Russian President Vladimir Putin’s party dominated the weekend elections for the State Duma, with results that did not surprise observers familiar with the country’s tightly controlled election system, but outcomes on the fringes show Moscow might be losing its grip.
United Russia, the country’s governing party, claimed a continued mandate to power on Monday, with 57.83% of the vote. That result includes a near sweep of single-member districts, giving it an even stronger advantage, with the expectation of occupying 355 of the Duma’s 450 seats — smashing its previous 2016 record of 343 seats.
“These indicators, of course, point to the highest level of consolidation within Russian society around the head of state,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a press conference.
The Communist Party, which almost universally votes alongside United Russia on major policies, came in second and is expected to net 40. Fellow controlled opposition parties, the Liberal Democrat Party and New People, won 25 and 20 seats respectively.
It has been largely perceived as a rubber-stamp election, the first held since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, and the list of candidates was severely restricted by government bureaucracy. Federal agencies challenge opposition groups’ ability to run campaigns through dubious standards such as signature collections and investigations over alleged foreign influence — processes ripe for exploitation by loyalist overseers.
A campaign from the highest levels of the Kremlin sought to bolster voter turnout for the election, and the government is now reporting 60% participation, the highest since 2013.
“Pretty much everyone understands that these are not free and fair elections,” Evgeny Roshchin, head of the Democratic Resilience program at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told the Washington Examiner. “So, whatever outcome you may see — either an official or unofficial reporting, it’s not the reflection of the level of support that voters in normal democracies usually give to their representatives. This is something else. … They choose among the lesser evils.”
Roshchin pointed to independent exit polls that documented votes cast by Russian citizens abroad, showing a staggering victory for the New People party across the board. The Communist Party came in second, and United Russia is estimated to have received a mere 5% of the vote.
“This is what I take as an expression of the protest vote, or the strategic vote. … That’s the purest reflection,” he explained. “And of course, the Russian diaspora outside is a different thing from the main Russian constituency. But this is just one other indication that these elections were more about the protest or strategic voting rather than genuine support for something substantial.”
A standout result nationwide was the unexpected victory of the anti-war Yabloko party, which managed to win a seat in the Novgorod regional Duma with 6.38% of the vote.
Yabloko was banned from the national election and most regional elections on the flimsy ground that assets in party election campaign materials violated copyright law. It was also accused of accepting foreign finances and engaging in extremist activities.
Roshchin was surprised when he saw the anti-war party clinch the seat and break the electoral threshold that would allow it to stand in future elections without fighting through the signature-gathering process often used to reject parties disfavored by the government.
“That’s what makes Yabloko still a viable party for the future. If they didn’t make it to the Novgorod Parliamentary Assembly, they would probably have disappeared altogether from the political landscape, as some of the other liberal parties did who didn’t manage to get into parliamentary assemblies,” he explained to the Washington Examiner. “It’s important not because there is one representative from that party in their assembly. It’s important because it gives them a chance to run again in the future elections as a party.”
ZELENSKY SAID TRUMP AGREES TO SPEAK IN NEW YORK FOR DIPLOMATIC MEETING
The final day of the election was disrupted by a massive Ukrainian assault on Moscow, sending pillars of smoke rising against the skyline of the Russian capital.
More than 1,000 drones were deployed in the attack, which managed to breach air defense systems through sheer numbers.
Videos show that the Gazpromneft-Moscow Refinery, one of Russia’s most important oil facilities, was struck less than 10 miles from the Kremlin itself.