About 160,000 candidates sought seats in local parliaments in Russia's regional elections this weekend. They're the first elections since the vote on controversial constitutional amendments that gave President Putin grounds to stay in power until 2036.
The vote comes a few weeks after the suspected poisoning of Russia's leading opposition figure Alexey Navalny. He fell ill on a tour to Siberia where he met local candidates taking part in his project called"Smart Voting" and filmed investigation reports on the activities of local United Russia members.
The vote spans three days between September 11-13 in an attempt to limit crowds and prevent the spread of coronavirus, a practice adopted in the July vote on constitutional amendments, which independent monitoring organizations say lowers voting transparency and makes it easier to falsify votes."Early voting traditionally makes the election process much less transparent," monitoring organization Golos said in a statement.
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