Voting assemblies for the Russian legislative elections opened in the Far East regions, starting three days of voting, with opposition limited by Vladimir Putin's regime, whose party is the expected winner, in the middle of war in Ukraine.
© Alexander NEMENOV / AFP via Getty Images
17/09/2026
by
Lusa
Arussian agencies Ria Novosti and TASS reported that the first voting sections opened at 8 a.m. Friday sites (20:00 GMT Thursday) on the Kamchatka peninsula and the autonomous district of Chukotka.
The vote will take place until Sunday, and half of the 450 members of the Duma (the Russian parliament) will be elected through national party lists, while the remaining 225 will be the result of one-off circles, in which the most voted candidate wins.
Putin's party, United Russia, must retain the majority in the Duma (Communist Party, Liberal Democratic Party, Just Russia and New People) have essentially supported the main decisions of power and war in Ukraine.
In the 2021 legislatures, United Russia achieved 49.8% of the votes and currently controls 310 of the 450 seats of the Duma, over 300 needed to maintain a two-thirds majority that allows it to approve constitutional changes without relying on other parties.
The scale of the victory of the United Russia will therefore be one of the main political indicators of scrutiny, more than the expected winner.
A survey by the state institute VTsIOM, held in late August, attributed 37% to the presidential party and 11.6% to the communists.
The election is the first for the Duma since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and occurs in a context of increasing internal impact of the war, between Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian territory, fuel shortages, inflation, high interest rates and labour shortages.
The electoral speech of the United Russia itself is linked to the conflict and Putin assumed a prominent role in the campaign, which associates the vote to national unity and military victory.
The main exception to the consensus surrounding the conflict is the liberal Yabloko, the only legal political formation in Russia that openly defends the end of war and peace negotiations.
The Russian Supreme Court, however, excluded Yabloko's national list of candidates from the elections, after an action by the Rodina nationalist party, leaving only a few of its candidates to dispute uninominal circles.
Several of these candidates have meanwhile been removed, detained or subject to prosecutions related to accusations of discrediting the Armed Forces or disclosing symbols considered extremist by the authorities.
The repression also struck other opposition figures, some of whom were prevented from competing after being classified as “foreign agents” and the main independent Russian electoral surveillance body, Golos, ended in 2025 after years of pressure from the authorities.
Despite these restrictions, some Yabloko candidates continued to campaign. Independent Center Surveys Levada indicates that more than 60% of Russians prefer negotiations to end the war.
The credibility of the electoral process is also challenged due to remote electronic voting, which will be available in more than 30 regions, besides Moscow, between Friday and Sunday.
Yabloko, communist sectors and opponents in exile called on voters to vote only on Sunday and through a paper bulletin, claiming that the electronic system does not allow adequate independent supervision.
Russia did not invite the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to accompany the elections, a decision which the organisation considered to be contrary to the commitments made by Moscow and part of a standard of departure from the principles of transparency, democratic accountability and the rule of law.
Another source of dispute is the holding of the vote in Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, and the occupied territories of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporijia and Kherson, whose incorporation into the Russian Federation is not internationally recognised.