The three-day ballot was held without any meaningful opposition. Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party was projected to cruise to victory in Russia’s tightly controlled parliamentary election on Sunday, according to an exit poll, with genuine political opposition absent from the ballot. The exit poll conducted by state-run VTsIOM polling agency put United Russia on 49.4%, followed by the Communist Party on 14.2%, the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party on 10.7%, New People on 9.7% and A Just Russia on 6.6%. All four parties projected to join United Russia in the 450-seat State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, broadly support the Kremlin and its war against Ukraine. Preliminary official results gave United Russia 57.5% after nearly 14% of ballots had been counted, according to Russia’s Central Election Commission. Voter turnout exceeded 56%, the commission said. The result is likely to tighten Putin’s grip on Russia’s political system, which he has dominated for more than a quarter of a century. Election without real opposition The three-day ballot was Russia’s first parliamentary election since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Putin presented the election as a test of public support for Russian forces fighting in Ukraine and an opportunity to demonstrate national unity. The Kremlin had largely eliminated meaningful political opposition before the vote, with most anti-war candidates barred from standing and prominent critics imprisoned, forced into exile or subjected to legal pressure. Voting held in occupied territories Russia also organized voting in occupied parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, as well as in illegally annexed Crimea and the city of Sevastopol. Ukraine, Poland and the European Union condemned the voting as illegal and said it could have no bearing on the territories’ internationally recognized status.
