Russia toward the vote, including doubles, doubles, spies excluded

The Russian State Duma may be full of doubles, replicas, mascara and guns after the upcoming parliamentary elections scheduled for Friday-Sunday in the Federation. Not one, but three, the candidates called Boris Vishnevsky – with hair and beard cut the same way and the same color – in the election race in St. Petersburg. The only thing that distinguishes them is the family name: Lazarevich is the party candidate Yabloko, the opponent against whom the Kremlin ranked two versions that changed hairstyles, name and surname only to confuse voters who will see a trio of identical. Faces on the ballot on voting day. One of the three fakes Vishnevsky, until recently, was called Viktor Bykov, and his photo as a deputy on the Petersburg municipal website shows how different his old appearance, denouncing the “real” Boris.

The candidacy of Irina Vatyanova, the former face of the Anti-Corruption Fund of Alexei Navalny, an organization that ended up on the same list of extremist movements with ISIS, was banned on the streets that reflected in the channels of the Neva. The polls will open September 17-19, but not for candidates who support the opponent in the cell, whose most loyal allies have fled abroad for fear of repercussions, persecution and handcuffs. The most famous candidates in this round are those who will not be able to vote: in the list of excluded celebrities is Lyubov Sobol, the right-hand man of the blogger, who withdrew his candidacy as Ilya Yashin. Oleg Stepanov, the former head of opponents’ bureaus in Moscow, is on parole for violating anti-virus restrictions by participating in a rally to liberate an opponent and his now tarnished criminal record has prevented him from participating. For almost the same reason, Alexandra Semenova was suspended by the Perm court.

Stop activists and journalists such as Viktor Rau and Natalia Resuntova, who presented themselves in the elections not in the European latitude, but in the extreme Altai region. Members of the Communist Party and Yabloko were also affected by the Kremlin’s ban on bureaucratic details or judicial harassment: Pavel Grudinin, Yulia Galyamina, and in Khabarovsk, the independent Anton Forgal, son of Sergei, the arrested district governor. Revolutions in the city a year ago.

The unknown is not what Russians will choose – or what is left to choose in the booth during a vote that the latest independent Russian media has described as the “least competitive” in recent history – but how many citizens will go to vote. The party of President Ednaya Russia, United Russia, of which Putin has not been a part for a while, is less popular than its leader, and according to recent opinion polls, only 26% of citizens will return to vote for him. Contrasted with this number Tass Agency, who wrote that the percentage of the party, at least in Moscow, would be at least ten points more than in the rest of the country.

Scythe, hammer and a few sparkles. It was the Russian Communist Party – which became a Pandora’s box for those who did not agree with the government line but did not have representatives to give preference to it – that unsuccessfully tried to stop the “foreign agent” Maria Butina, the hairy girl who became famous for Rossi when she was arrested in 2009 , and later deported, accused of espionage from Moscow in America. In the land of stars and stripes in the United States, she became an activist very close to members of the Republican Party. Honored as soon as she returns home, she becomes a superstar on Rt, Mastodon TV propagandist, and in her last professional reincarnation, the head of a brown ram that the Russians will be able to vote on in the coming days to finish her off. between the seats. This time, these patriots.