Russia to open voting booths at border with Poland, Baltic states

MOSCOW - Russia said Thursday it would open voting stations at its border points with Poland and the three Baltic states.

Moscow is holding a three-day parliamentary election across its 11 time zones starting on Friday, with President Vladimir Putin's party facing no real opposition and guaranteed to win.

Russia's ties with EU members Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia -- already historically fragile -- are de-facto frozen, with embassies open but many diplomats expelled and most Russian consulates closed.

The head of Russia's electoral commission, Ella Pamfilova, said Moscow would open "10 voting points near border crossings" for Russians living in those countries to cast their ballots.

Four of them, she said, will be in the Kaliningrad exclave, which borders Poland and Lithuania.

Another five will be in the Pskov region -- which shares a border with Latvia and Estonia -- and one more will be opened in the Leningrad region on the border with Estonia, Pamfilova said.

Russian diplomatic missions will open polling stations in other EU countries, Moscow has said.