Russia’s top election official calls for émigrés to lose voting rights 

Russian Central Election Commission chief Ella Pamfilova has called for citizens who have left the country to be stripped of their right to vote, describing them as traitors.

“In my view, if you left the country, you betrayed it — good riddance,” Pamfilova said in an interview with pro-Kremlin radio station Komsomolskaya Pravda on Monday.

Asked by the host whether the measure would apply only to Russians officially designated “foreign agents” or to everyone who left the country and opposes the war, Pamfilova said it should fall to law enforcement agencies and the State Duma to define the “all-encompassing category” of people who could lose voting rights.

Pamfilova also claimed that the Central Election Commission expected Russians who had fled the country and were voting from “unfriendly” states to stage pickets and “various provocations” aimed at “disrupting and discrediting” September’s elections. She said Russian ambassadors in “unfriendly” countries had been instructed to ask host governments whether they could guarantee the safety of Russian diplomatic missions.