Elections in Chechnya

March 4, polling station No. 394 in the center of Grozny.
From 8.30. In the morning, students and teachers (the instructions were given long ago) gathered in the main building of the Grozny Petroleum Institute, and then the authorities began to distribute the people: some were sent to city sites in buses, cars, gazelles.

The time of arrival and stay at the designated area was agreed upon in advance. In principle, this is a version of the “carousel”, but people do not vote, but act as extras on camera. Moreover, women were recommended to take with them different headscarves and scarves and exchange them. Several people were sent to the polling station to act as observers from various parties.

From 9 o'clock people came to the polling station, clearly not real voters, but extras. The attendance of employees of various offices was marked here by their managers with a personal signature. People don't live in this area, but vote here. In a private conversation, it turned out that they were forced to come to the city center and brought to the polling station under the threat of dismissal. And two weeks before the elections in the republic, collective meetings and gatherings of citizens were held, at which they were encouraged to vote “for you know who.”

The Parliament of the Chechen Republic, the Ministry of Labor, the Pension Fund, the Ministry of Housing and Communal Services and others - each employee was obliged to bring 10 people to the site under the threat of dismissal, and the employees called and asked relatives, acquaintances, and neighbors to help them out. At half past ten, a large crowd of people formed at the said polling station, ostensibly to vote. But no one checked the documents; they let us in freely and immediately, pretending to be an extra, left. Before this, the mayor of Grozny, Khuchiev, was at the site, and help in the form of a carousel arrived immediately in several gazelles. This is where pandemonium ensued. A concert and dancing were organized in front of the site.
At about 12 o’clock, a group of “carousel workers” arrived in 3 minibuses, some of whom, indignantly, said that this was already the fifth polling station to which they had been brought to vote in the morning.