By Shahzaib Saqib — SCN News
MOSCOW — Russians began voting on Friday in the country’s first parliamentary election since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with President Vladimir Putin portraying the ballot as a demonstration of national unity and support for Russian forces while most candidates openly opposing the war have been excluded from meaningful competition. The three-day vote will determine all 450 seats in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, where Putin-backed United Russia currently holds more than two-thirds of the seats.
Polling opened first across Russia’s Far East and will continue through Sunday across the country’s 11 time zones, with about 111 million people eligible to vote and electronic voting available in parts of the country. Half of the Duma’s seats are allocated through party-list voting, while the remaining 225 are decided in individual constituencies. Initial results are expected after polls close on Sunday, with a more complete count expected on Monday.
The election is taking place more than four years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and at a time when the war is increasingly affecting daily life inside Russia. Ukrainian drone attacks have struck oil refineries, logistics sites and other infrastructure, while businesses are dealing with high interest rates, labour shortages, sanctions and other economic pressures. Opinion polling cited by Reuters has also shown increased interest among Russians in peace negotiations, although polling conducted in Russia during wartime operates in a restrictive political environment and should be interpreted cautiously.
Putin has explicitly connected participation in the election to the war. In a televised address before voting began, he said the ballot would demonstrate that millions of Russians stood behind the country’s soldiers and remained united despite outside pressure. Russian state television has similarly promoted the election using military and patriotic imagery, linking voting to the government’s broader wartime message.
United Russia has dominated the State Duma for years and backed the Kremlin’s major legislative initiatives. Other parties represented in parliament — including the Communist Party, Liberal Democratic Party and A Just Russia — have also supported central elements of the Kremlin’s Ukraine policy. Reuters and AP report that United Russia is widely expected to retain its dominant parliamentary position, although the actual distribution of seats and turnout will not be established until ballots are counted.
The political environment surrounding the vote has drawn particular scrutiny. Russia’s Supreme Court last month removed the liberal Yabloko party’s national list after ruling that it had violated electoral regulations, an allegation the party disputed. Yabloko has advocated a ceasefire and negotiations over Ukraine, although some of its candidates remain on ballots in individual constituencies.
Several prominent anti-war political figures have also been imprisoned, barred from office or forced abroad during Russia’s wartime crackdown on dissent. Lev Shlosberg, a senior Yabloko figure, was sentenced to 11 years in prison over comments concerning the war, while deputy party leader Maxim Kruglov received a seven-year sentence in June on similar charges, Reuters reported. Russian law provides lengthy prison terms for what authorities classify as spreading false information about or “discrediting” the armed forces.
The vote extends beyond Russia’s internationally recognised borders. Moscow is also organising voting in Crimea and four Ukrainian regions it claims to have annexed — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Russia does not fully control all four regions, and its annexation claims are rejected by Ukraine and are not recognised by most of the international community.
The election therefore carries two distinct political measurements for the Kremlin: the formal composition of the next State Duma and the turnout that authorities can point to as evidence of participation during wartime. Putin has framed the ballot as an expression of public backing for Russian troops, but an election conducted with much of the organised anti-war opposition excluded cannot by itself establish the level of public support for the war across Russian society.
Russia’s Central Election Commission has rejected allegations that electronic voting or other electoral mechanisms are vulnerable to manipulation. Critics and some voters have questioned the transparency of electronic voting and the broader electoral system, while Russian authorities maintain that the process is legitimate and secure. Those competing claims remain part of a wider dispute over electoral conditions rather than an independently established conclusion about Friday’s voting.
For the Kremlin, the more consequential question after polls close may therefore extend beyond the number of seats won by United Russia. The turnout, regional voting patterns and official results will provide the government with political material it can use to argue that Russians remain united during the fifth year of the Ukraine war. Whether those figures can independently demonstrate the level of public support for the war is a separate question, particularly given the restrictions imposed on anti-war political participation.