Yabloko Observer Collapses During Arrest at St. Petersburg Polling Station

A Russian election observer lost consciousness while being detained by police at a polling station in St. Petersburg, the liberal opposition party Yabloko said on Saturday, as voting continued on the second day of the country's parliamentary election.

According to the party, officials at the polling station accused its observer of trying to "disrupt the elections" and summoned the police, who used force against him. Yabloko said it was not clear whether the man received medical attention promptly after he collapsed. He was taken to a police station and charged with disobeying police orders, the party said in a statement posted on Telegram.

Russian authorities did not immediately respond to the incident.

The vote to elect members of the State Duma is Russia's first parliamentary election since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The election, which began on Friday and runs through Sunday, has been spread across three days in an effort to lift turnout among the 111 million eligible voters, with electronic balloting also permitted. It features virtually no opposition and is widely expected to cement the Kremlin's political dominance.

Yabloko, the only registered political party that has openly criticised the war in Ukraine, was removed from the ballot last month by Russia's Supreme Court and is fielding only a few dozen candidates in single-constituency races. Several anti-war politicians have been jailed or forced to leave the country ahead of the campaign.

Yabloko and the Communist Party, which has criticised some aspects of government policy while avoiding any criticism of President Vladimir Putin, said many of their observers were refused entry to polling stations. On Friday, Yabloko chairman Nikolai Rybakov appealed to Central Election Commission head Ella Pamfilova over what the party described as repeated denials of access and pressure on its monitors. "The scale of what's happening does not allow us to view this as a misunderstanding," Rybakov said.

Russia did not invite observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, with the Foreign Ministry accusing the body of "double standards" over its criticism of Russia and saying other international organisations and observers from OSCE member states had been invited instead. OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President Pere Joan Pons called the decision a breach of Russia's commitments as a member state, saying the "persistent rejection of independent scrutiny follows a deeply worrying pattern of disregard for the principles of transparency, democratic accountability and the rule of law."

The Central Electoral Committee said more than 380,000 observers had been registered before the vote, including representatives of 11 political parties. Of those, 97,040 were linked to United Russia and 42,743 to the Communist Party. It also said 1,126 international observers and "electoral experts" from 133 countries and 13 international organisations had been registered.

Ahead of the ballot, Russia tightened restrictions on observers through a new code of ethics that bars them from making statements "that could be construed as undermining confidence in the electoral system." The Kremlin is seeking to use the vote to demonstrate public support for the war in Ukraine and lend it a veneer of legitimacy, while stamping out even minor signs of dissent. United Russia is all but assured of retaining its overwhelming control of the lower house, with several smaller parties of the "systemic opposition" that vote in line with the government on key issues also expected to keep their presence.