Good morning! Putin was elected in Russia, where the elections were held over the last three days. The elections offered no real choice. Results from polling stations in embassies in free countries worldwide, where opposition activists conducted polls, showed what results Putin would have gotten if there were true democracy in Russia. In Podgorica, only 40 out of 1,346 people voted in his favor.
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Putin gets 3% support (in Montenegro)
Among Russian opposition activists worldwide, there was a lengthy discussion about whether or not to participate in the election process. Some argued against participation, stating it would legitimize a fraudulent circus, while others viewed it as a chance to protest. Before his passing, Navalny, while in prison, decided to support a group of opposition members’ call to turn out en masse for the elections at noon on Sunday, 17 March, to showcase the widespread opposition.
Two weeks before his death in the prison colony, Alexei Navalny supported this action. He then emphasized that the strategy of the action “Noon against Putin” combined protest voting, agitation, physical presence and solidarity among those who would be at the polls at that moment. Here are some photos of what the action looked like in Russia, where the state made people aware that they would be monitored and filmed.
They made it known in Montenegro and in other European countries, but people were not intimidated.
Special emphasis should be placed on the voting in the occupied parts of Ukraine, where voting took place under the watchful eye of armed occupation soldiers. In the Ukrainian ambassador’s tweet, you can see what “freedom” and democracy look like when brought by Putin’s hordes of evil.
During that time, Montenegro sent observers of this circus to Russia. The youth of the movement led by Vladislav Dajkovic and Marko Milacic, and Milacic himself is there. Partners and political allies of Dejan Vuksic, security adviser to the Montenegrin president. While his junior partners Dajkovic and Milacic are with Putin, he goes to meetings with NATO representatives. Paradoxes of Montenegrin democracy.
One of the most active and liberal communities of Russian citizens in the diaspora resides in Montenegro and Serbia. In Belgrade and Podgorica, Putin received 3% of the votes from his compatriots. If only Russian citizens voted in these two countries, the all-powerful Putin would fight for the census. In Serbia, without intimidation and control, the elections in the first round would have gone smoothly if it had been up to the Serbian citizens. In Montenegro, he would have to make an effort in the second round. If there was DPS on the other side, then Putin would also win here with 60%.
Instead of the Serbs and us learning something from the Russians themselves and Russian citizens, who ran away from that regime, we still think that life under Putin’s regime is a bowl of cherries. In fact, we don’t think so, because no one from these unfortunate countries of ours immigrates there. Support for Putin is the result of a long and massive anti-Western indoctrination, which was carried out among the first by the Serbian Orthodox Church, and in Serbia by the Serbian state too.
Yesterday in Podgorica there were ranks of those Russians and Russian citizens who responded to Navalny’s appeal to vote at noon. According to different estimates, from 1800 to 5000 people gathered. A total of 1,300 of them managed to vote. Only a few dozen of them voted in favour of Putin. We know this thanks to activists who conducted exit polls at the exit from the embassy.
Imagine if one of the local politicians came out to greet these people, if one of the locals showed solidarity, brought some bottles of water to those people, for example.
Instead of nurturing this community, deepening our relations with it and getting to know it better, we seem to be trying to get it out of here as soon as possible. Some because they are “traitors of Putin and Russia”, others because the enemy “should never be trusted”. If we as a society and state do not do something to save these good, enterprising and talented people from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, they will become someone else’s happiness. I already see many engineers, scientists and professors who have built their careers at world universities and in world companies, and who spent a part of their exile in Montenegro. We are not experiencing the brain drain with only our young and talented people who were born here, but also with those who came and thought for a moment that Montenegro could be their home.
I hope that something will change soon about this.
That’s it for today. We wish you a pleasant rest of the day.
Kind regards,
Ljubomir Filipovic, CdM analyst and columnist
(The opinions and views of the authors of the columns are not necessarily those of the CdM editorial staff)
