The app «Smart Vote» of the imprisoned Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny was «connected in one way or another with the Pentagon,» said the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Sakharova, on the state broadcaster Radio Rossii.
Using the “smart vote”, Navalny’s supporters are calling on the Russians to vote against the Kremlin United Russia in the elections from September 17th to 19th. The associated homepage has been blocked in Russia for a few days. The authorities have also prohibited the Internet search engines Google and Yandex from displaying the term “Smart Voting” in search results.
Sakharova also referred to a conversation between Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and the US Ambassador in Moscow, John Sullivan, on Friday. Sullivan had been declared that the Russian side had “irrefutable evidence” of violations of the law by US Internet giants in connection with the upcoming Duma election, it said in a statement. From the US side there was initially no reaction to the allegations.