Planned exit poll outside Russian embassy facing pushback from police, security

Some Kremlin critics living in Ottawa say they plan to conduct an exit poll outside the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Canada on Sunday, the final day of a three-day presidential election that has been widely criticized as a sham.

The election is expected to herald a fifth term and another six years in office for 71-year-old Vladimir Putin.

Concerns about the validity of the election have intensified since the death of Putin's most high-profile opponent, Alexei Navalny, in an Arctic penal colony last month.

The Russian government says Navalny died of natural causes, a claim his family and many world leaders dispute.

The embassy on Charlotte Street will host a polling station on Sunday for Russian citizens living in Canada.

New Canadian citizen Maria Kartasheva said she plans to stand outside the building's gates on Sunday to conduct an exit poll. Kartasheva said she believes her tally will be more reliable than the official election results, which are expected to give Putin another landslide victory.

Kartasheva was convicted in absentia under a Russian law passed after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, for the "public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation."

She has no illusions the election in Russia will be free or fair.

"I expect that there would be a lot of election fraud," she said.

"This alone might give you an idea of how badly they are afraid of losing and that they probably wouldn't be able to win in a fair election."

Ottawa police deny 'demonstration' request

But Kartasheva has received pushback from Ottawa police who have characterized the planned exit poll as a demonstration, something she vehemently disputes.

"We will not be screaming anything at people. We will not have any banners, any speakers," Kartasheva said.

"What the Ottawa police is doing, they're siding with the embassy right now," she added. "By doing this, they are being accomplices in the crime of stealing Russian citizens' votes."

In a statement to CBC News, Ottawa police (OPS) said they declined the request for a demonstration at the embassy's entrance and exit, citing an obligation under the Vienna Convention.

"The OPS has advised protestors that any such protest can only be conducted across the street (not in the immediate vicinity of the embassy), so as to ensure that Russian citizens can access the embassy without interference," it said.

Aleksandr Polev, who participated in Navalny's 2018 presidential campaign, plans to stand alongside Kartasheva.

"It's the only one way that we can see the difference how the people actually vote and what numbers the government is showing to us," he told CBC.

Polev noted that while people are feeling frustrated over the war in Ukraine and Navalny's death, he sees a generation gap between older Russians who have a more imperialist mentality, and those who favour peace but can't speak out for fear of reprisals.

"Any ways to express themselves are criminalized now. You cannot say something against the war. So people are looking for opportunities to share their frustrations, to show that, to express [them]," he said.

For Tanya Lebedeva, another Russian citizen living in Ottawa, it's still important to cast a ballot .

"I'm taking an action. Even how small and miniscule a chance there might be, it's still better than zero," she said.

Embassy 'not concerned' 

The Russian embassy said its main goal on Sunday is "to provide for the safe, secure voting process and comfortable conditions for the voters," it wrote in a statement to CBC.

"[We're] not concerned about any exit polls whatsoever unless they create impediments or discomfort for the voters," the embassy said.

But that differs from what regular protester Karen Niven-Wigston said she was told by security personnel outside the embassy on Friday, where a group of about a dozen people has been holding near daily demonstrations since the invasion.

She said someone identifying himself as the embassy's head of security told the group that they'd have to stay across the street during voting on Sunday.

"The reason he gave was for our own safety and also for the safety of the people coming to vote. That was the official directive," she said. 

"They know that we don't do anything violent or destructive at all. So the fact that they think that we might harm one of the voters is also quite ridiculous."

On Friday, she said the group held a mock vote featuring a large ballot with Putin as the only candidate.

"Then we had paper ballots to give out to people as well, and then we threw the paper ballots in the garbage bin because essentially that's what people's ballots are worth," Niven-Wigston said.