Putin’s party secures a record number of seats in Russia’s wartime election

Russian authorities on Friday released the full results from the country’s first wartime parliamentary election, which further cemented the Kremlin’s overwhelming political control.

The three-day balloting ended Sunday. According to the results released by the Central Election Commission, the main Kremlin party, United Russia, will get more than three-fourths of the seats in the lower house, the State Duma, a record high. The tightly orchestrated vote excluded virtually any genuine opposition.

Nearly 60% of the 111 million eligible voters turned out, the most for a parliamentary election in over a decade. Authorities had spread the voting over three days and allowed online voting in some regions to boost participation.

The parliamentary election was the first since President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the first to include residents of four regions of that country that were seized and illegally annexed by Moscow later that year.

Voting also was held in Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. Kyiv denounced the voting in those regions as illegal.

Putin declared Wednesday that the election results was a show of public support for the Kremlin policies.

A massive state media campaign and tight control over the election allowed the Kremlin to strengthen its political dominance despite economic troubles and long-range Ukrainian drone attacks.

Central Election Commission chief Ella Pamfilova said that United Russia got 349 out of 450 Duma seats. It polled just under 58% of the ballot for the 225 seats apportioned by parties and also won 209 single-seat races that fill the other half of the chamber.

Several smaller parties representing the “systemic opposition” that vote in line with the Kremlin wishes on all key issues won 97 seats, and the remaining four seats were filled by candidates who ran without a party affiliation, Pamfilova said.

United Russia and other parties said they put dozens of Ukraine war veterans on its lists.

The liberal Yabloko party, the only registered political entity that dared to publicly criticize the war, was removed from the ballot last month by Russia’s Supreme Court. It only had a few dozen candidates in the single-seat races and none of them won a seat.

The election took place against the backdrop of incessant Ukrainian drone attacks. On Sunday, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported it downed 1,110 drones overnight.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 450 drones were downed while flying toward the city on Sunday in what he described as “the largest ever” attack on the capital in a failed attempt to disrupt the vote. The attack, which damaged an oil refinery and a residential building, killed three people and injured 38 in the wider Moscow region, officials said.

Pamfilova said six polling workers were killed in Ukrainian attacks and 75 polling stations were damaged or destroyed by shelling during the voting.