Putin’s wartime parliament: Kremlin party declared election winners

Election in Russia

Putin’s wartime parliament: Kremlin party declared election winners

The ruling Kremlin party was declared the winner in the parliamentary election, which critics described as a farce. Veterans also sit in the new State Duma as the driving force behind the war.

Those for the Russian war of aggression against the Ukraine leading Kremlin party United Russia massively expands its previous two-thirds majority in the State Duma in the parliamentary elections. According to data from the Central Election Commission in Moscow The party, which has been in power for more than 20 years, probably has at least 338 seats – a good dozen seats more than before, as the Russian news agency Interfax reported. The Duma has a total of 450 seats.

By morning, more than 90 percent of the ballot papers, including electronic votes, had been counted. Returning officer Ella Pamfilova wants to announce the preliminary final result in the morning. As things stand, there are now only four parties in the Duma – rather than five.

Putin is likely to see the election, in which only parties loyal to his line were admitted, as a clear signal for the continuation of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Kremlin opponents, however, described the vote as a farce. Independent experts, the opposition in exile and even the Kremlin-affiliated communists under their leader Gennady Zyuganov accused the Russian election authorities of falsifying the results. Because of the exclusion of a real opposition and a lack of freedom of the press and freedom of expression, the elections – like those in previous years – were criticized as neither democratic nor fair.

After counting almost all ballot papers, United Russia received 57.86 percent of the votes, as Interfax reported, citing the election management. There are also direct mandates. Forecasts had seen the ruling party at less than 50 percent. In the 2021 Duma vote, the central election commission awarded her 49.8 percent of the votes.

The Communist Party came in second with 13.84 percent of the vote; the ultranationalist party LDPR got 8.9 percent; The Nowyje Ljudi (in German: New People) party, which is popular among liberal city dwellers, achieved 7.94 percent. According to the non-final results, the Fair Russia party narrowly failed to reach the five percent hurdle, after being above it in the evening and at night (4.95 percent). Until now it was one of the five parties in the Duma.

In the previous election, according to the election commission, the communists won 18.9 percent of the vote, the LDPR 7.5 percent, Fair Russia 7.4 percent and Novye Lyudi 5.3 percent.

All ten parties on the ballot are considered to be close to the Kremlin – and all support the war against Ukraine that has been ongoing since 2022. More than four and a half years after the invasion of the neighboring country, war veterans are now moving into parliament for the ruling party. Under the impression of a massive economic crisiswar weariness and people’s dissatisfaction with the situation in the country, voter turnout reached more than 56 percent, the highest level in 15 years.