Disco dancing, children fighting and lovers kissing: Vladimir Putin's experiment of using webcams at polling stations provided Russians with a dose of entertainment as much as a check against ballot fraud.
Russians amused themselves zooming into distant corners of their vast country to catch a glimpse of the live relays of the election process on Sunday, but it was not clear if the system could guarantee transparency on its own.
Putin -- who is expected to easily win the election -- ordered the setting up of over 100,000 webcams after reports of fraud in December parliamentary polls sparked mass protests against his rule.
The cameras went online on Saturday well before the opening of polling stations, suddenly making it possible to catch a glimpse of life in the schools, village clubs and other municipal buildings that usually host the polls.
Some showed school in session on Saturday, with little boys getting into fights and rolling on the floor. A polling station in Moscow showed a couple necking on a bench set up in the hall next to the ballot box.
But election monitors have said footage from the cameras will be difficult to use as admissible evidence in court and most cameras have been set up too far away from the ballot boxes to see any sharp details beyond the fuzzy feed.
In Sasovo, a town in the Ryazan region south of Moscow, women with permed hair and low-cut necklines were seen dancing the night away to the sounds of Russian disco music on Saturday night.
In Siberia's Tyumen, a man called Nikolai was celebrating his birthday at the balloon-decorated polling station on Saturday evening, with the camera showing a long table overflowing with food and bottles of alcohol.
The decor turned more austere on Sunday as the tables were cleared to make way for the ballots.
Twitter users made fun of the live dramas, creating links to the most interesting feeds, rooting for people fighting and pretending to ask the disk jockeys to change the music.
The mood was less festive at polling stations in the region of Chechnya in the Caucasus -- still beset by unrest blamed on Islamists -- showing muscular men in camouflage silently sitting hunched over tables on Saturday evening.
Many cameras in Russia's Caucasus were not working at all on Sunday, while others showed much denser crowds than stations in Moscow.
Russians amused themselves zooming into distant corners of their vast country to catch a glimpse of the live relays of the election process on Sunday, but it was not clear if the system could guarantee transparency on its own.
Putin -- who is expected to easily win the election -- ordered the setting up of over 100,000 webcams after reports of fraud in December parliamentary polls sparked mass protests against his rule.
The cameras went online on Saturday well before the opening of polling stations, suddenly making it possible to catch a glimpse of life in the schools, village clubs and other municipal buildings that usually host the polls.
Some showed school in session on Saturday, with little boys getting into fights and rolling on the floor. A polling station in Moscow showed a couple necking on a bench set up in the hall next to the ballot box.
But election monitors have said footage from the cameras will be difficult to use as admissible evidence in court and most cameras have been set up too far away from the ballot boxes to see any sharp details beyond the fuzzy feed.
In Sasovo, a town in the Ryazan region south of Moscow, women with permed hair and low-cut necklines were seen dancing the night away to the sounds of Russian disco music on Saturday night.
In Siberia's Tyumen, a man called Nikolai was celebrating his birthday at the balloon-decorated polling station on Saturday evening, with the camera showing a long table overflowing with food and bottles of alcohol.
The decor turned more austere on Sunday as the tables were cleared to make way for the ballots.
Twitter users made fun of the live dramas, creating links to the most interesting feeds, rooting for people fighting and pretending to ask the disk jockeys to change the music.
The mood was less festive at polling stations in the region of Chechnya in the Caucasus -- still beset by unrest blamed on Islamists -- showing muscular men in camouflage silently sitting hunched over tables on Saturday evening.
Many cameras in Russia's Caucasus were not working at all on Sunday, while others showed much denser crowds than stations in Moscow.
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