According to the city’s administration, two as yet unidentified men attempted to enter the building on Wednesday, the penultimate day of advance voting in the Oct. 15 municipal elections, claiming that “ballots from the polling stations are brought in”.

The chairwoman of the Maardu electoral committee, Tiiu-Ann Kaldma, said that at 8:43 p.m. on Wednesday two cars, a Mercedes-Benz and a Volkswagen, were parked near the building of the city government in an area not covered by security cameras.

“They waited until the cleaner was exiting the building and attempted to make their way inside. The cleaner did not let the individuals into the building, locked the door and informed the electoral committee of Maardu. The whole incident can be seen on security camera recordings,” Kaldma said.

Maardu Mayor Vladimir Arhipov said that the incident may have been a provocation aimed at questioning that elections in the city were conducted in a fair and appropriate manner.

“There is no polling station in the building of the Maardu city government, and only votes will be counted there on Oct. 16. It is possible that there will be other attempts to call the appropriate conduct of the elections into question,” Arhipov added.

Maardu is a predominantly Russian-speaking industrial city of 15,000 bordering Tallinn on the east.