Vladimir Putin's pre-election billboards guarded: Astrakhan residents report

On February 12, a video appeared in the group "Typical Astrakhan" in the social network "VKontakte". Its author reported that billboards with the image of Vladimir Putin in Astrakhan were guarded by law enforcers. "A poster reads: 'Strong Russia, strong president,' and given the poverty around, it looks like a mockery," the author wrote.

In the video, the author explains that he is driving by a pre-election billboard of Vladimir Putin and he will record on video a black Hyundai car with a law enforcer inside it, who is guarding the poster around the clock, seven days a week. The video really shows a dark car parked near the billboard.

"A billboard on 5th Kerch Street is being guarded in a similar way," wrote Ildus Khadji-Muratov, another user of the social network "VKontakte".

"So, a car is parked near every such billboard. When I was driving through a bridge from a meat processing plant to the Svobodny village, I saw two such billboards. The asphalt on the bridge is covered with pits (and today they have been repaired with some kind of liquid that looks like asphalt). And the billboards and the bridge present a great contrast," commented on February 12 Aslan Aslanov, another member of the group in the social network.

Meanwhile, the press service for the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) and the Vladimir Putin's representative in Astrakhan rejected the information about the special protection for electoral posters from vandalism.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.