MOSCOW: Russian police detained at least eight people Friday for acts of vandalism at polling stations on the first day of voting in presidential elections, officials said.
Authorities did not say if the protests were directed against longtime leader Vladimir Putin, and state-media reports said voting was “continuing as normal.”
In Moscow, a video published by the independent SOTA news outlet showed an elderly woman setting a voting booth alight, filling a polling station with smoke before she is detained by police.
Another video in the capital showed a woman pouring dye into a ballot box. She was detained and charged with “obstructing the exercise of electoral rights,” investigators said.
Four others in the Russian regions of Voronezh, Karachay-Cherkessia and Rostov were also arrested for pouring dye into ballot boxes, officials said.
In the remote Siberian region of Khanty-Mansi, a woman was detained for trying to burn a ballot box with a Molotov cocktail, voting officials said.
“In the city of Kogalym at polling station No. 484, an unsuccessful attempt was made to set fire to a stationary ballot box using a Molotov cocktail,” the region’s election commission said.
In the Chelyabinsk region, police detained a man who tried to set firecrackers off at a polling station, the TASS news agency reported, citing the regional government.
Similar incidents of vandalism were also reported in Saint Petersburg and in the annexed Crimean peninsula, according to local media reports.
Russia detains eight for polling station vandalism
https://arab.news/rrbu5
Russia detains eight for polling station vandalism
- Authorities did not say if the protests were directed against longtime leader Vladimir Putin
- In Moscow, a video published by the independent SOTA news outlet showed an elderly woman setting a voting booth alight
Bolivia and Israel to restore ties severed over the war in Gaza
- Paz's government eased visa restrictions on American and Israeli travelers last month
- The Bolivian foreign ministry said its top diplomat would meet his Israeli counterpart in Washington later Tuesday to discuss the revival of bilateral ties
LA PAZ, Bolivia: Bolivia's new right-wing government said Tuesday that it would restore diplomatic relations with Israel, the latest sign of the dramatic geopolitical realignment underway in the South American country that was once among the most vocal critics of Israeli policies toward Palestinians.
The Bolivian foreign ministry said its top diplomat would meet his Israeli counterpart in Washington later Tuesday to discuss the revival of bilateral ties, which Bolivia's previous left-wing government severed two years ago over Israel's devastating campaign against Hamas in Gaza.
Bolivia said the effort came as part of a new foreign policy strategy under conservative President Rodrigo Paz aimed at “rebuilding Bolivia's international prestige, opening new economic opportunities and strengthening alliances that directly benefit the country and our citizens abroad."
Bolivian Foreign Minister Fernando Aramayo is in the midst of a whirlwind trip to Washington for meetings with American officials as his government works to warm long-chilly relations with the United States and unravel nearly two decades of hard-line, anti-Western policies under the Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party that left Bolivia economically isolated and diplomatically allied with China, Russia and Venezuela.
Paz's government eased visa restrictions on American and Israeli travelers last month.
In announcing his expected meeting with Aramayo on Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar thanked Bolivia for scrapping Israeli visa controls and said he spoke to Paz after the center-right senator's Oct. 19 election victory to express “Israel’s desire to open a new chapter” in relations with Bolivia.
Paz entered office last month, ending the dominance of the MAS party founded by Evo Morales, the charismatic former coca-growing union leader who became Bolivia's first Indigenous president in 2006. Not long after taking power, Morales sent Israel's ambassador packing and cozied up to Iran over their shared enmity toward the U.S. and Israel.
When protests over Morales' disputed 2019 reelection prompted him to resign under pressure from the military, a right-wing interim government took over and restored full diplomatic relations with the U.S. and Israel as it sought to undo many of Morales’ popular policies.
But 2020 elections brought the MAS party back to power with the presidency of Luis Arce, who in 2023 once again cut ties with Israel in protest over its military actions in Gaza.
Other left-wing Latin American countries, like Chile and Colombia, soon made similar moves, recalling their ambassadors and joining South Africa’s genocide case against Israel before the United Nations’ highest judicial body.
