Russia Parliamentary Election Hands Kremlin Wartime Supermajority

The Russia parliamentary election was the first national vote since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and it delivered exactly what the Kremlin designed it to deliver. United Russia, the ruling party closely aligned with President Vladimir Putin, is on course to retain its two-thirds constitutional majority in the State Duma after a three-day vote conducted under wartime conditions, according to partial results released by the Central Election Commission. With 50.03 percent of polling station protocols processed early on Monday, United Russia had taken 57.87 percent of the party-list vote, well ahead of the Communist Party on 13.79 percent, the LDPR on 8.80, New People on 7.86 and A Just Russia on 5.11.

The party-list vote elects 225 of the Duma's 450 seats; the other 225 are decided in single-member constituencies, where earlier commission data showed United Russia leading in 181 races. Combined with its projected share of list seats, that puts the party above the 301-seat threshold needed for a constitutional majority, which allows it to amend the constitution unilaterally. United Russia won 324 seats in the 2021 election. The partial results showed the party performing significantly better than exit polls had suggested: VCIOM put it at 49.4 percent and InSOMAR at 52.8 percent. Turnout reached 56.66 percent, up from 51.72 percent in 2021 and the highest Duma turnout since 2011. Both numbers fit the Kremlin's pre-election narrative. Putin had explicitly cast the vote as a demonstration of national unity and support for Russian soldiers, and a strong result with high participation lets Moscow argue that growing war fatigue has not translated into fatigue with Putin himself, according to the Hungarian Conservative.

No real opposition on the ballot

Opposition activists and independent analysts describe the election as carefully stage-managed, with no genuine path for voters to reject Putin's course. Yabloko, the only registered party campaigning on a pro-peace platform, was removed from the nationwide party-list contest by Russia's Supreme Court, though some of its candidates could run in individual constituencies. The other parties in the race — the Communists, the LDPR, New People and A Just Russia — compete with United Russia on domestic policy but form what is commonly described as the systemic opposition, broadly supporting the Kremlin's strategic course and the war itself. The vote was also the first to include residents of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed shortly after the invasion began in 2022, areas Russia still does not fully control, as well as Crimea. A spokesperson for the European Commission said on September 18 that holding the vote in occupied regions was a violation of international law. Without a real opposition option, some Russian activists encouraged supporters to vote for any party other than United Russia, while others urged a boycott of the election altogether.

Drones shadow the deadliest vote in post-Soviet history

The three-day ballot unfolded alongside a sustained Ukrainian drone campaign that made it the deadliest State Duma election in post-Soviet Russian history. At least eight people were killed in Ukrainian attacks across Russia and Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine during the voting. On September 20, the final day of voting, three people were killed in the Moscow region during what Russian authorities called the largest Ukrainian drone attack on the capital since 2022, a strike Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described as the biggest attack on Moscow since the war began. Zelenskyy said in a social media post that Moscow should end its war and choose peace instead of building rings of air defenses around the capital at the expense of other regions. On the same day, two people died when a drone struck a bus in Russian-held Kherson, including a member of a polling commission, while two more were reported killed in Russian-held Donetsk. On September 18, the first day of voting, a man was killed when a drone struck a private house in the Kursk region. Despite the unprecedented security preparations, which reflected how deeply Ukraine's months-long deep-strike campaign into Russia has changed the atmosphere since the 2024 presidential election, the authorities could not prevent the attacks from reaching polling areas.

Beyond Russia's borders, the election drew a wave of protest from the Russian diaspora. Thousands of Russians living abroad rallied at embassies and consulates around the world to demand an end to the war. In New York, more than a hundred people chanted slogans against Putin and the war in the rain outside the Russian consulate on September 20, according to USA Today. Vladimir Kara-Murza, the opposition activist freed in the historic 2024 prisoner swap between Russia and the West, posed with a green apple — the symbol of Yabloko — outside the Russian Embassy in Washington after he was denied the right to vote, and called on the international community not to recognize what he called a fake election and a fake parliament. Ilya Yashin, another activist freed in the 2024 swap, delivered a speech at the New York protest and told the crowd that protecting Ukraine from Putin was the most important way to support a democratic Russia. Polling before the vote showed a complicated picture inside Russia: support for peace negotiations was rising, while Putin's approval rating and support for the military also remained high. As counting continued into Monday, the Kremlin had the result it wanted — a parliament that ratifies, not restrains, its wartime course. More global coverage is available on the GenZ NewZ homepage.