Russians started voting on Friday in a three-day parliamentary election that will probably strengthen President Vladimir Putin’s hold on power after 26 years in charge.
The vote marks the country’s first parliamentary election since Moscow launched its military campaign in Ukraine in February 2022. The conflict has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides.
Only political parties that back Putin and the Kremlin’s military operation have received permission to run. Moscow has also set up polling stations in Ukrainian territories under its control.
Limited choice for voters
While most Russians expect Putin’s United Russia party to win comfortably, the election provides some indication of public feeling about the war. The conflict has affected daily life at home more than ever this year.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Kyiv sent 350 drones toward the Moscow region overnight, with most destroyed before reaching their targets.
Voters will choose all 450 members of the Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, with polling stations closing at 18:00 GMT on Sunday.
Putin has led Russia since 1999, and his United Russia party has controlled politics since the early 2000s. Moscow banned criticism of its Ukraine campaign, and elections under Putin rarely deliver unexpected results.
At a polling station in central Moscow, rail worker Sergei Korenets (41) said he would support United Russia, voting for “stability” – Putin’s main campaign message.
When asked whether four-and-a-half years of war equals “stability”, Korenets said: “Of course, I want all this to end as quickly as possible.” But he does not want political change at home because “I am satisfied from the point of view of my financial situation”.
Despite wide-ranging Western sanctions, Russia’s economy has not fallen apart and life in the capital continues relatively normally even as Moscow strikes Ukrainian cities daily.
Opposition shut out
United Russia faces only parties that generally support Putin’s policies and the war: the Communist Party, the nationalist LDPR, A Just Russia and New People.
Yabloko, which demanded an end to the fighting, could not run after authorities barred the party shortly before the vote. One of its senior members, Lev Shlosberg, sits in prison for criticising the war.
Russia has introduced Soviet-style censorship since 2022 and jailed critics of the war.
“I am fully for the special military operation,” Lyubov (55) told AFP in Moscow, using the Kremlin’s official term for its offensive. “NATO cannot be at our borders,” she added, repeating one of Putin’s reasons for starting the war.
But she criticised some social policies, still angry about Putin raising the pension age several years ago. “I want a return to the Soviet economic system,” she said.
Older voters remain among Putin’s strongest supporters, though many still complain about living standards.
Before the vote, Putin (73) urged Russians to cast their ballots to show troops that “behind our fighters stand millions of people” and to send an “answer to those who want to weaken Russia”.
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Mobilisation concerns
With public debate largely missing and protests banned, the vote may give the Kremlin some measure of frustration over a war with no clear end.
This year, the conflict has touched ordinary Russians more than before, with Ukrainian strikes reaching as far as the Urals and Siberia.
Some worry the post-election period in Russia will bring a new military mobilisation, similar to the 2022 call-up of 300 000 reservists. That deeply unpopular move triggered a mass exodus of draft-age men.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused the Kremlin of planning a fresh mobilisation drive this autumn, an allegation Putin has denied.
Putin’s political opponents have mostly fled into exile and his main challenger Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic prison in 2024.
Russia’s exiled opposition has urged anti-Kremlin Russians not to skip the elections but instead vote “against Putin’s party”. Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya also called on anti-war Russians to cast their ballots at noon on Sunday.
Yabloko disagrees, arguing it was better not to vote. “You are suggesting that we once again go, like sheep, dancing to their tune, and vote for those who have caused the deaths of people in Russia and Ukraine?” party chairman Nikolay Rybakov said this week.
