In front of the “Street 1905” metro station in central Moscow, several activists for presidential candidate Ksenija Sobchak, have erected a small inflatable tent. Their goal was to attract ordinary people to become official observers in the coming presidential election in this region alone. Becoming an observer at an election is a right that all Russian citizens have. 

Timur Valeev is the head of the Regional Headquarters Network for Ksenija Sobchak, and he was at the spot supervising the process from the beginning. Timur explained that their motive in doing this was alleged widespread manipulation with the voting process. By empowering mass numbers of ordinary people to monitor the election process, they hope to prevent any attempt at election fraud.

"Yesterday we had more than 150 people signed in, today it will be more than 200," Timur said. "All together at the various places in the town and on the big rally on March 15, I expect around 3,000 people. In total I think that by the voting day we’ll enlist around 5,000 election observers."

Regardless of freezing temperatures in Moscow, in a very short period of time a line of around 10 people was formed in front of the table where they were signed in for that duty. Maybe minutes after we spoke with Timur, a police van appeared at the location, with several police officers. They asked for the Timur’s ID and checked legal backgrounds for this event. Although as bystanders, we thought that the police were going to request the removal of that tent, it didn’t happen. The police van left the scene after 10 minutes and Timur and the rest of the activists continued to do their work. One police officer though stayed behind.

Ksenija Sobchak was and is considered an underdog in the elections. In many ways she has alienated voters with her position on Crimea, in that she claims it belongs to Ukraine. At the same time, many others are pointing out that her father was Putin’s boss and mentor, while current Russian president was an officer in the Soviet secret service, the KGB. But one thing is for sure, quite a few people have identified with Ms. Sobchak positions on Russia's internal problems.

Timur Valeev claims that they don’t see these elections as fair, but they are participating only to get air time on national TV to promote their ideas and point out nation-wide problems.

And it seems that Ksenija Sobchak, together with the people surrounding her at the elections, do intend to stay on the Russian political scene even after the elections are over.