Moscow: United Russia, the ruling, Pro-Putin party, retained its majority in Russian parliament, election officials said on Monday. The result comes after three days of carefully orchestrated balloting that excluded most opposition candidates and helped President Vladimir Putin maintain his tight grip on power.
Preliminary results indicated that United Russia would get 355 out of 450 seats in the State Duma, the lower chamber of parliament, the Central Election Commission said, which would be a record high for the party if confirmed.
Results from over 95 per cent of the polling stations gave United Russia just under 58 per cent of the vote for the 225 seats apportioned by parties, according to commission chair Ella Pamfilova. Another 225 lawmakers were chosen in single-ballot races, and the results showed United Russia candidates leading in 208 of those races.
Winning seats alongside United Russia were several other parties that almost always vote for Kremlin initiatives. A handful of seats will go to candidates who ran without a party affiliation in single-constituency races, according to preliminary results.
It was the first parliamentary election since Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the first to include residents of four regions of the country that were seized and illegally annexed by Moscow later that year. At a polling station in the Russian-held part of the Donetsk region, voters dropped their ballots in a box under the gaze of an armed Russian soldier.
Voting also was held in Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. Kyiv denounced the voting in those regions as illegal.
The government was “able to carry out the campaign and the voting the way it wanted, with the most optimal output,” said Tatyana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre, in an online commentary.