Voting began Friday for various local and regional offices across Russia, including municipal elections in Moscow that have not been held since 2017. In the face of mounting casualties from its invasion of Ukraine and extreme waves of economic sanctions as a result of During the war, Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly gone further than ever to ensure that opposition forces do not secure major victories, the New York Times reported on Friday. This has included the imprisonment and exile of many opposition leaders, with the independent Russian monitoring group Golos arguing that “real competition [in Russia] this year is at one of the lowest rates in a decade.” Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Moscow, told The Times that “almost none” of the parties opposed to Putin’s rule were able to take part in this year’s elections. “Finally, for the first time, the elections are completely absurd,” Kolesnikov said. Above, Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen at the G20 Summit 2018. Elections are currently being held in Russia amid major setbacks over the country’s protracted invasion of Ukraine. One expert, however, called this latest round of elections “absolutely absurd”. Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images Russian elections over the past two decades have been notorious for allegations of rigging and fraud. Putin’s ruling party has often won in landslides, but has sought to maintain democratic legitimacy by allowing other parties to participate. In the 2017 election, Putin’s opposition made significant gains in government while maintaining a minority presence. After the numerous embarrassing and debilitating consequences of the war in Ukraine, Putin has reportedly worked to prevent his political opponents from making gains in government that match even these small victories since 2017. Critics also pointed to the fact that the election was held over three days, from Friday to Sunday. Because of that, they say poll workers will have a harder time keeping track of everything that’s going on. Newsweek has reached out to Russian officials for comment. On Saturday, Russia suffered one of its most significant setbacks in Ukraine, when the country’s fighters launched a successful counterattack and drove Russian forces from several key strategic areas near Kharkiv. Ukrainian forces reportedly advanced almost 50 kilometers into territory previously held by Moscow, with the enemy fleeing so quickly that some decided to abandon their equipment. Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s interior ministry, posted a video on Twitter showing an abandoned Russian tank in Izyum, an area that has been an important regional base of operations for the occupation forces. Today our army received first-lease supplies from Russia at Izyum (this is a joke, of course. I will mark my jokes for a while now). The Russian soldiers fled so quickly that they left half their equipment behind. pic.twitter.com/6WeHs1LZ3A — Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) September 11, 2022
