Elections in Russia are neither free nor fair, and the 2024 presidential vote was no exception. Tens of millions of Russiansknow that. However, this does not mean that the Russian opposition could not use Putin’s sham elections as an opportunity for political action. The Noon Against Putin campaign was an attempt to seize that opportunity. Proponents of the campaign called for every dissident Russians to come to polling stations en masse at noon on March 17 and vote against Putin. To make sense of the strategy behind Noon Against Putin, one should take into account the fact that this campaign …