MOSCOW: Russians voted in local elections on Sunday expected to confirm the ruling party's dominance despite a dogged campaign by the opposition led by Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
Polls opened in far eastern Russia at 11 pm Moscow time (2000 GMT Saturday), with more than 59 million Russians eligible to participate across the country.
"In Russia, the single day of voting has begun. The first polling stations to open were in (far eastern) Kamchatka and the Chukotka autonomous region," the central electoral commission said.
Russians outside the capital, which is not participating, were set to cast ballots in 10,000 separate votes, with the focus on 21 regions electing new governors and 11 electing regional parliaments.
The results of the local elections are seen as a key indicator ahead of next year's parliamentary polls.
Experts say the vote has already been manipulated by the Kremlin, which has stopped opposition candidates from standing, or if they have managed to stand, has blocked them from access to the media.
By Saturday morning, Golos election monitoring group had already received reports of more than 1,000 suspected cases of electoral fraud from around the country.
The ruling United Russia party is expected to gain 67 percent of votes across Russia, according to a survey by independent polling agency Levada early this month.
The Communist Party is likely to be the runner-up with just 10 percent of the vote, Levada found.
The liberal opposition Yabloko party is presenting 1,500 candidates across the country, one of whom is standing for governor, but Levada found the party would gain just 1 percent of the vote.
An anti-Kremlin coalition whose leaders include charismatic whistleblower Alexei Navalny and former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, RPR-Parnas, has only managed to field just two of its candidates in the rural Kostroma region, after its other would-be candidates were refused registration.
The campaign in Kostroma has seen one of the candidates, prominent opposition politician Ilya Yashin, briefly detained, while the party's youth coordinator was beaten up.
Overall the elections are not expected to attract a high turnout, with just over 21 percent voting in local polls last year.
For the first time in more than a decade, voters in these polls have been allowed to cast votes early, as absentee ballots, and regional authorities have reportedly organised mass early voting to bulk up the turnout.
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