by Stefan J. Bos, Worthy News Europe Bureau Chief

KYIV/MOSCOW (Worthy News) – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ruling United Russia party has claimed a commanding victory in the country’s first parliamentary election since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, despite concerns over the fairness of the vote.

Near-complete results gave the Kremlin-aligned party a record 355 seats in the 450-member State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, the Central Election Commission (CEC) announced after more than 95 percent of votes were counted.

Putin had cast the three-day election as a test of support for the war in Ukraine, now in its fifth year.

United Russia won 57.83 percent of the party-list vote, according to CEC data, up from 49.8 percent in 2021, when the previous State Duma election was held.

RECORD SEAT TOTAL

The result would give United Russia nearly 80 percent of the seats and preserve its constitutional majority, allowing it to pass legislation and initiate constitutional amendments without support from other parties.

Its projected 355 seats would also surpass the party’s previous record of 343 seats won in 2016.

However, the election took place in a tightly controlled political environment in which genuine anti-war opposition was largely excluded from the ballot.

The Supreme Court removed the liberal Yabloko party, Russia’s only registered party openly opposing the war, from the nationwide party ballot ahead of the election, while other critics of the fighting in Ukraine were imprisoned or forced into exile.

RIGGING CLAIMS REJECTED

Yabloko and the Communist Party also reported irregularities, including observers being denied access to polling stations. Russia did not invite observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), whose Parliamentary Assembly said the decision breached Moscow’s commitments as a member of the organization.

Opposition activists in exile alleged widespread vote rigging, but CEC chair Ella Pamfilova rejected the accusations and described the election as “clean.” Authorities said hundreds of thousands of election observers had been registered.

Official turnout was 59.3 percent among Russia’s roughly 111 million eligible voters, which Pamfilova described as a record for such an election.

The Communist Party finished second with 13.81 percent of the vote, followed by the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) with 8.98 percent and New People with 7.96 percent. Just Russia also cleared the 5-percent threshold for parliamentary representation.

KYIV REJECTS VOTE

All four parties have generally backed the Kremlin on major issues in recent years, leaving United Russia facing little organized parliamentary resistance to Putin’s policies.

Yet Kyiv rejected the election as Moscow also organized voting in Russian-occupied Ukrainian areas, including Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, as well as Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry called the voting in occupied areas illegal and urged foreign governments and international organizations not to recognize the results.

“No ‘voting’ organized by Russia at gunpoint changes the internationally recognized status of these territories,” the ministry stressed.

DRONES HIT RUSSIA

Kyiv added that including representatives elected in occupied Ukrainian territories in Russia’s parliament further undermined the legitimacy of the State Duma.

The election also unfolded against the backdrop of massive Ukrainian drone attacks, including strikes targeting Moscow and its surrounding region on the final day of voting.

Russian authorities said hundreds of drones were intercepted near the capital, while several people were killed or injured in the wider Moscow region and an oil refinery and residential building were damaged.

Moscow accused Kyiv of trying to disrupt the election and vowed to intensify strikes against Ukrainian military targets in response.

Despite the bloodshed, final election results were to be formally announced later in the week, as Putin’s party prepared to continue with its largest-ever majority in Russia’s parliament.

Copyright 1999-2026 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.