Our Russian Service picks up on a report asserting that students, state workers, and workers from certain companies are being ordered or lured with promises of payments of up to 500 rubles ($8.75) to attend this Saturday's pro-Putin rally at Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium.

A must-read.

Some of our Russian team annotated Putin's March 1 speech, with a particular emphasis on domestic issues (as opposed to the weapons spectacular).

Putin's 'State Of The Nation' Speech: Annotated

This Yabloko activist claims (and appears to demonstrate) that a regional state TV branch silenced his phrase "Putin must go" during his official campaign appearance.

Novelist Akunin Endorses Election Boycott

Popular novelist and outspoken liberal Grigory Chkhartishvili (who writes under the pen name Boris Akunin) has posted on Facebook that he is "a convinced supporter of a boycott" of the March 18 presidential election.

"It doesn't matter who you vote for," he wrote. "If you go to the polling station, you have already voted -- for the legitimacy of these 'elections' and of such a government."

He expressed the hope that the democratically minded candidates who agreed to participate in this "farce" will, "having taken advantage of the campaign period, on the eve of the 'voting' will stop running around like cockroaches and call on everyone to join the boycott. Otherwise, they will never be clean again."

Opposition politician Aleksei Navalny has dismissed the election as "the reappointment of Vladimir Putin" and has called for a boycott.

Russian officials have launched a multipronged effort to encourage participation.

Our Russian Service is holdling a vlog contest on the elections, encouraging readers to submit entries here:

The only condition: vlogs should be about what you or people around you think about the elections. The rules are simple: stories up to 10 minutes, and no foul language, insults, or aggression.

Electile Dysfunction?

Our Russian Service looks at how VK has become a hotbed of electoral cheerleading as erotica and adult-oriented publishers team up.

In Russian!

Sex-tendance: How Youth Is Being Lured To The Election Through Social Media

Communist Candidate Says 'No' To Debates

Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin on March 1 announced he won't participate in any more televised debates as part of the presidential campaign because they were more like talks shows than serious discussions.

"In Russia...one candidate pour obscene language all over another one while that one pours water on him," Grudinin wrote.

Grudinin was referring to the February 28 debate in which seven candidates (President Putin is not participating in debates or other campaign activities) shouted over one another, nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky called journalist Ksenia Sobchak a "whore" and a "prostitute," while Sobchak responded by flinging a glassful of water at him.

Grudinin said such debates organized by "progovernment propagandists with the aid of the Central Election Commission create a negative impression about the elections among the people."

"I refuse to participate in such 'debates,'" Grudinin wrote in a statement on the Communist Party's website, "and I insist that the suggestions we submitted to the leadership of the television channels and the Central Election Commission about who should participate and changes to the format be accepted."

Putin Platform Emerges?

Our Current Time TV colleagues have the bullet-point rundown of Putin's pledges to Russians from today's speech, which in many ways served as a venue for the 18-year leader to spell out the election platform that he has otherwise failed to provide.

His pledges include increasing GDP by half by the mid-2020s, making Russia one of the world's five biggest economies; halving poverty in six years; boosting non-energy exports to $250 billion per year (from around $134 in 2017); raising life expectancy to 80 by 2030; devoting 4-5 percent of GDP in 2019-24; and more.

See the full Current Time list (in Russian) here.

'Listen To Us Now': Putin Unveils Weapons, Vows To Raise Living Standards In Fiery Annual Address

By RFE/RL

Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled a new arsenal of nuclear-capable weapons, vowed to cut Russia's poverty rate in half, and make the country's economy one of the world’s mightiest during his annual state-of-the-nation address in Moscow on March 1.

Speaking before hundreds of top officials and lawmakers weeks ahead of the March 18 presidential election that he is expected to easily win, Putin struck a defiant tone as he set out his future goals and policies.

READ MORE

Putin's Full Remarks

We live-blogged the Putin address (see entries below) and soon we'll be providing an annotated transcript of the speech.

In the meantime, here's Current Time TV's video stream of the full 1-hour, 58-minute Putin speech. (This takes you to the beginning of the defense portion of the speech, but you can drag to any part of the address.)