Jailed opposition politician Alexey Navalny calls on Russians to vote for ‘anyone but Putin’ in upcoming elections
In a blog post published Thursday, jailed Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny called on Russians not to abstain from the country’s upcoming presidential elections and to vote for any candidate but Vladimir Putin.
“Presidential elections will be held on March 17, 2024. On this day, we call on everyone to go to the polls and vote against Vladimir Putin. You can do this by voting for any other candidate,” reads the post.
Navalny’s associates also announced the start of a campaign called “Russia Without Putin.” The initiative’s website calls for “every active citizen” to challenge themselves to convince at least 10 people to vote against Putin in the remaining 100 days before the election:
Any election, even the most fraudulent, is a time of doubt. People start to think about who’s in power and why. The main task of the Russian opposition, the task of all honest citizens, is to devote all of our effort to responding to these doubts. To agitate. To explain that 71-year-old Putin, who’s been in power for 24 years, should not remain in power for another six. He will harm Russia. He must go.
Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, said the activists have put up billboards for their campaign against Putin in some Russian cities. The Navalny Team posted a video showing a person using a smartphone to scan a QR code on one of the signs that leads to the “Russia Without Putin” website.