Willing votes for the Duma election
Russia’s German election observers think everything is fine
Updated 09/23/2026 – 3:47 p.mReading time: 7 minutes
Several Germans delivered the desired verdict at Russian polling stations at the weekend: well organized, transparent, democratic. The Kremlin was able to rope in a former AfD MP as well as a former Berlin DKP leader and a sanctioned blogger.
On the first day of the Russian Duma election, the corpus delicti lay largely unnoticed and completely uneaten on a table in an election office in Yekaterinburg. On the second day, the police intervened and confiscated it: the apple in question was considered suspicious, the Telegram channel “Evening News” reported. In Russian, “Jabloko” not only means apple, but is also the name of a party that criticizes Putin’s war – Yabloko was therefore not allowed to run for election with its nationwide list. The chairman of the responsible district commission classified the apple as an “illegal election campaign activity,” other media reported.
Independent international election observers would probably see an apple brought with them as the least of the problems. But such observers do exist Russia no longer. Instead, the Russian authorities are presenting a different type of election observation: so-called experts who are supposed to certify transparency and democracy. Among them are Germans from a background in between AfDDKP, pro-Russian media and political activism. t-online was able to identify some of them.
The OSCE election observation mission was again not invited. The Russian election observer organization Golos, which emerged from civil society, is also no longer active. Its leading representative was arrested in August 2023 and sentenced to five years in prison in May 2025 because he was accused of having links to the European Network of Election Observation Organizations (ENEMO). This has been “undesirable” in Russia since 2021.
With many votes, a higher share for Putin’s party
According to preliminary information from the Central Election Commission, Putin’s United Russia party received 57.8 percent of the vote and expanded its two-thirds majority in the Duma with 355 of the 450 seats. Duma President Vyacheslav Volodin (also “United Russia”) said the gain was thanks to Putin’s support. The voters followed Putin’s call. The president described participation in the election as a “joint contribution to Russia’s victory.”
The presence of independent observers appears to be a hindrance to election participation and victory: Saint Petersburg lawyer Ekaterina Gulenkova published on Telegram a comparison of neighboring polling stations with and without whale observers from other parties: Where there were no election observers, voter turnout and vote share for “United Russia” were strikingly higher. It seemed as if voters had flocked to bars without observers to vote for Putin’s party.
