In Russia, voting procedures have opened for the renewal of the Duma, as well as various local administrations.

The president of the Central Electoral Commission, Ella Pamfilova, denounced "heavy attacks" against the infrastructure for online voting and claimed that "at least half" come from the United States.

In addition, Google and Apple eventually succumbed to pressure from Moscow and removed the Navalny app from their virtual stores, garnering the Kremlin's applause.

"It hurts the voters," said spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Navalny's headquarters, which ended up in jail last January, is obviously of the opposite opinion: "The decision to remove the app from Google Play and the App Store is a great disappointment: it is an act of political censorship and cannot be justified" spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh tweeted.

The application - simply called Navalny - serves in fact to "run" the intelligent voting system created by Putin's enemy number one to convey preferences to all those candidates who in single-member constituencies (225, out of 500 seats up for grabs in total) they can give the men of United Russia a hard time. The bulk of the endorsements went to the Communist Party.

The president has already voted, from the comfort of his office: he is in self-isolation following an outbreak of coronavirus cases in his entourage (or at least this is the official explanation).

According to official data, over a million Muscovites have already voted on the Internet (the capital is one of the seven regions of Russia where it is allowed). In general, the total turnout, calculated on the average of the seats open in the eleven time zones in which Russia is divided, reached (at 4 in the afternoon in Moscow) 9% of those entitled. We vote until Sunday. But fraud is feared.

(Unioneonline / F)

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