Russia’s elections continue into day two with observers barred from polling stations, turnout topping 40%, and bears complicating voting

This piece covers the second day of voting. For the key developments on the first day, see this report.

• Yulia Kuznetsova, the Green Party legislative candidate who went missing the day before, has turned up. She recorded a Telegram video message in which she said her husband “had to provide” her with psychological support. The volunteer group searching for her, however, said it found numerous oddities in the video and is still looking for her.
• Ilya Yashin canceled a trip to Yerevan, where he had planned to visit a polling station and stand in line with antiwar voters. “I can’t go into details, but there’s a threat to my physical safety,” Yashin wrote.
• In Baikalsk, in the Irkutsk region, where a curfew was recently imposed because bears have been wandering into town, special vehicles have been made available to voters. Residents who need to vote after 7 p.m. must call for a vehicle to pick them up at home and take them to the polling station and back.
• Observers from Yabloko are still being turned away from polling stations. In Perm, at precinct No. 3104, both the Yabloko representative and an observer from the Communist Party were barred on the grounds that there were no free seats.
• In the Leningrad region, police detained a young woman who had earlier been barred from observing the election. The incident took place near precinct No. 748 in the village of Vinnitsy. According to Bumaga, she was at the polling station as a voter but was detained and put into a police car.

• In St. Petersburg, at polling station No. 1919, a Yabloko observer was detained so violently that he lost consciousness. Police cited him for “disobeying” their orders, and the head of the precinct commission accused him of “trying to disrupt the election.”
• On Sakhalin, a Communist Party observer was not allowed to accompany a mobile voting team. He set off in his own car instead, but they simply blocked his way with an SUV.
• There have also been violations involving the sealed bags used to store ballots. At precinct No. 60 in St. Petersburg, while ballots were being transferred from the boxes into the bags, the commission chairman trampled on ballots and tore several of them.
• At several polling stations in St. Petersburg, the number of voters recorded in the official reports did not match the figures in the state election system, GAS Vybory. At one precinct, according to Fontanka, the report listed 446 people while the system showed 900. At another, an observer counted 387 voters over the course of the day, tallying everyone who dropped a ballot into the box. But when the ballots were moved into the sealed bags, she was handed a report giving the number of voters as 936.

• The internet went down in the Sakhalin and Magadan regions, and in Kamchatka and Chukotka, Russia’s Digital Development Ministry said. The ministry said there had been an attempted act of sabotage against communications networks and that a fiber-optic line had been damaged. The ministry said the sabotage was intended to disrupt the elections. Service has since been restored.
• Election analyst Ivan Shukshin said turnout figures had been falsified, pointing to anomalous data from territorial election commissions in several regions. He singled out Dagestan, the Ivanovo region, and Kabardino-Balkaria.

• In several Russian regions, public-sector employees are being coerced into voting using individually numbered lottery tickets, according to the BBC Russian Service. “Every institution has a coordinator who tells precinct election commission officials which number belongs to whom. At the polling station, you’re required to show your lottery ticket,” said a resident of Kamchatka Krai who works in education.

• As of 9 p.m. Moscow time on September 19, overall turnout stood at 44.38%, according to the Central Election Commission, and at 80% on the remote electronic voting platform. A total of 4.6 million people voted early.