Navalny allies claim wins in Russian regional polls

MOSCOW • Kremlin-backed candidates swept most major contests in Russian regional elections over the weekend but opposition leader Alexey Navalny's supporters claimed wins in two Siberian cities, including the one where he was poisoned last month.

"The authorities have shown they control the situation in the country," said deputy director Alexei Makarkin of the Centre for Political Technologies in Moscow. "But the opposition's performance proves there's a desire for political change in major cities."

Russians voted for representatives at different levels of government in 83 regions, including 18 governors over three days ending Sunday, in a key test of support for President Vladimir Putin ahead of next year's parliamentary elections.

The polls came amid unprecedented anti-government protests in neighbouring Belarus and daily protests in Russia's eastern Khabarovsk region over the July arrest of a popular governor from outside the ruling party.

Even as his popularity hit a record low earlier this year amid the economic dislocation of the coronavirus pandemic, Mr Putin, 67, pushed through constitutional changes in July that allow him to extend his two-decade rule to as long as 2036. His poll ratings picked up last month as the coronavirus epidemic eased in Russia.

Mr Navalny was campaigning for candidates against the ruling United Russia party when he fell victim in Siberia last month to what German doctors later identified as poisoning by the military nerve agent Novichok. He emerged last week from a coma in a Berlin hospital, where he had been flown to for treatment.

His allies proclaimed victories in city council races in Tomsk and Novosibirsk, where he had made videos. United Russia candidates won eight of 27 single mandates in the Tomsk race. Top Navalny ally Leonid Volkov said the results destroy "the whole myth about '2 per cent of liberals' and that they 'only have support of hipsters inside the Garden Ring'" road of Moscow. Elsewhere, campaigners backed by exiled tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky won 60 municipal seats in four regions.

Still, United Russia swept gubernatorial polls where opponents were challenging the incumbents. In Krasnodar, Governor Veniamin Kondratyev won with 85 per cent of the vote versus around 7 per cent for his communist challenger. In Irkutsk, Siberia, Mr Igor Kobzev defeated a communist former intelligence officer, winning 60 per cent of the vote.

Mr Navalny, 44, has built a following of millions with online videos exposing high-level corruption in Russia. Moscow has so far failed to investigate the poisoning of the campaigner, asserting that it has no evidence.

However, France's independent analysis has concluded that Mr Navalny was poisoned by Novichok in an attempted assassination, the office of President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement yesterday. Germany said earlier that laboratories in Sweden and France had independently corroborated German results from earlier this month.

Mr Navalny had appealed to voters to adopt his "smart voting" initiative to support the politician in each area with the best chance of defeating the United Russia candidate. The ruling party lost a third of its seats when the tactic was promoted in last year's Moscow city council elections.

The vote was conducted cleanly with only "minimal" irregularities, Tass news service quoted Central Election Commission chair Ella Pamfilova as saying yesterday.

BLOOMBERG, REUTERS