For some Siberian voters, election day began with a dip in an ice-cold river.
"Cold water invigorates. We are making our choice with a healthy body and healthy mind," Alexander Zelyenetsky, leader of the "Polar Bears" swimming club in the Siberian region of Altai, said after emerging through a hole in the ice of a local river.
His choice, like that of many others in Russia, is Vladimir Putin. The 55-year-old president is by far Russia's most popular politician after presiding over eight years of an economic boom.
Pollsters say Putin's United Russia party -- which also boasts a polar bear as its logo -- will win an overwhelming victory in Sunday's parliamentary election.
Lyudmila Pistsova, a 28-year-old accountant in the Altai regional capital Barnaul, also cast her vote for the party that has put Putin top of its list of candidates.
"It seems like the only party that can really help our region," she said.
The ballot is seen as a referendum on Putin, who aims to retain influence after stepping down as president in early 2008 and says a strong mandate from voters will give him that right.
Voters in Altai, a region nested between the Kazakh steppe and the mountains after which it is named, arrived early. They ate cheap pastries sold at polling stations and enjoyed a 10 percent discount offered by tailors and cobblers nearby.
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