Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is imprisoned in Russia, said in a message from prison on Tuesday that the fight for a democratic Russia was a marathon.
Navalny praised the “smart voting” tactic, but said its results were stolen.
Navalny’s supporters launched a so-called smart voting campaign in the run-up to the three-day parliamentary elections on 17-19 September, calling for the candidate in the single-member constituencies to vote for the candidate most likely to beat the ruling party.
However, in the elections, as expected, the ruling party “United Russia”, despite the great decline in popularity, again won a constitutional majority in the State Duma.
Navalny called on his supporters to continue the fight.
“We have one country, no matter where we live,” Navalny said on video on his Instagram account, managed by his peers.
“And the fight for it is not a sprint, but a long and long marathon,” he added.
Navalny said the election results had been stolen and praised the “smart voting” campaign as a huge achievement.
The main result of this campaign is that people have realized that “United Russia” no longer enjoys much popular support and had to falsify the election results in order to stay in power, Navalni stressed.
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