Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, who died suspiciously in a remote Russian prison last month, cast her ballot for Russian president at the Russian Embassy in Berlin after standing in line for more than six hours on March 17.
"You are probably curious what I wrote on my ballot," she said, "who I voted for. Of course, I wrote in the name 'Navalny.'"
Navalnaya was one of many Russian opposition leaders who urged those who oppose longtime President Vladimir Putin and his seemingly unstoppable bid for a fifth term in the Kremlin to come to their polling station at precisely 12 p.m. in an action called "Noon Against Putin."
The idea was endorsed by Navalny in one his last social-media posts before his death on February 16. He noted that showing up to vote at a particular time was one of the only legal forms of registering dissent left in Putin's Russia.
The protest produced enormous crowds in cities outside of Russia, where hundreds of thousands of Russians remain after fleeing their country in the wake of Moscow's February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the Kremlin's implementation of military mobilization that September.
Some lines also formed inside Russia, although the protest was far from the "millions" that Navalny evidently hoped to see. In a YouTube video, Ivan Zhdanov, head of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, said the protest "achieved its goals."
"The action has shown that there is another Russia," Zhdanov said, "that there are people who stand against Putin."
Nonetheless, the protest appeared insufficient to impede the Kremlin's narrative about the election, which stressed that the country was united in its endorsement of Putin and his policies of war, repression, and confrontation with the West. Analysts predicted that the final tally of the March 15-17 election -- which was strictly controlled by the authorities, with only token opposition allowed to run against Putin and which came after years of harsh repression of political dissent -- would show that more than 85 percent endorsed another term for the 71-year-old former KGB officer amid a record turnout for a post-Soviet presidential race.
"We all know that Vladimir Putin is not fighting to win any voters," political analyst Nikita Savin told RFE/RL. "Putin holds elections in order to demonstrate the stifling figures of his support and to demoralize the political opposition."
Even in Berlin, where Navalnaya voted, the Russian Embassy noted the long lines of voters in a social-media post that ended with the Kremlin's election slogan: "Together we are strong. Vote for Russia!"
'An Innovation Of This Election'
At least 80 people were detained on March 17, according to OVD-Info, which monitors political repression in Russia, after smaller numbers were detained during the previous two days of voting. Some were held for carrying or wearing portraits of Navalny.
There were at least 14 incidents of people trying to spoil ballots by pouring a staining green antiseptic informally called "zelyonka," ink, paint, or other liquids into ballot boxes. There were two cases of fires being set in polling stations and at least five cases of attempted arson.
Such protests are "an innovation of this election," wrote Stanislav Andreichuk of the banned Golos election-monitoring group on Telegram.
"There were never such cases before, and most likely it is the result of the enormous tension within society and of the aggression that it spawns, for which the authorities bear direct responsibility," he wrote.
In Kostroma, the head of the local branch of the Communist Party, Andrei Tarasov, was detained for allegedly "discrediting the armed forces" by writing "No war" on his ballot, a photograph of which he posted on social media.
In Perm, a 63-year-old woman was badly injured when a firework she had brought to the polling station ignited in a restroom.
"These are acts of despair resulting from the powerlessness that people feel, the sensation that they have nothing to do with this so-called election and, in fact, have no role in the politics of their own country," Andrei Buzin, a co-founder of Golos, told Current Time, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.
Such actions, political scientist Mikhail Komin told Current Time, show the degree of "radicalization" in Russian society.
"They show that this radicalized [part of] society resents those in power quite strongly and is actually ready to accept criminal responsibility, because all these people will now be facing prison terms," he said.
'Anyone But Putin'
In recent months, the wives and other loved ones of mobilized Russian soldiers have been holding protests and speaking out about the treatment of their men, who have been in service now for nearly 18 months with no end in sight. Before the current election, the group, called The Way Home, emphasized that they were not anti-war or anti-government. Nonetheless, the protests attracted the attention of the security agencies, convincing the group's leaders that it was useless to hope for change under Putin.
On social-media forums, the group urged its sympathizers to join the opposition "Noon Against Putin" protest and to spoil their ballots or vote for "anyone but Putin."
"We have already come under the pressure of the security agencies," a member of the group in Novosibirsk, who along with the other members quoted asked not to be identified out of safety concerns, told RFE/RL.
"We understood that the only chance for us would be a change of power. Until the very last minute, we hoped. Even when the police began coming to our homes, we thought, well, Putin just hasn't heard our complaints yet and we kept coming up with new petitions and new officials...to send them to. But when Putin directly said there was 'no need' to bring the mobilized soldiers home...it became clear that he would never let them come home alive."
"Now we are writing openly that we have to act and vote in such a way as to bring our husbands home," said the wife of a mobilized soldier from the Altai region. "We know that we have to have anyone but Putin. Who among us in their right mind would vote for him?"
The Way Home is realistic about the impact of their action.
"But it is important to do everything that we can," said a member of the group from the Irkutsk region. "And we mustn't listen to those who say it is useless."
'This Story Will End'
Opposition activist and journalist Sergei Kovalchenko, who co-created the "Noon Against Putin" idea with former St. Petersburg lawmaker Maksim Reznik, told Current Time that the protest was sufficient to show that there was not a consensus in Russia that Putin is the "national leader," as the Kremlin would have it. But what comes next, he said, is not clear.
"I don't have an answer to the question of what we should do after the election," he said. "I think we all have to do what we consider necessary. Be human, first of all. And second, don't change your convictions. Don't give in to the authorities' provocations."
"This story will end, and it will end with the natural end of one person," he added. "I think it is important the people understand that their task is just to survive, to remain human, to preserve their dignity so that later we can build a new country. And it was important that they saw one another and understood that they are not alone."
Ilya Shablinsky, a lawyer and former member of the advisory Russian presidential council for civil society and human rights, told RFE/RL that Putin had insisted on astronomic turnout figures for the election as justification for "some harsh measures that will come later, mainly linked to the war [in Ukraine] and to the goal of extracting more money from the population."
