Top stories in the Russian press on Tuesday, November 3, prepared by TASS

Izvestia: American voters head to the polls to elect president, Congress

On November 3, Americans will not only vote for a new president for the next four years, but will also elect 35 Senators, as well as the entire House of Representatives. According to experts interviewed by Izvestia, whoever wins the presidential elections - Donald Trump or Joe Biden - both risk getting at least a half-hostile Congress as their partners. According to forecasts, Republicans are likely to slightly outperform their rivals in the battle for the Senate, while Democrats should retain the Congress for themselves.

Meanwhile, the gap between Joe Biden and Donald Trump before the elections has narrowed, which means the outcome of the fight for the White House is still unclear.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 94 mln voted early, almost 60 mln people voted by mail. By comparison, in 2016, the total number of voters in the elections turned out to be slightly more than 133 mln. Experts believe that the vote count will drag on for several days, and the picture of the results of the in-person voting on November 3 and the early votes can be strikingly different.

"On November 4, there could be one winner, and a few days later another. The postal union openly supports Biden, and the possibilities for manipulating the mail-in vote are huge. Therefore, Americans will have a very high distrust of the voting results," Associate Professor of the Department of Political Theory at MGIMO Kirill Koktysh told Izvestia.

At the same time, the longer it takes to determine the winner, the higher the likelihood of spontaneous protests and street violence, Director of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Foundation for United States Studies at Moscow State University Yuri Rogulev told the newspaper. Businesses in major American cities have already started to erect barricades in malls and board up shops, law enforcement officials are working out scenarios for responding to riots. "Judging by the intensity of emotions and the serious division of the country based on ideological reasons, a confrontation is becoming irreconcilable. And this can lead to collisions," Rogulev noted.

One of the most discussed scenarios in the American political expert community is that on the morning of November 4, Trump will lead the elections, and a few days later Biden will be ahead of him thanks to early voting by mail. In other words, the presidential race will not be over on November 3.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Lukashenko launches counter-offensive against the public

On Monday morning, human rights activists reported that at least 300 people had been detained during Sunday’s protest in Minsk. A criminal case was initiated based on public order violations with more than 230 individuals ending up as defendants. Experts told Nezavisimaya Gazeta they believe this is a new crackdown aimed at stopping the demonstrations.

Local observers and experts attributed the hardened attitude towards the protesters to Lukashenko's desire to crush the already protracted protests as soon as possible. November 9 will mark three months from the moment the unrest erupted, the newspaper writes. Moreover, at the end of August, Lukashenko assured that order had already been restored on Belarusian streets, however, the protesters continue to amass in the thousands and show no intention of letting up.

"Before the weekend, an unstable dynamic balance of power was established between the authorities and the protesters, because Lukashenko cannot suppress the demonstrations, and his opponents also cannot yet achieve their goals," political observer Alexander Klaskovsky told Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

The expert does not believe that Lukashenko will achieve his goals by tougher measures. He calls other factors more significant. "I think the decisive factors may be: first, the persistence of the supporters of change, second, the deteriorating economic situation and, third, the Moscow factor," Klaskovsky said. According to the political commentator, Moscow still intends to push him towards constitutional reform. "At the same time, Lukashenko does not want any transit of power, therefore, tensions on the eastern front are also possible. All these factors, of course, will undermine the system," he said.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Fighting targets Nagorno-Karabakh leadership

The fragile truce reached with Moscow's participation for the exchange of prisoners and the bodies of those killed during the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh has been broken again. Recently, this is the third ceasefire concluded and immediately broken. Moreover, in developing an offensive against the unrecognized republic’s second-largest city of Shusha, the Azerbaijani military began the systematic destruction of Nagorno-Karabakh’s leaders, Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes.

The motorcade of Defense Minister Jalal Harutyunyan came under fire first, and now the attack on the President of the Republic, Arayik Harutyunyan was reported. According to Baku, the vehicles and personnel were destroyed last Saturday in a combined strike by aviation and artillery crews. However, the presidential press service denied both of these reports, saying that the minister was wounded, and the president was alive and fulfilling his duties.

Military expert Aleksey Ramm told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that most likely the final plan for penetrating the defense in Nagorno-Karabakh was prepared by the Azerbaijani Armed Forces following the 2016 conflict. "Baku perfectly understood the main weakness of the Nagorno-Karabakh armed forces - a small number of mobile combined arms and artillery units and subunits. Therefore, at the first stage of the operation, it was planned to strike along the entire front line. Their goal was to force the transfer of reserves and prevent their concentration in the main sections of the breakthrough in the south," Ramm said.

This very plan can now be seen, the newspaper writes. The Azerbaijani army continues its offensive along the southern border of Nagorno-Karabakh and Iran in the direction of Shusha with access to the Lachin corridor. If this happens, Karabakh will be cut off from Armenia. As a result, the supply of Nagorno-Karabakh units will be disrupted with all the ensuing dark consequences for them, Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes.

Kommersant: Moldova might shift West

Incumbent President Igor Dodon of Moldova, suffered a painful blow in the first round of the country’s presidential elections, where he finished second, losing the lead to his pro-EU rival Maia Sandu. Dodon can still recoup, but now it will be much more difficult. If the opposition challenger wins, the thaw in relations between Moldova and Russia may turn cold, since Moscow is not among Sandu's priorities, Kommersant writes.

Head of the Chisinau Institute of Public Politics Arcadie Barbarosie told the newspaoer that both candidates have reserves among those who did not vote during the first round. The expert believes that the majority of those who "skipped" the first round, will vote for Sandu in the run-off.

Analyst at WatchDog Moldova Research Center Valeriu Pasha also believes that Dodon did not use all of his reserves. The current president, the analyst told the newspaper, can mobilize voters from breakaway Transnistria. Residents of the unrecognized republic with Moldovan citizenship, and there are several hundred thousand of them, did not vote very actively in the first round of the elections. Just like Moldovan citizens living in Russia. Pasha does not rule out that Dodon may appeal to the Russian side with a request to stimulate the voting of Moldovan citizens with the help of the police and migration structures. In turn, Sandu is also counting on the diaspora - Moldovan citizens living in Europe demonstrated unprecedented activity in the first round.

In the meantime, if the second round ends with a victory for Maia Sandu, this will certainly affect the relations between Chisinau and Moscow, which, under the pro-Russian Igor Dodon, were very balanced, Kommersant writes. Russia is included as the main strategic partner of Moldova in Dodon’s election program. Sandu's party platform says that relations with Russia will be ensured on the basis of common interests in trade, investment, freedom of movement and cultural ties, while a strategic partnership is mentioned in the context of interaction with the United States.

Izvestia: Russian ruble continues to hit new lows

The ruble exchange rate will depend on how the pandemic goes, energy prices, the consequences of the US elections and the sanctions rhetoric, experts interviewed by Izvestia believe. At the same time, given that the rates of the Russian currency have overcome the technical and psychological boundaries of devaluation, there is a high probability of a further weakening of the ruble. For the coming months, the range of 80-85 rubles per dollar and 92-95 rubles per euro is quite realistic, analysts admit.

Early on the Moscow Exchange on November 2, the dollar rose to 80.7 rubles and for the first time in several months and approached the low numbers of spring. The euro reached 93.9 rubles and renewed its December 2014 record. The reasons for the weakening of the Russian currency, according to experts interviewed by Izvestia, lie in a number of factors. The main ones were the decline in oil prices due to the second wave of the coronavirus and a series of lockdowns in Europe, Senior managing director at NKR rating agency Alexander Proklov said. The depreciation of the ruble has been going on for several days against the background of a general decline in the currencies of developing countries, Head of the information and analytical content department of BCS World of Investments Vasily Karpunin told the newspaper. He added that this is largely a general trend in light of the surge in the dollar index ahead of the US presidential election.

The negative background for the oil market, which runs the risk of temporarily moving from a deficit to overproduction, is being created by the lockdowns in Europe, an increase in production in Libya and US drilling activity, Karpunin added.

With some stabilization of world markets, a strengthening of the national currency and a rollback to 73-74 rubles per dollar are possible, Chief economist at Expert RA Anton Tabakh said.