Bike paths leading to hell

Why do not ignore the Russian elections

Until the end of the week, the second election campaign during the war will end in Russia. The main result of the elections of the last year was the dizziness from success: ten days after the demonstration of the “convincing support of the presidential course” on September 21, 2022, Putin decided to declare the first mobilization in the country since the Second World War. Elections work as a plastic surgery for an aging dictatorship. After the next electoral act of “folk love”, the dictator receives a carte blanche for madness. In September, they can repeat.

The election campaign of 2023 takes place against the background of the deepest apathy of Russian citizens, the adoption of a new order of things, which applies to candidates. In Moscow, where Sergei Sobyanin has to extend his label on the board, the most vivid election advertising was the meeting of the current mayor with the “participants of Svo”, during which the official gave one of them a personal award weapon - for luck.

Candidates from parliamentary parties in the Moscow elections compete in finding ways to ignore reality and are, as it were, the avatars of Sergey Sobyanin, who propose to realize certain elements of his economic activity to appease the capital. The grandson of Zyuganov Leonid (Communist Party) promises to engage in the reclamation of industrial zones in case of victory and calls to vote for the slogan “We will return the future”, as if hinting that someone had stolen the future of Muscovites. The candidate from the SRZP party Dmitry Gusev parasitizes the migrant fibers of citizens and offers to fight ethnic crime. The former favorite of Zhirinovsky Boris Chernyshov is barely distinguishable against the background of these shades of gray. And the representative of the New People party, Vladislav Davankov, is concerned about the support of the residents of Moscow and offers the project “Million ITSHNIK”, which will teach voters programming and the basics of working with artificial intelligence. In other conditions, this undertaking should be called progressive, but there is a suspicion that now residents of the city would like to get answers to completely other questions. By the way, there are no women among candidates for mayors of Moscow, as there are no supporters of the world.

The rhetoric of candidates for the post of head of the capital is concentrated around communal problems, despite the fact that in reality the post of mayor of Moscow is a key political position in the federal system of government.

Candidates spend all their forces not to notice war, and invite citizens to try out the bike path leading to hell.

From an emotional point of view, the idea of ​​a boycott of such “elections” is more than understandable, especially taking into account the factor of ubiquitous electronic voting (DEG), and it, as the Novaya Gazeta investigation cycle showed in the fall of 2021, is a black box that can at their discretion manipulate special services. Let me remind you that it was DEG that became an instrument that was able to stop independent candidates in Moscow districts in the elections to the State Duma and ultimately led to the creation of a monopo -Parliament, who swore allegiance to military criminals in full force.

Now the war becomes an internal factor that additionally corrupts the electoral process. Imital elections are also held in the occupied territories - all parliamentary parties participate in them. According to the Voice movement, a number of parties are trying to nominate technical candidates to such elections, and the practice of “extraterritorial election commissions”, when citizens vote where they are more convenient to control officials, spreads from the occupied territories to the Russian Federation. The rights of journalists and observers are sharply limited-the holiday of Russian democracy, far away in its special path, is rather a spectacle for Putin than in a plausible way to convince citizens that they chose such power.

Nevertheless, any vote given and counted not in favor of pro -government candidate No. 1, in the elections of any level in the legal territory of the Russian Federation, including voting for the mayor of Moscow, can be a legal and safe way to demonstrate its attitude to the war. Considerable to vote in the elections for gray candidates who draw up Sobyanin's retinue, without supporting any of them, means to express their protest that is happening during the aggression against Ukraine.

Even fully corrupt elections built on imitation procedures within the framework of DEG come across the problem of performers. And among falsifiers, saboteurs and sabotage workers, tired of the war, can also be found.

In conditions of war and dictatorship, symbolic gestures of resistance are important. It is enough to recall 16 million people who voted against Putin’s eternal authority at a senseless 2020 pseudo -referendum about the new edition of the Constitution. We know that these people who said “no” dictatorship exist in Russia.

Complex elections are coming to Yekaterinburg-a city with a large democratic and protest tradition, the homeland of one of the most famous independent politicians of the country, ex-mayor Evgeny Roizman. Here they will elect deputies to the City Duma, and the recommendations of the Smart Voting, presented by Yekaterinburg Leonid Volkov, will be agitated to massively support candidates from Yabloko. This was done, of course, not because the Russian opposition and representatives of political emigration reconciled for the sake of a common goal, but from pragmatic considerations. But Yabloko remains the last legal structure in the country, whose candidates in all regions and at all levels are agitated by peace.

The election on September 8-10 in Russia is only the preparation of the terrible presidential campaign of 2024, which in the second year of the war (few believe that the criminals will stop) and after a possible new mobilization will make the people simulate love for the leader.