Russ­ian elec­tions take place with armed guards in occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries in Ukraine: Report

Rus­sia held elec­tions on Sat­ur­day in Ukraine’s Donet­sk, Luhan­sk, Zapor­izhzhya, and Kher­son regions.
Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin claims to have annexed these parts of south­ern and east­ern Ukraine last Sep­tem­ber. The West does not rec­og­nize Russia’s con­trol of the occu­pied regions.
Yevheni­ia Hliebo­va, the head of the mil­i­tary admin­is­tra­tion in Novomyko­laiv­ka, a vil­lage in Kher­son, told the Wash­ing­ton Post how the elec­tions were going in these occu­pied regions. She said the process came across as an “elec­tion at gun­point” because sol­diers accom­pa­nied poll­sters “car­ry­ing a weapon, so it was a threat, not ver­bal, but in fact it was a threat of vio­lence.”
Oth­er anony­mous Ukraini­ans claimed that elec­tion offi­cials appeared at their doors flanked by armed sol­diers. Offi­cials claimed the house call was due to the vio­lence between Rus­sia and Ukraine.

A boy looks from a vot­ing booth as his rel­a­tive fills in a bal­lot dur­ing a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion on Sat­ur­day, March 16, 2024, in Sim­fer­opol, Cri …