Russian authorities on Sunday reported multiple attempts to sabotage voting in local elections taking place in occupied areas of Ukraine. Votes are taking place this weekend in 79 regions of Russia, with ballots for governors, regional legislatures, city and municipal councils, as well as in the four Ukrainian regions Moscow annexed illegally last year — the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia provinces — and on the Crimean peninsula, which the Kremlin annexed in 2014.
Balloting in the occupied areas of Ukraine has been denounced by Kyiv and the West as a sham and a violation of international law.
Russian electoral officials on Sunday reported attempts to sabotage voting in the occupied regions, where guerrilla forces loyal to Kyiv had previously killed pro-Moscow officials, blown up bridges and helped the Ukrainian military by identifying key targets. A drone strike in the early hours of Sunday destroyed one polling station in the Zaporizhzhia province, deputy chairman of Russia’s Central Election Commission Nikolai Bulaev told reporters. He said no staff were at the station at the time of the attack.
A Russian-appointed official in the neighbouring Kherson region said that a live grenade was discovered on Saturday near a polling station there. Marina Zakharova said the grenade was hidden in bushes outside the station, and that voting had to be halted while emergency services disposed of it.
Moscow has partially occupied Kherson and Zaporizhzhia since early in the war. Ukrainian forces have since retaken Kherson’s namesake local capital, and are pressing a counteroffensive in Zaporizhzhia that has been making slow progress.