Polling stations opened in Russia’s Far East on Friday, beginning a three-day parliamentary election that President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party is all but certain to win. It is the first Duma vote since Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
Voting runs through Sunday across the country’s 11 time zones, starting with the Kamchatka peninsula and Chukotka on the Pacific. Electronic voting is permitted, and Moscow has organised balloting in occupied areas of Ukraine.
United Russia, formed in 2001, has dominated parliament for more than two decades and won over two-thirds of Duma seats in 2021. Its list is led by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin.
Only parties backing the Kremlin and its military campaign were registered to compete. Alongside United Russia, the ballot lists the Communist Party, the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, A Just Russia and New People — all of which support the war. The liberal Yabloko party, the sole registered force calling for an end to the fighting, was barred from running shortly before the vote. Lev Shlosberg, a Yabloko member, was imprisoned for criticising the war.
The vote arrives as the conflict reaches deeper into Russian life. Ukrainian drone strikes have hit refineries, warehouses and logistics hubs far from the front, reaching the Urals and Siberia and causing billions of roubles in damage as well as civilian deaths.
Putin, who has led Russia since New Year’s Eve 1999, has tied the election directly to the war. He called on Russians to vote to show troops that millions stand behind them and to give an answer to those who want to weaken Russia.
With protests banned and public debate absent, the vote serves the Kremlin as a gauge of frustration over a war with no clear end. Russia’s exiled opposition has urged anti-Kremlin voters not to boycott the poll but to back other parties. Putin’s main opponent, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic prison.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused the Kremlin of planning a fresh mobilisation, echoing the 2022 call-up of 300,000 reservists that prompted an exodus of draft-age men. Putin has denied any such plan.
Results are expected on Sunday.