Multiple Russian voters charged with ‘discrediting' the army after writing anti-war slogans on ballots

Multiple people in Russia have been charged with “discrediting” the Russian army for allegedly writing anti-war slogans on ballots for Russia's September 11 elections, according to the independent outlet Mediazona.

One of the accused is Lev Karmanov, a Moscow voter who used watercolors to paint a dove with the words “No to war!” on his ballot while in a voting booth. Election officials told him he couldn’t submit the ballot since the watercolors could damage the electronic voting machine, but they offered to let him fill out another ballot, which he did. On his way out of the polling place, Karmanov was arrested by police.

A Moscow court fined Karmanov 50,000 rubles ($824). In the official ruling, the court said that “voting is a public activity, as the ballot goes to authorized officials from the electoral commission to be counted," and that his message was therefore illegal.

In Veliky Novgorod, a voter named Anton Bochanov used yellow and blue markers to write “Fuck the war” on his ballot, which he then put in the ballot box. He was arrested soon after. Police officers wrote in the arrest report that Bochanov “dropped the ballot into a clear ballot box, and the paper landed face up, so that the message was clearly visible to everyone.”

In Kirov, a voter named Natalia Ryabova was charged for casting a ballot with the message “Putin is a dickhead, Glory to Ukraine, Russia will be free.”

The independent news outlet Baza also reported two cases in Moscow in which voters were charged with “discrediting” the Russian army after they wrote anti-war slogans on their ballots.