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Russian election latest: Putin claims landslide win as West condemns 'pseudo-election' - BBC News Russian election latest: Putin claims landslide win as West condemns 'pseudo-election' - BBC News
(32 minutes later)
Vitaly Shevchenko We've just been seen the latest comments on the Russian elections from UK Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron, who points to “widespread reports of electoral violations” in a statement.
BBC Monitoring "These Russian elections starkly underline the depth of repression under President Putin’s regime," he says before adding it "seeks to silence any opposition to his illegal war".
During Russia's presidential elections Moscow launched a wide-ranging campaign telling residents living in occupied parts of Ukraine to vote in Russia's presidential election. Lord Cameron has also been commenting on the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny at a penal colony in Siberia last month, saying it served as "a tragic reminder of the severity of political repression in Russia today".
For the first time, the national vote took place over three days (15 - 17 March), although voting began early in the occupied parts of four Ukrainian regions: Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk. The foreign secretary calls for the immediate release of all political prisoners.
One resident complained of pro-Russian collaborators with ballot boxes going from house to house looking for voters accompanied by armed soldiers. Lord Cameron says holding elections in Crimea, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia "is an abhorrent violation of the UN Charter and Ukrainian sovereignty" and adds they "will always be Ukrainian".
A pro-vote campaign called InformUIK, ostensibly designed to inform Ukrainians about the procedure of voting, seeks to visit all remaining residents of Russian-occupied regions at home.
They collect personal data to compile lists of voters, and sometimes film local residents during such visits. Russia's electoral chief in the partly occupied Zaporizhzhia region acknowledged that locals were worried about the filming.
Residents were also sent text messages informing them of the dates of the vote and tried-and-tested Soviet methods have also been deployed to attract people to polling stations, such as free concerts and food.
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