About a dozen Russians, defying threats from authorities of long prison sentences, have vandalized ballot boxes and polling stations across the country in protest of a presidential election that is almost certain to hand Vladimir Putin six more years as president.
Police in Moscow on March 15, the first of three days of voting, detained a woman after she poured a green antiseptic dye known as "zelyonka" into a ballot box after she deposited her voting sheet.
The Investigative Committee said the woman was detained and a probe had been launched into "obstructing the implementation of voters' rights."
At another polling station in the capital, a man was detained after he poured a similar liquid into a ballot box.
Reports from several areas across the country -- including the city of Borisoglebsk in the Voronezh region that borders Ukraine, the southwestern city of Rostov-on-Don, the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, the Volgograd region that borders Kazakhstan, the North Caucasus region of Karachai-Cherkessia, and Ukraine's Russian-occupied Crimea -- also highlighted voter protests using the dye.
Meanwhile, the Baza Telegram channel published a video from a polling station in Moscow, showing a woman pouring a flammable substance on a voting booth and setting in on fire.
In Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg, a 21-year-old woman was detained after she threw a Molotov cocktail at an entrance of a local school that houses two polling stations.
Ella Pamfilova, chairwoman of the electoral commission, warned those found guilty of disrupting voting during the three days would face up to five years in prison.
Russian elections are tightly controlled by the Kremlin and are neither free nor fair but are viewed by the government as necessary to convey a sense of legitimacy.
They are mangled by the exclusion of opposition candidates, voter intimidation, ballot stuffing, and other means of manipulation. Those who were expected to be Putin's main challengers currently are either incarcerated or have fled the country, fearing for their safety.
Adding to the anger of some is the inclusion of four regions of Ukraine that Russia illegally annexed since it launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022.
In the Russian-occupied southeastern city of Skadovsk in Ukraine's Kherson region, an explosive device detonated at a polling station but caused no casualties, Russian-installed officials said.
Many Western governments have called conducting of elections in the occupied areas "a grave violation of international law."