#MOSCOW, March 16. Online voter turnout in Russia’s presidential election on the federal platform has reached 90%, according to the portal on online vote monitoring.

As of 9:27 p.m. #Moscow time (6:27 p.m. GMT), as many as 4,268,291 ballots were issued to voters in 28 Russian regions, who had applied for voting online. Thus, voter turnout on the federal platform of electronic voting was 90%

Residents of Moscow can vote on Moscow’s own platform and were not required to apply for remote voting beforehand.

The Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament, officially designated March 17, 2024 as the day of the presidential election. The Central Election Commission (CEC) then announced that voting would take place over three days on March 15-17.

#MOSCOW, March 15. The incumbent Russian leader, #Vladimir #Putin, who is vying for the country’s top office as an independent candidate, has cast his electronic vote in the presidential election.

The published video footage shows Putin walking to a computer in his office, casting his vote and then smiling and waving at the camera. The computer monitor displayed a standard notification for a successfully cast vote.

This is not the first time the president used this voting method. In the last few years, Putin cast his vote online during the autumn single election day. This is the first time online voting is available during presidential elections, (it is currently available in approximately one third of all regions of #Russia).

#BERLIN, March 15. The majority of Bundestag MPs voted against a new resolution of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union bloc, demanding that Germany send Taurus missiles to Ukraine.

As many as 495 parliamentarians out of 690 present voted to reject the resolution, 190 voted in its favor and five more abstained. The meeting was broadcast by local TV channels.

#German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has repeatedly rejected the idea of sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine. According to him, the effective use of these missiles requires the involvement of German military personnel, and this is precisely the line he does not want to cross.