Russia is holding a parliamentary election this weekend, but the outcome is widely seen as a foregone conclusion: the pro-Kremlin United Russia party is expected to tighten its grip on the State Duma in the first vote of its kind since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine.
Voting began yesterday and is due to finish tomorrow, extending across three days. Yet the duration, critics argue, should not be mistaken for democratic competition. Instead, it marks the latest in a long sequence of carefully managed elections since President Vladimir Putin rose to power more than a quarter of a century ago.
Few observers anticipate anything other than another dominant result for United Russia, which currently holds a two-thirds majority in the Duma, the lower chamber of Russia’s federal parliament. The party has enjoyed sweeping parliamentary control through most election cycles since 2007.
Authorities have permitted 10 other political parties to take part. Four already sit in the Duma and together occupy about one-third of the seats.
Often labelled by Russia analysts as “managed opposition,” these parties include A Just Russia, which blends nationalism and socialism; the economically liberal New People; the Communist Party (CPRF); and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), an ultranationalist force that is neither liberal nor democratic and typically cooperates with United Russia.
Few expect United Russia not to retain its two-thirds majority in the Duma
None of these groups challenges either the war in Ukraine or the broader machinery of political repression in Russia. Some, including the Communists and the LDPR, have repeatedly adopted hardline pro-war messaging.
Russia’s parliamentary system gives voters two ballots: one for a party list and another for candidates in their local constituency.
All 450 seats are contested, split evenly between party-list representation and single-member constituencies.
Yabloko, described as Russia’s marginal anti-war party, was blocked last month from running a party list, though it is permitted to nominate a small number of candidates in single constituencies.
Those candidates are not expected to shift a system structured for United Russia’s comprehensive victory, while assigning a defined share of seats to other Kremlin-aligned parties.
With little genuine political choice on offer, the process leaves many Russians asking what, exactly, the election is meant to achieve.
Andrei Pivovarov, a Russian political activist now living in exile, called the elections “a show” in an interview with RTÉ News.
“Elections matter to Putin primarily as a procedure, and this procedure has three key audiences,” he said.
Those audiences, Mr Pivovarov argued, are the West, Russia’s elites and, finally, the Russian public.
Mr Pivovarov spent more than three years in a Russian penal colony after being convicted for involvement with an “undesirable organisation.” He previously led Open Russia, a pro-democracy movement that has since been disbanded.
He was freed in August 2024 as part of the largest prisoner exchange between Russia and Western intelligence agencies since the Cold War, and he now lives in Germany.
“Putin needs to preserve at least a degree of formal legitimacy to demonstrate that elections are being held in Russia and that, on formal grounds, other countries should therefore recognise him as the president of Russia,” Mr Pivovarov said.
He said the Kremlin also stages elections to try to undercut the legitimacy of Ukraine’s leadership.
Russian President Vladimir Putin cast his vote online
Mr Putin has frequently highlighted that Ukraine has not held elections, without addressing allegations of rigging and the absence of real opposition parties in Russia.
Ukraine has not organised elections since Russia’s full-scale invasion began, citing the imposition of martial law.
For Russia’s governing class, this weekend’s vote serves another purpose: a public demonstration that Mr Putin remains firmly in control.
A presidential election two years ago, in which Mr Putin officially received 88% of the vote, performed a similar function.
“It is particularly important for Putin now to go through this procedure and once again demonstrate to the elite that, despite the war, economic problems and growing public dissatisfaction, he remains the leader supported by the majority,” Mr Pivovarov said.
The third audience, he added, is the domestic public.
“The presentation of high voting figures also helps reinforce the domestic narrative that society as a whole is prepared to continue the war and supports the current course,” Mr Pivovarov said.
During the campaign, United Russia has leaned heavily on patriotic appeals and the argument that the country must rally around the war effort.
“Strength in Unity” has been among the party’s central slogans.
United Russia has also put forward dozens of Russian army veterans as candidates.
“We are one people and we will fight together for the flag, for our motherland to defend its interests,” Mr Putin told United Russia’s party congress last month.
“I am sure that the upcoming elections will confirm the stability of the state,” the president said.
Still, the economic backdrop has grown more uncertain this year after Russia largely weathered Western sanctions for the first four years of the war.
Over the summer, Ukrainian drone attacks on fuel depots and retail warehouses far inside Russia led to long queues at petrol stations and disrupted supply chains for the retail sector.
Dozens of Russian army veterans are contesting seats for United Russia
Facing public anxiety about the economy, United Russia has also highlighted its domestic record, arguing it has improved access to housing, healthcare and education in recent years.
Election Atlas, an independent Russian election monitoring project, reported that beyond pro-war messaging, many posts on United Russia’s social-media channels focused on urban development, communal services, healthcare and education.
According to Meduza, an independent Latvian-based Russian news outlet, regional party branches were instructed to stress how many schools have been built and how many rural health clinics have opened in recent years in their campaign material.
Some protest-minded voters may look to parties such as the Communists or New People in hopes of narrowing United Russia’s margin.
New People has largely avoided public debate on the war, but it was the only Duma party to criticise the introduction of internet restrictions earlier this year — a stance that could win a small number of anti-establishment votes.
Even so, few expect any major surge from the managed opposition, which operates within boundaries designed to keep it small and compliant.
Sabine Fischer, a Russia policy expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, wrote this week that over the past two decades the Kremlin has “shaped a ‘party system’ designed to simulate representativeness.”
“The state administration controls this system by playing all the parties off against one another and ensuring the dominance of the ruling party, United Russia”.
A landslide for United Russia is likely to be portrayed by the Kremlin as evidence of broad public backing for the war — a narrative that could precede a new phase of escalation from Moscow.
Ukrainian intelligence has said the Kremlin intends to order a mass mobilisation of reservists after the Duma elections, an allegation Mr Putin has dismissed as “utter nonsense”.
But the Kremlin also denied reports of an impending mobilisation in September 2022, only for Mr Putin to announce a partial mobilisation a week later.
Given that recent history, it may be risky to dismiss the possibility that the Kremlin could take similar steps in the months ahead.
