United Russia Wins Supermajority in Russia's Wartime Vote — SkimNews
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- United Russia won over 58% of votes across three days of voting ending Sunday, positioning the party for more than three-quarters of State Duma seats — a record result in its 25 years of dominance.
- Yabloko, Russia's only registered anti-war party, won zero national seats after the Supreme Court removed it from party lists last month, though it cleared 6% to enter Novgorod's regional parliament with about 12,000 votes.
- The Communist Party took 40 Duma seats with 13.8% of the vote, while nationalist LDPR won 25 and the New People party 20; both Yabloko and Communist observers said they were turned away from polling stations.
- Russia's Central Electoral Commission, led by chair Ella Pamfilova, announced near-60% turnout in the first parliamentary vote to include residents of four Ukrainian regions Moscow illegally annexed in 2022 — extending Kremlin electoral authority over occupied territory.
- OSCE election monitors were not invited; OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President Pere Joan Pons said Russia's exclusion violated its commitments as a member state.
- EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas dismissed the vote as a 'so-called' election, while Australia, Britain, Canada, and two other countries condemned the polls in occupied Ukraine as 'part of a wider system of occupation.'
- Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center analyst Tatyana Stanovaya warned Putin will likely read the result as confirmation of war support, 'even though it is not the case: The overall demand for ending the war is growing.'
Why it matters: Putin gains a Duma where his party controls more than three-quarters of seats, against a backdrop of mounting concerns — voiced by Carnegie analyst Stanovaya — about new mobilization, repression, and escalation. The contradiction: a Moscow resident told Al Jazeera the Ukraine conflict was Russia's most acute problem, even as the official turnout-as-mandate story emboldens the Kremlin.
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