OMM Redaksiyası
President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party has won a record supermajority in Russia’s parliamentary election, according to near-complete official results reported by Al Jazeera, AFP and AP.
United Russia received more than 58% of the vote after three days of polling that ended on Sunday. The result puts the party on course to win more than three-quarters of the seats in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament.
Election held amid war in Ukraine
The vote was the first parliamentary election since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It also included residents of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow seized and illegally annexed later that year.
Voter turnout was nearly 60%. Al Jazeera correspondent Dmitry Medvedenko said the result and participation rate were likely to be viewed in Moscow as strengthening support for the continuation of the war, despite growing public concern about the conflict.
Ella Pamfilova, chair of Russia’s Central Electoral Commission, said Yabloko, the country’s only registered anti-war party, had failed to win any seats at the national level. The party was removed from the ballot by Russia’s Supreme Court last month and had only a small number of candidates in single-member constituencies.
Yabloko did win representation in the regional parliament of Novgorod, where it said it received about 12,000 votes, or just over 6% of the total. The party and the Communist Party said many of their election observers had been denied access to polling stations.
Opposition parties take limited number of seats
The Communist Party won 13.8% of the vote and secured 40 seats in the State Duma. The nationalist LDPR won 25 seats, while New People took 20.
Russia did not invite observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The Russian Foreign Ministry has accused the organisation of applying “double standards” in its criticism of Moscow. OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President Pere Joan Pons said excluding observers violated Russia’s commitments as a member.
Many voters in Moscow said the result was not unexpected. One resident, identified as Tatyana, said she wanted the conflict in Ukraine to end sooner through peaceful means if possible.
Tatyana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center said Putin would likely interpret United Russia’s performance as evidence of public support for the war, although demand for an end to the conflict was growing. She said the result raised concerns about mobilisation, further repression and possible escalation.
Western countries condemn the vote
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas rejected what she called Russia’s “so-called” election. She said the Kremlin had suppressed dissent, barred the only registered party opposed to the war and prevented international election monitors from observing the vote.
Australia, Britain, Canada and two other countries condemned the parliamentary elections held in areas of Ukraine under Russian occupation, calling them part of a broader system of occupation.
