Shocking footage has emerged of terror tactics used during Vladimir Putin’s election victory, as a man is dragged from a voting booth by armed police on suspicion of ‘voting the wrong way’.
It came as evidence was published suggesting the Kremlin despot’s victory was based on between 22 million and 31.6 million false votes.
And a prominent communist lawmaker Maria Prusakova, 40, challenged her party’s recognition of Putin’s rise by saying it was based on “imaginary support”, in other words cheating.
A voter in St. Petersburg, Putin’s hometown, is seen being accosted by an armed police officer while in the voting booth.
He was violently taken away after the policeman wanted to check how he was filling out his ballot.
In St. Petersburg, a voter was dragged out of a voting booth by a police officer while he was checking how he was filling out his ballot.
Versions of the story suggest the officer suspected him of spoiling his ballot in protest against Putin.
Two police officers eventually took the voter away before a female poll official intervened to tell police that the man had the right to mark his ballot however he wanted.
According to one version, the policeman suspected him of canceling his ballot – which he is legally allowed to do – in protest against the hawkish dictator Putin.
Another reason is that he “voted the wrong way”.
Another officer helps to remove the voter, but an election official then intervenes to tell the police that the man has the right to mark his ballot however he wishes.
This example of electoral terror is minor compared to the growing evidence that the result was based on a gargantuan theft of votes.
Some 75.9 million voters voted for the dictator and he officially won the election with 87.29 percent of the vote.
However, independent news outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe used a mathematical model developed by Russian expert Sergei Shpilkin, whose method has long called into question the veracity of elections under the Putin era.
“From our analysis, it follows that Putin received at least 31.6 million votes through fraud, that is, about half of the votes for him were obtained,” said the media.
“This is voter fraud on a record scale in Russia’s presidential elections.
“There has been so much falsification that it is almost impossible to identify the area of ’honest’ votes using statistical methods.”
Another preliminary analysis by the media outlet Important Stories suggests the scale of the falsification at 21.9 million votes, based on the same model designed by Shpilkin, a physicist considered the leading independent analyst of Russia’s election statistics.
“This is electoral fraud on a record scale in the presidential elections in Russia,” said Russian expert Sergei Shpilkin.
In both cases, the estimates are based on incomplete voting data and more precise analyzes will follow.
Shpilkin’s theory is that the ratio of votes cast for different candidates should not change as turnout increases.
So if turnout is higher and votes pile up for one candidate, it’s fraudulent.
This is the suspicion that hangs over Putin’s victory during the three days of voting from March 15 to 17.
It is suggested that the votes were “added” to the winner by stuffing the ballots and rewriting the final election protocols.
“The distribution of votes for the different candidates is compared to the turnout rate in each polling station,” Novaya Gazeta Europe said.
Communist MP Prusakova has broken ranks among Russian politicians by declaring that Putin’s victory was based on falsifications.
“It must be admitted that the authorities today have all the tools – electronic voting, voting within three days, administrative resources and electoral legislation – to legitimize their political hegemony,” she declared.
“But unfortunately the result of this government’s actions has only been an increase in the number of imaginary supporters.”
Prominent Communist MP Maria Prusakova, 40, challenged her party which recognized Putin’s success by saying it was based on “imaginary support”.
Russian election statistician Shpilkin believes that fraud in Putin’s election has intensified since he came to power a quarter of a century ago.
In 2018 – the previous presidential election – some 8.6 million fraudulent votes were added for Putin, according to its analysis model.
Alexander Kireyev, a Russian-born election expert now based in the United States, calculated that a vote on constitutional amendments in 2020 involved 20 million rigged votes.
The 2021 legislative elections indicated that 14 million votes were rigged, Shpilkin said.
Putin’s spokesperson described the 2024 count as “a completely unique result” – but according to this analysis, it was only due to cheating on an epic scale.
For comparison, the alleged number of fraudulent votes is roughly the same as the 32 million people who voted in the last UK general election in 2019.
Foreign Secretary David Cameron said the election result highlighted the “depth of repression” in Russia.
“Putin eliminates his political opponents, controls the media, then declares himself the winner. This is not democracy,” he said.