Russians go to the polls to elect a new State Duma in a tightly controlled vote, devoid of meaningful competition and with little doubt about the outcome. Vladimir Putin’s United Russia is expected to extend the control over parliament he has maintained for 23 years, along with a handful of nominal opposition parties that vote reliably with the Kremlin on the issues that matter. The three-day vote begins Friday, with results expected after polls close Sunday. Despite the predictability of the outcome, the first Duma elections since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 are taking place against the backdrop of a war that, once distant for many Russians, is increasingly intruding into daily life. In this context, the Kremlin has further strengthened its control. Last month, authorities excluded Yabloko, the pacifist liberal party, from the elections, eliminating the only political force left in Russia that was openly challenging the invasion of Ukraine. That leaves a handful of other parties, from the Communists to the far-right Liberal Democrats, which together form what is known in Russia as the “systemic opposition”: groups that are allowed to criticize authorities on the margins, but which align with United Russia on issues that matter to the Kremlin. A Russian Communist Party rally in central Moscow on Thursday. Photograph: Maxim Shipenkov/EPAFor years, they have served as a political safety valve, giving voters a place to register their discontent without posing a serious threat to the ruling party’s dominance. But even by the diminished standards of Russian politics, these parliamentary campaigns have been surprisingly hollow. “In most elections, candidates compete for attention. In Russia this year, many are doing the opposite,” said Farida Rustamova, a political analyst and founder of the independent newsletter Vlast. “No one wants to be the center of attention or discuss anything sensitive.” Most of the candidates have barely campaigned, he noted. Televised debates have sometimes been held in half-empty studios because politicians didn’t show up, producing awkward clips that quickly became memes online. A campaign worker handing out promotional materials for United Russia in Yaroslavl. Photograph: Anastasia Barashkova/Reuters United Russia’s campaign videos have relied heavily on low-budget artificial intelligence, with few memorable slogans or promises. Neither party has dared to address the growing questions surrounding the continuation of the war that are increasingly dominating private conversations: “The Kremlin is deliberately keeping the elections secret, as greater interest would not benefit them. They do not want to discuss difficult and fair issues.” [want to] Let’s get this over with,” said a person close to the Kremlin, speaking on condition of anonymity. Same logic. Several observers believe officials initially expected the party to win a negligible result, demonstrating how little support remained for an explicitly anti-war platform, but when polls suggested growing support for the party, authorities removed it from the vote so as not to risk an unexpected result. A candidate for the Russian liberal party Yabloko handing out leaflets in Moscow Photograph: Yulia Morozova/Reuters Vladimir Gelman, professor of Russian politics at the University of Helsinki, said another. The goal of the elections was to provide the Kremlin with a continuing source of legitimacy and reinforce the impression that there was broad public consent behind the political system and the war. “Although these elections are not free or fair, they remain the only source of legitimacy,” he said. In a televised speech before the vote this week, Putin explicitly linked participation in the elections to the war in Ukraine, presenting the vote as a demonstration of unity in the face of external pressure. will demonstrate once again that millions of people “The people stand behind our soldiers, that we are a people united by shared values, historical memory and love for our homeland,” Putin said. In what follows. With Moscow’s troops making little progress at great cost in Ukraine, rumors of another large-scale mobilization have spread across the country. The fear is that once the elections have passed safely and a new compliant Duma has been installed, the Kremlin will have greater freedom to implement unpopular measures that it has so far avoided. Russians fled after Putin announced the first wartime conscription. The person close to the Kremlin said that several friends had sent their children abroad in recent weeks, a sign, he said, that even among those with access to the system, few are sure what will happen after the vote. Putin has tried to calm those fears. In recent weeks, he has twice rejected suggestions that a new mobilization is imminent. But those assurances haven’t been enough for some men, including Dmitry, who flew to Yerevan, Armenia last time. “I will wait a few weeks after the elections,” he said, adding that he felt the risk of renewed mobilization was too high to ignore. “We’ll see if anything changes after the vote.”
