A man was detained in Yekaterinburg for attempting to pour paint on a ballot box.

A resident of Yekaterinburg spent a long time in the voting booth during the Russian presidential elections, which aroused suspicion among members of the election commission. Having left the booth, the man went to the ballot box to “pour green paint into the ballot processing complex,” but was stopped and detained, the public monitoring center of the Sverdlovsk region reported. In city gymnasium No. 13, a woman was detained for attempting to smuggle green paint into the premises of PEC No. 1550.

The public monitoring center warned that committing illegal actions at polling stations entails liability under Art. 141 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (obstruction of the exercise of electoral rights or the work of election commissions), which may result in imprisonment for up to five years.

According to the government of the Sverdlovsk region, polling stations in the region are guarded by more than 20 thousand employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Russian National Guard, as well as representatives of the transport police, the Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and other interested structures, and vigilantes. In the Sverdlovsk region, voter turnout in the presidential elections of the Russian Federation, taking into account remote electronic voting on the first day of voting amounted to 33.7%.

Vasily Alekseev, Ekaterinburg