While Vladimir Putin has just announced, Friday, December 8, that he is running in the presidential election scheduled for March 17, 2024, the authorities of several Russian cities, including Moscow and Saint Petersburg, are busy hiding a well-known fact. embarrassing: billboards calling for voting against Putin in this election installed the day before the president’s candidacy was announced.
Under the word “Russia”, written in huge letters, are smaller inscriptions – “Everything will definitely work out” or “Happy New Year”. On the side is a giant QR code, via which the user, supposed to be redirected to a harmless competition for the end-of-year holidays, ends up on the website Russia without Putin. On the home page, we can read not the rules of a game to win gifts, but the announcement of a counter-electoral campaign: “For Putin, the 2024 election is a referendum on approval of his actions and the war [en Ukraine]. On March 17, Russia must understand that the majority does not want Putin at the head of the country.”
These posters are the work of well-known opponents: the Anti-Corruption Foundation, Alexeï Navalny’s NGO, for whom “the results of the vote will be rigged, but our task is to make everyone understand, without them, that Russia doesn’t need Putin anymore.”
“No one will do this for us”
The strategy that Alexeï Navalny defends to counter the re-election of Vladimir Putin is clear: vote for any candidate other than the Russian president. He calls on citizens to “convince at least 10 people to oppose Putin” in the next hundred days, the length of time that separates them from the fateful date of the election. “Anyone can participate in the campaign through prospecting phone calls. […] Anyone who has left the country can do this type of canvassing. It’s very simple, you just have to try.” said Ivan Zhdanov, director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation in a video. Citizens are also encouraged to spread this anti-Putin campaign in the streets through leaflets and on social networks. “No one will do this for us,” point Maria Pevchikh, chairwoman of the board of directors of Navalny’s foundation.
This operation, the “most important” for the NGO, has been mobilizing Navalny’s teams for months. This work is the result of a long reflection: an opinion survey was organized to find out the attitude of Russians towards the 2024 presidential campaign, via a form of 10 questions. Around 30,000 people said they were ready to boycott the elections, while more than 45,000 signaled they were up for “any candidate against Putin.”
Navalny’s worrying fate in prison
As this campaign begins, there is concern about the fate of Alexeï Navalny, imprisoned in a penal colony more than 250 kilometers from Moscow and whose conditions of detention are regularly denounced by his lawyers. The opponent has not been able to give any sign of life to the outside world since December 5. “Today, Alexeï Navalny was not [présenté au tribunal] by video link. The prison colony employee reported that there was an ’emergency’ and that there was no electricity,” said onon December 8, Kira Yarmysh, the communications director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, before to specify that the opponent had a health problem last week. No one knows if his non-appearance has a link with the anti-Putin campaign which has just been launched.
Since 2021, Navalny has been imprisoned in a “high security” prison facility, where he lives in ultra-strict detention conditions. While the 1,000-day prison count was exceeded in October, the authorities announced the transfer of the political prisoner to a single-cell establishment for a period of twelve months. In October, three of his lawyers were arrested or targeted by searches.