Early voting observers in Krasnodar were kicked out of the polling station

Observers were expelled from polling station No. 2052 in Krasnodar. Open Russia coordinator Tatyana Usmanova writes about this in a telegram.

According to her, a member of the local election commission with an advisory vote and an observer from the city Duma candidate Yana Antonova tried to photograph the safe bags in which the commission members packed ballots at the end of early voting. Usmanova notes that members of the commission warned only observers from United Russia that they were starting to pack ballots. The commission member from the PSG and the observer from Antonova were unable to photograph the safe packages. The remaining members of the commission refused to give the member with the PSG certificates of vote counting and drove them and their observers out into the street, and the door to the polling station was locked.

“When they brought the acts, it turned out that the numbers on the acts did not match those on the packages,” writes Usmanova. In addition, the report states that 376 ballots were issued during the day, while observers counted no more than 150 voters at the polling station. The observer reported this in a video posted on Facebook by Open Russia activist Artem Vazhenkov. The expelled observers called the police.

22:25 When called, an investigator from the police department arrived, and they refused to let him into the station. Then the National Guard officers arrived, and only after that the investigator was allowed inside. However, observers were not allowed in: as Usmanova writes , they stated that disinfection was taking place at the site.

A similar story happened at site No. 219 in the village of Leninsk, Miass urban district in the Chelyabinsk region. Candidate for the Miass City Assembly Anastasia Borisova told OVD-Info that after the voting was over, the commission members carried the ballots through the entire building to another room, where they began packing them in safe bags. The observer and the non-voting member of the commission were not allowed to sign the safe package, and a police officer kicked them out of the office. According to Borisova, in addition to the policeman, for unknown reasons, there was a certain Cossack in the office who performed the function of guarding the premises.

• Yana Antonova is a former coordinator of Open Russia in the Krasnodar region. She is currently being prosecuted for carrying out the activities of an undesirable organization in connection with the organization of various events under the auspices of Open Russia.
• In April 2017, the Prosecutor General's Office recognized as undesirable several organizations associated with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, registered in the UK and the USA. The Russian Open Russia movement was not banned. Despite this, administrative cases are regularly opened against its activists for participation in the activities of an undesirable organization. On March 30, 2019, Open Russia announced its self-liquidation for security reasons.
• The case of an “undesirable organization” against Yana Antonova was opened in April 2019. It became the third in a row under this article. On May 21, 2019, the activist was charged . Criminal cases under the same article were opened against member of the federal assembly of Open Russia Anastasia Shevchenko ( under house arrest), Maxim Vernikov (he was sentenced to 300 hours of compulsory labor) and Anton Mikhalchuk ( put on the wanted list). The case against the fifth accused, journalist Alexander Savelyev, was dropped by the investigation due to a note in the article: he voluntarily stopped collaborating with Open Russia.