Russian official agencies are touting the elections being conducted in the four regions of Ukraine that were illegally annexed last year. Voting is taking place at people’s homes in the four regions as well as at “extraterritorial” polling stations in Russia.
Russia’s Central Election Commission said voting at the extraterritorial polling stations was coming to an end.
There are, for example, several polling stations in St. Petersburg alone.
Residents of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, as well as those in occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, are entitled to vote.
A local Telegram channel in occupied Zaporizhzhia said the early voting for the elections of deputies to the Legislative Assembly and local self-government bodies is “in full progress.”
It said that in three urban districts — Melitopol, Berdyansk and Enerhodar — voting will take place on September 8, 9 and 10.
There is no way to confirm the official figures and no international observers of the polling.
The Ukrainian side has poured scorn on the process: Yuriy Sobolevsky, deputy head of the Kherson region council, told CNN that the elections had “nothing to do with democracy or free expression of will. What is happening now is a show that they call elections in order to create a propaganda narrative.”
“The emphasis in these elections is on door-to-door work, when two collaborators accompanied by armed men from the Russian Guard, police, and in some cases the military, go from house to house in the settlements. They visit every house in the settlements and actually force people to vote under psychological pressure,” Sobolevsky said.
Ukraine’s National Resistance Center said the “occupiers have already prepared the election results.”
