a polling station in Moscow. St. Petersburg, according to a local official. One person was arrested after trying to set fire to a ballot box in Khanty-Mansiisk, Siberia, and another after trying to light a firecracker at a polling station in the Chelyabinsk region, not far from Ural Mountains. Six people were also arrested after pouring dye into ballot boxes near the Russian capital, in Siberia and in the Voronezh regions (west), Rostov-on-Don (southwest) and Karachay-Cherkessia, in the Caucasus. The head of the electoral commission, Ella Pamfilova, claimed that these people were acting for money promised by bastards from abroad.< /p> Ella Pamfilova, head of the Central Election Commission, in February 2024. The Moscow prosecutor's office warned the population on Thursday against any protest action, as no criticism or opposition is tolerated in Russia. In the occupied part of the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, a bomb exploded without causing any casualties in front of a polling station, local authorities denounced. In a joint statement read by Ukrainian Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya to the press at the UN, more than fifty countries, including the United States and France, condemned in the strongest terms the holding of this poll in several Ukrainian regions.
War in Ukraine
War in Ukraine
Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations, has already accused Russia of being a “terrorist state.” (Archive photo)
The Russian deputy ambassador to the UN slammed absolutely unforgivable attempts […] #x27;intervene in Russian internal affairs and ensured that these territories were administratively and politically part of our country, whether you liked it or not.
On the eve of the presidential election, Vladimir Putin, 71 years old, 24 of whom have been in power, urged his compatriots not to turn away from the path in these difficult times, an allusion to the consequences of the assault he unleashed against Ukraine more than two years ago.
The outgoing president faces three candidates without scope who oppose neither the offensive in Ukraine nor the repression which eradicated all opposition and which culminated in the death in prison in mid-February of the detractor of the Kremlin Alexeï Navalny.
Yulia Navalnaïa, the opponent's widow, at the European Parliament in Strasbourg last February. husband, for his part invited Russians to protest by voting for any candidate other than Putin.
She also asked Russians supporting the opposition to go to polling stations at the same time, Sunday at 12 p.m. local time, to show that there are many of them.
A woman inserts her ballot into a ballot box in Moscow, Russia, on Friday.
Voting began at 8 a.m. local time on Friday on the peninsula Kamchatka and Chukotka, two remote regions of the Russian Far East. It will end on Sunday at 8 p.m. in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave bordering European Union countries.
At a Moscow school, Lyudmila, a 70-year-old retiree, says she wants victory in Ukraine above all. According to her, this involves a vote for Vladimir Putin.
But according to Nadjeda, 23, the fact that I am there will not change anything [.. .] around me, we are all used to the idea that everything is already decided for us, there is nothing we can do about it, says this young Moscow ballerina, refusing to give her last name. It's all a bit wrong.
With this election, Vladimir Putin will remain in power until 2030 and will be able to run again to remain in charge until 2036, year of his 84th birthday.
He had the Constitution revised for this purpose in 2020.
The President of the European Council Charles Michel, for his part, ironically congratulated Mr. Putin on Friday for his landslide victory in elections which begin today.
The United States also criticized the vote and Ukrainian diplomacy urged the international community to reject this farce.
Ukraine has increased military pressure on the Russian border regions of Belgorod and Kursk, targeted by a multitude of drone attacks and incursions by military units made up of Russians opposed to the Kremlin. p>
A civilian was killed and two others injured in Belgorod in a Ukrainian shelling, according to Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, who earlier said that a fighter had also died in another strike.
At the same time, drone attacks are increasing in the border regions, but also hundreds of kilometers from the front , Ukraine having promised reprisals for the bombings it has suffered for more than two years.
In Berlin, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz and the French President, Emmanuel Macron, showed their union on Friday on aid to this country, after weeks of strong tensions on the strategy to adopt against Moscow, on the occasion of ;a summit with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.